Good advice. It's why I stay the hell away from opiates.

Yeah just stay away from opiates in general. It is too good a feeling for many people to resist for very long.

Methamphetamine and opiates can not be used responsibly ever, by ANYONE. I don't care who you are, I've seen some otherwise bright and intelligent people fall prey to the trappings of both those substances. The consequences are horrible, not only for those using but for everyone around them.

It really depends on the person. I really do believe some people have "addictive personalities" or whatever. (I also believe I do not, since I've done heroin and lots of other opiates many times and never felt a "need" to do them again.)

However, I would agree with the general sentiment of "better safe than sorry" and that one should think twice before using certain drugs, yes.

As for Rx drugs, yes, those too. My dad was addicted to (legal, prescribed) opiates for over a decade before he died, possibly helped along by heavy use of opiates and alcohol.

I would say that "responsible" use differs from person to person, though. I haven't done drugs in probably 6 or 8 years, people I know still smoke pot every day. I hate pot, I could never stand it. I hate how people spend 6 hours a day looking for their dealer, and then smoke it and sit around like morons the rest of the night. I would never pay money to feel like that. I can't even understand why marijuana is such a popular drug.

I really don't know. In the past, I've both been extremely pro-drugs and extremely anti-drugs. Now, I just don't care about it.

Cannabis and psychedelics are the only illegals worth doing (though also more "worth it" than legal drugs, ie alcohol, tobacco, coffee). Marijuana is basically the best drug for regular consumption as long as you can handle your shit; fucking coffee and tobacco got me hooked, but I can handle myself just fine with weed. I did get slightly burnt out with weed a few years ago for a bit, but I was just using too much before then and being a directionless idiot who'd take any drug (mostly stupid fucking pills) he could get his hands on. And even the come down from cannabis is pretty pleasant for me now; just stay mellow and tired while the "haze" gradually disappears. Man, I love weed...

"... and I just want everyone to know that I'm pro-family and anti-drug."
- Patrick Bateman

I don't care if you use whatever drug you want to use, as long you are not some crackhead trying to beat the shit out of me to steal my pocket money.

My problem is with drug cartels and the like, as they fuck up every place they put their grubby hands on.

No such thing, in my opinion. Everyone I know who claims to be able to use recreational drugs responsibly(and I know PLENTY) has fucked their lives up in one way or another due to it.

EDIT: And call me arrogant as you please, but I have a lot of disdain for regular drug-users. No junkie I've ever heard of has ever accomplished anything significant, noteworthy, or even worth mentioning. If the highlight of your life is getting high/tripping out, I suppose it's hard to focus on actually important stuff.

Yeah, you do sound like an arrogant prick to me. It doesn't matter what you do in this life you know that, right? You can do many things that are noteworthy but you will still die and rot in the ground anyway.

Kurt Cobain?

Think there's a couple of scientists/noble laureates/inventors/artists attribute their success in part from drug use (psychedelic or otherwise). Really that is all the point of this post is to point that out, I don't see a need to give a post as ignorant and square as yours a proper response.

Thats a stupid argument. It matters plenty if its important to you. If you arent going to make good use of your time alive, why are you still here? Go off yourself and stop breathing my air.

Fuck off.

You're missing the point, though. Being a "junkie" is not responsible drug use. "Regular drug-users" is rather vague, too. Would you call a person who "regularly" uses lsd once every two or three months a "junkie"? Would you put that person on the same level as an every-day heroin user?

What irks me about anti-drug people is that they paint the issue in a black and white picture, and nothing in life is ever that cut and dry. They simply don't think enough about the issue.

For me I see the use of drugs by humanity as a necessary and inescapable recreation. Humans have been manipulating their consciousness in various forms for thousands of years, and contrary to your post, many intelligent and successful people have done and continue to use drugs.

Rule of drug use (and many other facets of life): "mēdén ágan" ("nothing in excess")

"Psychedelics should be used not to escape reality, but to embrace it."

somefella: are addicts humans to you? or to you does junkie = C.H.U.D.?

Anthony Kiedis
Keith Richards
Ray Charles

pretty noteworthy names to me, man.

You're a regular mental Bruce Lee.

Guys, behave or I'm gonna close the thread, that goes for Mr. Moderator Crick too.

My apologies. I get worked up about apathy sometimes.

.. sorry. (I can relate, Crick.)

The famous mathematician Paul Erdős was a habitual amphetamine user. So much so, in fact, that a colleague of his made a bet that he couldn't go for one month without doing it. Erdős won the bet (for $500), but he commented that his sabbatical had set back the world of mathematics by a month, and immediately resumed taking amphetamine. "Before, when I looked at a piece of blank paper my mind was filled with ideas. Now all I see is a blank piece of paper."

So yeah, people have accomplished great things with the aid of drugs. There are obviously lots of musicians I could use as examples as well, but I thought it better, in this instance, to use someone from a different field.

