Is Objectivism against drugs?

[Solomon Eagle]

If you've ever worked in a drug rehab your opinions may differ. Getting up close with the afflicted can change your perspective too. I could go into the many different ways a person can become addicted but the one that contradicts your "an attempt to obliterate one's consciousness" is the biological predisposition towards certain drugs. Studies have shown attention deficit people having a strong tendancy towrds stimulants. There are lots of other genetic studies showing how people's brain chemistry leads them towards drugs. Drug addiction is just a plain sickness that sad to say usually gets treated with more drugs.

You equivocate. You can't possibly believe that all drugs are bad, so I accuse you of equivocation. The drugs that cause the problem aren't the drugs that sucessfully treat it. For example, Effexor is a drug which has been shown to remove some people's craving for alcohol. That's not sad, it's a blessing.

[Samoht]

I am a little late to this conversation, and from the more than heated conversations that I have seen, many of you probably don't read this post now, but there is some information that needs to be added.

Mood altering drug use (those that alter concrete perception and/or the rational thought process of the user) is not an issue of a person having the right to do what they wish with their bodies. When people use those drugs they loose the ability to control emotional impulses and they deaden their own consciences in order to remove emotional consequences from their actions.

I have seen children after (and while) they have been beaten within an inch of their lives by people who were too stoned to control their anger (and yes, most were only on weed at the time). Not by their parents, but by older siblings or strangers on the street who thought that the kid looked at them in a disrespectful way. [if you would like to know why I just watched, none of the kids I saw beaten were worth risking my own safety to help.] Also, I saw mothers who allowed live-in boyfriends to rape their children because they lacked the will or ability to get a job [in this situation me and my family did step in to help, resulting in the first time I had a gun pulled on me]. They used weed to deaden their emotions and rationalized that their ten, eleven and twelve year old daughters had seduced the mothers’ forty plus year old boyfriends who were addicted to "hard drugs.” Whenever guilt from what they had done to their own lives and the lives of their daughters would creep in the mothers would light up. I never saw any of them sober. Since then many of the molestation victims have repeated the pattern. Usually the dealers and child molesters (usually the same people where I’m from) would simply shoot people who tried to turn them into the police, but occasionally they would do a home evasion and rape the girls and women in the house in front of the others as an example of what happens when people complain too loudly. [The man who raped the girl my family helped shot and killed the girls uncle in an unrelated drug deal and went back to prison soon after his release from prison and never had the opportunity to come after us, but if he had he would have died in the attempt.]

I have seen these situations (all of which fueled on drugs) in several different states in every race that lives in poverty. What I mean by this is not that this is a compiled list of what I have seen in drug infested areas, but that all of these examples are occurring now in all of the drug infested areas that I have lived in or next too. My wife works in a pediactric psych hospital. Weekly children are brought in from parents who are addicts. Some have suffered massive physical torture at the hands of stoned parents, but most are in varrious stages of starvation from neglect.

I have seen people shot and stabbed over nothing by people who were on mind-altering drugs. Because I lived rationally and refused to participate in the local drug culture, or view their "alternative lifestyle" as anything other than evil, I have had several knives and guns pulled on me and have had to actively try to kill people in several different situations in my own defense because my existence and strength by choosing to live in reality and refuse to give up on bettering my own life was a direct insult to their self destructive way of life. When they see those of us who lived in the same hopeless area they lived in, around the same brutal thugs that they lived around, succeed in what they wanted it shows them that their lives are the end result of their choice to use drugs to deaden their mind in order to evade reality and not the result of outside factors such as being born poor in a violent area where there is little opportunity. Instead of changing their lives they simply try to remove what we represent by destroying us.

Mind altering drugs use never stay within the mind of the user. It always finds a way out to damage the lives of those around them through direct action, be it impaired driving that results in a car wreck, or impaired judgment where the user finds it perfectly rational to stab a man in the chest in the middle of a crowded room because the stranger did not return a greeting. Once again this is not a hypothetical, but an incident that happened two feet in front of me. If a person wishes to destroy their own lives by smoking crack or meth, so be it, but if they do not die instantly from an overdose they become an irrational engine of destruction and the actions they commit do not remain within their own minds. The only way to stop them before they cause the damage is to prevent them from getting the drugs to begin with.

I have never understood the missconception most people have with mind altering drugs. Soma does not exist (read "Brave New World").

[Inspector]

Since I saw this thread I had been looking for a particular Rand quote. I finally found it:

Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state, from a reality one cannot deal with, from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian "intuition" brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get "stoned."

Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene an evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.

-Ayn Rand, from "Apollo and Dionysus"

[gadfly]

Samoht, I would move (if you can, and if you have not already).

I agree with your assessment. The principle I use to judge this topic is simply that drugs are bad to the extent that they impair rationality.

