PieFed DKWhy does it seem like the majority of people think problems are caused by drugs rather than problems causing people to turn to drugs?
I was never heavy into drugs but I smoked weed a fair bit in my 20s, knew a lot of other daily users of weed as well as some harder drugs. I don’t think I ever came across a person that randomly decided to do drugs for no reason one day and got hooked. They were all people who had pretty messed up problems in their life that were too complex for them to fix on their own.
So it confuses me when people instantly assume that someone is in a bad situation due to drugs rather than them using drugs to deal with a bad situation. And yes I know drug abuse makes problems worse the vast majority of the time but it’s not what I see as the root issue in a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom/coping mechanism for people that society have let fall through the cracks.
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It’s an easy, comforting answer.
“That person’s life sucks because they do drugs” doesn’t raise any uncomfortable questions, and it makes avoiding a similar situation seem easy. “That person is using drugs because their life sucks” leads us to ask why their life sucks and whether the same thing could happen to us.
That’s a deep answer. Kinda like fundamental attribution error.
It is exactly fundamental attribution error, with a bit of motivated reasoning.
I guess a lot of people who haven’t gone through some serious shit in their life really do find it difficult to accept how bad some people have it
It takes the “fate” out and puts in a level of control. Well your life is crappy because you do x, I don’t do x so I’m safe.
Out of curiosity, what would you consider an example of circumstances where taking drugs would make someone’s life suck less (at least, from their PoV)?
People in a wide variety of circumstances report positive experiences with psychedelics.
I think someone in a bad situation they can’t improve through their own effort might feel better numbing their experience with drugs. The trouble with that is people aren’t always good at judging whether there’s anything they can do about their bad situation.
In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick
It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.
Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.
I’ve known people who has done drugs just because “party fun” and ended up hooked.
There are plenty of people out there. Some would have take on drugs because their lives where miserable, or even as a form of anesthesic, but other just because they were fun (at the beginning)
One of the most used drugs, tobacco, people start smoking “just because it’s cool”, and end up hooked for life. Never underestimate how addictive are drugs and how social pressure or just social behavior could make someone try a substance.
Because fixing the PROBLEMS means the people in charge lose money to build functional, supportive social structures.
Much easier to throw victims in jail and monetize their “treatment” by privatizing poor people’s tax dollars.
The problems causing drug abuse reflects on the speaker’s treatment of people and the people close to them, it makes them responsible for the fallout of their actions or lack of action.
Blaming the user absolves themselves of any responsibility.
You can apply that to pretty much any social ills, like poverty, homelessness, etc.
IOW, the person blaming the user: may have abused the user in some way as a kid, voted to end substance abuse education in schools, voted to end afterschool programs that might’ve kept kids away from abusive situations or drugs in the house, voted to limit or end food programs that would have allowed people to not become completely destitute and take to drugs for escape, and so on.
It also depends what drugs we’re talking about.
There are definitely drugs much more likely to cause problems, even if you didn’t have any in the first place. And not everybody who runs into problems with drugs used them to cope with problems they had. Careless recreational use can lead to addiction all the same. Especially when the drug can create a physical dependecy, like alcohol or heroin do.
But it’s also a lot easier to blame drugs than to pin down societal problems that might lead people to problematic drug use.
Because it’s simpler than admitting/dealing with systemic issues. It’s easier to imagine that someone doing drugs isn’t human than it is to ever imagine you could be there yourself.
It’s a lack of empathy.
To answer your question, because they’ve never done drugs. people who blame the problem you describe solely on drugs don’t know anything about drugs, except that they’re scary and they hurt you.
A simple explanation of a complex problem
Can’t that be the same for other things? Drugs, violence, guns, gangs, etc.
Nobody should want to do those things with a healthy mindset.
I don’t disagree
Listen how are we supposed to argue if you keep agreeing with me
I don’t like your tone but I accept your right to an opinion
The thing about morality is that it’s a luxury for most people. When you’re put in a position where the only way to survive is to act against your own morals, it kinda breaks all of them.
And then you rebuild your morals to fit your situation … and if you then overthink it like I did, you realise how many moral standards are just bullshit.
