Is the command to say "no" sufficient reason not to use drugs? If one uses drugs and develops illness, does that prove that his or her decision to use them was unwise? In using drugs, must we forfeit some privilege or right to happiness and take personal responsibility for any future suffering we encounter? Is the choice to use drugs an excuse to ostracize or maltreat the user? What if the user were deprived of other fulfilling activities to begin with? How do we know it's always good to obey the law? How do we know that if we avoid drugs, we will even be rewarded in life?

In writing this essay, I am in no way encouraging drug use. Drugs are dangerous: they can damage your body, put others at risk by altering your cognition, or even kill you. I'm writing it, first of all, to give an anecdotal account of what it feels like to be 'high' on a drug, so that a reader may try to grasp it without using drugs, if he or she chooses. Second, I'm writing it to protect people who have used drugs from certain fallacies that might be committed against them. Although anti-drug campaigners might at first react offensively to these sections, it must be remembered that these are formal fallacies and thus errors in argument. Drugs can produce wondrous experiences, and hopefully, this essay will help people understand why some have chosen not to say "no."

My Experiences Using Drugs

Over a span of six years, I have used the following drugs: marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, LSD, powdered cocaine, mescaline, ketamine, DXM, and psilocybin. I will describe the effects of three of these drugs on brain function along with my experiences before proceeding to discuss social and political problems concerning drug use.

Marijuana

Contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and works by mimicking the effect of the brain's endogenous cannabinoids. Dangers of marijuana smoking include all the risks normally associated with smoking: emphysema, bronchitis, and lung cancer, in addition to learning difficulties and short-term memory loss.

My experiences using marijuana were not always pleasant. It seemed to affect my self-consciousness and my concerns in social situations. I played with my fingers a lot and it occasionally gave me a discomforting feeling of panic. However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much more expressive music seemed. At low doses, I found it relaxing and it didn't bring the negative symptoms.

LSD

Short for 'lysergic acid diethylamide' and acts on the serotonin receptor 5-HT_2A. LSD is not addictive, but its risks include flashbacks, 'bad trips,' and persisting perceptual distortions.

After taking two LSD tablets, my field of focus seemed to expand as if my consciousness had been 'amplified.' I was fascinated by the LSD trip: colors seemed aglow and as in the case of marijuana, my appreciation of music deepened. While lying down I felt completely relaxed and at ease.

Cocaine

Exerts its effects by blocking the reuptake of the 'pleasure chemical' dopamine. The dangers of cocaine use include damage to the nasal septum, cocaine psychosis, stroke, and heart attack.

While living in isolation and before I had used any drugs, I had read about cocaine's mechanism of action on the brain and wondered, "What would all that happiness feel like?" I had eagerly awaited a trip to paradise on a day I finally had the opportunity to use cocaine. Eventually, a friend showed me to a dealer and I tried it for the first time. After sniffing a few lines, I noticed that I was feeling very giddy and excited. I continued to use it over a span of one year.

Cocaine gave me a pleasurable rush that I felt in my heart, one that heightened my alertness and sense of control over my surroundings. I felt this racing control over my thoughts that gave me daring confidence to do bold things, such as walk to the store while high.

The experience was certainly exhilarating, but I would not call it a perfect pleasure. It lacks some of the qualities of other pleasures. I got scared often and checked my pulse. It did not give me the feeling I expected from a dopamine agonist: that the world was a warm, loving place filled with happiness. It was simply a rush of energy that felt very pleasant. Cocaine also seemed to lack the more mysterious and curiosity-inspiring effects of drugs such as marijuana and LSD.

Drug Fallacies

As much as people might love to kick dirt on a former drug user, it must be cautioned that there are several fallacies one must avoid in order to make a fair assessment of how 'guilty' the drug user really is. There is, of course, a decision to break the law, a subject to which I will turn in the next section, but moral, philosophical blame is a concept of greater complexity, to which many have been fallacy-prone.

Fallacy #1: If illness occurs during or after drug use, then drugs are to blame.

This is easily recognized as a faulty inference: if it rained, and then after it rained a burglar broke in and stole your dinnerware, would you attribute your missing property to the thunderstorm? Of course not. Just because one event succeeds another does not mean that the two are causally linked. If a drug user develops an illness, we cannot infer on that basis alone that drugs caused the illness. That would be what is called the Fallacy of Post Hoc Reasoning.