Good idea. And interesting story, too.

Drugs don't work unless there are nerotransmitters already like them in our brains. It's seems silly to avoid an enhancement on account of it being a drug. Used too much, the apparatus wears out, but that puts the 'responsible' in drug use.

As far as myself and what I do, it's not even an issue. I don't touch drugs (or alcohol for that matter).

For everyone else, though, I in fact actively encourage irresponsible drug use. Overdose and die already. Please.

Of course there are great men who have been regular drug users too, but citing examples opposite to a statement doesn't automatically refute it. My own guitarist is smoking it up every other minute, him citing Keith Richards is not going to make me or anyone else look differently at his stupid habit. Using that logic, I could say physics students should go get a full body paralysis because Stephen Hawking is really clever.

A: Get off that shit, you're missing rehearsals and school because all you care about is smoking up.
B: Dude, fucking Keith Richards, man. Don't talk to me about affecting the band, we could be the next Nirvana or something !
A: Newsflash though, YOU are NOT Keith Richards, so clean your act up or find another band.

EDIT: Obviously I'd much rather be seen an arrogant prick by junkies than try to soften my stance on an already obvious issue. Meaning that, in my country you go to jail for a year or two if you get caught with about half a joint's worth of weed. Rather than argue about how the law sucks, weed is so harmless, boofuckinghoo the government is so evil, how about deciding like an adult that the consequences aren't worth the risk, so just quit that shit.

So why are you still living? Since nothing in life matters, why don't you go kill yourself now? Can it be that you try to take a super nihilistic view on life to appear a hard-ass but fear death too much to ever stand behind your own philosophy? You're a poseur of the highest order, kid.

PS: I'm getting my fine ass cremated, so slowly YOU rot

Oh, Singapore. Never mind.

So your guitarist obviously isn't very "responsible", as the word is defined by pretty much everyone here, which renders your anecdotal evidence rather more moot, does it not?

somefella: I only pointed out addicts who had done something noteworthy, which you said you'd never heard of.

It's too bad about your bandmate, too. In a different country, he would probably just be a burn-out, whereas in yours it's a lot more dangerous. The law is crazy, and the government is deranged. I can understand why you get upset watching him play with fire.

Admittedly that was a pretty blanket statement, I was referring more to anecdotal instances or broadened social circles. Obviously there are drug addicts or former drug addicts who achieved great things while stoned out of their minds. Rust In Peace is one of my favourite metal albums of all time, for example. I just feel citing such examples to deny the severity of one's own addiction is silly. Meaning people going like "Dave Mustaine could do smack and tour the world, why can't I?"

I still think there isn't such a thing as responsible drug use if it's more regular than a pop every few months.

Because it wouldn't matter either way.

Yeah false comparisons like that are delusional.

It depends on the drug. Having a drink every few days wouldn't be addict or dysfunctional behavior. My guess is that you're just really pissed watching your friend make excuses and take unnecessary risks for paltry reward and you don't want to see him go down like that, eh?

great post and thats what i tell people everything in moderation. some people want to come home from a hard days work or studying or whatever people are doing and want to smoke a couple joints, relax watch tv etc or eat some mushrooms and listen to music or watch a funny movie etc

everything can be addictive in life and be taken to extremes. gambling,sex,social networking,online gaming etc
i bet on football during the season i spend 20 dollars through my work to play a football pool does that make me a gambling junkie? no now if i bet my house and my life savings on a horse race yeah that would make me a gambling junkie.

i have seen plenty of people do drugs recreationally and no one in the world would expect them to do drugs i have known a state trooper to do coke on occasion, another cop that smokes weed, a teacher that did opiates on the weekends. none of these people are junkies, i have seen my fair share of those as well.

presidents, government officals, school teachers,factory workers,scientists,doctors,nurses etc every walk of life has done drugs on occasion and have done them responsibly

Most of the addiction comes from reward, not volume. In the case of gambling, for instance, expectation of reward is increased by way of Variable-Interval rewards. Great ape pulls bar unpredictable number of times until reward appears. Great ape bets on football unpredictable number of times ..
In the case of some drugs, addiction can start in very small doses and over a short amount of time. Conditioning relies on reinforcement.


Maybe. It could mean you were having a manic episode.

Because it felt 'just that good', rats have crossed electrified grates to be able to push a button that stimulated an electrode in their brains.

