Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Posts
Yeah I had to edit that real quick to add "Not that it really matters because it is super duper psychologically addictive." But no, it is not believed to be physically addictive.
The problem with hard drugs is they tend to take this behavior to an extreme - ie. you don't see anyone giving BJ's out behind the Olive Garden for a dimebag or a beer. Heavily addictive substances are detrimental to society because they create addictions so strong that people are willing to do just about anything for them. It affects them constantly, making them a less/unproductive member of society.
While more people die a year from smoking than from drug abuse I'd venture that hard drugs are deadlier than cigarettes. But I have no data. Anyone?
You sure about that? I'm finding lots of physical side effects of withdrawal, including but not limited to:
Dysphoric mood, fatigue, unpleasant dreams, insomnia or hypersomnia, E.D., increased appetite, psychomotor retardation or agitation, anxiety, insatiable hunger, aches, insomnia/oversleeping, lethargy, and persistent runny nose.
It's physically changing the brain state, screwing up your dopamine and serotonin levels. Long-term use can damage internal organs and permanently shorten attention span.
Maybe we have different definitions of "physical."
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine
not even close
while there are deaths cause by meth heads drowning a baby or the recent benoit killings
400,000 a year from cigarettes is tough to beat
I find it very hard to believe that for drugs like shrooms and LSD will be widely embraced by the general populace. They are, honestly, not drugs that your average person is going to enjoy too much/seek out. I think a lot of the drug misinformation just gives people excuses for not doing these kinds of things. Instead of saying, "Well, that kind of experience isn't really for me," they tend more to say, "Oh yeah that shit make you go crazy and kill yourself every time I heard."
On the other hand, with weed I think there would be an increase in consumption shortly afterward, and then it would naturally decline. I think this is the pattern legalization has found in other places.
I also bet that more people smoke cigarettes than do coke, or whatever.
Kind of an unimportant distinction given the strength of the addiction. That's what I'm really basing my ideas on combined with the immediate effects of the drug. It's nearly impossible to overdose on weed or nicotine given standard use. You don't hear about stoners overdosing and dying. But you certainly do hear about people dying from ODing on coke.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
I think that's what they meant by "psychologically".
If brain state is determined via neurotransmitters and psychological problems can be fixed with perscription medication, does the definition of psychological addiction change? Is psychological addiction merely the brain getting attuned to a certain configuration of neurotransmitters? How is this any different than a physical addiction?
Also - think Pavlov's dogs. Phychological effects can trigger physical effects.
Isn't it just a threshhold between physical and psychological? If that's the case, why do we treat it as black/white binary?
|daydalus.net|
==========
Psychological has always meant "habitual" to me. Like how a lot of smokers complain when they quit about the habit of holding a cig.
But since it's a personal definition it's probably wrong.
I think it's mostly to with withdrawal symptoms. Like with pot or, say, video games. You can really really like those things, but if you stop doing them your physical body is not going to suffer.
With stuff like heroin or amphetamines your body will actually begin to deteriorate if you just quit cold turkey.
It's kind of a blurry divide when it comes to cocaine- you won't show any physical symptoms during withdrawal and your physical body doesn't suffer but your brain chemistry certainly does
Coke is way physically addictive
Weed is legal for medical purposes in california, and it's hardly a problem, meth however, which is quite illegal is very rampant
Hard data isn't easy to come by because a large group of the people who use hard drugs don't tend to be the type that will respond to a survey or go to the lab. In some cases I know of, people use hard drugs to self-medicate, which makes it even harder understand. Which ruined their life first, the schizophrenia or the herion addiction? They're already close to the edge, and of course, putting the drug in your body doesn't help. The 'casual' user, like the person who is addicted and might get help from a treatment center or family, is easy to come by but not really what most people see as the problem, which is also dangerous.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
"world's most widely consumed psychoactive substance"
"In North America, 90% of adults consume caffeine daily"
Tolerence, Withdraw Symptoms, Appetite Supression.
I have to go to drug counseling twice a week for my Use of Marijuana charge, and I just can't help but not listen to anything my counselor says when he talks about some of the ideas listen in the OP.
"Is out life only here for druge? We wern't born high, why do some people feel the need to change their moods with the use of drugs? What do you think is the earliest drug people get addicted to?" And so on...The entire while he is saying this to us he is drinking out of his 22oz coffie mug that he's already filled up twice during the 2 hour long class.
Thats one drug I will never try again, stupid fucking Mt. Dew.
