6 Insane Drug Myths People Used to Teach as Fact (Cracked)

[CLICKHEREx]

http://www.bluelight.org/vb/threads/719231-6-Insane-Drug-Myths-People-Used-to-Teach-as-Fact-(Cracked)


my3rdeye View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Aug 2012
Location Planet Microdot
Posts 929 13-04-2014 11:26 Not bad through they confuse a flashback with HPPD

6 Insane Drug Myths People Used to Teach as Fact


Life has never been good for people who like drugs. Well, unless you're including every second of every day before the 1920s. Children's medicinal heroin is still a few years of hard lobbying from finding its way back to the shelf, but pot users finally have a light at the end of the tunnel, and there's even hope for MDMA, thanks to Zoloft's shit-eating incompetence at treating PTSD.

It's the dawn of a new era. "New" doesn't mean "free of bullshit," though. And being hip doesn't mean you aren't prone to believing a whole galaxy of lies.

#6. Drug Addicts Are Easy to Spot

This is the 21st century, and no one besides the odd straight-edge kid and maybe your eighth grade counselor believes any of the lies peddled by D.A.R.E. We're enlightened, and we know that someone who likes the occasional puff of the devil's lettuce or dose of magic mushrooms can still be a productive member of society. But our tolerance for illicit narcotics comes to a quick end once "hard" drugs enter the picture.

Meth, for example: It's basically crack for poor white people. We know it rots your face, and Breaking Bad has given us a pretty clear picture of average users:

They're emaciated wraiths living in the margins of society and making their money through a combination of drug dealing, panhandling, and ATM-based murder. Those drug addicts exist. And so do these:


Researchers from the great schools of America's meth belt (the Crystal League?) have concluded that meth use is often seen as a necessity:

"The long hours and tedious work in oil fields, agriculture, construction, ancillary health care, and fast food restaurants may be more tolerable on methamphetamine. Users report using meth to provide the energy to work multiple jobs or be a good mother."

And that's a critical part of the whole meth story. It's a stimulant, and large numbers of people rely on it because they need more energy than 60 hours of manual labor and three kids leave them with. Is all that meth helping their lives out in the long run? Of course not, but they aren't living the party life 24/7. They're doing a bump before their 16-hour shift at Walmart, because have you ever had to work a 16-hour shift at anything?


It's also worth noting that Walt's infamous "blue" meth wouldn't have made one fuck of difference to street-level addicts. Any sane dealer is going to cut that shit because it means more profit! There's only one group of meth users that would really care about 99 percent purity: rich people who like to party. And these people aren't getting busted on the street or breaking any visible bad. They have lawyers and nice cars, thus rendering them functionally invisible to most copdar.

So yeah, the stereotype of the unemployed drug addict isn't particularly accurate. The gub'mint estimates that three-quarters of drug users are employed. That shouldn't be too surprising if you've been to any good parties. But while we're busting myths, let's talk about the drug-addicted welfare recipient, tokin' his marijuanacrack on Uncle Sam's dime. Drug users are just about as common among welfare recipients as they are anywhere else. There's zero evidence for a giant underclass of drug-addicted welfare sucklers. It's almost like bad shit happens to sober people too.

#5. Addiction Is Like a Lurking Monster

One of the few things I did take away from my high school drug awareness class was the knowledge that some substances are inherently addictive. Try heroin or crack just once and BOOM, sweet lady addiction has you dead to rights. The Reefer Madness bullshit gets wiped out as soon as you meet someone who smokes pot without having their life boil up in catastrophe, but absolutely everything about heroin looks sketchy, and crack smells like burning garbage. Factor in those horror stories of abuse and meth mouth, and the only way drug addiction makes sense is if these substances are like vicious narcotic tigers dragging poor souls into madness.