Three points I would like to make:

A) Weed can be dangerous (well not really, but when I explain my story I'm sure you'll understand what I'm coming at.) When I was a lot younger I used to smoke a lot of weed (I barely do now, mainly due to this experience.) I had bought some horrible crusty and kind of brownish weed from this guy and decided late at night to smoke about a gram of it. I only manage to smoke 4 cones, as I realized something wasn't normal (I could barely stop my hands from shaking.) Anyway I started to head into the kitchen, first thing I notice is I couldn't shut the door at all, kept making horrible noises. Once I reached the refrigerator my eyesight was really grainy (similar to what would appear on your old TV when you had n signal, however throw in flashing and a lot of weird colors popping up as well.) I tried to eat something to keep my mind off it (I ended up throwing that up later.) After doing so the situation had got worst as all I could hear was rain. As I reached my bedroom, it reached it's peak, in which I remember switching on the computer and not being able to see anything, plus it felt like the light from the monitor was burning my face. So instead I tried to sleep it off, well you know that just made it worst. The raining audio hallucination had gotten so loud that it was hurting soo much, I also started to feel a thousand of pebbles hitting my face(however not visually.) I lay there suffering from this torture for hours, until I went to my bathroom to throw up what I had eaten.) I eventually fell asleep or just blanked out maybe through exhaustion. Anyway back to the point, being responsible with drugs also includes picking responsible dealers and not smoking anything that gets handed to you (as I found out later from a mate of mine who was close with the dealer, that the dealer had gotten his hands on PCP as well.) I'm sorry to turn this into a typical post you'd see on erowid, but I literally remember this event like it was yesterday since it had such a huge impact on me, and today smoking weed can just stress me out due to the fact I don't want this happening to me again (an I recount this story so people are aware that spiked weed does happen.) Nowerdays I'm very responsible with my alcohol and hallucinogens. I've been meaning to find the perfect place and time for DMT.

B) The prescription pill craze at the moment is concerning. As it seems to be handed to kids way too frequently. My cousin (his name will remain unknown) recently got prescribed an anti-depressant. Honestly the reason being (according to his mum) that he feel negative some days, and therefor the doctor felt that was a suitable enough symptom for my cousin to be considered bi-polar. I don't think the medical system, at least in my country is very responsible when it comes to this stuff as I've heard it a million times.

On a side note I overheard some addicts at my trains station talking about how Animal Crossing is meant to be the best game to play whilst high on meth (which kind of makes sense.)

And also stay away from those syriinges in the sandbox

I know two guys that used to do outrageous amounts of drugs. Eating shrooms like popcorn, covering a full-length mirror in cocaine and having that basically be the party, meth and dexies to speed up work. Not only have these guys never had any issues, one of them now owns and runs his own very successful business, owns many properties and is worth something like 2.5 million; the other is married and writes for a living, including writing speeches for Canadian dignitaries (including, I'm not fucking joking, the former prime minister). These dudes really never got hooked on drugs, even opiates (they loved opium back in the day, but never used needles).

So that's just a quick response for both the person who said that NOBODY does opiates and speed and shit and doesn't become fucked up, and to the guy who admitted he sounds like an arrogant prick.

Note: I don't advocate this kind of drug use; I'm just saying some people really are fine with it. Oh, and the president of the USA was a regular pot and coke user. He did okay for himself.

Great for him, this President, but what's the point of that statement? To say drug use can get you into the White House? There are exceptions to every rule, obviously. Some people shrug off stage 3 cancer with nothing but placebo, does that make chemotherapy a completely irrelevant option?

In general, I still think doing anything other than shrooms or weed every few weeks is a bad idea. Sure, some great and famous people have done more and not fucked up, but reality check: you aren't them.

EDIT: @ Grave_Wyrm, You got that right. Besides, it's hard to work with a band member who skips practice on more than a few occasions citing fatigue or unavailability, but never fails to meet his dealer right on time. Sure, he's taking night classes to get a business degree and working part time at a studio, so you could say that you wouldn't call that fucking his life up. But sometimes instead of saying "It could be worse", you say "It could be better". If he wasn't getting high all the time he'd have enough money to pay for studio time for rehearsals, instead of constantly trying to fish loose change from his jeans. Just one example. My point's that while you may not be fucking your life up with recreational drugs, your life could also be much better without them.

It was just to point out that doing drugs won't necessarily stop you from going to the white house. And those guys aren't that far from me, to be honest.

I guess my point is that there are many people who have a certain capacity for drugs, who can operate and function pretty naturally while on them. Some people use tylenols and aspirin and advils on the daily; some people have their blood pressure meds, their cholesterol meds, their headache meds, their back pain meds, and their sleep meds; other people smoke pot every day. I think as long as people are in good health, a healthy state of mind, and take care of their priorities first (IE - don't buy pot if you're scraping up money for the rent), it's responsible drug use that doesn't hurt anybody and is okay. That all said, I don't live in Singapore; I live in a country where people go to park benches and puff a joint and nobody cares, where just two days ago I saw a businessman sitting in his convertible parked at the side of a busy downtown street rolling a joint on his lap, so I feel quite differently about it than you do, I think understandably. In your country, I think I'd take a pretty long "high-atus", but here, I just don't think anyone's life would be better if they didn't have a beer or smoke a joint after a long day of work.

My experience with opiates is a nasty one. Felt good for a bit... then felt sick... then puked and fell asleep. Not my idea of a good time.