People should be free to abuse their own bodies however they want to. Your body, your choice.
I don’t drink, or smoke, or use anything. Never have. That’s my choice.
It used to be… look up “vin mariani” sometimes. Cocaine is illegal in the USA largely why a lot of other drugs are illegal: they aren’t profitable for the right folks.
If alcohol / caffeine were discovered TODAY neither would be approved by the FDA for usage in products. But because both are intertwined with USA culture in a way neither cannabis or cocaine is, the former two are allowed (and even glorified) while the latter two are forbidden. It has nothing to do with harm reduction and everything to do with corporate profits.
A lot of drug harm experts agree
Idk about the claim of it being illegal because it’s from Latin America, but a lot of racism was involved in deciding to make it illegal. There was a moral panic at the time that it was giving black men super human strength and unctrollable lust for white women.
The bars on that suggest that alcohol has a higher harm to others, but crack cocaine has higher harm to users. Regular cocaine is a smidge worse overall than tabacco.
I dunno that this really sells it beyond being able to say “it’s not as bad as alcohol and heroin”.
That said, addiction should clearly be treated as a mental health issue, not a criminal issue. That goes for alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or tobacco.
This was from early February. Why is it being posted again? I remember seeing it on here when it was posted the first time when it actually occurred.
Legalize all drugs
Then cops would loose those funds for the war on drug, cartels would be ruined and prisons empty! Is that the world you want to live in?!
who would do the slave labor then?!
would be “sold like wine”
They literally used to put cocaine in wine and called it Coca Wine. Coca-Cola removed the wine during the temperance movement and replaced it with caffeine. They removed the cocaine after the drink got popular with African-Americans and didn’t want to be associated with “coked out <censored>”
Pretty sure whiskey is pretty bad too. I’m not for prohibition, or drugs being illegal. But I’m not in favor of people using cocaine or drinking alcohol.
How about using cocaine AND drinking whiskey? Classic combo. /Jk
In the 19th century they have coked up wine. No joke. Even the Pope endorsed it.
And I am not going to mention Coca-Cola. Despite the stories, the time it DID have minute amounts of cocaine in it was very brief since they did get complaints to knock it off.
They still used spent coca leaves that had so little cocaine left that it was imperceptible, and it was only until 1929 before they finally stopped that.
So if you wanted to get coked up with coca cola you would need to go back to 1885 and within days of the first coca cola being served.
But if you went that far back just do ALL the drugs. There was no such thing as an illegal drug back then.
How else does one properly enjoy a highball?
I’m thinking Junior approves.
Yeah. I lived through the 80s. Coke is BAD. Much worse than booze.
Now weed. That’s a perfect good.
Am I nuts, or would legal coke just result in people switching to meth and other amphetamines?
Idk. I have watched people discover Darknet markets for years now, and the most common line of thinking that I see whenever someone tries good cocaine for the first time is “I wish I could sustain this feeling for longer, and cheaper.” Everyone is always eventually disappointed by what cocaine can offer.
Yeah cocaine is like the most overrated drug ever. So overpriced and that shit lasts like 40 min maximum before you need to do more (and the diminishing returns are immediate).
Not a fan of stimulants in general, but coke is definitely more often than not a status thing (in the US at least). You have to be rich to be able to afford that habit.
Crack was much cheaper. This is why crack was so heavily criminalized while powder cocaine was not.
Yep. Plus they did it by weight, and were about as dishonest about it as you can get… Most of the weight is baking soda, but they weigh the entire rock anyways.
But they do (or at least did) that with everything. I remember that teenager in Texas being threatened with significant prison time for weed brownies because they weighed the entire brownies rather than just considering the THC content.
Under the current farm bill loophole, that brownie is probably now 100% federally legal no matter how much THC it had in it.
That is diabolical.
Am I nuts, or would legal coke just result in people switching to meth and other amphetamines?
Probably! And the nice thing about meth is you can manufacture it in your own home!
Fun facts about meth
Seriously, don’t fucking try meth, and especially don’t try to make it in your own home. That shit will destroy you, and I say that as the child of a former meth head.