In fact, predisposition to illness by itself can motivate one to use drugs, as I will show in the next section. Even worse, an attack on the drug user, social or physical, might be planned to cause illness after drug use has begun. This brings us to our next fallacy:

Fallacy #2: If illness occurs as a result of drug use, then the user is solely responsible.

Shifting the blame for an event entirely onto one cause when it might have multiple contributing causes is also a faulty inference, called the Fallacy of the Single Cause. When specific people are made to take full blame, this is called the Scapegoat Fallacy. In reality, several causes may be to blame, including subsequent bullying by members of one's social group who intend to attribute the resulting anxiety entirely to drug use, and we must remember to apportion blame carefully among the collective culprits rather than scapegoat.

Fallacy #3: Negative consequences of drug use alone, e.g., becoming a 'statistic,' prove that the choice is unwise.

This can be considered an instance of the Fallacy of Retrospective Determinism. It states that if an action leads to consequences, then, merely on the basis of that outcome, it would have been wise not to follow it. But if this were so, then no one would take any risks: we wouldn't go skiing or skydiving, we wouldn't play hockey, go mountain climbing, gamble, or even play the lottery. The consequences in each case may be more or less severe, but it's the same fallacy: one should not base the wisdom of a decision on a particular outcome.

Why Some Have Chosen Not to Say "No"

In using drugs, one admits the possibility of becoming a 'statistic.' The likelihood of drug-related illness and its imagined severity are compared to the experience and joy one hopes to obtain from them. The expected reward of the decision to use drugs is then compared to the expected reward of avoiding drugs, and a conclusion is reached that no convincing argument is readily available that drug use isn't worth the risk. As I will explain, the command to say "no" by itself isn't always persuasive, nor is an appeal to common sense, particularly when the user fears that he or she might live an unsatisfying life.

Suppose a therapist tells you that you have a mental condition that permanently affects your ability to build and maintain social relationships. In your naïve trusting state, you assess that the likelihood is frighteningly high that you will never find happiness in marriage and that you will never experience the true thrills of romantic love. One day, a close friend or relative informs you that he knows a cocaine dealer. You are thereby presented with two choices: you may either say "no" and risk lifelong dejection in which certain thrills are never attained, or, in a chance to use drugs that might not return later, you may risk becoming a 'statistic.' Deciding that your culture has treated you badly and that you are unhappy with the prospect of being single forever, you ignore the command to say "no," seize upon the opportunity, and experiment with cocaine.

At this point, you certainly have no intention of ruining your life. You're simply living it up while you can as an alternative to a future whose expectations seem bleak. You may even plan to stop using drugs and resume your projects again. Soon, however, your dealers and acquaintances are giving you free cocaine. You accept their offers at whim, but in a matter of months you develop a strange and unpleasant condition that causes you to perceive the world differently.

Does this outcome alone prove that your decision to use drugs was foolish? "No," you reason, "my drug use just ended badly." Does your decision to break the law and use drugs imply that you have forfeited some moral privilege that you formerly had? "Not necessarily," you say, "as I made the decision to use drugs with good intentions and without convincing argument that I should not."

"After all," you might add, "what did you give me to begin with?"

When Hope Isn't Enough

As an alternative to using drugs, anti-drug campaigners might offer hope as a 'solution' to the problem. Even though your life might turn out unfulfilling, they would argue, you can at least hope for eventual prosperity. But how rational is it to avoid drugs and hope for prosperity without them when the likelihood of prosperity already seems low?

The word 'hope' is usually applied in cases wherein some desired outcome for the person who hopes is either partly or wholly beyond his or her immediate control. During a hurricane attack, we say, "I hope my children will be safe," but while driving to work, we do not say, "I hope I go to work this morning." In our case, the desired outcome for the potential drug user is reward in life (or perhaps, if one must live in suffering, no life at all). To tell this person that he or she should avoid drugs and instead hope for prosperity is already to allude to the fact that future prosperity is at least partly, and perhaps even wholly, out of his or her control. The consolation to hope reveals forced insecurity on the hoper and possibly an attitude of dominance on the part of the lawgiver, an attitude that may even be patronizing and lacking in empathy toward those who, in their philosophical quandary, choose to break the law and use drugs.