It is very useful for collecting votes, justifying increased spending, and is ultimately lucrative. A lot of political topics are like this, IRL reality is more complex and no one has a silver bullet
Mmm. Used to misdirect hate and anger towards a group of people who mostly don’t have the means to defend themselves because they’re down on their luck already. Social scapegoats.
IMO the thought sequence goes: I’ve had struggles in my life and I’ve always had the option to use drugs to deal with it, but I didn’t. And most people around me feel the same way. So when I see other people with struggles turn to drugs, it’s their own fault for not being as strong willed as me and my ingroup. And when drug users cause problems in our society, I don’t feel bad for whatever happens to them, because it’s their own fault.
But clearly not all life struggles are comparable, not everyone has the same system of support around them, not everyone has the same genetic predisposition to addictions, and probably 100 more variables.
But a war on X is rarely about everyone in a society coming together and deciding that we should crack down on X, and more about a party/demagogue using X as a scapegoat for real, systemic issues that they have no idea how to solve. People hear politician make loud, confident speech about solving all problems using war on X, and people say “sure, sounds reasonable, do that, just solve it.” Obviously it won’t, the question is just how much damage the demagogue will do before people catch on.
Not necessarily a proper answer, but..
Captain Ketamine is supposedly worth over $2 trillion…
Because people don’t understand what they haven’t experienced. Like, at all.
Amplification - drugs /can/ turn a small problem into a huge one.
Plus sometimes people do start drugs for temporary or even trivial reasons - boredom, curiosity, peer pressure, even just availability - they don’t always need to be escaping something.
When they say drugs ruin lives, it’s a truism often enough to be accurate.
A popular theory among self-proclaimed paychonauts, or people that like to experiment with drugs, but mostly psychedelics, is that using mind-altering substances could lead to ideas or insights that could be (considered) a threat to the status-quo. This is why the powers that be often demonize all drugs equally.
As others have pointed out, many people don’t really like to think about the systemic issues in society that drive people into poverty, homelessness or other problems that often go hand on hand with drug addiction.
It should be pointed out, though, that some drugs can and most likely will ruin your life. The first rule of experimenting with drugs is never, ever try heroin (or other opiates).
Can confirm. Tried it once and now I have incurable anhedonia and disthymia (basically depression).
But I’m still able to work and capitalism can exploit me so, all’s fine, I guess.
It is also extremely addictive.
Yeah thankfully I’m not addicted, but then again, I understand people getting addicted because it’s the best feeling I ever had in my life (and will ever have, because I can’t feel this happiness anymore).
I concur. From a historical-perspective, rooted in colonialism, drug use was prohibited due to the effect it had on labour’s compliance, even if the use was an indigenous cultural phenomenon. Rather, it made life more difficult for those charged with its administration.
I think the OP is mistaking the propaganda for reality. People generally aren’t thinking about others in any significant way. They just don’t want to deal with an inconvenience so brush it aside by falling back on the propagandized version of reality that is given by the government and corporations. It’s the safe answer and the institutionally accepted answer. Anything else requires conflict and Deborah just wanted to buy coffee and get to her appointment on time, not debate with unhearing television screens, radios, strangers, law-enforcement-drones or a consortium of suited executives. The homeless man was begging on the street due to drugs and a lack of will-power. More importantly to Deborah, he was in her way and was assaulting her senses and cognition. Let the police lock him away.
Homelessness has been increasing here in Australia due to well-understood mechanisms. Those mechanisms have been operating for decades and intellectuals and observers have made critique before. They continue to do so. The issue only gets worse, because it’s by design. It’s the political class’ blueprint and things are working as they should be.
The council would rather pay to have infrastructure torn up, such as the removal of public benches from public property, because the homeless sleep on them and that is unsightly. The fact that the cost would have tripled to have it installed, removed and (presumably) re-installed once the homeless issue was resolved isn’t true, because there is no resolutions to hinder the advance of homelessness.
Drugs are a class issue. The labourer is not to indulge in them. The other classes are free to do so within a limit. The demands of industrial society have influenced what that limit is, but there is a clear distinction between the classes. When a lawyer indulges in cocaine and it’s made into a public-spectacle the media report about the immense stress placed on lawyers. When the labourer makes a drug-induced public-spectacle the media report on the moral failings of the labouring class and how they must be better controlled.
