Why have you not tried 'drugs'?

I have had mental health issues (and symptoms of psychosis when I was young.) I don't think it's worth the risk of triggering anything.

You say that like it's a bad thing

Obviously this thread only applies to people who do not experiment with drugs (excluding alcohol, nicotine and pharmaceuticals).

Is it the Law? Are you afraid of being caught?

Are you worried about you health?

Are you scared of becoming addicted?

Or do you feel like you are too ignorant about the drug in question to feel like you should experiment with it?

I am just interested to find out why people do not experiment. For me, although I do not take anything very often except cannabis and alcohol, drugs are important to me. The different states of mind you enter when taking weed/ mushrooms/ LSD/ MDMA/ salvia/ cocaine etc are so intriguing. I would find it horrible to be trapped in a sober mind 24/7.

Yes, drugs deserve a LOT of respect and one must know exactly what he/she is doing before trying a new drug for the first time. But there are only a few drugs which, in my opinion, are not worth trying at least once in your life. Just to feel how your mind alters under these substances is amazing.

I never said that had been no deaths. I know there have been some deaths, they are few and far between though. You're much more likely to die getting a car, crossing a road, getting too drunk etc etc the list goes on. The fact is, it's a relatively safe thing to do. There are an estimate 125,000 recreational ketamine users in the UK. How often do you hear about them dying on the news? And trust me, if one of them died you'd hear about it, the media loves to report every illegal drug death. Its funny that they don't report the 200 or so deaths per year due to pharms, or the ~8,500 alcohol deaths. Yet everyone considers them pretty safe.

Do you think there's some magic way the doctors administer ketamine, compared to how recreational users do it? The doctors may use IV, and they may be able to monitor, recreational use may be more crude but the bottom line remains that, they're still taking the same drug, there isn't a magic method that ensures safety, or any way to make the drug behave in a different way. Also, that's not even mentioning the fact that in hospital use, the average dose of ketamine is much, much higher than any recreational user will do.

X factor has been known to kill brain cells at a far quicker rate than a smack addiction!

Lol ok maybe the X Factor bit although I have been known to indulge. But I prefer a glass of rose wine to smoking a J, but personal taste really, I guess it depends on what feeling you're looking for.

but as far as I'm aware, there's nothing to suggest that the likes of psilocybin & DMT are anything other than safe for use. I know I certainly don't feel negatively affected in any way, my mind is as sharp as it's ever been and I've taken most of the common substances out there - not that I think they're all harmless, definitely not. I really do think they could be great for society, for the attitudes they promote (and discourage).

Obviously this thread only applies to people who do not experiment with drugs (excluding alcohol, nicotine and pharmaceuticals).

Is it the Law? Are you afraid of being caught?

Are you worried about you health?

Are you scared of becoming addicted?

Or do you feel like you are too ignorant about the drug in question to feel like you should experiment with it?

I am just interested to find out why people do not experiment. For me, although I do not take anything very often except cannabis and alcohol, drugs are important to me. The different states of mind you enter when taking weed/ mushrooms/ LSD/ MDMA/ salvia/ cocaine etc are so intriguing. I would find it horrible to be trapped in a sober mind 24/7.

Yes, drugs deserve a LOT of respect and one must know exactly what he/she is doing before trying a new drug for the first time. But there are only a few drugs which, in my opinion, are not worth trying at least once in your life. Just to feel how your mind alters under these substances is amazing.

I have nothing against alcohol as such. I have something against people who lecture others at length about the dangers of drug us whilst simultaneously sipping their beer. The Daily Mail crowd if you will. Personally I prefer a J because alcohol doesn't agree with me. It messes up my stomach condition, it makes me feel like crap the day after if I even have just one or two glasses, and I prefer the effect of weed.

I think with weed it is really stupid because it is so widely used any adverse effects are generally known and understood. But I understand it with other drugs when people say they can be dangerous, that's not just the Daily Mail crowd I agree with this too. I mean a lot of people take drugs without even understanding what they are, and with no way of knowing what's actually in them. I think this is partly down to the fact that they're illegal so they can't be monitored or regulated though.

Basically I don't personally think there are many drugs that I haven't tried which I would want to try...if someone else does go for it but I definitely wouldn't condone it, because you don't know what the risks are. At least with alcohol I know the exact number of units I'm having, and that there's no crushed up glass or rat poison in it.

That's just my opinion

In some respects, it is and in others it isn't. A lot of people are actually incredibly misinformed about heroin. For example, a lot of people don't know that pure heroin has little to no negative health effects, until you start getting near overdose quantities, in which case well... you overdose. The negative health effects seen in those who regularly take heroin, such as HIV, skin diseases, liver and kidney damage, are all results of long term exposure to impurities in the heroin, the crap that it gets cut with to increase the street value.