In reality, a rational decision must be based on more than just 'hope.' We must take into account all possibilities and make sensible comparisons of the reward expectations of every course of action. We cannot simply treat possibilities as if they were impossible -- at least, not literally (for a more detailed discussion, see another essay of mine, On Trust, in which I allude to the problem of faith as well).

If new laws are made to protect citizens from unnecessary suffering, then we might witness a reduction in law-breaking behavior, but until then, simply being told to hope may not be found a rational incentive by those who feel they might be cheated.

Should Drug Users Be Punished?

To discourage drug use, lawmakers and citizens could deliberately exacerbate the problems drugs already create for users, or even introduce problems where none existed, in order to roll them out into the public eye as examples of failure and helpless sufferers. Though the more schadenfreude-thirsty could see such a political strategy as an opportunity for amusement, it could theoretically be taken to callous extremes, resulting in concentration camps and even torture chambers for people who so much as experiment with drugs. One must therefore ask: How far would we go? Would decreased incentive to use drugs really be worth that kind of cruelty?

Rehabilitation programs and short-term jail confinement are to be distinguished from this more destructive form of punishment, in which the life and future plans of the drug user might even be ruined. Indeed, the intellectually dishonest could even see this form of punishment as an opportunity to commit the fallacies described in previous sections, and we must be on our guard against them.

Might Drugs Be Useful One Day?

Given their immensely powerful effects on the human mind, it is surprising that so many have sought to abolish drugs altogether. If used in a way that did not create danger, drug use could not only become safe and acceptable but could also expand our range of enjoyable activities and enliven the human experience. They could provide clues to the understanding of the world and of human consciousness. In a culture where happiness and social acceptance are occasionally difficult to attain, drugs could provide us with the opportunity to partake of intense pleasures that may otherwise be practically impossible.

Even so, there is a dangerous problem connected with the unconditional legalization of all drugs. This problem pertains to Darwin's theory of evolution and the existence of two possibilities:

1. If drugs are legalized, then we will evolve to benefit from them and enjoy them even more.
2. If drugs are legalized, then we will evolve to dislike them in order to benefit from abstinence.

The real danger, here, is (2). Suppose we legalized LSD for all adults. At first, there would be widespread recreational enjoyment, provided that dangers are kept to a minimum. This enjoyment could continue for centuries or even millennia. Eventually, however, genetic adaptation causing people to detest the LSD experience might arise, motivating them spend less time using LSD and more time on activities beneficial to survival, such as good parenting. If this genetic adaptation to avoid LSD brought success, then it could spread throughout the gene pool, and we might never be able to achieve the same pleasurable experience from LSD again.

Of course, the opposite could happen: if LSD were legalized for everyone, then we could adapt to find it beneficial to survival. In that case, the pleasure derived from LSD could actually increase. At this point, we might not have enough information to reliably predict what would happen. There are two drugs already legalized in our culture: alcohol and tobacco. They have been available to all for several thousand years. Although we still derive pleasure from their use, it is possible that to some degree we have adapted to them already -- perhaps positively, perhaps negatively.

In legalizing drugs -- say, for less fortunate citizens -- there would lie a great challenge in preventing adaptation from spreading. For example, we would need to find a way to keep drug-repulsion genes from conferring any survival advantage. Since we do not yet fully understand genetics, this may prove a difficult problem to face securely. To legalize drug use and prevent adaptation is, at least, a possibility for those less able to find happiness in life.

Conclusion

My decision to write this essay could very well be met with great opposition. However, I have tried to be as fair as possible, and again, I don't encourage drug use. The drug experience comes with exhilarating pleasures but also with limitations and dangers. At the same time, we must be aware that drug users aren't entirely responsible for their own problems, that the mere command to avoid drugs may not be found sufficient reason to avoid them, and that it is questionable to punish drug use in a way that interferes with the user's future well-being and life plans.

Ultimately, we may find a use for drugs, whether for survival or recreation. In legalizing drugs, however, we would need to carefully safeguard ourselves against the possibility that we would genetically adapt to become repulsed by the drug experience. Still, drugs may eventually provide an opportunity for less fortunate citizens to experience pleasures they find uniquely difficult to attain.


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