I haven't looked it up in some time but doesn't/didn't Amsterdam have an issue with rampant usage of hard drugs. I'm sure there's a study out there somewhere.
I think >8.0z (I don't know if that's right its been so long) keeps you from feeling the addictive effects of caffine in a cup of coffee.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
My point here is that drugs may cause you to do thing you would normally do maybe even illegal or dangerous things. However any crime you could do on or because of drugs would be just as much of a crime if you were totally clean. I have trouble grasping that there's some fundemental difference between the two.
I'm not saying there is.
Technically being outside is one. Drunk and disorderly conduct.
If faith is just a silent tribute, mine is just a desperate act.
if you're sober it's called "disturbing the peace". Different name pretty much the same crime
What is the rate of hard drug use in the Netherlands? Also, comparing pot use to hard drug use is tricky since they're very different.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
Any kid who gets drug tested in school should insist that the staff are tested too.
I know of at least two teachers from my school who were known to smoke pot and I know 4 or 5 people who went on to teach after uni who all smoked.
I'd argue that there is an inherent human desire to experience altered states of consciousness; it's an impulse as fundamental to the human condition as the impulse to create or enjoy art and music; attempts to extinguish this impulse are doomed to failure.
Actually, there is no drug that can make you physically addicted with casual use. Habitual use always, always, always precedes chemical dependency. You can't develop a physical chemical dependency until you've had multiple exposures to the chemical in a relatively short time frame.
The focus on physical addiction versus "psychological" addiction is, I think, a big red herring. There are highly habit-forming drugs and there are drugs which are not highly habit-forming. There are drugs which are likely to create unpredictable, violent, or destructive mental states and there are drugs which are not. And, finally, there are drugs which are likely to kill you (either immediately or eventually) and there are drugs which are not. These three axes should be the only criteria by which we judge recreational drug use from both the legal and social perspectives.
And, by the way: nicotine is highly habit-forming and highly physically addictive. It's actually one of the most highly physically addictive drugs in wide use today. Cocaine, surprisingly, despite being highly habit-forming, is actually not as physically addictive as popularly believed.
There is no known biological reason why LSD flashbacks should occur. LSD is a very, very fragile molecule that is water-soluble and eliminated from the body quickly. It should be chemically impossible for LSD to remain anywhere in any body tissue for more than a few days. As pochacco said above, it is much more likely that LSD flashbacks are psychological in nature - just like any other intense experience can create flashbacks.
It's an extremely fuzzy distinction, but the basic difference is that "physical" addiction causes somatic symptoms. 'Somatic' in this context means 'of the body,' so symptoms that are experienced in the body: nausea, trembling, hot/cold flashes, loose bowels, muscle weakness, sleepiness, etc.
When you start talking about changes in neurotransmitter production or reuptake or changes in receptor cites, it's hard to figure what neurochemical changes are directly caused by the drug use, and what are caused by your typical psychological processes (habituation, conditioning, association, etc.). Not impossible, mind you - the kind of paranoid delusions caused by extreme cocaine addiction are unlikely to be purely "psychological" in nature - but when you're talking about something like anxiety, it gets a little harder to draw that line.
And please don't forget that there was that whole "Great Depression" thing going on too, and recreating the liquor industry was a surefire way to create jobs.
Interesting. What about poverty rates? I'm asking for this information because stats in a vacuum don't mean much since drug use is affected by external factors, namely socio-economics.
hummusandkimchi.blogspot.com
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/FriedRice-1814/hero/11834264
California has all but accepted this practice, while I think up to 11 states followed suit,
Medical marijuana is de facto legalization.
Therefore, I'm all for it.
It improves the lives of a lot of people who are suffering. It is good.
Probably helps to increase the social acceptability of smoking pot too, which is also good.
It will make it more easy to study the long term effects of smoking pot. Also good.
It might be a small step on the path to total decriminalization/legalization, but that is just a pipe dream.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
Click here for a horrible H/A thread with details.
technically true, it's sort of a slang term. But in several states with a referral from a doctor a patient can legally posses, consume and grow up to 8 oz. of marijuana and state officers have no authority to do anything
lots of info here http://www.canorml.org/
This is not to say that the state officers do not have discretion in whether or not they arrest you, just to say that they could, at any point, arrest you if they chose to do so.
it's still legal to sell through state sanctioned dispensaries. It's just still illegal at the federal level. But that hasn't really stopped anyone so far
That just means that, yes Virginia, it's still illegal.
And, yes, it has stopped people.