Only no, of course that's not how it works. Chemicals aren't ninth-level wizards: They can't dominate people. At most, 23 percent of heroin users become dependent, while 80 to 90 percent of people who try methamphetamine or crack never develop an addiction. The whole substance model of addiction is based on a study that showed that rats trapped in cages, alone, will choose heroin over food. This was extrapolated as "Heroin's so addictive, it'll make you stop eating!"


What it really said was "Rats trapped in cages are so miserable, they'll drug themselves to death." Another scientist took rats that were already addicted and put them in a cage with friends, exercise toys, and space to run around. Shockingly, the rats vastly decreased their drug use and started doing normal healthy rat stuff. Some of them still took drugs on occasion, but hell, who doesn't?

#4. Drugs Cause Crime

This is basically the whole premise that kicked off the war on drugs, as well as the underlying assumption behind both RoboCop and the Judge Dredd reboot. It makes sense: Even if you're talking about drugs that don't cause violent behavior, like heroin or pot or sizzurp, people who get addicted to that shit commit a ton of crime just to buy more. This is the world as police procedurals have painted it for us.


But science has found the literal opposite to be true: Only a small percentage of drug users commit non-drug crimes. When arrested drug users commit a second crime, it's almost always another case of "caught getting high." There's no armed robbery switch that enough hydrocodone flips in your head. If you're willing to shoot a man for drugs, you'd probably be willing to shoot him for a whole bunch of reasons.

Surveys of the prison population have found that 60 percent of incarcerated drug users didn't start until after their first arrest. So there's a pretty clear connection between being in prison and drug addiction. Someone should look into that.

#3. Pot Is "Natural" and Therefore "Safe"

"Hey, bro, did you know that Ecstasy is, like, bad for you? That's why I stick with ganj. That's Mother Nature's high, yo. So you know it's safe."


Cracked has already weighed in on the whole "natural drugs aren't always safer" issue. If you still have doubts, take a huge dose of Datura and then a huge dose of LSD and see which one leaves you shitting blood in a field. (Hint: Datura means "unending fountain of death poop" in Navajo.) But this is about an even more insidious myth: the idea that smoking pot is harmless because, on its own, pot is super benign.

Here's the thing: Pot farmers are in it to make money. And one thing that fucks up your whole money-making potential is bugs eating your goddamn crop. Hence, lots of pot winds up doused in pesticide. The folks growing corn and cabbage have to undergo scrutiny by the FDA to make sure their products don't hit your table completely drenched in poison. Marijuana is still about 40 percent illegal at the best of times. Drug dealers are the only authority scrutinizing your pot, and they don't really care if your dank nugs smell like Agent Orange farted off a burrito filled with Raid.

There's no government oversight to make sure you aren't smoking a big fat bowl of DDT, and that means you totally are. Up to 70 percent of the pesticides on a bud transfer into the smoke. You gotta cough to get off ... and to vastly increase your risk of emphysema. It's true that marijuana has never been anyone's primary cause of death, but between 1997 and 2005, the FDA listed it as a contributing cause to 279 deaths.

#2. Everyone is Lying to You About Flashbacks

Acid flashbacks are one of those rare cases where the anti- and pro-drug sides come together in irresponsible ignorance. Back in school, your D.A.R.E. cop probably told you stories of kids leaping from tall buildings because they fell back into a trip from years before and suddenly thought they could fly. It was obvious B.S., so a few years later, when your druggie friend vehemently denied that LSD caused flashbacks, you assumed he was right.


Here's the truth: Heavy, long-term psychedelic use can cause "flashbacks" in anyone. But these flashbacks aren't you suddenly going "FUCK YEAH, THESE ARMS ARE WINGS NOW, ASSHOLES!" and doing a Wilbur Wright off your deck. They're more like tiny halos glowing around objects, or a vague sensation that the stucco on your wall is actually a subtly shifting pattern. Sometimes little tracers follow stuff like cars and tennis balls.

It's a little like having shitty night vision. And if you have shitty night vision, you might want to put some time between night driving and any three-month acid binges.

