Allegory takes a little trip (was forum=28)Follow

There's very little "glamor" involved in drug use. Pot makes everything "better" &, at least for me, prevents me from being bored (as it makes the "boring" much more entertaining. RE: FFXI). While, admittedly, i'm certainly not on my "A-Game" while stoned, my tolerance is such that I'm not "Bill & Ted" or "Cheech & Chong" level stupid either.

Tripping is a whole other deal though. It expands your consciousness (for better or for worse) & is quite the "spiritual" journey. I think everyone should, at the very least, eat some mushrooms at some point & see for themselves.

It may have been more than just LSD that he did all those years back but. It was years ago. I knew him to be clean and did not do any drugs or pot many years after. Drink some beer yes but. One moment hes working at the machine and the next hes thrashing on the floor clawing his skin open screaming. Things like LSD gather in the brain and sit there. One day they go pop and so does your sanity. He's in a mental instution locked up and still is all these years later. He is not the only person I know that went this way back then. Chasing down people that are on a "Bad Trip" is never fun and dangerous for an EMS crew also. You learn fast to let the cops handle them and then strap them on the gurney with lots of straps and then they still can break loose.

As for the casual user of pot? Meh, its your life I cant stop you nor do I care. But, Come to work stoned, Wrung out, bloodshot eyes and can't do your job? Jepordizing my safety and your own? I won't stand for it. When your dealing with 20 juvenile felons? Falling asleep at night? Being totally innatentive when your dealing with them and they can smell it on you? Not good for you or me. I want to stay safe, keep the kids safe, and not have to turn you in for sleeping on the job. I've even known some C0-workers to abuse vicoden and pain killers there.
Like most people here I tried pot. All my friends did Even cops and court judges. But it was a shared joint here and there. One day I had more than that "Happy feeling" I felt like I was drowning. It took many hours for it to pass as did my ever wanting to do pot again.

Like I said. Doing drugs even pot is up to you. I consider people that do it fools. I've learned my lessons in life. One of them is to not do drugs.

Edited, Jul 8th 2010 11:17am by Tailmon

If you lived out in the middle of no where by yourself, then your point would have more foundation. The problem is, a community doesn't work like that. Your personal actions may and will affect others. The people in the neighborhood directly affects the value of the community.



Even though you're "joking", I will address this.

All of those aforementioned scenarios have control measures to greatly reduce the safety hazards allowing personnel to have daily involvement with minimal negative side effects.

The problem lies in "hard drugs" that are nothing but harmful, that can kill you or severely alter you in short amount of time. The contradiction in trying to implement safety measures in "hard drugs" is that people are taking the drugs for the exact reasons that are causing the serious side effects. Else, they would be just taking "gateway drugs".



I'm confused on your crack/meth gateway drug comment.

What about having unwrapped open bottles of beer, drinking in public and not being drunk? Isn't that also illegal?



It's more about not being in the right state of mind than hallucinating. I can't change your opinion on anything, but all I can say is that you are implying that curiosity outweighs stupidity and that's not true. Rather you agree with the definition or not, that word exists.

Several studies and more over the years. I suppose one can go look them up again for the doubting masses.

What are the long-term effects of taking LSD?
The use of LSD can result in long-term effects for both one-time and regular users of the drug. Possible negative effects are “flashbacks” of the drug experience, as well as prolonged anxiety, depression or psychosis. These reactions usually decrease over time, and end within a few months after LSD was last taken, but may continue for years.

Flashbacks are the spontaneous and unpredictable replay of an aspect of the LSD trip, occurring some time after the initial effects of the drug have worn off. Visual or emotional experiences that were originally seen or felt while under the influence of LSD are re-experienced. Flashbacks usually last only a few seconds or minutes, but may happen over and over again. Only some people who take LSD have flashbacks, but frequent users of the drug are said to be at greater risk. Flashbacks may be triggered by smoking marijuana or drinking alcohol, or by emotional stress or fatigue.

