Why hate Athiest?

[jstrodel]

I have spent years of my life helping alcoholics get sober. I care deeply about the pain the alcohol causes people.

Okay. I want an account of what exactly you did that occupied years of your life helping alcoholics get sober.

I have spent time encouraging people in Alchoholics Anonymous. I have been fairly close friends with alchoholics in homeless shelters and gave them rides, helped them find housing. I have served in drug rehabilitation programs. I lived in a Christian missions house for a year and a half and watched people go in and out with drug problems, as I cried because they wouldn't change their lives around with AK-47's going off in the background as drug dealers shot each other. One of my close friends died of heroin.

I have discipled many people on addiction and tried to help them get their lives together, including people that have abused and sold MDMA (the last person that I discipled is now in jail for trying to steal oxycontin).

I am not a drug warrior. I understand the arguments perfectly well about supply and demand and quality of drugs. But must everything in life go back to politics? Why can't people just appreciate that drugs cause a great deal of harm, and if people are going to use them, at least keep it to themselves and not promote them or talk about them as if they are not dangerous.

I am against drugs because I almost lost my life to them. It is absolutely evil for anyone to simultaneously teach a belief system that severely undermines morality (I would say, fatally) and at the same time have casual discussions about drug use.

MDMA is a very dangerous drug. Have you ever seen the PET scans of people that take MDMA? And you know what, when you come off of MDMA, you can feel it. Taking MDMA is not like drinking a glass of wine with dinner. Anyone who has done it knows that. Maybe it is like binge drinking, I really couldn't say because there are thousands of years of history associated with alcohol use and MDMA has only been around in the last few decades.

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Nah, Strodel you missed my point completely. Or you just ignored it for the more immediate use to bolster your case. I wasn't addicted to drugs because I decided one day to light up a stick of marijuana. I lit up because I hated myself and life and my god, my family, my homelessness, my abuse, my abandonment, my body in sickness, everything about me I loathed and I wanted to forget and marijuana was my medicine in desperation. I grew out of the marijuana high pretty quick, got a job and made myself a nice little home. But I got more and more empty and desolate the more productive my life became. In the end, I secretly wanted it ended as quickly as possible. So I set no limits; I sped on the highway, I walked at night in the city alone, and the day a line of coke was offered to me I took it with no hesitation whatsoever. I even felt fulfilled in the knowledge that I was on a downward spiral and no one gave a shit enough to stop me.
The same can be said for a 500lb person who ate themselves into a diabetic coma because icecream tacos make them 'happy' (although eating is known to become chemically dependent, especially chocolate). Eventually they know it'll kill them because eventually it will, I just chose the more efficient way to do it with alcohol and coke. Mind you, I was in pre-med at the time so I don't really fit your stereotype. I owned my own car, I worked full time at various jobs, I had my own apartment, I was self sufficient completely, and all of that could be attributed to my drug connected and supported life at the time.

But that's besides the point. My point was: that people are responsible for their addictive behaviors for various psychological reasons, not the non-addictive drugs. People are responsible for how far down the rabbits hole they go. Becca isn't evil as you say, for saying "Hey I'm taking some E this weekend, gonna have a good time."

What about all those people who say, "I need a drink" or, "Fuck yeah it's friday lets get drunk!". Do you tell them FU with such vigor?

I have said a lot of harsh words to a lot of people. I've seen several people die in my life. Maybe if being nicer would get the point to people faster maybe I should do that. Do you have any evidence that being nice gets people out of jails, institutions and death faster than being mean? I would do that just as quickly.

My meanness comes out of love, not of anger. I want people to appreciate that drug use is much more than an individual choice. I know a lot of people that have had families. Other people who have pimped out women. I know one guy who was involved in murders, another guy was almost kidnapped and held at gunpoint. This is what drugs are all about. You got out of the middle class comfort zone of the suburbs. It is a crazy word.

I would rather have someone tell me "fuck you" than have someone tell me "you can to whatever you want, you will never be arrested, you will never sell drugs, you'll never goto jail, you'll never overdose, you'll never be pimped out". I've had all of those happen to me (except being pimped out)

In my opinion alcoholism is far worse than most drugs, and I personally believe getting drunk in a single use is far more harmful to your body than one hit of E --both physically, and mentally.

It is the same thing. Why do you see the world in such a political lense. Who cares which is worst, how many people do you know whose lives are screwed up from drugs? I could care less about what the laboratory tests say about ecstasy use, who only takes ecstasy? Who even gets ecstasy when they buy it? I have had all kinds of crap in my pills, and i knew about dancesafe and pill testing and all that crap. The problem is, you get high and you take more. That is just the way it is.

No one does drugs the way that they test them in a laboratory. You should know this.

And what about the people born into life at the mercy of alcoholic fathers and drug-addicted mothers? You're right, it's a status quo and a reality for many people's lives. So, are you going to say to their faces, "hey it's not your dad's fault he hits you, it's just the alcohol. It's not your moms' fault she spent all the grocery money on some oxicontin, it's the white pills in that little bottle's fault!"
<<NO>>
I'd wanna slap you if I were that kid.

