A Month of Blogs - Drugs

Drugs

Suggested by Jonny F.


As a writer who seems to have hit a low point in creativity and / or just getting off my ass and writing, I signed myself up to write 31 blog posts during October - one a day - on any subjects that are suggested to me. The only rules for suggestions are that they can't be anything that involve me having to take on a particular viewpoint (so no "Why I Hate Twilight" or "Why Rock Music is the Best Music") - this isn't debating class, and right now I'm not interested in trying to argue something that I may or may not agree with. Anything else goes - it can be a specific subject or a broad one, one that I've written about in the past or something new that will need research. If you're interested in playing along, you can leave a comment here, or email me at thenordicalien@gmail.com. (I'll try and remember to check there, honest!)


Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

- Mr Mackey


I have a friend who's an addict.

Truthfully, I have several friends who are probably (drug) addicts, many more if you add in things like cigarettes and junk food. But right now I'm thinking about one friend in particular. My friend got into drugs lightly as a teen, with pot, and then more heavily as a 20-something. I won't specify what kind of drugs, since that could be seen as identifying evidence, which for obvious reasons would be a bad thing for the purposes of this post. All I'll say is that my friend's choice of drugs doesn't involve needles, and that they started out with a legal - i.e. prescription - drug habit, and slid down that slippery slope into semi-legal and then illegal drugs.

We talk on a fairly regular basis about my friend's habit, as they consider me to be someone they can talk to who won't judge them. (I find this amusing, since I'm one of the most judgemental people I know. I can only assume what they mean is that when I judge them, for the most part I'll keep my opinions to myself unless asked for them, and I'll continue to love them anyway even when I think they've royally fucked up.) One of the things that we've discussed at some length is why my friend's an addict.

On their less honest days, my friend gives me the spiel about needing drugs. They're prescribed by a doctor, they have a medical condition that requires them, etc. I inevitably call bullshit on this, as a) not all the drugs are prescribed by a doctor, at least not for my friend by THEIR doctor; b) my friend buys and sells a whole lot more on the side; c) my friend doesn't use the prescribed drugs in the way that they're meant to be used (think twice as many, and up the nose instead of in the mouth); and d) my friend hasn't had any extensive testing for their medical condition in the years since they were injured and has no real idea whether they still suffer from it. (I could also object due to my feeling that there are other ways to handle an injury than with hard drugs - graduated exercise, CBT, pain management courses - and if you're not willing to explore those ways you shouldn't be prescribed unlimited medication, but that's a personal opinion rather than a fact so I tend to leave that out of my arguments.)

On their more honest days, my friend will talk to me about how good it feels to be buzzed, which really gets down to the bones of it. Highs feel nice. They feel nice enough that people chase them, through all manner of ways. I'm no exception here - I spend much of my free time in search of that elusive bliss, although I tend to chase my highs with exercise, books, nature, hobbies and occasionally food. Everyone does, in one way or another. It seems to be human nature to seek out pleasure and to escape from boredom or pain.

My friend has been through more pain than a lot of people, although more cushiness as well. That dichotomy has set them up for what is perhaps a more persistent need to chase extremes of pleasure than you'll find in many people. A childhood raised by a permissive single parent - and I would like to add the caveat here that none of these things will ensure addiction in the future; simply that the convergence of factors in my friend's case has set them up with the tendency to think that a rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows is normal and necessary - who coddled them and protected them and always allowed them to have their own way, followed by teenage years in which they were blessed with an excess of charm, above average looks, brains and natural athletic ability, followed by the death of several loved ones and a sense of having lost their place in the world, have caused my friend to think of their life as split into two parts: the early part (good) and the later part (bad). Childhood and teenagehood were good and fun and exciting. Adulthood is bad and boring and painful. Drugs are the crutch which both livens up their adult years and dulls a lot of the pain.

This isn't an unusual story. Using drugs as a killer of emotional pain and a thing that makes your life brighter and shinier are two very common things. My friend's case is complicated by the fact that the losses they suffered came right at the beginning of their twenties, as their brain was coming down off the natural high that the teenage years bring. Recent progress in neuroscience has found that teenagers don't think and feel the same way that adult humans do. Impulse control and the ability to plan ahead and stick to that plan are some of the last parts of the brain that develop fully. Perhaps more importantly, the parts of the brain that deal with memory and emotional responses are overloaded by adult standards - although many of my teenagers argue that the teenage brain is the one we're supposed to have, and adults' brains are merely atrophied - causing everything to feel more wonderful, more exciting, more awful. Just more. Nothing is ever quite as emotionally powerful as it is when you're in your teens. No music sticks with you as strongly as the music that you loved when you were young; no memories of wild nights hit you with quite the same degree of nostalgia; few romances are as hard to forget as the ones you had when your volume of gray matter was at its highest and your body was flooded with hormones. Those memories, and the feelings that go with them, are indelibly imprinted on the brain, and even those of us whose teen years were often unbearable tend to look back at the good parts through rose-coloured lenses.

