you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 6 points 3 days ago (18 children)

How have drugs become so normalised and downplayed that people "just do" them and have anecdotes to share about them

And that on lemmy

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 18 child comments
  • [–] 34 points 3 days ago (8 children)

    Belive it or not, alchool is even more normalised (which is arguably worse than many drugs)

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 11 points 3 days ago (7 children)

    I remember an episode aired in Denmark many years ago having a health expert in a news studio talking about drugs and alcohol and ranked them on two parameters, how harmful they were on a personal level and on society level, and alcohol was ranked as the worst of these.

    I think it was based on this study from UK.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] 17 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    Because drugs can be a hell of a lot fun if done safely. Obviously depends on the drug. Also, nothing has “become” so normalised because humans have been doing various drugs for thousands of years.

    I’m not saying it’s for everyone, but I am saying that there must be something to it or people wouldn’t do it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 12 points 3 days ago

    There's been a lot of fear mongering and misinformation about drugs since Nixon popularized the puritanical "all drugs are bad" idea in the 70s.

    The reality is much more complex. There are all kinds of recreational drugs out there that can be taken safely without lasting damage or long term effects.

    Many are actually safer than alcohol, some even offer significant benefits to mental and physical health if taken responsibly (see psychedelic use to combat depression, anxiety, and PTSD). And on the flip side, there are all kids of drugs that will fuck your body and life right up by either damaging your body and/or causing chemical dependancy.

    Education is the key to determining which drugs are safe to take responsibility, and which drugs are not, and ensuring your environment is safe before dosing anything is also critical to safety.

    Source: I do drugs.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 9 points 3 days ago

    I don't think people are downplaying them, what you're replying to is good healthy advice. Also Lemmy skews left and modern leftists tend to take a harm reduction stance on drugs and speak very openly and non-judgementally about them.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 3 days ago

    It's not being normalized, it's being destigmatized, because it was already exceedingly normal. And it's obviously not being downplayed, otherwise you wouldn't have the opportunity to complain about people talking about it so openly.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago

    Ehh, this feels like some kinda survivorship bias / frequency fallacy. I'd argue the people that post and leave comments on social media are already way outside of the norm. It is a power law distribution when it comes to social media participation. Your outliers in this case are very likely outliers in other ways such as in opinions/thinking, risk taking, etc. Drugs really aren't all that normalized. Sure all my friend circle is full of degenerates, but I am still going to be guarded about my "hobbies" when meeting new people.

  • source
  • parent