My mother hung out with meth heads for a good portion of my childhood (the shit you don’t notice as a kid because it’s “normal”), and I was much worse off for it. In the last year I lived with her, I found a shake and bake lab in the basement, which freaked me the fuck out, cuz that’s how you burn your fucking house down and die or end up in the hospital with burns over a significant portion of your body
Every time I get a cold and have to stand in line for sudafed I think about how meth has inconvenienced me in a (relatively minor) but super annoying way. I think I’d rather people do weed or coke so I can shop unobstructed.
Making it illegal just causes more problems.
Not commenting on that. Just saying that the comparison made us absolute bullshit
.
I think it’s bad for a very specific type of person, I found it to be pretty underwhelming - like a strong cup of coffee that makes your face numb.
Race numbing led to a lot of atrocities in Central and South America.
Back in my adventurous days, I tried lots of stuff, and I also found coke to be no big deal. It just didn’t do it for me. Neither did alcohol. Weed was my drug of choice, probably because I was a creative type, and weed inspired creativity more than any other substance.
Everybody wants something different from their drug of choice.
Not op. Coke gave me a loooot of energy, tooo much energy to sit down but I couldn’t think. I just kind of jumped/moved around a lot. I’m usually very mellow. My drug of choice has always been weed too. I’m not a creative type but I love analyzing data while high. I can focus better and I have better judgment. If sober self can’t decide on something, my high self can. It’s weird.
Yeah, the energy boost seems to be the primary attraction of coke. Back then i was a runner and weightlifter, and always had plenty of energy pumping through me. I didn’t need that boost. I still don’t, which is why i don’t have an attraction to energy drinks either.
I did understand that another effect of cocaine was a sense of supreme self-confidence, which i didn’t need either. Not that I’m that confident anyway (or wasn’t back then), but drug-induced self-confidence wasn’t something i valued. I took my confidence from my accomplishments, and my ability to i teract with people. I wasn’t the life of the party, but i always had friends and relationships that were satisfying.
I suppose coke provides advantages i don’t need, while weed does. Alcohol has more of a numbing effect, which can be helpful if you are trying to supress bad stuff. I dont have that problem, either, or at least i have better ways of dealing with it.
Oh man I love cocaine.
Till your heart and vascular system doesnt
your heart is a muscle, train it to failure just like any other :3
You dont train cells with toxicity, else I’d do a chemo every 4 weeks to become immortal
Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist
Keep on loving, keep on fighting
And hold on, and hold on
Hold on for your life
Butter is worse.
Butter isn’t directly cardiotoxic
It costs $3/lb tho…
And yet more people die from cholesterol than cocaine.
And yet more people die of cancer than shark bites.
100% of people ingesting cocaine in any form will experience cardiotoxicity. High bad cholesterol can be retained by living healthy. Nothing can undo direct toxicity to cardiac cells.
I can be in fit shape. Walk everyday, do cardio/lifting three times a week. One hamburger does nothing to my cardiac cells. One line of cocaine will damage my heart.
You seem to really care a lot about me to lecture me on my vices. Thanks! /s
I just want to do what I want buddy. Ain’t harming no one besides myself according to you.
Right on. People always gotta judge. You do you… and make sure to share with the homies!
There’s cocaine (crack and the snortable kind), which are truly bad, especially Crack.
From what I gather the powdered form can theoretically be used in moderation and isn’t psychologically addictive - at least not more so than tobacco.
But then there’s Coca Leaves that the “natives” chew in Central America. You’d need to eat a whole-ass tree to get a significant high. You get more of a buzz from a strong cup of coffee or a can of red bull.
Khat is a similar “drug” used in Saudi Arabia and the nearby regions as well as Somalia and Ethiopia. It always gives nice headlines when the customs confiscate ONE HUNDRED KILOS OF KHAT. Which is a weekend dose for a group of dudes, because they’re counting the whole-ass tree as “drugs” like it was concentrated like Fentanyl. It’s chewed socially for hours on end and not used for a quick high.
Cocaine is directly cardiotoxic, ie, kills or impairs cardiovascular cells and caffeine is not/doesn’t.
Khat can cause vascular problems and damage the heart by effects cause by the former, but it isn’t directly toxic to cardiac cells. Big difference. I’d rather chew Khat leaves my entire life than coca leaves. Its not that cathinones are saint level healthy but atleast it doesn’t damage the heart at any amount like cocaine holding products do
It would probably be sold at starbucks like coffee instead of like an alcohol.
