Have you ever been given drugs at the doctor’s or dentist, like anesthesia or pain meds? It’s pretty rare that someone has never experienced an altered state of mind at some point.
The majority of people have been high before, and the majority of people are not drug addicts who find being sober horribly depressing. It’s the depression that causes the drug addiction, not the other way around - though it certainly does make it harder to recover.
Doing street drugs or abusing prescription drugs is completely different from being put under anesthesia or having a dentist numb your mouth. They’re two different animals.
Didn’t intend to suggest they were the same, only that people don’t find being sober depressing and unbearable after experiencing an altered state of consciousness once. People get “high” at the doctor’s or dentist all the time and the risk of addiction from that is all but non-existent, but if someone seeks out the same drug outside a hospital setting the risk of addiction is much higher. Why? Because drugs don’t make people addicted, they keep people addicted. People become addicted when they begin to use drugs as a maladaptive coping mechanism (typically for mental illness or environmental factors, i.e. poverty), and only then does the chemical component of addiction come into play.
Have you ever been given drugs at the doctor’s or dentist, like anesthesia or pain meds? It’s pretty rare that someone has never experienced an altered state of mind at some point.
The majority of people have been high before, and the majority of people are not drug addicts who find being sober horribly depressing. It’s the depression that causes the drug addiction, not the other way around - though it certainly does make it harder to recover.
Yes, at the dentist they numbed my pain. When I was 14 I had general anesthesia for surgery. And when I gave birth I had an epidural.
Doing street drugs or abusing prescription drugs is completely different from being put under anesthesia or having a dentist numb your mouth. They’re two different animals.
Didn’t intend to suggest they were the same, only that people don’t find being sober depressing and unbearable after experiencing an altered state of consciousness once. People get “high” at the doctor’s or dentist all the time and the risk of addiction from that is all but non-existent, but if someone seeks out the same drug outside a hospital setting the risk of addiction is much higher. Why? Because drugs don’t make people addicted, they keep people addicted. People become addicted when they begin to use drugs as a maladaptive coping mechanism (typically for mental illness or environmental factors, i.e. poverty), and only then does the chemical component of addiction come into play.