Some Thoughts on Drugs
Jun. 19th, 2022 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unspeakablehorrorWhile I generally prefer to avoid drugs in my own life, I don't think using them is inherently bad either from a practical or a moral perspective. The way the human body works by default can be kind of a disaster, so sometimes they can help manage that. And I don't see why using drugs recreationally should be a moral issue, either. But I also wish people wouldn't push recreational drugs on me, which has particularly been a problem with alcohol in my case.
However, there's another drug where I think the pushiness far exceeds alcohol. I'd go so far as to say this drug is the drug of The Man. And that's caffeine! And it's not even that I never consume caffeine, but you're supposed to consume enough to keep you awake so you can continuously be a proper little cog in the machine despite horrific sleep deprivation. Which, caffeine does horrible things to me beyond what most consider laughably small amounts, so no! I'm not going to do that.
I also think that there's a lot of problems with how the medical establishment both gatekeeps drugs and forces them on people (eg. during institutionalization), and I think that unfortunately these things often aren't seen as the two sides of the same coin that they actually are. And I think that there's no contradiction to saying that people shouldn't stigmatize people taking medication because they need it to function, and that some of those people wouldn't need that medication to function in a better society. Neither of those statements is blaming the individual or insinuating that they can somehow fix the problem themselves through some sort of 'power of positive thinking' nonsense.
Societal problems are actually not more fixable by individuals than chemical imbalances are. We can't just make ourselves rich or get whatever job we want or have as much time off as we want or sleep in as much as we need in this society through some individual action. Nevertheless, all of these things could have a positive effect on mental health that could reduce or eliminate the need for drugs or therapy in some cases. The lack of these things is also slowly killing a lot of us, drugs or no drugs.
However, there's another drug where I think the pushiness far exceeds alcohol. I'd go so far as to say this drug is the drug of The Man. And that's caffeine! And it's not even that I never consume caffeine, but you're supposed to consume enough to keep you awake so you can continuously be a proper little cog in the machine despite horrific sleep deprivation. Which, caffeine does horrible things to me beyond what most consider laughably small amounts, so no! I'm not going to do that.
I also think that there's a lot of problems with how the medical establishment both gatekeeps drugs and forces them on people (eg. during institutionalization), and I think that unfortunately these things often aren't seen as the two sides of the same coin that they actually are. And I think that there's no contradiction to saying that people shouldn't stigmatize people taking medication because they need it to function, and that some of those people wouldn't need that medication to function in a better society. Neither of those statements is blaming the individual or insinuating that they can somehow fix the problem themselves through some sort of 'power of positive thinking' nonsense.
Societal problems are actually not more fixable by individuals than chemical imbalances are. We can't just make ourselves rich or get whatever job we want or have as much time off as we want or sleep in as much as we need in this society through some individual action. Nevertheless, all of these things could have a positive effect on mental health that could reduce or eliminate the need for drugs or therapy in some cases. The lack of these things is also slowly killing a lot of us, drugs or no drugs.