Depression or anxiety may follow a bad trip. Psychosis may develop after using LSD, although it is thought that this reaction may be more likely to occur in people with latent, or underlying, mental health problems.

The effects of LSD are very strong and profound. Many people have claimed to have discovered their inner selves under the influence of LSD. One interesting analogy was made by Professor Jeffrey M. Blum of the University of Buffalo School of Law:

"The problems posed by LSD, for example, in some ways resemble those presented by scuba diving. Each is seen as a form of exploration that opens new vistas. Hence participants often find the activity enormously stimulating and inspiring. Each activity poses a small but significant risk of serious personal harm, these being death in one and aggravation of pre-existing states of mental instability for the other. Untrained, unsupervised use of unchecked substances or equipment are ill-advised in both cases." (Blum, 1990)

Some users of LSD experience what is clinically referred to as LSD psychosis, schizophrenic-like disorders that seem to be triggered by using the drug. However, in careful analysis of LSD psychosis patients, it appears that those who have strong family histories of major psychosis or psychopathology are more vulnerable than those who do not (Tsuang et al., 1982). Vardy et al. (1983) reported similar findings, as well as that LSD psychotics have significantly higher rates of parental alcoholism than control groups. In a survey of five-thousand individuals who had used LSD a total of twenty-five-thousand times, Cohen (1960) found 1.8 psychotic episodes per thousand ingestions, 1.2 attempted suicides, and 0.4 completed suicides -- figures consistent with the those of the general population. Regarding dangers of psychosis in therapeutic uses of LSD, Pahnke et al. (1970) notes:

I once knew this one dude who drank a big jug of LSD and then they found him weeks later sitting in a cornfield thinking he was an orange.

Third time's the charm.

I've never had the same thought about anyone who drank alcohol regularly for a few decades, either. It might be true, but it's not really relevant when it's at such a low degree. Besides which, if we're being anecdotal, it could just be that anyone who regularly smokes pot for a few decades wasn't that bright to start off.

How often and for how long? I'm talking specifically to the guys who smoke pot every day (often several times a day) and insist that it's perfectly safe and spout off all kinds of statistics "proving" this. Um... It's not. You're going to continue to act like and think like a stoner even when not stoned because that'll become your "normal" state given enough time.

I've seen plenty of people who were smart and ambitious about their futures in their teens, started smoking pot, thought it was great and harmless and whatnot, and ten years later they're still smoking pot and thinking it's great and harmless, and ten years after that they're still smoking pot and thinking it's great and harmless. Of course, they're still working part time at the local Sizzler or something and never finished that education they started, and well that dream they had when they were younger, it just didn't happen, but it's not their fault, and it's not the pot, it's just things out of their control which caused their life to end out the way it did. Pot's perfectly safe! And it makes life just fine, so don't worry about it man!


Yeah. Seen that. A lot. In moderation, do whatever you want. Just don't make it your life. Unfortunately, far too many kids, responding to insistence that pot is harmless, do make it their life. And they never really live life as a result.

I've seen that situation unfold a few times myself. Moderation certainly is the name of the game.

I don't know that it's due to "insistence that pot is harmless", however. In those situations, it strikes me more as an excuse/mantra that helps one sleep at night. To keep one from having to confront the addiction, I guess.

As many people, if not more, follow that same behavioral pattern but with alcohol. They may not argue that it's "harmless" like one might with pot, but they certainly have their own set of excuses and rationalizations. I think that if there wasn't a belief that pot was harmless, its addicts would simply use other excuses in that fashion.

Edited, Jul 8th 2010 5:56pm by Eske

I've been an every day smoker for roughly fifteen years, since I was about fifteen, and I'm hungry. Ravenously so; like a man with only four inches of intestine or a glossy-eyed, fly-bitten Ethiopian child.

And once again, gbaji is superior to statistics and fact.

I don't think anyone is saying that in the first place, and I'm not entirely sure where you got it from either.

If you smoke high quantities of pot on a daily basis you're bound to **** yourself over just like drinking yourself into a coma on a daily basis ***** up your body.
Not really very shocking facts.