I was never heavy into drugs but I smoked weed a fair bit in my 20s, knew a lot of other daily users of weed as well as some harder drugs. I don’t think I ever came across a person that randomly decided to do drugs for no reason one day and got hooked. They were all people who had pretty messed up problems in their life that were too complex for them to fix on their own.
So it confuses me when people instantly assume that someone is in a bad situation due to drugs rather than them using drugs to deal with a bad situation. And yes I know drug abuse makes problems worse the vast majority of the time but it’s not what I see as the root issue in a lot of cases, the drug use is a symptom/coping mechanism for people that society have let fall through the cracks.
It’s an easy, comforting answer.
“That person’s life sucks because they do drugs” doesn’t raise any uncomfortable questions, and it makes avoiding a similar situation seem easy. “That person is using drugs because their life sucks” leads us to ask why their life sucks and whether the same thing could happen to us.
That’s a deep answer. Kinda like fundamental attribution error.
It is exactly fundamental attribution error, with a bit of motivated reasoning.
I guess a lot of people who haven’t gone through some serious shit in their life really do find it difficult to accept how bad some people have it
Because people don’t understand what they haven’t experienced. Like, at all.
We don’t deal with the root cause because it’s expensive, time consuming, complex and some people will get offended (ie: most of our problems are a result of bad parenting - adulting not knowing how to regulate themselves, adults being too exhausted from work, adults not knowing how to mirror etc. ). Symptoms are what’s treated. Ie: in the us the focus is on getting you back to work/ be productive and not solving your depression, anxiety whatever.
In addition to propaganda campaigns? It’s the same reason people try to shift the blame for most societal issues (financial, health, relationships) to a failure of personal responsibility.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/pulling-through/202505/why-we-blame-the-sick
It’s a comforting lie people tell themselves because it gives them a false sense of control. Honestly, kind of the same reason people start doing drugs.
Drugs or other habits can help people cope when they can’t keep believing a comforting lie, but also feel driven to their breaking point by too much reality/need to find a way to escape from the pressure.
Well oxy definitely turned normal people with pain, into uncontrolled addicts. I’d say oxy drug is a problem.
I do know a few people (very well) who had a super good life then friend group gets them into drug scene and life falls apart.
But yeah mostly its abused kids, neglected kids, or people with mental health issues looking for the soothing that others just get naturally as a coping skill
I do know a few people (very well) who had a super good life then friend group gets them into drug scene and life falls apart.
You’d be surprised - I was this person who had a “super good life” and from the outside “had friends that got me into drugs and caused problems” but trust me, that was a facade and I was 100% seeking it out - that’s why I was hanging out with those friends in the first place.
To answer your question, because they’ve never done drugs. people who blame the problem you describe solely on drugs don’t know anything about drugs, except that they’re scary and they hurt you.
A simple explanation of a complex problem
Because fixing the PROBLEMS means the people in charge lose money to build functional, supportive social structures.
Much easier to throw victims in jail and monetize their “treatment” by privatizing poor people’s tax dollars.
Because you live in Usonia.
This certainly isn’t the case with my country,
the Netherlands, where the problem is considered one of regulation
or with China, where the problem is considered one of national security and imperialism.I live where?
I live where
The Netherlands.
The problems causing drug abuse reflects on the speaker’s treatment of people and the people close to them, it makes them responsible for the fallout of their actions or lack of action.
Blaming the user absolves themselves of any responsibility.
You can apply that to pretty much any social ills, like poverty, homelessness, etc.
IOW, the person blaming the user: may have abused the user in some way as a kid, voted to end substance abuse education in schools, voted to end afterschool programs that might’ve kept kids away from abusive situations or drugs in the house, voted to limit or end food programs that would have allowed people to not become completely destitute and take to drugs for escape, and so on.
Because they don’t care about others and want access to the resources that would be spent to help them. They see drug addicts as losers who can’t compete and want to keep them out of the game. They treat them the way they were taught to treat others, by being treated that way themselves.
It is very useful for collecting votes, justifying increased spending, and is ultimately lucrative. A lot of political topics are like this, IRL reality is more complex and no one has a silver bullet
Mmm. Used to misdirect hate and anger towards a group of people who mostly don’t have the means to defend themselves because they’re down on their luck already. Social scapegoats.
Can’t that be the same for other things? Drugs, violence, guns, gangs, etc.
Nobody should want to do those things with a healthy mindset.
I don’t disagree
Listen how are we supposed to argue if you keep agreeing with me
I don’t like your tone but I accept your right to an opinion
Amplification - drugs /can/ turn a small problem into a huge one.
Plus sometimes people do start drugs for temporary or even trivial reasons - boredom, curiosity, peer pressure, even just availability - they don’t always need to be escaping something.
When they say drugs ruin lives, it’s a truism often enough to be accurate.
First order effects easy to see, seconf order causes harder to see