Because it is everywhere and in everything, a lot of people underestimate how powerful caffeine is. Our tolerance is very high for that drug, if you were to give it to a person who’d never had caffeine before, a single cup or coffee would have them wired for hours and hours.
Several things determine the danger of a drug. One of the most important is the “distance” from pleasure to lethal dose. In that regard alcohol is way less dangerous than kokain.
Another risk is how easy you build dependency, and again you can easily enjoy a shared bottle of wine for dinner, or a beer during a break, and even get drunk in the weekend every weekend for years, all without building a dependency, you really have to abuse alcohol to become an alcoholic.
Finally there’s the way you take it, where alcohol is consumed relatively slowly, and the uptake through the digestive system is also relatively slow. Kokain is taken quickly, to obtain a rush and a the high quickly, and the uptake is directly to the blood through mucosa, way quicker than if it had to go through the digestive system.
This makes kokain (cocaine) way more likely to create a dependency, and is also why it’s generally considered more dangerous.So objectively by perfectly standard measures, kokain is way more dangerous than alcohol. Even without accounting for the extra dangers from kokain being illegal, like the addition of adulterants that are very dangerous.
by perfectly standard measures kokain is way more dangerous then alcohol
No it’s not, by your perceptions of those measures it may be but experts disagree.
You also have to consider deaths from collateral damage, eg. Driving under the influence. Alcohol tops those charts by a lot and causes a lot of innocent deaths.
I have no strong opinion for/against legalizing cocaine, but your statements don’t seem to align with the literature I’ve read on the lethal dose of alcohol vs cocaine - which I’ve always seen list alcohol as worse.
For example the chart below which measures the dose required for an active dose vs a lethal dose as a ratio - alcohol is worse.
Source listed here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.svg
The problem is, the chart’s too scientific / technical to properly convey real world data to common people for what we’re talking about; Not to mention look at the scale in that thing. About halfway through it goes from logarithmic back to non logarithmic.
What were realistically trying to gauge is based on common purchasable amounts, what’s the difference between pleasure and LD50.
You’re more likely to die from water toxicity than LD50 of beer.
You’re more likely to die from suffocation on your own vomit than alcohol poisoning from a large bottle of spirits.
A lot of places refuse to sell pure grain alcohol because it is dangerous.
The chart has nicotine way up there too but you can hardly get enough of that to cause any damage directly.
Cocaine’s safety is largely dependent upon delivery methods. Going up the nose is probably relatively safe in the short term.
Another problem with the safety behind cocaine is it getting cut with more dangerous drugs. Which arguably legalizing would help with.
I think the biggest problem is that alcohol is that it is such an effective depressant. People use it to cope instead of getting proper treatment, then go about their lives trying to operate heavy equipment and coexist with people that are functioning perfectly well.
I know one person that had a heart attack and burned out from coke, But I know lots of people that have died from alcohol and paired driving walking and even one guy that just fell off a couch smashed his head on a coffee table and died. Then again confirmation bias I know maybe a dozen people that do coke.
That chart is simply wrong:
https://www.libertyhouseclinic.co.uk/blog/substance-abuse/cocaine-or-alcohol-whats-worse/
Due to its intense and immediate effects on the brain’s reward system, cocaine comes with a very high risk of addiction.
This is a very well established fact in what research shows about dependency. There is absolutely NO WAY cocaine is only slightly higher than alcohol in dependency potential.
It’s also one of the things that make smoking such a strong dependency.Also both LSD and Psilocybin seem dead wrong from what I know. Both are advised to ONLY take when you are monitored by a sober person. And that’s not because of how “innocent” they are.
LSD and psilocybin are non-lethal and do not develop physical dependencies. Youd have to take and insane amount to die. You are advised to be watched if you are new to the drugs as they are HIGHLY mind altering. It’s not like alcohol or weed, your perception of things completely change. An experienced user is fine on a standard dose alone. But that’s not what LD-50 measures anyway, it deals with direct toxicity. Its not someone jumping through a window because they are tripping and now think they can fly.
OK but they are highly dangerous none the less. I know (2nd hand) of someone who became dependent using it only once!!
