The Student Room Group

"Drugs are for mugs"

Anyone who says this phrase with any amount of seriousness is surely a philistine, an anti-intellectual, and someone severely lacking in knowledge. How can anyone claim this when Berlioz wrote at least a portion of his famous "Symphony Fantastique" whilst high on opium, Coleridge wrote the "Kubla Khan" after an opium influenced dream, Francis Crick used acid, Freud snorted large amounts of coke, Steve Jobs dropped acid, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" on a six day coke binge, and there are countless other drug using geniuses like Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley, Philip K Dick, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, Charlie Parker, Martin Scorsese... the list is endless...

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Ugh, they're best ignored. Bear is a recovering drug addict and a current god addict, his bigotry is driven by the later, you'd be better of helping him with his god addiction.
Sure, they can help you reach incredible highs but you run the risk of addiction with most of them - in the same way that a crazy drunken night out is sometimes the best experience of your life, but if you binge every night suddenly it's not so amazing anymore... Personally they don't interest me, friends use them, to each their own.

People need to stop butting into others' business essentially
I'm drug-free myself but I agree.

A huge number of successful and intelligent people use drugs, the biggest thing which shocked me growing up about drugs was that the average drug-user is intelligent, articulate and perfectly capable of functioning rather than looking like someone from a government propaganda advertisement.
I'm not supportive of this phrase but I think people who say it aren't automatically thinking of and referring to these functioning addicts who are the exceptions. They're talking about the people who lose their livelihoods, end up homeless, ruin their relationships and health because of drugs
Yeah there's some soluble paracetamol you can drink with a mug of tea or something
Original post by Mathemagicien
Outside the arts, taking drugs is a sign that you are incapable of resisting peer pressure, or incapable of resisting urges.

In the arts - who knows? They probably do drugs all the time.

Modern Art



Do you make all these profile pics yourself?


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Original post by Mathemagicien
No, I outsource it to North Korean orphans. Hence the subliminal messages praising "Our Glorious Eternal Leader".


I'll take that as a yes, I'm assuming you use a general template and go from there?


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Lewis Carrol wrote Alice in Wonderland after having it in an Opium dream.
Original post by Mathemagicien
I do it all myself... its not exactly difficult (nor on-topic)


Ugh, fine. Drugs are bad m'kay, unless you want to write, draw or compose stuff. Then go for it I guess?


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Original post by similarBlank
Lewis Carrol wrote Alice in Wonderland after having it in an Opium dream.


interesting....

*
Original post by Mathemagicien
Outside the arts, taking drugs is a sign that you are incapable of resisting peer pressure, or incapable of resisting urges.

In the arts - who knows? They probably do drugs all the time.

Modern Art



what do you think of bankers who do Coke? And all sorts*
Original post by Mathemagicien
They do coke and go with hookers because they are sad people who can't take time out for friends or family.


not even on weekends?
Reply 13
Original post by Mathemagicien
Outside the arts, taking drugs is a sign that you are incapable of resisting peer pressure, or incapable of resisting urges.

In the arts - who knows? They probably do drugs all the time.

Modern Art



Francis Crick, the man who discovered the structure of DNA with James Watson, used LSD. Carl Sagan, the astronomer and astrophysicist, was also a marijuana user. Steve Jobs took acid, as did Bill Gates. Edison used cocaine elixers. Ralph Abraham, the prominent US mathematician, has used LSD before, and has praised it.
Reply 14
Original post by Mathemagicien
If drugs weren't illegal, then I would probably condone them for artists. I mean, who cared if they have negative side effects, they are only artists.


I'm surprised you're so authoritarian. I always had you down as swinging towards libertarianism or classical liberalism.
Original post by Mathemagicien
There are no weekends in the world of finance

(Not entirely serious, I wouldn't know tbh)


I have a few friends who work in the city of London,they don't seem themselves at times,all that added stress too but they get to get on holidays every now and then*
Reply 16
Original post by Mathemagicien
There are lots of scientists; you'd expect some to do drugs, its not evidence that drugs are beneficial to their work.


Well, Sagan, Jobs, and Abraham have all said that taking drugs (marijuana, LSD, and LSD respectively) influenced them very positively.
Reply 17
Original post by Mathemagicien

You couldn't be more wrong! :rofl:


But you seem like a smart guy! :tongue:
Original post by KingBradly
Anyone who says this phrase with any amount of seriousness is surely a philistine, an anti-intellectual, and someone severely lacking in knowledge. How can anyone claim this when Berlioz wrote at least a portion of his famous "Symphony Fantastique" whilst high on opium, Coleridge wrote the "Kubla Khan" after an opium influenced dream, Francis Crick used acid, Freud snorted large amounts of coke, Steve Jobs dropped acid, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" on a six day coke binge, and there are countless other drug using geniuses like Baudelaire, Aldous Huxley, Philip K Dick, Hunter Thompson, William Burroughs, Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Plant, Charlie Parker, Martin Scorsese... the list is endless...

How?...
this sounds so much like that 'I don't need to pass uni, cause Mark Zuckerburg didn't go!!' sort of counter argument.

You're pointing out why they're wrong for totally flawed reasons. This sounds more like an appeal to authority than anything
Reply 19
Original post by bottled
How?...
this sounds so much like that 'I don't need to pass uni, cause Mark Zuckerburg didn't go!!' sort of counter argument.

You're pointing out why they're wrong for totally flawed reasons. This sounds more like an appeal to authority than anything


No, it's pointing out lots of people who clearly aren't mugs who took drugs, thus refuting the idea that "drugs are for mugs". Pretty simple stuff really.

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