Drug use?

[Dianka]

"Oh, I have known quite a few people who have ruined themselves because of ecstasy use. They are like zombies. It is creepy talking to someone who has depleted their neurotransmitters because of too much drug use"

 

I'm no neurotransmitter depleted zombie and I've been doing E since 1993. In fact, over the last 6 months alone, I've probably taken over $2000 worth of the drug and yet I still hold a position as a senior project manager at a telecommunications and IT engineering firm, make more money than the majority of my peers, and pay all of my bills on time every month just like normal drug free people. Last month, I received my 4th promotion with the company that I've worked for over the last 7 years. I really doubt the drug does any kind of brain damage. As for my physical health, I compete in triathlons and exercise 5-15 hours a week. From my own personel experience, the drug is harmless.

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Right, YOU. I suppose you dodged a bullet, because I can think of at least 10 people that were "friends" (drug associates) who completely lost it. Maybe the physical activity keeps you from the mood changes the happen to my people. I don't know for sure, but I know from experience that physical exercise keep me from depression. Maybe they were predisposed to mental instability (every one of them were from fucked up backrounds).

 

But yes, when you roll your brain is flooded with serotonin, and days afterwards your levels of that neurotransmitter are depleted. Now, I have done acid and the next day I was a bit crispy, but that is not the case with x. Serotonin is not easily replenished. Thus, most people who roll are perpetually depressed.

 

Another reason you may feel ok is it you eat a lot of food with tryptophan. It helps speed up production of serotonin.

 

Anyway, whatever. TO EACH THEIR OWN, OR SOME OTHER OVER-USED PHRASE.

[Dianka]

Once the kids are tucked in, check the Tivo and grab the opium pipe, er ... beer.

 

I see no reason to not imbibe in any mood enhancing/altering drug when it's appropriate - like your "down time".

 

Smoke some wiskey soaked tobacco in a pipe and watch the stars in the evening.

Perhaps a little opium or a hot cider with brandy before sex or bed.

A double mocha espresso in the morning

Maybe chew a coca leaf while mowing the lawn.

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Wow, how Laissez-faire.

 

You should run for public office.

 

 

[All Gods Fail]

As a recovering alkie/addict who did a lot of dangerous experimenting (anyone ever try some Brompton's solution? ), I can honestly say that if you can get by with little or no mind-altering chemicals, so much the better for you. You'll save money and brain cells, and possibly severe social embarrassment. Most drugs kind of suck.

 

Stay in school, kids!

 

But, I also think the war on drugs has been a failure bordering on catastrophe. It's put a burden on this country that we can't really afford, either financially or politically. Keeping pot illegal is especially foolish while booze is a much more harmful drug to society and individuals and is perfectly legal. If it were up to me it would be the other way around.

 

There's also the question of individual rights. Do we have the right to put anything we want to in our bodies? What if we end up becoming a drain on society? I honestly don't know about legalizing harder drugs - it might eliminate some crime, but I think they would probably still be a societal problem. And stuff like heroin, meth and crack - does anyone really need that shit? If smoking some hash and having a pint or two of Guiness doesn't sufficiently dissolve the tension of the average day, you've got some serious problems, methinks.

 

Anyway, to respond to the OP, at first I did a LOT more drugs when I deconverted. Now I don't do any except caffiene. I am a huge, annoying coffee snob now.

[HuaiDan]

Have you ever heard of it being used chronically? At $20 a bean, that would make it an extremely expensive habit.

A HELL of a lot cheaper than a night out drinking. A $20 tab would be an expensive one, usually less than $15 in my locale. Yes, chronic use will f you right up. Foxy, you have dodged a bullet, but not by luck. I think an otherwise healthy lifestyle and mental stamina play a huge role on one's ability to acclimate. Personally, I've found getting enough sleep is important in helping me recover, which is difficult to when u'r rolling all the time. You just don't want to sleep. That can leave you in a pretty creepy state. But, if i eat right, get enough sleep, stay focused, and stay in shape, I can be almost superfunctional and have energy beyond abundance. A tab every week or two I can handle, and I REALLY enjoy!

[HuaiDan]

Another thing I have to mention about e is the warm glow of positivity and enthusiasm it leaves me with for days afterward.

[Lanakila]

So has anyone changed their stance on drugs since departing the religious right?

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Yes my stance is that it should be legalized and regulated, and before as a fundy I agreed with the war on drugs.

[integral]

I use marijuana for problem solving and for personal growth.

 

I'm not sure if these are the normal effects people get, but when I'm 'high,' my mind becomes pristinely clear and I get a laser-like concentration.

 

 

Compare marijuana to driving a car. As soon as you take a puff you're behind the drivers' seat. The engine's running and you can go anywhere you want. But just because you own a car though, does not guarantee that you will take it to useful, productive or enlightening places. You may just drive in circles, get in a wreck or simply drive it off a cliff. It all depends upon your intention when you're driving as to where you end up, and what you'll do when you get there. Marijuana is the same way. Although it contains great potentials for self-transformation and can take you to places you never dreamed of, its effect is still primarily limited to the mind that is driving it, so to speak.