Despite warnings not to use it unmonitored, and only once per year.Its not someone jumping through a window because they are tripping and now think they can fly.
OK I get the point. 😋
LSD is non-habit forming for three reasons. 1) you pretty much gain an immediate and temporary tolerance. 2) the trips are so intense, abusing it everyday probably hints to you having some mental disorder instead of some dependency. They can be exhausting. 3) it’s not physically addictive, your body will not form a dependency on it, in fact it’s processed out of the brain with minutes to hours of consumption even if its effects last for much longer.
Thanks, the more you know. 👍
I know (2nd hand) of someone who became dependent using it only once!!
???
You know someone who is addicted to shrooms/LSD?
I’ve only done shrooms, but it’s not really a thing where you can just “go on with your day.” I have done all of my trips solo as well - not something I would recommend to others, but it’s possible to prepare a safe environment with the kinds of things needed to distract from “bad trips.”
It’s very hard to imagine what being addicted to LSD/shrooms would look like - unless you’re microdosing, it’s a “trip” which takes a lot out of you. Iirc even medically the effects are lessened if you don’t wait long enough between doses. You don’t get euphoria, you get something a lot more complicated. It’s not really the kind of experience one gets “addicted” to in the same way - not chemically and I don’t think psychologically.
Everyone should check out Erowid and unlearn the DARE hysteria.
unlearn the DARE hysteria.
IDK what that is.
DARE is a program that would tell kids insane shit, like smoking a joint would make you addicted for life or the story about someone taking acid and staring at the sun until their eyes burn out. The kind of story you are sharing sounds like a DARE urban legend.
You know someone who is addicted to shrooms/LSD?
No, I know someone who knew this guy. Allegedly he became a total mess in no time. They were a group who took it under guidance, and this one fellow became hooked trying it once.
I’m sorry, but there are magnitudes of difference between scientific studies and secondhand anecdotes. We should base public policy on only one of these (hint: it’s not the anecdotes)
True.
If you get drunk every weekend for years you are an alcoholic and you just don’t know it.
The % of alcohol drinkers who are problematic drinkers is extremely high (about 25% of alcohol drinkers in Canada to give an example), people just don’t understand what is problematic drinking. 10% of the US population over 12 y.o. has dealt with alcoholism in the last year.
It’s 15 drinks per week for men and 8 for women to be considered a heavy drinker. That’s 1 to 2 a day, or just all in the weekend. These are determined by the US CDC. Source
Here in The Netherlands the amount of glasses is higher to be considered a problematic drinker (21 for men and 14 for women) but it is recommended to drink less then 1 glass per day to avoid alcohol related diseases. Source
Because alcohol is so normalized people don’t see it as problematic as other substance abuse but if alcohol would have been invented recently it would have been listed as a class A drug. Alcohol is more toxic to the human body than cocain.
If you get drunk every weekend for years you are an alcoholic and you just don’t know it.
Some people get drunk once a week and don’t drink otherwise.
10% of the US population over 12 y.o. has dealt with alcoholism in the last year.
I never claimed alcohol is without problems. I expect by dealt with, it includes family and friends coworkers and such. That it isn’t personal alcoholism.
Nope, that’s personal alcoholism.
You can get drunk once a week and not drink otherwise, that’s still alcoholism, every time you drink you lose control of it.
You sound like someone who is defending their own bad habit and that doesn’t want to admit that it’s alcoholism.
Wow by this definition I’m pretty alcoholic because every time I drink, last time was 5 months ago, I got hella drunk.
I mean, it’s just about the buzz for me
If every time you drink you do it to the point of getting drunk then yeah, you’ve got a problem with alcohol… Even if it’s not frequent.
If you drive once every 6 months but when you do you go twice the speed limit because you just enjoy the thrill of speed then you’re a problematic driver.
Nope, that’s personal alcoholism.
I simply don’t believe that. But if they consider getting drunk once AUD, then that an absolutely useless piece of crap paper.
You sound like someone who is defending their own bad habit
That’s decidedly offensive, I drink on average the equivalent of 1 beer per day. I basically never get drunk, but it can happen, maybe a couple of times per year. I drink maybe 2 bottles of wine per month.
