Philosophy of never having done Drugs, Boozing or Smoking

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

Am I the only one on this site who isn’t a substance abuser, gone out of my way to always avoid using this stuff? Drinking booze, needles, snorting, rolling, weed, cigarettes, pills, bongs…

Its a rather pointless activity, doesn’t sound wise to fuck up your brain, internal organs, reproductive systems, all to make yourself unhealthy.

Sometimes I drink Green Tea, I buy these “true lemon” packets off Amazon.com. I’m pondering drinking some tonight. I get really wild while reading, got a text on medieval mathematics. No, not wild… that’s my limit. I wouldn’t push pass caffeine. I avoid pain medications like it’s the plague.

I am more than capable of having a “bad trip” experiencing bad things, and “feeling good” experiencing good things, in concrete reality, triggered naturally, through life experiences. I don’t have a need to synthetically substitute reality, beyond using my natural chemicals in my body. I can find excitement reading, watching something on my Kindle, or getting my ass up and exploring, engaging with reality, people, places.

I would get very angry if someone tried to get me high, slug them. I find it repulsive, I’m quite happy being me. If I want to expand my consciousness then I apply myself, and do so. I have a wonderful inner world, very vibrant imagination and self control in manipulating it’s flow.

If your taking drugs, your just quitting life, trying to Dodge who you are, weakening yourself, making yourself sterile, quitting life. Its a deeply pointless existence. Those guys in India who live their whole lives cleaning untreated sewers have a higher existence than a substance abuser.

Far more dignified than…

That guy in the sewer at least has the dignity of having a place in society, a wife and kids to go home to, not being wacked out and suicidal over nothing.

He is far up higher the totem pole of life than a wasted drug addict, and if you take drugs, and keep taking them, that’s all that is going to happen… one day you’ll be alone, at the end of every rope, contemplating ending it. Why would anyone seek that absurdity out?

It is the inevitable end if you get started, and especially if you want to keep with it. How on earth is damaging your body possibly beneficial?I to you, save in some twisted, self defeating sense? Its much better to just try to live, and do better, or at least when everything is going wrong, to do no worst intentionally to yourself. Always look at the universe wide eyed and sober, in full appreciation as God intended.

2

Sort of. Drug use can interfere with ‘doing’ philosophy when it inhibits reasoning skills, use of logic, thinking clearly, etc. So insofar as these things are required to do philosophy, drug use would interfere with it, yes. But the analytical aspects of philosophical thinking are not the only aspects of philosophical thinking in general. Because philosophy is such an ambiguous thing one can’t easily say it is being done wrong (unless you mean a particular branch of it), only that there is some logical error in some line of reasoning…or… language games are intersecting and creating conceptual confusions. The former might be the result of a stoner doing philosophy, but the latter is an inescapable consequence of doing philosophy in general and comes with the territory.

More times than not you can probably blame philosophy’s ambiguity rather than the drug use of the philosopher when you either ask “what the hell is this crap this dude just wrote” or “why can’t you understand what I’m explaining… are you stoned?”

Philosophy is the only field in which the practioner’s can be intoxicated by some substance and it makes little difference. The natural sciences, no. There is no room for ambiguity and mistake.

3

I thought I was the only one who did not use.

The only time I was exposed to drugs was when I was at a pub having a glass of wine with a girlfriend. I don’t know how this happened but suddenly I could not speak, I knew what was going on, but I had no control over my outward movements, it was sort of like being paralysed. I told my GF what was happening and I wanted leave. I don’t know how I drove home, (it was a short distance) but when I got there I more or less passed out. She was the same. I think something must have been put in our drinks.

It was such a scary experience not to be in control of your body and it would be even more terrifying to not be in control of your mind.

I think this is the reason why I don’t do any of the above.

I’ve seen and heard people who have taken ‘bath salts’, I lived in an area once where it was notorious for drug addicts and prostitutes and that really scared the shit out of me, to hear them going off their heads.

I don’t understand why people prefer disney land to reality.

4

Typical INTJ. Really though, we also have addictive personalities, it’s why corporate executives have a reputation for drug use, it gives us the neurochemical high in areas we are already crave. I saw it in my neighbors and family, so rejected it. It leads nowhere good. I wouldn’t want to loose control either, it’s our natural capacity to inhibit and harness the impulse to blindly go to extremes without considering consequences… but addictions override this. You become familiar and safe with using it once you have experienced it, brush it off as a debunked myth, only too late realizing it was all true. You’ll be like Smears, driving around in tornadoes on Christmas day looking for munchies, the impulse towards self preservation completely shot to hell.

5

Me neither. Never felt the urge to abuse my body nor my mind in that way. I think that fear (righteous fear) and the will to preserve one’s self is a good thing. I feel guilty when I have more 3 1/2 cups of coffee in every day. lol Occasionally I will have a glass of wine but not really a drinker. I come from a family of alcoholics so I’m quite aware of what it can do to one’s system and one’s life and especially to the lives of one’s children. That I will not have. Break the cycle, break the pattern - have to do it you know.

You’re quite happy being you? I can’t honestly say that I feel that way all of the time. There are times when I am not quite happy being me but that’s usually when I’ve done something which goes against my own grain or which allows me to see my human flaws or weaknesses - which isn’t a bad thing but at first not so easy.
I laugh at myself a lot - taking one’s self too seriously can crack one up. Don’t have time for that to happen. Crying helps and I cry when I get a bit overwhelmed by myself, that also helps a lot. Gotta get rid of those toxins you know.
I like to meditate on and reflect on the willows…among other things. We become what we look at. Be very careful what you look at.

6

I look at women, never became a woman.