None of it is coherent and the ruling class don’t care. If you’re interested in the intersection of drugs and morality, especially if your background is from a Catholic or Christian cult, I’d snarkily implore you to read their histories and the documented drug use of these cults that underpin Western-democratic morality codes. There’s a reason the Bible is like a fever-dream of a druggie, because it is one. The needs of capitalism, of regimented time-controlled labour, now prohibits such use and the priest class pivot to create a narrative of why it is so, even if their documented legacy shows them to be lieing dogs.
Drugs are an inseparable part of the human experience. Have fun; look after each other and listen to your elders’ advice. I’d caution that the cultural ceremonies that had implemented recreational drug use have been obliterated from living memory for some social groups and we now find ourselves in societies that mass-produce novel drugs. It’s uncharted territory in one sense.
Because the human mind is preconditioned to prefer simple solutions that confirm pre-existing beliefs and biases, especially if they feel good.
Those who want to control us need a boogeyman to point at, one that is NOT themselves.
Ultimately, this is the reason.
But how did the overlords drill the misconception into people’s minds so well
The “War On Drugs™”
See D.A.R.E.
Talking about the problems and circumstances people face which may lead to substance use (including alcohol and THC) is still stigmatised and socially taboo in the community compared to the simplistic conversation about effects of substance use.
Can you imagine if we all spoke openly about the problems and various forms of abuse, neglect and violence in the community?
I’m professionally neck deep in this, and still people turn to coping mechanisms before opening up. It’s rather sad.
It’s not either/or, it’s a self-reinforcing cycle, though it isn’t usually the drugs themselves that start it.
Well oxy definitely turned normal people with pain, into uncontrolled addicts. I’d say oxy drug is a problem.
I do know a few people (very well) who had a super good life then friend group gets them into drug scene and life falls apart.
But yeah mostly its abused kids, neglected kids, or people with mental health issues looking for the soothing that others just get naturally as a coping skill
Just opiods in general
You’d be surprised - I was this person who had a “super good life” and from the outside “had friends that got me into drugs and caused problems” but trust me, that was a facade and I was 100% seeking it out - that’s why I was hanging out with those friends in the first place.
Not a lot of vocal people that had big problems, almost turned to drugs, but didn’t, and noticed they still had problems.
Why do people with problems assume other people don’t have problems, or have strength, or emotional maturity? We are all fragile and barely hanging on. All of us.
First order effects easy to see, second order causes harder to see
Easier and cheaper to actually do something about them.
If drought hits your country would you rather people focus on bringing water to the plants (lack of water is a visible, tangible, actionable cause of the problem) or start a meteorology department and wait for rain (because weather is the one that caused drought).
To make people not turn to drugs you need to provide them with a life worth living without drugs. I’m not talking utopian living. You want to turn people away from drugs? People who have their own house/flat, work less than 60 hours a week, have money to spend on hobbies after necessities like food or clothing, and have places to do those hobbies in. Those people do not turn to drugs. But those people aren’t obedient workers constantly stressed about chasing the goals of their employer. Those people aren’t exhausted sheep voting along party lines because they have no time or energy to research political topic themselves. If you are the government, you do not want those people existing at all.
As for marijuana - marijuana stalks can be turned into plastic-like but eventually biodegradable substance. So the reason marijuana was so demonized had nothing to do with drugs, but everything to do with it competing with plastic.
Hemp as fabric material was everywhere before the victory march of fossils. But is it really as good as plastic?
For modern use of plastics? Not really, we found even better plants to replace plastic and there are several startups in Asia, Africa and South America that use them.
For use of plastics at the time? Marijuana hemp only “downside” was being bio-degradable. The idea that your trash bag will outlive you was considered great back then.
Plastic industry is probably the most scam-infested one in the history of mankind. Even considering modern predatory tactics like gambling for kids. Do you know that when international community decided to use triangle made of arrows as a symbol for “recyclable product”, plastic companies lobbied for the same symbol to also mean “plastic” no matter if it’s recyclable or not? This is why every plastic nowadays has the “recyclable” symbol with number inside, number indicates type of plastic and only one or two of about ten types of plastic is really recyclable.