[Dianka]

I am guessing those "neurotransmitter depleted zombies" were taking other drugs at the time that caused the brain damage, or perhaps they were on drugs as you spoke to them...  DXM is sometimes sneakily passed as X and I know that DXM can cause brain damage if used on a regular basis at high doses.

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Yeah they were. Lets go down the list:

 

Marijuana:

My friends and I would pull a few tubes and afterwords eat a few cookies. Every once in a while cops would confiscate something, but no real trouble.

 

LSD:

Laughing contemplation no eating for 12 hours. Friends were generally just having fun, and we would usually end up walking to the beach, peaking, and going home.

 

Ecsatsy:

Instead of going to the beach and running around, my friends were now going home and having orgies. Barney drops out of school weeks before graduation. Charile kills himself in his car, Tonya jumps off a fuckin bridge. Friends were now gossiping about Van fucking other guys while rolling. Fights. Caroline, Jessica and Danielle get kicked out of school. Chris and Dana, the two friends I most enjoyed contemplating the universe with while stoned, can no longer form sentences without referring to "this one time while I was rollin" and pretty much talked exclusively about ecstasy.

 

When I started going to high school, ecsatsy was not a drug that was being done a lot. We all did the drugs we felt were safe (little chance of getting addicted to). We had fun, and it was pretty innnocent play. It went on like this for about 2 years.

 

X came into popular circulation, and within weks things started getting fucked up.

 

You all have your experiences with X, I have my own.

 

I don't believe we should let people legally do drugs that severely impair their judgement. Specifically, if they do things while intoxicated that they felt were wrong while sober, I feel the drug should not be available legally.

[Poonis]

Has anyone here ever done Fly Agaric? I haven't but am interested. Shrooms have been real good to me, but I heard the Fly is a death/rebirth experience. What was your experience?

[HuaiDan]

Fly agaric may just be a death experience. From what I've heard and read, the margin between the effective dose nad LD50 (the dosage at which 50% of the test subjects died) is far narrower than other drugs. The buzz isn't apparently so great , easily surpassed by other, more available drugs, and given the toxicity of the active constituent (s) with the ease of making a mistake in identifying the proper mushroom species, I'd say the risks outweigh the benefits

 

The fly agaric is a common species of gilled woodland mushroom. It is fairly easy to identify (go do the research yourself, i'm not sending anyone here on a madcap mission to inadvertantly poison themselves), but just as easily confused with the deadly panther agaric mushroom.

If you have experience id'ng shrooms, I say go for it. Maybe the other info is just propaganda, but I've consulted some quite objective sources, such as Paul Stamets.

[LadyFeline]

I really doubt the drug does any kind of brain damage. As for my physical health, I compete in triathlons and exercise 5-15 hours a week. From my own personel experience, the drug is harmless.

 

Tell that to a fuckin' paramedic, man. Or a goddamned ER doc.

 

Ever since Ecstasy found its way into my home county, fucking First Responders (of which my father and three friends belong to) can't go a fuckin month without some X-doped numbnuts fucking him- or herself up something nasty, and usually winding up dead. So come off the "It's harmelss!" crap, because that's a lie.

 

I don't care about pot use. If you want to be dazed and confused, and reek like a skunk that's been dead and rotting in the Arizona sun for a week, that's your problem. Don't smoke it around me, and I won't punch you in the mouth. Moreover, don't try to do what my former pothead roommate did, and try to push me off a balcony, because it'll likely be you cracking your fucking skull open on the sidewalk below, and not the other way around.

 

Overall? Keep it away from me, and I won't care. I don't wanna see it, smell it, or hear you talk about it, but otherwise, I don't give a damn. You wanna fuck up your brain, heart, and lungs? You go right ahead. But keep it in the privacy of your own goddamned house or apartment.

 

But pot is the only drug I take that stance on. All others are worthless garbage and a detriment to society, and so are the people that use them, in my not-so-humble opinion.

[HuaiDan]

Party pooper

 

Tell that to a fuckin' paramedic, man. Or a goddamned ER doc

 

For 5 yrs (95-2000) I worked in an emergency room for a major urban hospital. I saw plenty of people in there for smoking crack or pcp and freaking out, but never once for e. Saw plenty of drunks, in every state; poisoning, fights, accidents. Maybe it (e)wasn't as popular at that time, but definitely not unheard of. No, definitely not harmless, but compared to alcohol, it's just candy.

[Vigile]

but compared to alcohol, it's just candy

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Really? How so? (If you have the time).

[Dianka]

All others are worthless garbage and a detriment to society, and so are the people that use them, in my not-so-humble opinion.

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Eh, we all fuck society up in our own unique little ways; regardless of whether drugs are involved.

[HuaiDan]

Really? How so? (If you have the time).