These hallucinations aren't dangerous or really that bothersome. The trouble starts when people worry about them: The symptoms are mild, but stressing yourself out about possible brain damage can be, well ... damaging. Tragically, the point at which this stuff becomes a bother is the point at which more drugs won't relax you. It's nature's cruelest Catch-22.
#1. Pot is a Gateway Drug

There's a whole family of research that kicked off with scientists grabbing one line from a middle school anti-drug course and going, "Let's make our hypothesis the opposite of that." Case in point: The idea that marijuana is a gateway drug.

You probably know that's untrue, since most people know way more occasional pot users than they do crackheads. But research actually indicates that pot is the opposite of a gateway. Which is ... what, one of those slides on a crash-landed airplane? Anyway, studies in the wake of medical marijuana laws show that a 20 percent drop in heroin use corresponds with a 10 to 20 percent surge in marijuana use.

If you want the populace to get fucked up less often, the best way might be to stop hassling them about it. Portugal decriminalized drug use 10 years ago, and while more adults do drugs now, fewer teens do, and fewer people of all ages die from overdoses. It makes a lot more sense when you think about drug use from the perspective of a stupid person. If you're dumb and your friend has a seizure because of whatever felony you just snorted, you might just leave him to die in his car, because fuck calling 911 and bringing The Man down on you both.

And that's really the best case for ending the war on drugs: It'll make things safer for kids, poor people, and the stupid.


http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-insane...src=fanpage%2F

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#2 Clocktower View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Jul 2012
Posts 950 13-04-2014 15:18 Wow, I don't always have a high opinion of Cracked but this is a REALLY good article. Bravo!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#3 neversickanymore View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
Senior Moderator
Recovery Support
Science & Technology

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Jan 2013
Location babysitting the argument in my head
Posts 10,313 13-04-2014 16:14 I agree.

I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves.

To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch.

That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then. RECOVERY FORUMS ~~~ADDICTION GUIDE~~~ CONTACT ME

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#4 'medicine cabinet' View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Jun 2006
Location Baltimore
Posts 6,393 14-04-2014 00:11 Yes good article indeed. I was already pretty bad off on dope before I shot for the first time and I was more or less hooked x 10 after I felt how incredible iv was.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#5 toothpastedog View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Dec 2010
Location Fascist Valley, USA
Posts 2,119
Blog Entries21 14-04-2014 04:18 Originally Posted by neversickanymore
I agree.

I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves.

To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch.

That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then.
After talking to a number of diverse individuals in the scene, I don't think it was an anomaly or anything, although I'm still not so sure it's the norm either. Anyways, I remember the first time I used IV heroin. Amazing feeling. Can't remember the first time I IM'd dope, but I can remember the first time I used/snorted some heroin/ECP nearly as well as the first time I felt the IV rush. However, to this day, I'd rather snort some ECP than IV a dose. If you handed me a needle and some tar, I'd IM (properly - three years and thousands of IM shots later and I've never had an abscess or infection due to proper care) over IV any day.

Point being, although I remember that first IV hit of heroin, and how amazing it felt, it's not something I ever really sought out again. I prefer the general opioid emotional and sensory "stability" and general euphoria opioids can provide. On a certain level I get it, but in another more personal sense I never really understood why people could get so into/obsessed with certain methods of using drugs like smoking or IV. But hey, everyone's different right?

But I digress. Pretty good article OP!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#6 slimvictor View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
Moderator
Drugs in the Media

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Dec 2008
Location "Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness. More darkness will make darkness thicker. Only light can dissipate darkness. Violence and hatred cannot be removed with violence and hatred." - Thich Nhat Hanh
Posts 6,336 14-04-2014 08:48 Originally Posted by neversickanymore
I agree.

I do have to say that I unfortunately experienced a very strong addiction after the first dose using an new strong and fast delivery system. i had always enjoyed the substance and had over indulged but had never been addicted. I absolutely intended to only try it once.. you know just to see what it was all about. for the experience. One dose and I was off to the races with a real addiction after the very first dose with that delivery system. I personally think that one really good rush is all it takes to become addicted. How fast the addiction progresses after that I think is individual.. but mine progressed like wild fire and I went from partying and frequently abusing and using many drugs but having little or no big direct negative impacts caused by the drugs themselves.