In my friend's case, the combination of the natural highs of the teen years and the fact that the brutal losses they suffered came right at the end of that period have resulted in an uncontrolled yearning for the past, for security, for excitement. The drugs don't bring back the dead, or send my friend back into the past, but they provide an echo of the feelings that are so sorely missed. They will, of course, never provide more than an echo.

I think this is the real reason why I agree with Mr Mackey. Drugs are bad. Not because they wreck your body (plenty of things do), not even because they're dangerous and possibly deadly - although both those things alone are reasons for me personally to stay away. Drugs are bad because they catfish you with pretty promises of feeling good, promises which they can never deliver after the first few times, unless you take more and more of them.

Of course, I lost a brother to a drug overdose when I was a kid. I'm biased.

Probably not everyone who becomes addicted to drugs is trying to revive their teenage years, although I'd hazard a guess that a large portion of them are. But I feel reasonably safe in saying that everyone who becomes addicted, and stays addicted, is either escaping from pain, escaping from boredom through the chasing of larger and larger highs, or some combination of the two.

Is chasing a high necessarily a bad thing? Can you be a social drug user without turning into an addict? Those are two questions I've been asking myself while writing this post (and, indeed, for many years before now) and I've never come up with a completely satisfying answer. I do think that some people, if they have a great deal of self-control, can be recreational drug users. (I also think that a heck of a lot of people who describe themselves as recreational drug users, aren't.) Marijuana is one of the drugs that's most talked-about at the moment, what with all the legal revisions going on in the US. When people ask me - which they often do - what my position on the legalisation of pot is, I admit that I'm not really sure. I suppose I support legalisation sort of by default, since I don't believe that it should be illegal when tobacco and alcohol are legally available just about everywhere, and I know full well that banning those things would be both impossible and unnecessary. The problem I have with legalisation is that I worry that it won't be done in the right way. If a formerly illegal substance is to become legal, I feel that it needs to be regulated, taxed (I know this will be an unpopular opinion; since how many of us actually want to pay taxes?) and studied extensively. So far, this hasn't happened with marijuana, or at least what regulation and studying has been done hasn't been widely publicised. The fact that a thing is legal does not necessarily mean it's safe. It doesn't mean it doesn't have ill-effects, both short and long-term. It doesn't mean we should automatically stick it in our mouths. When it comes to weed, most people fall into one of two camps: the "Weed is dangerous / a gateway drug / supports drug barons / etc" camp, or the "It's natural and good and as harmless as sparkly unicorns" camp. As far as the harmful side-effects go, I'm witholding judgement until more research is done, but assuming that there can't possibly be any seems dangerously naive to me. In addition to my practical concerns, there is my personal, irrational bug-a-boo: why can't life be enough? Why can't the planet, with all its wonders, be enough for people without the need for mind-altering substances?

I don't generally bring up that last point with people unless they ask me directly, since most folks would tell me to mind my own business, and they'd be right. The fact that I find it sad that people feel dissatisfaction with what, to me, seems like an extraordinary world full of wonder, is my own problem, not anyone else's. And you'd also be right if you said I was a bit of a hypocrite to feel that way, as I mentioned earlier that I find myself chasing my own highs quite often. When I push myself in the swimming pool or on the ice rink, when I take a walk on an autumn day, when I immerse myself in the crowd at a hockey game or an MMA match, I'm chasing those peaks of emotion. And when I reread a book that I've loved, when I eat a favourite food, when I listen to a song that fills me with joy or rerun a memory in my mind that makes my heart pound, I'm using repetition to try to recreate the feelings I had last time those things made me happy. Human nature - the need to seek out pleasure - meets human habit - the tendency to repeat behaviours in the hopes that they have the same positive result. Physical pleasure - pleasure in exercise, in food, in sex - and emotion come together in this wonderful synergy. And with the best of these things, the things that you love above all others, whether we're talking about songs or books or foods or lovers or anything else - they're always good. Perhaps a fraction less good than the first time, or perhaps not, but always good. And the periods inbetween, while not giving a person the wash of bliss that they get from the peaks, don't throw you into those deep depressing troughs either.

That's why I think you can consider me only a bit of a hypocrite. Because, personal likes and dislikes aside (or as far aside as they can ever truly be), I do honestly feel that there's a difference between chasing a high through drugs, and chasing it in the ways I've mentioned just above. The drug high can be hell for your body, while the things above (junk food and MMA excluded) are generally safe, and it's expensive - but more importantly, the drug high never fully satisfies after the first time, and people end up spending their whole lives chasing something that is physically impossible to attain.

And what kind of a life is that?


I haven't cited any sources for this blog post, as I wrote it off the top of my head, based on what I've learned over the years. However, if you want to learn more about the science behind teenage brains, you can try the following pages:

National Institute of Mental Health - http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-still-under-construction/index.shtml

A PBS programme - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/

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