I'm not referring to its intoxicating effects, mind you, but rather only in the relative number of deaths, accidents, injury and property damage cause as a direct or indirect result of using either substance. Hell, e is prpbably candy compared to candy, seeing as processed sugar consumtion is responsible for its own share of health related issues.

 

Now for some data mining:

 

State of California Dept of Corrections

 

A drug abuse survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2002 found that more than 10.2 million youths age 12 and over had used MDMA once in their lifetimes. This represents an increase of almost 4 million youth since2000. (Office of National Drug Control Policy. 2003. Club Drugs: Fact Sheet. Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President.)

 

Russell Newcombe & Sally Woods

Centre for Applied Psychology, School of Human Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University, Henry Cotton Campus, Webster St., Liverpool, L3 2ET, England

 

First, between 1986 and 1995 there were 58 Coroners’ verdicts of deaths by drug abuse which implicated amphetamine-type drugs (notably ecstasy and/or speed).

 

However you finagle those numbers, that's pretty low risk.

 

Second, a review of newspaper reports revealed 114 deaths linked to dance drugs/parties in the decade January 1988 to December 1997 – of which 78% involved ecstasy, and 7% involved speed. ......Estimated mortality rates based on press reports declined steadily from 31 linked deaths per million ecstasy users in 1992, to 21 in 1994 and 12 in 1996.

Isn't that less than getting struck by lightning? It's interesting to note that the fatality trend is going down while usage is increasing. Now people know they have to drink friggin' WATER.

The same source goes on to mention that, per user, alcohol is riskier than mdma by a magnitude of 100.

 

info from

 

http://www.drugtext.org/library/articles/newcombe.htm

[Foxy Methoxy]

Oops! Sorry to have turned this into a debate on whether or not E is harmless. I was hoping to find out if people who used to be against recreational drug use as Christians have changed their minds since deconverting.

[Dianka]

Oops! Sorry to have turned this into a debate on whether or not E is harmless. I was hoping to find out if people who used to be against recreational drug use as Christians have changed their minds since deconverting.

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Foxy you know we drugged ones cannot hold one conversation for too long. you give us all too much credit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JOSE.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your avatar..........

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is that who I think it is? I really hope so.

[Jose]

It is indeed.

 

He sucks as a president, but he's the best dumb hick in the public eye, ever.

[Foxy Methoxy]

Nonlinear conservations are a sign of drug use . . .

[Amethyst]

I was hoping to find out if people who used to be against recreational drug use as Christians have changed their minds since deconverting.

 

I personally am still against most drugs because they tend to burn out people's brain cells, and some of them cause death. I'm not against drugs like marijuana if they are taken medicinally, as long as you don't go out and drive right after having a smoke or something. When I was Christian I was against marijuana, but my views changed a bit when all the medical stuff kept coming out.

 

Personally I like my brain cells, I don't want to fry them.

[HuaiDan]

Sorry to have turned this into a debate on whether or not E is harmless.

But isn't the harm caused by a drug, or the lack thereof, and people's notions of harmed caused by drugs, directly relevent to one's changing attitude towards drugs? I don't think we're straying too far off topic here, just as long as we don't dwell there.

Here's how I think it is relevent:

A christian lives by indoctrination issued by the church and other authorities, and thus will be more susceptible to drug war propaganda. A deconvert, on the other hand, is more likely to give careful consideration to the facts and arrive at their own educated conclusion. Since death/injury/physical harm are one of the biggest selling points of the war on drugs, I think this weighs heavily on people's atitudes and how they might change following deconversion.

[Foxy Methoxy]

True. I was just trying to avoid the typical vapid "drugs are bad" vs "no they aren't" discussion and realized I my "no they aren't" response directed the discussion in that direction. I wasn't telling people what to post. I was apologizing for my own brainless response.

[Megistias]

Nonlinear conservations are a sign of drug use . . .

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So too meandering conversations.

 

 

 

 

/ now I want to know what "Nonlinear conservation" is 'cause it sounds potentially trendy.

[Foxy Methoxy]

I picked up the term from an antidrug website explaining to parents how to recognize drug abuse in teens.

[Guest JPD]

I have loved drugs in all of their various forms, but pot has been a lifelong companion. I sold mushrooms for several years, and quickly got burnt out on that trip experience. I don't think I'll ever do that again. E I love. Sold it too, for awhile. But, E, though I have never felt better than when rolling, it's not the kind of high you can get on a regular basis. At least, not for me. I tried, and after awhile several beans did nothing but make me feel like tinfoil. Now I do it once or twice a year and it's a great as the first time, each time. I also love opiates, but I don't try very hard to find them. It's possible to like them way too much. I love pills in all forms. Never tried meth. I've had coke summers, but, it's way too hardcore to maintain. To me, coke has a built in fail safe in how shitty it makes you feel afterwards. I tried a 10x concentrate of salvia divinorum once and I'll probably never do that again. It's good if you want to know what it feels like to be hopelessly insane and in hell-on-earth. Now that I know, fuck it.

 

So, basically, pot is my faithful friend.