To in less than nine months to signing myself up and paying for a trip to rehab, a place I said I would never need to go.. as it escalated so fast and came with so much negative aspect and this coupled with the inability (or at least no knowledge on how) not to use the drug and the frequency and scale the addiction drove me to use after just a short time.. worked me like a little bitch.

That being said guess the ten years of hard partying still preceded that addiction. But I remember the rush of that dose like it was yesterday and there is little doubt in my mind that it is possible for a person to become addicted after just one really fast strong rush. May take awhile for the ugliness to show up, but that doesn't mean the addiction wasn't created right then.
Interesting about the addiction story, nsa. I knew a guy who swore up and down that he became addicted to crack after his 2nd hit. So, maybe the article got that wrong, but otherwise it was really a great piece of writing. DiTM Guidelines DiTM Videos Thread BLUA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#7 ComfortablyNumb95 View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact
BL Ambassador

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Nov 2012
Location "When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky"
Posts 2,328
Blog Entries2 15-04-2014 20:58 why does the title use the past tense? lol

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#8 Waffle Sock View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Feb 2014
Location Planet Nibiru
Posts 1,318 Yesterday 18:31 “This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and others.”

“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death.”

“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men”

“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
-Harry Anslinger, 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, United States of Amerikkka

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#9 ro4eva View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles Add as Contact Send Email
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date Nov 2004
Location Aiding my comrades in mythbusting prohibitionist propaganda - one cliche at a time.
Posts 2,743
Blog Entries8 Today 04:46 Surprisingly well-written article. And somewhat witty at times.


Originally Posted by Waffle Sock
“This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and others.”

“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”

“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death.”

“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men”

“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”
-Harry Anslinger, 1st Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, United States of Amerikkka
The damage that this man's opinions and interests has caused (and continues to do) - in relation to certain mind-alerting substances - to ordinary law-abiding human beings all over the world; and the unthinkable amount of resources which have been utterly wasted on a crooked and futile attempt to meet his impossible agenda cannot be understated.

It makes me wonder just how different our drug laws might be today if Harry Anslinger wasn't born.

He sure sounds like he was a piece of work...


Originally Posted by Hypocrite?
Harry Anslinger claimed that he had witnessed a scene that affected his life. When he was 12, he heard the screams of a morphine addict that were silenced only by a boy returning from a pharmacist to supply the addict with more morphine. Anslinger was appalled that the drug was so powerful and that children had ready access to such drugs. However, the experience did not stop Anslinger, while acting as the Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, from authorizing a druggist near the White House to fill a morphine prescription for an addicted Senator Joseph McCarthy as part of an effort to help the Senator end his heroin addiction.
Originally Posted by Racist? Jealousy?
In Anslinger's own words regarding marijuana use: "Colored students at the Univ. of Minn. partying with (white) female students, smoking [marijuana] and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy."
Originally Posted by Hidden Agenda?
Some of his critics allege that Anslinger and the campaign against marijuana had a hidden agenda, DuPont petrochemical interests and William Randolph Hearst together created the highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign to eliminate hemp as an industrial competitor. Indeed, Anslinger did not himself consider marijuana a serious threat to American society until in the fourth year of his tenure (1934), at which point an anti-marijuana campaign, aimed at alarming the public, became his primary focus as part of the government's broader push to outlaw all recreational drugs.
Originally Posted by Propaganda According To Anslinger
The La Guardia Committee, promoted in 1939 by New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, was the first in depth study into the effects of smoking marijuana. It systematically contradicted claims made by the U.S. Treasury Department that smoking marijuana results in insanity, and determined that the practice of smoking marihuana does not lead to addiction in the medical sense of the word. Released in 1944, the report infuriated Harry Anslinger who was campaigning against marijuana and he condemned it as unscientific.
Originally Posted by Fact According To Anslinger
In Anslinger's own words regarding a tragic incident which he blamed on marijuana use: "An entire family was murdered by a youthful addict in Florida. When officers arrived at the home, they found the youth staggering about in a human slaughterhouse. With an axe he had killed his father, mother, two brothers, and a sister. He seemed to be in a daze… He had no recollection of having committed the multiple crime. The officers knew him ordinarily as a sane, rather quiet young man; now he was pitifully crazed. They sought the reason. The boy said that he had been in the habit of smoking something which youthful friends called “muggles,” a childish name for marijuana."
Too bad it's not possible from a practical standpoint to go back in time, because I'm sure many people would love to get a chance to undo some of this man's drug-related work. And I know I'd love to make 'undo' the ratification of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs treaty from '61.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#10 CLICKHEREx View Profile View Forum Posts Private Message View Blog Entries View Articles
Bluelighter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join DateSep 2012
Posts107Today 19:12

