I am on the fence with these topics because I have years of fear drilled into me. These topics are a taboo and I have rarely ever tried anything at all. The experiences did not ruin me, they made me more curious about my brain in a positive way. But the social taboo lingers.
What surprises me the most is that we have accepted sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and a ton of mass manufactured food which are harming us. I am struggling with high blood glucose for 12 years. Yet, the substance which I can grow in my* own backyard and may actually not be as harmful is just brainwashed out of my limits.
As a similar "Boy Scout" of sorts, the fear is/was real. I didn’t experiment with so much as nicotine or alcohol until I’d tried “stuff” with the supervision of an experienced "sitter"; I ended up having some of the best times of my life in the safety and context of home and friendships. Combined with my own life experiences with drug abuse and addictions, I was able to build a healthy relationship with those substances that didn't result in dependency or abuse.
In the time since, my views have changed dramatically on these substances, and I'd like to try more of them. However, my personal moral compass prevents me from using substances outside of a legally permissible setting, at least at present - and that's something I'm fine with.
Ultimately, the taboo side of things is something the individual has to grapple with on their own. I can only commiserate with your frustrations, not help overcome them unfortunately. My only other advice would be to use any substance only to amplify good vibes, never to cope with bad ones.
If all you do is chase a lost feeling, you're missing out on what's in front of you now.
> I ended up having some of the best times of my life in the safety and context of home and friendships.
> However, my personal moral compass prevents me from using substances outside of a legally permissible setting, at least at present - and that's something I'm fine with.
Laws encode a kind of social reasoning (the balancing of risk, ethics, societal impacts, etc) and choosing to follow the law in most situations can be a moral stance (a matter of principle).
Indeed, in the most general sense (and probably more so in democracies) laws represent the codification of what society as a whole deems acceptable and what should happen when someone breaches that code.
Of the people in power, not the people. Most certainly the people who were enslaved didn't believe it was moral or ok. Similarly for women's rights, LGBTQ+, etc etc. So again, laws and morality are different things and should be treated as such.
Assuming a government that reflects the people like democracy, which is I assume the context of this discussion. And to be clear they are different, but they are very closely related. And the relationship is that law follows and encodes the people's morality. Usually by majority depending on the form of government.
If many people feel like the laws do not represent their morality, that's generally a problem, and will result in either change in the laws, or change in government altogether. They are quite intrinsically linked.
Democracy is not where a government reflects the views of the people. Otherwise the democracies of the world would not have taxes or ubiquitous surveillance or perpetual war. Nobody anywhere wants these things.
I would disagree with that; I want taxes because I get something out of taxes. Taxes are me paying the government for certain services they provide me, like I'm hiring a contractor.
As for surveillance/war, although they have been supported by large chunks of the population in the past, I would say democracy aims to reflect the views of the majority. But it's also not magic, it's a fixed system -- a complicated system, but just a system. You vote for the person/party that best reflects your views. It seems quite a bit more likely to be a reflection of the people than other forms of government where the people tend to have less of a say, but not necessarily of course.
To an extent, but you have to be careful with that. A common counter-argument is what happened when the Nazis allowed you to report your neighbours for treasonous talk. Lawful, but evil.
There's a whole section of moral philosophy dedicated to whether it's morally right to subsequently go after the people who reported their neighbours. They knew they were sentencing their victims to imprisonment or death, but did so 'lawfully'. Ex post facto laws are an interesting moral conundrum.
Also laws sometimes don't actually reflect society as the process gets hijacked by companies, the billionaires controlling the media or vocal minorities (usually religious vocal minorities).
Is there that much of a social taboo? Maybe it's just the people I hang out with and work with, but most people are open to psychedelic use and a lot have at least tried some.
Having grown up around the world and going to a few international schools I came to realise that "normal" is just what the people around you do (well "in public" is probably a good effective limit).
Yes, it’s your bubble. There are American states still charging people over marijuana. Having grown up Christian I personally know people in their 30s who view psychedelic and heroin users similarly. Those people would have the opposite view of you.
Years back, my friend’s parents asked me to stage an intervention for him after they found out he regularly took LSD. He was 19 at the time.
Growing up my friend’s dad was a conservative christian and a frequent caller into conservative talk radio shows. There was a state referendum to legalize marijuana, so I asked what he thought. “Of course it should be legal. It says right there in Genesis—God said: I give you every herb bearing seed upon the Earth. What could be more clear-cut than that?”
The words are written in the first chapter of the first book.
Clearly God did not mean “use” as “in turn into rope and strangle other people” (violating other commandments) but nowhere does God say herbs can’t be used for medicine or wine can’t be used for its intoxicating effects, (within some reasonable degree of moderation.)
All of the Bible is T&C’s. God’s goal was to make it longer than Apple’s but he failed. (Ironically Apple was the one fruit Adam and Eve weren’t supposed to eat.)
Nah he just created all the plants/fruits/etc. and then gave them to Adam and Eve without an instruction manual. Never told them to eat anything in particular. I think it was still a nice gesture.
My friend's "Christian" parents both eat Oxycontin like candy but think anything THC related is evil and kicked one of their sons out of the house at 15 years old because they found out he ate a THC gummy. When confronted they said their drug use is moral because they have prescriptions but weed is illegal and therefore satanic. I wish I was there to point out kicking their teenage son out on the streets was also illegal.
This mindset hard to even wrap my mind around. Total nonsense.
Isn't the distinction based on whether the substance directly cause a wage gap and/or significant life expectancy loss? Someone on meth all the time can literally fatigue-free until there is no brain matter left, but someone on coffee or beer can not.
It is often argued that some of generally illegal substances like marijuana is only toxic to comparable extents as legal substances, but there are observations that it seem to trigger some types of megalomaniac schizophrenia, so the fence probably has reasons to be there, I think.
> Isn't the distinction based on whether the substance directly cause a wage gap and/or significant life expectancy loss?
No. I feel QUITE certain that the distinction is based on whether or not the substance has a history of a few generations of widespread use among western Europeans ("white people").
What surprises me the most is that we have accepted sugar, alcohol, cigarettes and a ton of mass manufactured food which are harming us. I am struggling with high blood glucose for 12 years. Yet, the substance which I can grow in my* own backyard and may actually not be as harmful is just brainwashed out of my limits.
edits: you to me