It is obviously both. You are very eager to place all the blame on people. When you goto neighborhoods where you widespread use of crack or communities where there is widespread use of ecstasy, you see peoples choices but you also see the effects of drugs on what would otherwise be much different people.

Why are you so quick to defend drugs?

It's that mans' fault for becoming an alcoholic in the first place and not seeking treatment for the reasons he feels he needs to drink. Mom's fault for not biting the bullet and detoxing so her kids don't starve. I've been on the equivalent (prescribed legally by doctors) of a drug 100 times stronger than morphine, for years for a legitimate health reason and I got off the SECOND I wasn't in pain anyore. And I quit cold turkey for reasons far less than my childs' empty stomach. That bitch chooses drugs over her kids, she isn't being held at gunpoint by the pills.
As they say, guns don't kill people, PEOPLE kill people.
Oh and being a drug addict does NOT make you a thief by default. NOPE. Being a low standard asshole makes you a thief. There's always a choice.

That is true, but is the compassionate thing to tell people "drugs aren't that bad, but if you do them it is ALL YOUR FAULT" or is the compassionate thing to tell people "drugs screw people up, and if you did them and they didn't screw you up, you were lucky". As someone with experience counseling people with addictions, reducing drug abuse to a simple "being stronger than the drugs" is a horrible way to approach recovery.

What have you done for drug addicts? Do you share your pet ideas about addiction at AA meetings or at rehabs? You know what they would tell you there, right? You know what doctors who specialized in addiction would say, right?

They would say this "Drugs are bad, but if you are strong enough, you can overcome the bad parts and have fun"

No. They would say that is a horrible thing to tell people, a psychological sting, especially for males that wounds and pierces them making them feel
like they have some sort of responsibility to be stronger than drugs. That is how I felt when I did drugs. It is some sort of weird ego thing. And I can tell you, I know a whole lot about the effects of drugs.

Telling people "you can use drugs, you just have to be stronger than the drugs" is just about the stupidiest thing that you can say. You cannot even demonstrate its veracity with an anecdote from your own life.

If you are so concerned about drug use, why don't you volunteer helping people that lives have been destroyed by drug use? Why don't you submit your pet ideas to them, see what they have to say. Maybe you could publish your theories about addiction in academic journals of medecine. As a matter of fact, why not come up with some theories about how people should do neuro-surgery. Maybe your pet ideas can help people [sarcasm].

The audience I think you are targeting here, are recreational users. And I disagree with how you are approaching the subject. If you truly lived my life, you would take responsibility for your actions and not blame it on some inanimate pill that isn't even chemically dependent. Even you would have to admit that not everyone ended up like you or your friends did. People break the law because they choose to, not because a pill told them to do it. On the other hand, people do things because a book told them to do it so I'm not going to throw out the possibility that some poor fools empty bag of Percocet told them to rob the pharmacy. Apparently praying to god can become just as addictive as anything else because it too releases serotonin, as well. Alongside with eating, exercising, and masturbation (all of which ARE habit forming) because we're intrinsically habit forming creatures. The thing is, we all have the power within ourselves to overcome any amount of chemical in our brain, and that is what should be your message.

Why don't you go deliver drug addicts with that wisdom, if you know so much more than the medical community. You could help a lot more people than they could, since you understand addiction so much better than they do.

Research suggests that people who used ecstasy at least 25 times had lowered serotonin levels for as long as a year after quitting.

Exactly

The fact that you refuse to see that addictive drug use vs recreational use of nonaddictive substances is as different as black and white, and refuse to lay the blame where it lies: the people who take them for self medication purposes or the people who let those people spin out of control through inaction or ignorance: That. That is why the drug problem will continue to rise and become an issue. You're ignoring the real issue and fighting the wrong battle, friend. You wanna help? Really truly want to? Then face the true adversary: the reasons people feel so disheartened with life that they'd give up the value of their own. Fight to give those who want a way out of their despondent realities, a true out. Counseling and free mental healthcare would be a good step for those wanting out of their mental realities. Job corps would be a way for those born into drug infested and controlled lives a way out of their poverty. Or fight the misinformation in your own community. Fight the lack of mental and medical care. Fight the real life-altering chemicals like alcohol and heroin. Fight the laws that contribute to this status quo. Fight the social factors like abuse and neglect that inevitably lead to addicts. Fight the economic policies of your society that create an illegal market of jobs as being more viable than the 'straight' life. Fight the government that allows this to take place because they make money fighting it but never overcoming it. Fight anything, but fight something truly worth fighting for.

I would agree that these are relevant factors for drug addiction. Certainly there should be answers to all of these issues. That doesn't change the fact that drugs are bad. Economics is a big part of dependency. But that doesn't change the fact that people from wealthy areas get into the crime and the debilitating patterns of behavior too. Mental health is important, but medicine cannot treat all problems equally well, and people can become dependent on medications like benzodiazepines.

There are many social problems that are important and demand an answer, however, at the end of the day, that does not justify drug use.