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Why animals eat psychoactive plants

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Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#111

Post by circlefavshape »

mc32 wrote: post #94
Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the 4 founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital was addicted to both cocaine and morphine and was able to remain functional while addicted for the rest of his life. I think it's easy to mix up the effects of the illegality of certain drugs with the effects of the drugs themselves. Impurities and poor injection hygiene are probably a large part of the health effects of these two drugs currently, and they are a result…

There are outliers and exceptions to lots of things, but that does not necessarily mean that therefore it's appropriate to extrapolate to the population at large. When people say window washers should wear safety equipment do we also say, well, there have been cases where window washers have fallen ten stories and survived, in order to color the hazards? There are also very many legal prescription drugs to which when…

> They hardly bring any good

Good? Good for who? I would contend that most people's experiences of most drugs (including alcohol) are mostly positive. Mine certainly have been.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#112

Post by evincarofautumn »

wingerlang wrote: post #106
evincarofautumn wrote: post #5

I’ve always found it fascinating that people don’t perceive socially sanctioned drugs as drugs at all. Saying “drugs and alcohol” to me is like saying “sandwiches and hamburgers”. A person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning, smoke a cigarette on their lunch break, and drink a couple glasses of wine in the evening, and the only thing that keeps them from being called a “drug addict” is that these particular drug…

> “sandwiches and hamburgers” I kind of get what you mean, but those are very different.

In what way? A hamburger is a sandwich, and alcohol is a drug. A hot dog is a sausage, too.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#113

Post by bambax »

> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure

This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "living things that are not modern humans", and in order for any phrase starting with "animals" to be true you need to examine ALL ANIMALS.

A very popular French author from the 16th century (Rabelais) once said "rire est le propre de l'homme" (only humans laugh); this sentence is taught in school here in France and repeted constantly; it's considered both insightful and obvious (which is a contradiction in itself; what's obvious and undisputable shouldn't be very interesting).

I was told this as a teenager and always considered it a gratuituous affirmation with nothing to back it up.

Why wouldn't some animals like to get high?

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#114

Post by mc_hammer »

bambax wrote: post #113

> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "livi…

i think youre right

theres one type of monkey that commonly scavanges for rotted fruit for its alcohol

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#115

Post by domenzain »

bambax wrote: post #113

> As a young scientific researcher, Siegel had been confidently toldby his supervisor that humans were the only species that seek out drugs to use for their own pleasure This upsets me to no end. How do they know? People constantly proclaim that "only humans do this or that" which means "animals don't do that", which means... well, nothing, since "animals" is not really a relevant category. Animals is short for "livi…

That echoes statements that seek to prove homosexuality is unnatural since only humans do it—which is demonstrably false.

How often would gratuitous affirmations like that arrive in your schooling? Did they ever stop?

In my experience the French educational system is very formal and structured; also strongly focused on the chronology of the ideas it teaches.

I feel it pushes many inaccurate ideas to later (while staying on topic) challenge them formally. Would you agree with this?

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#116

Post by greggman »

I'm firmly on the "legalize drugs" side if only to get rid of the crime since that's more relevant to me.

That said, one of the "keep drugs illegal" guys from this debate (http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/versus-drugs/) basically claimed legal drugs kill people. Tobacco is used by 1/3 of humanity and kills 5 million people a year. Alcohol is used by 1/4 of humanity and kills 2.5 million people. 1/20th of humanity uses illegal drugs, that includes people who claim to only use it once a year, and the drugs kill 0.5 million people a year. In other words legal drugs kill 10x the people of illegal drugs. So he extrapolates that if we legalize drugs real deaths by them will go up by as much as 10x.

He also believes after you legalize it the full force of big pharma and VCs and banks and big tobacco will be unleashed on promoting and marketing it. He claims you can google these plans and you can google the lobbyists talking to politicians about all the tax revenue that will come in by making it as big as alcohol etc.

I'm not saying I agree. I have no idea. The idea of it being promoted can be argued away by saying only the government will sell it. Maybe? Here in California there are plenty of shady stores offering instant consultation with a doctor to get your medical approval so you can then buy from them. The point being businesses are popping up. I have no idea what it would take for a giant company to decide to run this stuff.

Others claimed the crime deaths offset the drug deaths although if you check the stats they arguably won't be close. Even a doubling of drug deaths will be far more than drug related crime deaths.

You can also just claim you're more interested in a reduction in crime and even if more people die from drug related accidents. Of course if it's a reduction in theft related crime that's great but of course more intoxicated people could mean more unintentional deaths like drunk drivers?