7

I didn’t understand where you were coming from at first with that. I had to backpeddle. Anyway, when I wrote the below…

I was thinking from a deeper level from my perspective and intuition anyway.
If we take the time to reflect or to meditate on something, say for instance, a star, a tree, a beautiful raging sea or thunderstorm, a tree branch with a bird on it even - whatever it might be - I think that we’re capable of attaining/obtaining a sense of qualia from that and it becomes incorporated into our beings, a form of synergy if you will, almost like an I-Though relationship as Buber called it which becomes One.
Or is it simply that nature merges with nature and we discover ourselves?
Many things mold us, transform us, without our awareness.
But I think that it is important what we look at - on a subconscious level, we are influenced.

8

You become what you “consume”, not necessarily what you ingest. And that isn’t entirely accurate. Actually you become what you can make out of what you consume.

9

James S Saint

James, in what way are you using these synonyms differently? I don’t get it.

Not sure what you mean by this either. If we drink too much coffee which has caffeine, we might become a very nervous organism.
If we consume yogurt, yummy, and much milk, we might become a calcium-laden organism.

Or did you mean to say digest? That might be more appropriate, in line with my above post.

10

To “consume” is to merely obtain and destroy. To ingest is to bring within oneself so as to digest. To digest is to take apart and reorder and incorporate into constructive harmony with oneself. Thus:
) Consuming helps only the money/trade makers
) Ingesting is only a beginning.
) Digesting takes attention, time, and consideration.

When one fully digests, he makes more of himself. He grows. If he doesn’t digest completely, he becomes more of what wasn’t him. He changes, perhaps for the good, usually not.

What comes of what you destroy/consume?
Has it been incorporated into you?
Has is been to serve the money makers?
Has it been partly digested such as to pervert what you were?
Has it been completely digested so as to ensure that you have grown?

You become whatever you have made of it. Slave, king, whatever.

11

Well, first of all taking drugs does not mean abusing drugs, or throwing your life away. You can use drugs occasionally and be the end result as portrayed in the OP. I am sober 99% of the time probably. I drink occasionally, around parties, dinner out, or so. I may smoke some weed a few times a year. I smoke cigarettes every day. Yes I have an addictive personality and yes am INTJ as well. But that doesn’t mean I am not in control of my mind and or body when I consume drugs. Since I am experienced and don’t over do it, I see it as becoming mentally prepared to take on the effects of the drug, ensuring that I will be comfortable in this new mental state I am entering with my surroundings. I control the drug use to feel what I want to feel. But all that requires experience and knowledge of what the drugs do to you.

When I first began, in my younger years, of consuming drugs wasn’t about throwing your life away, or hiding from life. It was about experiencing everything that one could experience. Traveling, thinking, playing sports, working out, playing games, studying, eating different foods, and trying drugs, were just part of becoming a well rounded person. How could I have an opinion of something I never tried anyways? Which, Mr Ferguson, how exactly do you know what you’re talking about if you have never tried drugs? Is it just from what you’ve read in the media, or perhaps high school health class? I took enough drugs to see the extent of the damage that they could do to me and perhaps maybe at times did do to me, but not on a permanent level. If anything permanent came from my past drug use, I would say it was beneficial if anything. Did it knock down my intelligence? Not that I’m aware of, for all I know is that my intelligence actually has increased after my trial period with drug use in my pre-adult days.

But don’t assume you are someone who didn’t choose to escape reality, for perceptions obtained through drug use can be just as much as reality as perception without drug use. Besides, it can really lead to some creativity. When you’re on acid, you know you’re not seeing reality when walls start moving on you, its the drug affecting your perception. So what? Did you throw your life away, or are you experiencing life just the same? I learned alot from taking drugs on a more intimate level. If you don’t think you need to learn those same lessons then good for you. So what? If you think you did learn those same lessons without drug use, I would vehemently disagree.

12

What TF is saying and I agree with him, the most dangerous part of taking drugs is that very first ingesting of them or it.

One does not know if they will become addicted or not.

I am also an INTJ and I am not impulsive or random, I allow my intuition to work for me, which maybe the reason I intuitively know I should not indulge and which may be your reason also being an INTJ, that you intuitively know it will not effect you in a major way.

I look at Amy Winehouse’s descent and nothing would induce me to try.

13

“Drugs” is a broad category that encompasses a lot of different substances that for the most part, only have the name “drugs” in common. Anyone who knows what they’re talking about understands that weed, alcohol, mushrooms etc shouldn’t be in the same category as cocaine, meth, heroin and prescription drugs.

14

Besides, the biochemistry of the brain is composed not only of the very drugs themselves that people occupy their mind with, but oft times take them to compensate the affective lack thereof them.

15

Reality is for people who can’t handle drugs.

16

There is an example of evil and good.

People believing evil of all good and good of all evil.

17

Angry wrote:

Could you give up smoking?

18

[quote=“mr reasonable”]
“Drugs” is a broad category that encompasses a lot of different substances that for the most part, only have the name “drugs” in common. Anyone who knows what they’re talking about understands that weed, alcohol, mushrooms etc shouldn’t be in the same category as cocaine, meth, heroin and prescription drugs.[/q]

Oh, this is pathetic. The withdrawal symptoms from quitting the drugs “food and water” are very harsh.

Maybe you need to take the class “life 101” before being such a pompous ass about drugs and neurochemistry.

19

Ec, you think that a person who smokes weed is under the same circumstances by doing so as a person who uses heroin or is addicted to benzos or painkillers? Pompous? Pathetic? I get the sense from your terminology that your response is an emotional one that wasn’t very well thought out. Don’t talk that kind of shit to me.

20

Everyone’s biochemistry is different on most things…

Your blanket statements are much less thought out than my objections to them …

On pot, I’m a psychotic psychopath, alcohol doesn’t change my personality at all.