Thread by @iamdylancurran

I've seen a lot of people discussing drugs, their usage, and how and why people die from them yet people continue to take them - I know a good bit about drugs (don't ask), and my best friend died from an overdose this year, so here's my perspective.

Drugs in general serve only two purposes:
A) A method of escape, when reality has too much suffering and people want to temporarily free themselves from that existence.
B) A method of new experience, when reality is a bit too boring and people want to go somewhere exciting.

Method A is what generally leads to addiction (certain drugs are just too good at providing an escape e.g. heroin, fentanyl, weed).

Method B is what generally leads to sudden deaths due to the nature of the drugs e.g. cocaine, MDMA/ecstasy, speed

You may ask yourself, in terms of Method A, why would anyone use heroin when they know how bad it is? You need to understand the addictive nature of the drug (how it affects your brain reward system) and you also need to understand how bad reality is for some people.

Imagine your life is in complete turmoil - and you feel worthless, depressed, lost - then you find this substance that solves all those issues, all your life's problems, makes everything okay - for 8 hours a day. And it's cheap.

So you try this drug once, and boom, everything is okay and solved. You are in pure euphoria for 8 hours. Then it wears off, and you return to your worthless reality. For those 8 hours, you existed in a magical world where all your faults and problems didn't exist.

Now solving the problems in your life just got a million times harder, now when you're trying to fix things, there's going to be a nagging monkey on your shoulder telling you - remember heroin? Why bother with this pointless world, when another world full of bliss exists?

In terms of Method B, the desire for new experiences - this isn't hard to understand. Humans constantly want new and better experiences, it's why we travel, try new foods, meet new people, watch new TV shows...and take drugs and drink alcohol.

Humans have an innate sense of invulnerability - we all think we'll never be the ones to die doing something. We hear about one guy dying in a car crash from texting on his phone and we think YES, but it'll never be ME who dies doing it...and people still text while driving.

So MDMA/cocaine have the effortless ability to turn a 5/10 night into a 10/10 night, just like alcohol does. Sure, you pay the price the next day, but doesn't alcohol have the same effect with hangovers? What is really the big difference between alcohol and recreational drugs?

It's key to understand that drugs and alcohol are not coherent entities, they are groups of molecules, and that is it. Cocaine is not bad or evil, it is the same as a painkiller or any substance on Earth - just a specific set of molecules we put together.

Taking too many painkillers can kill you, drinking too much alcohol can kill you, too much nicotine can kill you, taking too much Xanax can kill you, most substances can kill you in abundance. Why aren't all these things outlawed?

The legal distinction between certain sets of molecules and other molecules is foolish, and if we continue to blame the molecules rather than sitting down as a society and thinking 'how can we allow people to safely do as they please' then drug death tolls will continue to rise.

Know what actually kills people? Drugs that are cut with things people don't know about, people unaware if their body can handle certain drugs, people unaware of the safe limits for their bodies for certain substances. People who can't get help because the substance is illegal.

The idea that alcohol is a safe drug is stupid beyond comprehension, and kills hundreds of thousands of people worldwide annually. Think long and hard about how you can go to jail for smoking a joint, but can buy Jaegerbombs at any bar in the world.

I hope the next step as a society is for us to stop demonizing drugs and drug takers - and actually look to allow people to safely use these substances. Teach awareness, put regulations on the drugs so they have to pure, provide safe environments to take them.

I've ranted here - but even after my friend died from an overdose, I blame him for his responsibility in putting substances in his body, and the Government for not providing a safe way of obtaining safe substances. Groups of molecules are not evil, our attitude towards them is.

Just as an add-on - MDMA/ecstasy has been proven to CURE PTSD symptoms, weed has been proven to be a more effective painkiller than opiates and less addictive, and psychedelics (Shrooms, Ketamine, LSD) are being proved to be effective cures for depression, anxiety, and addiction.