The pod " cool people who did cool stuff” with Margaret killjoy did a series on safe use sites and the “drug user liberation front” recently. Definitely worth a listen if youre into this subject.
it’s the narrative pushed by the government, and most people are insufficiently wary of the stories they are told by the powers that be.
if people abuse drugs because of a history of generational and personal trauma at the hands of racist, capitalist, i and imperialist forces, then the obvious answer is to counter those forces. if people abuse drugs because they’re just bad people who make bad decisions as part of an immutable personal failing, it is far easier to justify criminalizing drug use, imprisoning drug users, and using them as slave labor to fuel the machine.
at least, that’s definitely what’s going on in the US.
We don’t deal with the root cause because it’s expensive, time consuming, complex and some people will get offended (ie: most of our problems are a result of bad parenting - adulting not knowing how to regulate themselves, adults being too exhausted from work, adults not knowing how to mirror etc. ). Symptoms are what’s treated. Ie: in the us the focus is on getting you back to work/ be productive and not solving your depression, anxiety whatever.
We all have our coping mechanisms. And without any doubt some of them are healthy and most of them are bad… And some of them will actively kill you.
Drugs is in the last two categories.
Tbh I think weed is a terrible drug, killing motivation and clouds thinking - but it is a step above alcohol. And should be legal.
What we need to have a social network where nobody needs to turn to drugs, but realistically it’s not going to happen.
Rugged individualism and idealism. We have long been conditioned to view these things as a personal moral failure rather than the inevitable result of social pressures. Mainly because this is more convenient for our masters.
The drugs mess up your brain chemistry. Yes, they were in a bad place and did drugs. Being in a bad place didn’t make them engage in prostitution, break into cars, share needles, sleep outside, not brushing their teeth, not shower, etc. The drugs did that, and the drugs will keep them in that state until they hit rock bottom or die. You are correct that economic blight causes drug addiction, but drug addiction causes peoples’ lives to get so much worse.
I’m in no way saying drugs will fix problems (majority of the time), I’m saying drug abuse should be treated as a symptom and not a cause
It’s both, but you can’t address the mental health and economic circumstances until the person gets clean. They’re not mentally able while they’re on drugs.
I think not addressing the mental health and economic substances until they are “clean”, will make it a lot harder for them to get clean
I don’t understand why we need to pick one or the other when thorough and holistic interventions would work a lot better
I agree with your overall point, this is more of a nitpick on the wording
I agree with you. I had a drinking problem. I tried AA and other methods to stop drinking and they never even came close to helping. One day I discovered that for me, alcohol and opiates did not mix and made me violently ill without fail.
Using that to my advantage, I became addicted to opiates, knowing I couldn’t drink while on them. It broke my mental addiction to alcohol a few months after the physical addiction was gone. Breaking the mental addiction was the critical part. Once I knew I no longer wanted to drink, I knew it no longer had control over me.
Breaking the opiate addiction afterwards was easy because I never really wanted to do it in the first place. I never had the mental addiction. I just drank until the opiate physical addiction was gone, then stopped drinking because I already didn’t want to, it was only a tool being used.
I don’t recommend anyone try this method though. It very likely will kill anyone who attempts it. I wanted to share because for me, it confirms what you said, forcing an addict to get ‘clean’ will only make it harder for them to do so. In my opinion.
Because if you give them money, they’re going to spend it on drugs. If you give them an apartment, they’re going to destroy it and not care, because they’re on drugs. I understand it’d be “nice” if addiction treatment wasn’t hard, but it is.
I agree, but I meant that both interventions need to happen at the same time since having regular contact with support and being able to rely on them (instead of drugs) while getting clean will make it more likely that they succeed.
I feel like we might be pushing for the same point, and are talking about different sides of it
If you give them money and they spend it on drugs, maybe it’s because they still did not have enough money to believe they could live a normal life.
If they destroy an apartment given to them, maybe that apartment was cheaply made and not fit for humans in the first place. Maybe if it were worth caring about, they would care about it.
Mental health treatment ≠ addiction treatment
An addict is more likely to stop being an addict once their normal human needs are fulfilled.
