Are taking drugs and being a good parent mutually exclusive then?

[wanderlust]

I don't want to get told off lots or start a fight, its just that I (along with most of my friends - parents or not) will take drugs every now and then, but I am aware that the people I know are not necessarily representative of what's really normal or acceptable - so what does everyone really think?

whiskey is medicinal tho isn't it

..sorry i am just interfering

coca cola was medicine to start with wasn't it when it had actual coca in

Oh yes, alcohol abuse can kill you. It is a recreational substance the use of which you would not brand "abuse" because it is legal and accepted.

Re "A couple of glasses of wine is not abuse because that's what wine is for" and "Wine wasn't invented for any medicinal purpose".

Neither was cannabis, mdma (ecstacy), lsd (acid), nor most other recreational substances "invented for any medicinal purpose". In the case of cannabis and cocaine, the stuff had been around for millenia. How can any use of them be "abuse" as per your 'medicinal' rationale?

LSD, one of the most popular party drugs ever, has never had a medicinal use, and in fact is a Schedule I drug in the US, which means it has "no acceptable medical use".

You are not OK with drugs, which is fine. But you are putting forth a demonstrably wrong hypothesis on what should constitute "abuse", and that is not fine.

Abuse depends mainly on the frequency of use. Thus the concept of alcohol abuse, which should not exist according to you, because "that's what wine is for". Similarly, one can use but not abuse other recreational substances. And it makes no difference whatsoever whether they are legal or controlled or illegal in the particular country one chooses to party in.

No, of course the concept of alcohol abuse exists. Stop putting words in my mouth. This argument is getting silly.

"Party drugs" my arse. Tis is what I mean by adolescent.

I thought your view was that there is a correct 'use' (i.e. how a substance is meant to be consumed, like wine is for drinking) and 'abuse' (i.e. using a substance for something it is not intended).

As such, 'alcohol abuse' should not be possible. If you agree with me that the above view is not correct, feel free to change it.

just as a meandering sorta thought, we produce alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol. I don't think that we have specific enzymes that break down other mind altering substances that act on the drug specifically (too many specificallies there but you see what I mean)

Obviously they are broken down. I wonder what enzymes are involved......

Okay, that wasn't especially eloquent of me. You can tell I'm getting a bit fed up with this argument.

It's drug "abuse" because it's what I suppose you could call "non-therapeutic" use.

You can abuse alcohol by "using" it in an incorrect way - drinking it to excess. And if you are a diagnosed alcoholic then you usually know you have to avoid it, so in that case for you drinking alcohol is injurious and should be avoided. But otherwise, anyone can have a glass of wine or a pint of beer and they're not in any danger. The same is not true of controlled substances. They're unpredictable. A small amount could kill you. The fact that people boast of having taken shitloads of the stuff and had a great time is not evidence against this.

I don't agree that controlled substances are unpredictable. Do you mean illicit drugs made from controlled drugs but with additional chemicals added eg by dealers? Or prescribed controlled drugs? I administer them regularly and have never seen anyone have an adverse reaction on recommended doses.

I think a lot of the problem here is in the terminology. If only we could all agree what we are talking about things would be a lot easier. I mean illicit drugs. Illegal drugs. Things most people refer to as "drugs" rather than tablets, medicaments, prescriptions, doses, pills.

(Obviously you can abuse those too, but the difference is that you have them for a purpose, and if you keep to that purpose you know they are medically tested and likely to be doing you more good than harm. And if you think they aren't, you can take it up with your GP and get the prescription changed.)

So what you are saying is legal is good, illegal is bad.

So people taking a pill of Ecstacy in a party before it was outlawed were fine, but those taking one today are not?

I get the feeling that your main objection here is that people are breaking the law.

Otherwise, I agree with ladylush, there is nothing unpredictable or dangerous about the occasional use of illegal substances. According to an Economist article I read some years ago, more than 500,000 Ecstacy pills are being sold in England every weekend. How many dead do you read about every week?

I wish people would stop telling me what I was saying.

The fact that a lot of people do a dangerous thing and survive doesn't necessarily make that thing less dangerous per se. You can put your head in a tiger's mouth a hundred times, and if after ninety-nine times it doesn't bite you, you may come to the conclusion that putting your head in tigers' mouths is safe. Unfortunately, the hundredth time it bites your head off. To the unbiased observer, it's hard not to wonder whether it might not have been better to steer clear of the tiger in the first place...

Most of the risks attached to illicit drug use is because users don't know exactly what chemicals are in the drug they're using (avoided of course if you are friends with the person who makes it) and because they are using too much of the drug. I suspect the latter applies more often and the same is true of prescription drugs. Polysubstance abuse is another problem obviously - with chemical stacked on top of chemical.