Thanks for the above, guys. Check out: "Debunking the Hemp Conspiracy Theory", at http://www.alternet.org/story/77339/...spiracy_theory

Now I have multiple versions to choose from, but at the moment, am tending to favour the "Alternet version".

[machineelf]

'Cracked' is a disinfo website. Owned and operated by scumbags. So is 'mad' magazine. Bits of truth blended with lies.

Edited July 17, 2014 by anon

[DiscoStu]

#3. Pot Is "Natural" and Therefore "Safe"

they seem to be confusing insecticide/fungicide with cannabis

[doxneed2c-me]

Flashbacks =/= HPPD

Some people will have true flashbacks....
Flashbacks aren't often visual it is usually a specific setting that sets it off. Flashbacks are actually PTSD. It is usually overcome much faster then PTSD caused in another situation but it does exist. A common PTSD type effect after a bad trip would be fear of loud and busy places. The fear is usually unwarranted and was never encountered until after the bad trip. Just be accepting of this in people who had a bad trip or if it was you take care when entering busy places. It would be important not to avoid them but it could take time to be able to be within them again. People can return to 100% and even learn how to deal with them better once they overcome the minor setback.

Another issue people might face is acute psychosis. I use the term acute loosely as I have read about cases which lasted 6 months from one bad trip but it is rarely permanent. That being said this is not a latent mental illness as in many people once it is resolved it is never encountered again not even after exposure to the same substances. Please note the is different from psychosis brought on by stimulant abuse.

Also some problems interpreted as "HPPD" are actually normal phenomenon just people don't tend to realize them. Things shift, trail and have halos after sleep deprivation, starvation, and with normal differences in vision between both eyes. For the vision thing if you either have one eye that sees better than another all of these problems can occur and if you know how to couple and uncouple your vision you can easily see shifting patterns. Finally astigmatism causes warped images such as circles looking like ovals. Usually one eye is significantly more effected then the other making one eye see one image and the other seeing a warped image and when they are interpreted by the brain it becomes "halos." To make matters worse most people don't know they have vision problems or deficiencies in their eyes be it from not getting checked or because they pass the legal definition for sighted people and the optometrist only tells you when there is a problem. Furthermore people with astigmatism can have better than 20/20 vision but they see 2 objects when they see. A person with astigmatism sees 2 images; one is the real object and the other is a ghost image of the skewed object this causes a "halo."

The last problem is people who obsess over HPPD and flashbacks can induce the effects themselves and/or see nothing different then anyone else but believe because they did something different than the "normal" population what they see must no.longer be normal.

In that... Most people who are convinced they have HPPD usually don't ;) but PTSD/flashbacks can happen from bad trips but can be resolved with meditation, soul searching, and acceptance it was a substance that induced the experience not a situation and one must overcome the fear associated with the situation. Sometimes it is beneficial to see a psychotherapist to learn to overcome what was endured.

Edited July 21, 2014 by doxneed2c-me