A mentally ill person does not stop being mentally ill, unless a cure exists. Their symptoms can be mitigated or reduced at best.
Pay attention to my use of the words “maybe” and “more likely”, these are not absolutes and that’s most of my issue with your comment. If you give SOME of them money, they’ll spend it on drugs. If you give Some of them an apartment, they will destroy it. Others however, might spend that money on an apartment and nice clothes to interview for jobs with.
These are all just my opinions. I am someone who has destroyed apartments, spent money inappropriately on drugs and alcohol, and did not care about anything for a decade unless it modified my state of consciousness. It took love and patience from a couple people and it wasn’t easy for them. It took a couple years and wasn’t cheap, but I think it worked and I am lucky to have those people make the effort. I believe it’s a solution that should be attempted more. Giving someone money or an apartment is a short term fix that ignores the problems. Giving someone love and patience is a long term solution that difficult but has better odds the longer it is done. There’s always exceptions though, some people are just fucked.
I’m not advocating for self medication but I’m saying there are legitimate uses for drugs, especially with mental health problems. Hell even ketamine, mushrooms, and LSD are accepted forms of therapy in this day and age.
Being in a bad place has absolutely resulted in plenty of people turning to sex work and sleeping outside. I’ve had to do the latter completely sober.
Yeah drugs can make the situation worse, but it’s really easy to be in a financially desperate position and turn to drugs to cope with what you’re having to do to get through it.
The reality is that drug addiction, financial destitution, and homelessness are complicated and there are multiple categories of people in these positions. Drugs will often make the situation worse, and can be the incitement to the downward spiral, but for plenty the drugs are more of a symptom than a cause.
Oh do fuck off with your holier than thou outlook.
Signed: someone who was in that position, married to someone else who was in that position.
Thank you for a sane take. So many people online seem to not understand the reality of things like drug addiction, alcoholism, homelessness, etc. None of these are quick fixes and all of these spiral into one another.
Because the problem is them sniffing leaded gas, instead of fresh air.
They should have just been born in 2000’s.
I never saw weed as causing someone problems in their life. I would agree that life can drive some people to use drugs, but I also think that meth makes life exponentially worse.
Yes but how many meth heads do you know that randomly decided to do it one day for the hell of it? I’m sure there’s some out there but 99.9% of the time it’s going to be someone in such a bad situation that they don’t care about the long term consequences, they just want to not suffer.
I know a lot of ‘meth heads’. Most of them were prescribed Adderall as kids but as adults it became harder and harder to obtain prescriptions and they eventually turned to alternative solutions to get their medication.
Correction, “knew”, I knew a lot of meth heads. Most of them died from opiates added to their medication they didn’t know about. Fun fact: no one has ever died from a meth overdose. It’s always meth in combination with something else, usually opiates.
I mention this because there’s a stigma with meth prevalent in society and it is very unfair in my opinion. There are meth users and meth heads. A meth user is capable of living a very normal life. A meth head is created by society, mental illness, malnutrition and poverty. Just my opinion.
Do you consider weed a drug? What about alcohol?
I consider weed a drug in the sense that it it’s a substance that affects people physically and mentally but obviously not in the street sense of the word. Yes alcohol is a drug to me.
I appreciate the consistency.
Because they don’t care about others and want access to the resources that would be spent to help them. They see drug addicts as losers who can’t compete and want to keep them out of the game. They treat them the way they were taught to treat others, by being treated that way themselves.
Because, like you said, even when drugs don’t cause the initial problem, they almost always make it significantly worse to the point that the drugs are the primary contributor to the problem.
The other layer is why do some turn to drugs as their coping mechanism while others never do.
What’s giving people, in similar circumstances, better coping options/skills, or just inherent resilience, vs not?
Genetic predisposition for addiction, environmental or situational factors, tax brackets, the list goes on.
Lot easier to get drugs if you’re in an environment with easy access to them. Lot easier to get hooked if you’re predisposed to addiction. The drug of choice changes as you go up the wealth ladder.
I know I probably wouldn’t have used weed to self medicate if I didn’t have ready access to it
Mostly environment and familial influence