What I was trying to get at with my last reply to you is that moralizing about drug use is your brain on liberalism (especially the strain of Protestantism that underlies American culture).
Stigmatizing drugs that have a mixture of recreational and therapeutic uses, like amphetamines, actively harms the people who need them. It is already so hard to get a prescription for adderall — I recently moved states and had to find a new psychiatrist who would continue treating me. It took me several months and several appointments with psychiatrists who refused to continue my prescription, treating me like a junkie, doubting my diagnosis even with the thorough 14-page report from the psychologist who diagnosed me in hand, and trying to put me on something else that could take up to 6 months to work and had awful side effects like suicidal thoughts — all because of the stigma around stimulants. I'm lucky that I could afford to spend $200 for each worse-than-useless appointment until I found someone actually willing to help me (2 hours away lol) and that my boss understood why my work was so shitty until I got back on my medication, but that's really not the norm.
Stigmatizing drug use also harms recreational users without benefitting society in any way. Recreational adderall users might be someone who has ADHD but no insurance to covers diagnosis or psych visits, just as easily as it might be someone who just wants to have a good time, just as easily as it might be someone working grueling hours at an exploitative job that needs to stay awake and energized, like truck drivers. It's easy to say "well the job should be safer and less shitty so people don't need to take drugs to be productive for capital" but that's not the material reality we live in.
Stigma around drug use also makes it harder for someone struggling with addiction to get help or treatment. It also makes it easier to keep substances illegal and power the prison industrial complex.
There's no harm in normalizing drug use, but there are many parties harmed by stigmatizing it.
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What I was trying to get at with my last reply to you is that moralizing about drug use is your brain on liberalism (especially the strain of Protestantism that underlies American culture).
Stigmatizing drugs that have a mixture of recreational and therapeutic uses, like amphetamines, actively harms the people who need them. It is already so hard to get a prescription for adderall — I recently moved states and had to find a new psychiatrist who would continue treating me. It took me several months and several appointments with psychiatrists who refused to continue my prescription, treating me like a junkie, doubting my diagnosis even with the thorough 14-page report from the psychologist who diagnosed me in hand, and trying to put me on something else that could take up to 6 months to work and had awful side effects like suicidal thoughts — all because of the stigma around stimulants. I'm lucky that I could afford to spend $200 for each worse-than-useless appointment until I found someone actually willing to help me (2 hours away lol) and that my boss understood why my work was so shitty until I got back on my medication, but that's really not the norm.
Stigmatizing drug use also harms recreational users without benefitting society in any way. Recreational adderall users might be someone who has ADHD but no insurance to covers diagnosis or psych visits, just as easily as it might be someone who just wants to have a good time, just as easily as it might be someone working grueling hours at an exploitative job that needs to stay awake and energized, like truck drivers. It's easy to say "well the job should be safer and less shitty so people don't need to take drugs to be productive for capital" but that's not the material reality we live in.
Stigma around drug use also makes it harder for someone struggling with addiction to get help or treatment. It also makes it easier to keep substances illegal and power the prison industrial complex.
There's no harm in normalizing drug use, but there are many parties harmed by stigmatizing it.
This. Pearl clutching about medications is ableist.