Anyway, like I said I'm still firmly on the "legalize" side. This was just one of the first arguments against that made me pause.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#117

Post by wingerlang »

evincarofautumn wrote: post #112
wingerlang wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “sandwiches and hamburgers” I kind of get what you mean, but those are very different.

In what way? A hamburger is a sandwich, and alcohol is a drug. A hot dog is a sausage, too.

Sandwich isn't necessarily a hamburger though. Also, doesn't a hot dog refer to the whole package? That'd make it different from a sausage.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#118

Post by bornhuetter »

wingerlang wrote: post #117
evincarofautumn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way? A hamburger is a sandwich, and alcohol is a drug. A hot dog is a sausage, too.

Sandwich isn't necessarily a hamburger though. Also, doesn't a hot dog refer to the whole package? That'd make it different from a sausage.

Americans consider hamburgers to be a type of sandwich. It can be confusing to people from other countries who don't consider meat in a bun (as opposed to meat between slices of bread) to be a a sandwich.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#119

Post by ddoolin »

mc32 wrote: post #94
Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the 4 founders of Johns Hopkins Hospital was addicted to both cocaine and morphine and was able to remain functional while addicted for the rest of his life. I think it's easy to mix up the effects of the illegality of certain drugs with the effects of the drugs themselves. Impurities and poor injection hygiene are probably a large part of the health effects of these two drugs currently, and they are a result…

There are outliers and exceptions to lots of things, but that does not necessarily mean that therefore it's appropriate to extrapolate to the population at large. When people say window washers should wear safety equipment do we also say, well, there have been cases where window washers have fallen ten stories and survived, in order to color the hazards? There are also very many legal prescription drugs to which when…

> Drugs are like gambling. They hardly bring any good and potentially bring lots of bad. Do you think it would be good to push opiates on the Chinese, or push MJ on Mexicans and blacks? Would that be justice? While we may agree that punishment is disproportionate, or unjust, ridding society of substances that incapacitate people to varying degrees, is not too bad a thing. Would we rather have an intoxicated population, one less capable of making everyday decisions even-headed?

I'm a regular marijuana smoker with the occasional mushroom and LSD trips and I can say at least the latter is extremely common among my friends and even coworkers! None of us are physically dependent on these drugs and all function completely level-headed in our everyday lives as software engineers, lawyers, analysts, and more. Trust me when I say there is more than "hardly any good." There is always the potential for bad, with this and just about anything, and acknowledgment of this requires us to educate each other on the proper time, place, reason, and so on surrounding their use.

To _push_ those things on _anyone_ would be bad, sure. You should stop to consider that the associations you made with ethnicity and certain drugs is a result of the entire issue at hand! It's not simply that the punishment is disproportionate. It's that people are being criminalized for doing what others do every day, albeit in a different form that happens to be legal and socially accepted. The type of environment this creates is one where people are not educated on use and the production of these drugs is not supervised and not regulated, which is bad for everybody.

Re: Why animals eat psychoactive plants

#120

Post by vidarh »

WickyNilliams wrote: post #108
evincarofautumn wrote: post #5

I’ve always found it fascinating that people don’t perceive socially sanctioned drugs as drugs at all. Saying “drugs and alcohol” to me is like saying “sandwiches and hamburgers”. A person can drink a cup of coffee in the morning, smoke a cigarette on their lunch break, and drink a couple glasses of wine in the evening, and the only thing that keeps them from being called a “drug addict” is that these particular drug…

A friend and I had a good laugh recently after spotting someone had posted a rant on FB declaring (amongst other misinformed nonsense) that "if someone is addicted to drugs they deserve to die". In the comments underneath more people chimed in with "yeah, bloody druggies, they deserve it", and other similar sentiments. Then the original poster commented, without a hint of irony, "I know, who would want to do drugs?!…

Part of the reason is that they don't know how often they see people under the influence of drugs, because it's not something that will be paraded in front of someone who is clearly anti-drug - unlike alcohol - because of the legal risk.

So their image of drug users is drug addicts with so severe problems that they are "visible" in wholly negative ways, because outside of a few self-destructive people or activists, for the most part the only ones that will expose their use publicly, or to people who make it clear they are against drugs, are the ones unable to hide it.

I used to think all drug users were the kind of broken down addicts you occasionally see on the streets too, though I felt pity for them rather than express the kind of unfeeling anger you'r describing from that Facebook user.

That first changed over time as I over the years met more and more drug users who were fully functioning, and mostly entirely normal people (using drugs ranging from cannabis to heroin) and was forced to accept that not only were they not all broken down wrecks, but many of them were not even addicts. Including some of the ones using some of the hardest drugs.

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