If one were to obtain pure heroin and inject it with clean syringes, providing you took the right dose, there would be pretty much no health risks, other than having an allergic reaction (applies to any drug). There's the risk of addiction, which then leads to other problems, there's no denying it's an incredibly addictive drug and that must be considered, the truth is though, addiction is really the only negative thing when we're talking about pure heroin, even then, if one where to hypothetically become addicted to pure heroin, you would still experience no negative health effects if the addiction was maintained. Theoretically, if you had enough money to fuel a heroin addiction and maintain a pure supply, nothing would happen to you. In reality though, that isn't going to happen.

The dangers of heroin are almost soley derived from its illegality. The reality is, no one is going to get a pure source of heroin illegally, so everytime a user injects, they're not injecting heroin, they're injecting heroin cut with a lot of other crap, all directly into their blood stream, leading to (as I already said), skin diseases, liver and kidney failure, HIV and collapsed veins, to name a few problems. Since it's cut with god knows what, the user also does not know the purity of the heroin and so we introduce the risk of overdose into the equation too. A user may be consistently used to buying heroin of a certain unknown purity, they know how much to take of this heroin and then one day, they're getting their fix and unknowningly buy heroin of a higher purity, they continue to take the same amount that they're used to and subsequently overdose and die.

Let's imagine then, that heroin was legalised and pure sources, of known purity, were provided. You'd eliminate essentially all negative health effects of the drug, you'd eliminate the risk of overdose, as the purity would always be known. You'd eliminate the billions of pounds that goes into the pockets of the criminals and the lives that are lost within that trade, plus eliminate anything else that money goes towards (human trifficking for one).

Is this enough to jusitfy it though? I'm not sure. The problem lies within how addictive is. Realistically, I don't think legalising is going to cause everyone to start taking heroin, everyone knows how addictive it is and even those who know how to get it and already indulge in other drugs, would still most likely draw the line at heroin. I know quite a few people who have experimented with various substances, they don't care about whether they're illegal or not, that isn't the reason why they won't do heroin. They won't do it because they know, if they got addicted, it would ruin their lives. That wouldn't change if it were legalised, they wouldn't suddenly think, oh let's go try heroin! If it were legalised and they became addicted it would still **** their lives up. They might not die because of it, they might not even become that ill, but it would still severely ruin things for them. However, the increased availability may cause some very curious people to try it, they may just want to experiment with it once or twice and unintentionally become addicted. Obviously no one plans to become addicted to heroin, everyone just tried it the first time to experiment, it's just that, at the moment, you would really have to go out and actively pursue getting some in order to try it. So it being readily available, could be quite a dangerous thing.

I'm torn. On one hand, I think legalising would be good, you'd lower death rates, you'd lower negative health affects, you'd lower gang activity, amongst other criminal activity and you'd pump money into the economy via existing users. I also think the amount of people who use it, wouldn't increase substantially, for reasons I've already listed. On the other hand, I have a feeling, that use may increase marginally simply due to the increased availability and lowered risk of death. Does one justify the other? Which case is worse?

I think ideally, some kind of middle ground would be the best situation. Where availability of heroin doesn't massively increase, so that it's still not easy to get, but so that those who do use, aren't destroying themselves with an impure substance provided by gangs.

Edit: I do hope people read my entire post, I can see that if you were to read the first paragraph, you'd just think I was saying "Heroin is fine!", which I am not.

I never said that had been no deaths. I know there have been some deaths, they are few and far between though. You're much more likely to die getting a car, crossing a road, getting too drunk etc etc the list goes on. The fact is, it's a relatively safe thing to do. There are an estimate 125,000 recreational ketamine users in the UK. How often do you hear about them dying on the news? And trust me, if one of them died you'd hear about it, the media loves to report every illegal drug death. Its funny that they don't report the 200 or so deaths per year due to pharms, or the ~8,500 alcohol deaths. Yet everyone considers them pretty safe.

Do you think there's some magic way the doctors administer ketamine, compared to how recreational users do it? The doctors may use IV, and they may be able to monitor, recreational use may be more crude but the bottom line remains that, they're still taking the same drug, there isn't a magic method that ensures safety, or any way to make the drug behave in a different way. Also, that's not even mentioning the fact that in hospital use, the average dose of ketamine is much, much higher than any recreational user will do.

Most people I know, myself included, use testing kits. They also use the reports from other users on strength, as well as the lab reports produced by users submitting them for testing in the Netherlands. There is no incentive for a drug dealer to put rat poison or glass in their product... dead customers don't tend to be good repeat customers. Almost all the dangers associated with most illegal drugs do stem from the fact they are illegal, and even with the fact they are illegal factored in most are still - on paper - safer than alcohol.