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tweet by Johann Hari: The core of addiction is not wanting to be present in life, because pour life is too painful a place to be. This is why imposing more pain or punishment on a person with an addiction problem actually makes their addiction worse.
Since ppl obviously disagree with your view - here is some anectodal counter evidence:
When i was younger and went out often, I had a close friend group of like-minded ppl. In that group we experimented with different drugs. The most common one was probably MDMA in pill form, but we had things that where in powder, liquid, crystal and organic form. For new drugs we read up and usually had a trip sitter, all our stuff went through the lab - so we knew what actually was in there. In our high time, we had a trip every weekend and a comming down with some weed. I know for a fact that we did not harm anyone else. Did we harm our bodies? Possibly, but for sure less than smoking tobacco for the same period and frequency would have. Did we develop an addiction? I can't speak for the others, but i know i did not. And those i am still in contact with have a clean and organized life now.
It will be extremely easy for you, to simply say 'denial' and not take in what i wrote. But trust me when i say i know what an addiction is. During my time in the military i developed an addiction to alcohol. I am fine now, but i know how it is to be dependent on a substance and i know how it is to look back at it.
Thanks for the great response
I too was friends with an organic chemist. We were luckier than most to have that kind of insight available