"Just saying no" to drugs in 2025 is like refusing to use computers and the Internet. Sure, you can do just fine without them, but you're locking yourself out of a whole realm of the world, since an illicit psychoactive drug is not just a substance - it's a well-established global network of independent human-scale (but not always human-shaped) agents that does not cease to exist when you successfully ignore it. It's no coincidence that chemical neuroaugmentation has developed hand in hand with the silicon pseudocognition that lets us write to each other over a wire :)
And that's exactly why the goody-two-shoes humanist-by-default muh work-and-family type economic agents never know what hit 'em when weird shit inevitably hits the global fan. Though personally, I would prefer a world designed by acidheads, or even opiate addicts, rather than the present inane timeline, which is largely the work of coke fiends (and their industrious flunkies the speediots) over the course of the last half century or so.
Spoiler, kids: contrary to naming convention, amphetamine and its derivatives do not "speed" you up in any meaningful way.
(EDIT: for the sake of it)
Those ones do not write angry half baked manifestos and try and take over the world and flex their power on everyone in their path.
Usually they just realize the trees are talking to us and very important and we shouldn’t cut them all down. That kind of thing. Long term thinking.
These guys just want to be king of the castle. And god knows what happens if they achieve it all and then get bored
That whole "psychedelic enlightenment" meme is half due to the privilege of narrow-mindedness uniquely permitted to the college-educated (whose psychedelic journeys usually end up with the proverbial lousy T-shirt), half elaborate hypermedia smoke screen (deployed by you-know-they-know-you-know-who by means of the Learies, Lillies, and other difficult to pronounce for our East Asian strategic partners Huxleys)
As a matter of fact, it gets worse. I've observed psychedelics assist people's slide into faschizoid thinking on multiple occasions. My point was more like, cocaine turns people into peasants, maaan. You've never seen? And they've already been in charge for a long time, surprise surprise. And they're hella bored, too, which is why the things you must've been observing if we're at all on the same planet have been occurring at an ever more farcical cadence. (Therefore, according to your own reasoning, you're god. Enjoy! ;)
Bad form.
Nah not really. You need computers and the internet to engage with the modern world but not doing drugs is fine. I mean they can be interesting but also have well documented downsides.
A possible real world example - I'm guessing here is Elon. The pre drugged up one of a decade ago building rockets and cars I thought was cool. The current Elon doing nazi salutes and cruelly firing people looks to me like someone who's done too many drugs. You can ask yourself which you'd rather be.
All the people near and far who have been putting up with his existence for the past decade, now they could sure use a fat ass jolt to the ol' central nervous. Except they fear it would make their wives invoke Mumbo Jumbo!
> I think it’s not coincidental that many of the people I’ve met who believe in this stuff have a relationship with amphetamines/MDMA