Damn, I'm trying to stay away from this place, but I checked back when I was bored for a second, and read the chat thread. My god you fools ganging up on gamerat are sad. Here's some words by the great writer Stephen King, from his book On Writing: A memoir of the Craft. Now this is just an alternate viewpoint by someone who's actually experienced hard core addiction in his life including weed, alcohol, tobacco, cocaine, and plenty more. I'm not saying this is fact, but it's another viewpoint that should be considered. I especially agree with the part that people think creative minds require some kind of substance abuse to create things. Gunnii, I'm looking at you. Try reading this with an open mind, and instead of spouting about gamerat's anti drug indoctrination, think about your pro drug indoctrination.
"The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers—common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I’ve heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. It doesn’t matter if you’re James Jones, John Cheever, or a Stewbum snoozing in Penn Station; for an addict, the right to the drink or drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter."
-Stephen King
First off, I don't condone use of 'hard drugs' like the one Scarecrow listed in his post. They are all too addictive and anyone who uses them regularly most likely has a problem. But drugs like weed are no worse then cigarettes. Their probably even better.
I'm not pro drugs, I just don't give a shit if people feel inclined to use them. Some people have trouble doing them, obviously, but others handle them perfectly well. Two friends of mine smoke weed once every weekend, they have never done it in the middle of the week and they have been using for 2 or 3 years now, they have it well under control and keep their shit together.
Just a quick Google search can show you just how many creative thinkers have used drug without it actually showing.
Did you know Sigmund Freud, better known as the father of psychoanalysis, did cocaine?
Or that Richard Feynman tried LSD, marijuana and ketamine?
And those are just scientists, there is an even bigger number of artists out there.
I'm not pro drugs, I'm not recommending them to people or convincing them to use drugs, I already stated that I will never do drugs myself. People have the right to do drugs as long as they can actually deal with it and not cause a harm to others, drug lords make this much harder then it has to be, and if you deny it you need to read up on some statistics regarding the war on drugs.
Did you know that about 7000 people people die of overdose every year, most of them die because of impurities in the substance they are taking, those impurities would not be a problem if the drugs were regulated and controlled by the government. Since 2006 over 70.000+ people have died in Mexico alone, not from drug abuse, but from the war on drugs. Many of those people didn't even do drugs, they just happened to be at the wrong place in the wrong time. Did you know the war on drugs costs the U.S. more then $51,000,000,000
annually. And I don't think you knew that it's estimated that if marijuana was taxed and regulated it could generate profits of up to $1,400,000,000 per year.
And do you know what the best part about this war is?
It's not doing shit. In fact, studies have shown that drug usage has gone up substantially since it began. The war on drugs has done achieved nothing with its propaganda, overflowing prisons and with the people that it has killed.
Edit:
The man who practically turned into a zombie probably had an underlying mental illness. He was also believed to have used a cocktail of bathsalts and cocaine, it's not recommended. Either way, that reaction is an exception, not the rule.