So there you go, but you sound like one who likes to make idiotic personal comments.Guess I’ll spoon feed you
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/brochures-and-fact-sheets/understanding-alcohol-use-disorder
In the past year, have you:-Had times when you ended up drinking more, or longer, than you intended?
-More than once wanted to cut down or stop drinking, or tried to, but couldn’t?
-Spent a lot of time drinking, being sick from drinking, or getting over other aftereffects?
-Wanted a drink so badly you couldn’t think of anything else?
-Found that drinking—or being sick from drinking—often interfered with taking care of your home or family? Or caused job troubles? Or school problems?
-Continued to drink even though it was causing trouble with your family or friends?
-Given up or cut back on activities you found important, interesting, or pleasurable so you could drink?
-More than once gotten into situations while or after drinking that increased your chances of getting hurt (such as driving, swimming, using machinery, walking in a dangerous area, or unsafe sexual behavior)?
-Continued to drink even though it was making you feel depressed or anxious or adding to another health problem? Or after having had an alcohol-related memory blackout?
-Had to drink much more than you once did to get the effect you want? Or found that your usual number of drinks had much less effect than before?
-Found that when the effects of alcohol were wearing off, you had withdrawal symptoms, such as trouble sleeping, shakiness, restlessness, nausea, sweating, a racing heart, dysphoria (feeling uneasy or unhappy), malaise (general sense of being unwell), feeling low, or a seizure? Or sensed things that were not there?-Any of these symptoms may be cause for concern. The more symptoms, the more urgent the need for change.Thanks for the TLDR, I agree all of those are very bad, and strong indicators of alcoholism.
But I’m very surprised that as many as 10% 12+ year experience that within a year? (12% men 8% women)
But maybe that’s because I never had problems myself, when I was younger I hated if I could feel alcohol clouding my thoughts just the slightest. So I basically didn’t drink at all while in education. I probably still choose to be with people that don’t drink much, because I still absolutely prefer moderation.I know your numbers are American, but I think it’s probably about the same here. Again I’m honestly very surprised that so many people have such serious problems?
I work for a medium-sized regional hospital (~125 beds) and we see patients in our emergency department dealing with severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms (seizures, malnourishment , dehydration, etc) multiple times per week. We pretty much always have at least one patient in the hospital detoxing from alcohol.
Removed by mod
The guideline here is 3 standard drinks per day, more than that and you may be an alcoholic.
You can do the above within that limit.PS:
I think you have a problem with your shift key, you may want to consider buying a new keyboard. it looks pretty stupid with the jumbled writing.That’s… insane. If you’re drinking 3 alcoholic drinks per day you’re not considered an alcoholic?? That seems like an extremely warped view of alcohol vs every other drug.
Please note this is a maximum! And it’s STANDARD alcoholic drinks:
https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/what-standard-drink
It’s not insane, it’s based on health impact, and probably the fact that 3 standard drinks don’t create dependency.
1 standard drink is broken down in the body in about 1 hour.This is according to Danish health authorities, 3 standard drinks for men and 2 for women per day on average is the max, it’s recommended to not exceed that. But even at maller levels, the principles I stated in my first post remain the same.
That defines the daily drinker, but a person who only indulges occasionally, but always gets hammered on those occasions, has a serious problem with alcohol as well. That’s a person who can’t control it, and lack of control is a problem.
Yes I agree, you can get drunk some times without being an alcoholic, but if you get hammered drunk so you don’t know what you’re doing, then you obviously have a problem.
I never understood why some people find it funny, when they get so drunk they can’t remember anything the day after???I work a lot of college events for my job, and recently had two girls in front of me, and one said to the other “Dude, I’m gonna get you so blackout drunk this weekend!”
I did a lot of drinking in college, too, but i never wanted to get blackout drunk, and I’m a guy. Who would take care of me, make sure i was safe? The others around me who are also drinking hard? It’s a thousand times more dangerous for a girl.
Yeah no.
Ehhhhhhhhhh, coke is a weird one.
I’m generally coherent on a lot of drugs and I retain my awareness. Coke? Nope! I’ll eventually black out and lose any sense of myself on it.
It’s fun, but damn if you won’t wake up somewhere and have no idea wtf is going on.
On alcohol, if I get too drunk, I’ll just fall asleep.
