I remember an episode aired in Denmark many years ago having a health expert in a news studio talking about drugs and alcohol and ranked them on two parameters, how harmful they were on a personal level and on society level, and alcohol was ranked as the worst of these.
I don’t think people are downplaying them, what you’re replying to is good healthy advice. Also Lemmy skews left and modern leftists tend to take a harm reduction stance on drugs and speak very openly and non-judgementally about them.
There’s been a lot of fear mongering and misinformation about drugs since Nixon popularized the puritanical “all drugs are bad” idea in the 70s.
The reality is much more complex. There are all kinds of recreational drugs out there that can be taken safely without lasting damage or long term effects.
Many are actually safer than alcohol, some even offer significant benefits to mental and physical health if taken responsibly (see psychedelic use to combat depression, anxiety, and PTSD). And on the flip side, there are all kids of drugs that will fuck your body and life right up by either damaging your body and/or causing chemical dependancy.
Education is the key to determining which drugs are safe to take responsibility, and which drugs are not, and ensuring your environment is safe before dosing anything is also critical to safety.
Because drugs can be a hell of a lot fun if done safely. Obviously depends on the drug. Also, nothing has “become” so normalised because humans have been doing various drugs for thousands of years.
I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but I am saying that there must be something to it or people wouldn’t do it.
If they never cracked down on psychedelics in the 60s and 70s, then I bet the crack and heroin epidemics of the 80s and 90s would never have happened. Nor the ongoing fentanyl epidemic.
It’s not being normalized, it’s being destigmatized, because it was already exceedingly normal. And it’s obviously not being downplayed, otherwise you wouldn’t have the opportunity to complain about people talking about it so openly.
Ehh, this feels like some kinda survivorship bias / frequency fallacy. I’d argue the people that post and leave comments on social media are already way outside of the norm. It is a power law distribution when it comes to social media participation. Your outliers in this case are very likely outliers in other ways such as in opinions/thinking, risk taking, etc. Drugs really aren’t all that normalized. Sure all my friend circle is full of degenerates, but I am still going to be guarded about my “hobbies” when meeting new people.
How have drugs become so normalised and downplayed that people “just do” them and have anecdotes to share about them
And that on lemmy
Belive it or not, alchool is even more normalised (which is arguably worse than many drugs)
I remember an episode aired in Denmark many years ago having a health expert in a news studio talking about drugs and alcohol and ranked them on two parameters, how harmful they were on a personal level and on society level, and alcohol was ranked as the worst of these.
I think it was based on this study from UK.
Wait what, people use butane as a drug?
Cannabis being “more dangerous” for both users and others above ketamine makes me question their reasoning…
Huh, that’s a curious stat - low harm to others for meth
The amount of theft meth users do to support their habit has me questioning too. This must be an old graph as it doesn’t have fentanyl.
I struggle to take seriously any chart which uses “crack cocaine” unironically
Why? I don’t think may people say it with the ‘cocaine’ part but it’s correct, is it not?
I don’t think people are downplaying them, what you’re replying to is good healthy advice. Also Lemmy skews left and modern leftists tend to take a harm reduction stance on drugs and speak very openly and non-judgementally about them.
There’s been a lot of fear mongering and misinformation about drugs since Nixon popularized the puritanical “all drugs are bad” idea in the 70s.
The reality is much more complex. There are all kinds of recreational drugs out there that can be taken safely without lasting damage or long term effects.
Many are actually safer than alcohol, some even offer significant benefits to mental and physical health if taken responsibly (see psychedelic use to combat depression, anxiety, and PTSD). And on the flip side, there are all kids of drugs that will fuck your body and life right up by either damaging your body and/or causing chemical dependancy.
Education is the key to determining which drugs are safe to take responsibility, and which drugs are not, and ensuring your environment is safe before dosing anything is also critical to safety.
Source: I do drugs.
Because drugs can be a hell of a lot fun if done safely. Obviously depends on the drug. Also, nothing has “become” so normalised because humans have been doing various drugs for thousands of years.
I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but I am saying that there must be something to it or people wouldn’t do it.
If they never cracked down on psychedelics in the 60s and 70s, then I bet the crack and heroin epidemics of the 80s and 90s would never have happened. Nor the ongoing fentanyl epidemic.
It’s not being normalized, it’s being destigmatized, because it was already exceedingly normal. And it’s obviously not being downplayed, otherwise you wouldn’t have the opportunity to complain about people talking about it so openly.
Always has been.
I dunno, but most things are safer than alcohol.
Ehh, this feels like some kinda survivorship bias / frequency fallacy. I’d argue the people that post and leave comments on social media are already way outside of the norm. It is a power law distribution when it comes to social media participation. Your outliers in this case are very likely outliers in other ways such as in opinions/thinking, risk taking, etc. Drugs really aren’t all that normalized. Sure all my friend circle is full of degenerates, but I am still going to be guarded about my “hobbies” when meeting new people.