Drug use: Shortening life span or gaining life experience?

[pankreeas]

Briefly touched upon in another thread but I feel it's worthy of more discussion.

I stick by an ideology that life is purely about 1 thing. Experiencing life itself. What is involved in that? at the heart is emotion. Pure emotion is unattainable by drugs.. it is a random thing that happens.. usually out of the blue. Love, hate, fear, regret, elation...etc.. all experienced in life, and paralleled in drug use, just in a "fast-track" way that can be dangerous if given to the wrong individuals. Anyways what do drugs in a nutshell do? enhance these emotions.. therefor increasing ones emotional "threshold" for sake of a better word, and approaching it from this aspect; one could almost say that on drugs one is getting "more" out of life.

Comments? questions? clarification?

[mouthwater]

I mean, I understand your argument, but it's certainly not applicable for most people.

For example:

Life isn't simply about "experiencing life itself," it's about pleasing God(s) / living by God(s)'(s) word / living a moral life, etc. Since (most) organized religions claim drugs are immoral, drug users are doing a disservice to themselves and their God(s) by participating in such vile and detritus acts!

Don't you have any respect for yourself!? Don't you know drugs destroy the body and mind!? I feel sorry for you...

Or so the argument might go... ;-)

[Streak of Blue]

If you're responsible they shouldn't shorten your lifespan significantly.

In any case, I heard someone once say that if you died at say 50 due to drug use you could have had as fulfilled a life, if not more fulfilled a life, than an 80/90 year old who never took drugs. Two reasons for this I guess:
-Your perception of time can be distorted on many drugs. Due to drug taking your mind could perhaps perceive that you'd lived longer than your actual lifespan. Although, they can have the opposite result I guess(ie. as if your life went really fast).
-The experiences gotten on drugs can be out of this world and truely amazing. These experiences over a short period of time could rival someone else's experiences over a longer period of time.

SWIM personally thinks that life does not necessarily have to be either drugs or drug free experiences, but both. One should not let drugs dominate one's life, but one should not be closed to the experience either. There are hundreds of wonderful experiences available to humans. Playing sport/games, travelling this vast world, experiencing a multitude of different cultures and customs, experiencing the highs associated with things like love, sexual experiences, experiences from drugs etc.

To clarify; drugs are a life experience. There are risks, but then again, you wouldn't go rock climbing for your first time without a safety harness.

[The Doors]

SWIM believes that if drugs are used with the proper intentions of getting new perspectives and not to get, as we call it here, "fucked up", there is a good chance that one will become a better person from the experience. What SWIM loves about drugs is how your subconscious interacts with your consciouse, it makes you discover new things about yourself and about the world, it's just up to SWIM to understand the messages being sent to him.

SWIM believes that some people may not need drugs in life, but in SWIM's world he likes being able to use drug responsibly, having fun and gaining knowledge and becoming a wiser person while doing so.

[Streak of Blue]

SWIM likes to get "fucked up" responsibly.

In SWIM's opinion drugs do not cause enlightenment as such, they're just fun.

But then again SWIM is quite non-spiritual.

[Nagognog2]

Yep. Drugs are bad and shorten human life. So back during Vietnam (and still to this day in small, redneck counties), a Judge would commonly give a pot-smoker a choice: A year in jail, or join the army and go to Vietnam to serve your counrty. Yep. Drugs are bad...

[darawk]

Plenty of things shorten your life. Cake, stress, polluted air, war, etc...I don't think casual drug use will have a more pronounced impact than any of those things. I see drugs as experiences like any other, like visiting a foreign country drugs allow you to experience new things or old things in new ways.

[nanobrain]

ask Al - going strong at 101...

[Alicia]

Death is an inapt-able cause of human existence we are born alone we experience alone, we die alone.

Drugs well if u wanna take the scenic view of life why not it will come to an end one day. even if you could live forever would u really want too? do u love yourself that much to watch everyone else die around u. Reminds swia back to the films"Interview with a vampire" and to some extent in "highlander."

gaining life experience is a daily process regardless of whether the psycho-actives play a part yes they will influence and educate punish but people are always learning new things