This principle is also evident in differing degrees, however. Some of the discussion has already touched on this. For example, drinking coffee to stay awake on a long drive is not the same as using a large dose of methamphetamine which makes you so out of it that you stab someone, and should not be appraised the same way morally. For this reason, I am not willing to categorically say that using a mind-altering drug is morally wrong in all degrees and under all circumstances.

Something I have often wondered is whether using drugs can negate a person's free will (by significantly impairing their rationality), and if this should impact a person's legal right to use the drug. For example, in my opinion there is no question that people should be allowed to drink in private, and in reasonable quantity in public. Banning alcohol was a fiasco during Prohibition because it undermined the principle that people should be able to engage in free trade and the (fully consensual) activity of drinking alcohol, which in itself does not represent a violation of anyone's rights. However, if rationality is removed, by using drugs of a type, or in an amount, that always makes the user temporarily irrational, does that mean they should not have a right to use those drugs? Or should we still always wait until they violate someone's rights?

[gadfly]

A drug like LSD disrupts consciousness and harms the mind.  It is bad.  I will tell my kid not to use it.  I am not sure what the motives of the chemist who researched it were.  I am not a chemist, and I don't see much benefit to me in denouncing that chemist.

LSD was first synthesized - and used - totally by accident in 1938 by a Swiss chemist doing pharmaceutical research. He thinks he may have absorbed some through his skin in the laboratory. Related compounds also occur naturally in morning glory seeds and in ergot fungus, which attacks grains such as rye and barley. It has been suggested that these compounds may have precipitated the Salem witch trials, when citizens ingested infected grains and then had hallucinations, which they interpreted as the influence of witches.

[drewfactor]

I very much doubt the validity of even having a thread like this (drugs and objectivism do not belong in the same universe, much less a discussion), but, I will say to any "potential" Objectivist who is struggling with, toying with, thinking about drugs (those that cause loss of focus and coherence),  -  DONT LIE TO YOURSELVES.  Don't even pretend that you deserve to breathe the same air that Ayn Rand once breathed if you see any value in mind-altering drugs.  *I am not talking about medication*  If you want an anything-goes world, go out and join it.  Reap its rewards!  I will admit - deuces are wild these days.  But you cant be a double agent here.  You give yourselves away too easily.  The TOC will accept you.The Libertarian Party will accept you.  Any university will accept you.  But real objectivists won't.  A thread like this is like a gift, a sanction if you will, that you don't deserve.  When I think that we discuss the defense of this country, constitutional issues, art, economics, and other important topics on this board, and then someone comes along, somewhat like a streaker, and says that drugs make the world more fun or interesting  - why not just say what is obvious - you hate yourself and this world. 

This is a sanctuary for many of us.  I live in an area with about 600,000 people.  I couldn't find 20 objectivists around here in a lifetime.  I come to this board because I could meet 20 a day sometimes.  Why are you and your ilk here?

I certainly dont want or care to have everybody agree with me.  That would be an out-of-cotext and irrational desire.  But there has to be a modicum of decency.  I don't want to hear about your LSD trip - or any other similar whim.  I can go to a local university coffee shop and watch the freakshow anytime I want.

This is an excellent post. As a student of Objectivism whom has found this philosophy to provide me with a rational basis for abandoning my desire to "escape reality" by using marijuana, I agree with your points. Although you condemn this discussion on this forum, and you've made your case, I do think it has some value for people like myself whom want to gain insight and motivation to continue on a path towards a "drug-free" existence.

[dondigitalia]

I'm glad this thread got bumped up.

In my senior year of high school and for a couple years after, I went through a drug-use craze. The drugs did give me some form of momentary pleasure, but every other aspect of my life went downhill, to the exact extent that I was using. I recognized the harm I was doing myself and stopped a few years before discovering Objectivism, so it wasn't really Objectivism that caused me to stop, but what Ayn Rand's work did help me do was fully realize the harm I was causing myself during those truly unfortunate year. And, yes, I am the only person to be blamed for such an error.

No life of drug use can really be called a life at all. What it can be called is an avoidance of life. Fully enjoying every aspect of your life requires that you are fully aware of every aspect of your life. After all, how can you enjoy something of which you have no awareness? I assure you, and take it from someone who has been there and knows, there is NO recrational drug that expands your awareness, as some drug-users will try to claim. Every last one of them does exactly the opposite.

I didn't read this whole thread. Nor do I intend to read 5 pages of argument over something I already understand better than just about anyone. As they say, hindsight is always 20/20, and if I could go back and do things differently that's the #1 change I would make. If anyone is currently struggling with this in regard to their own life, feel free to PM me and I'll be glad to get into specifics and do whatever I can to help you understand the full effect drug-use WILL (not might) have on your life. I have observed that the negative impact drugs have on people's lives is consistent across the board. The only variance is the extent of their drug use, which correlates directly to the extent they destroy their lives.

[dondigitalia]

There are some amphetamines that have legitimate medicinal value, particularly in treating cardiovascular conditions. Miss Rand did have lung problems. People tend to be scared away by the word amphetamine because of recreational drugs like MDMA (ecstasy, which is an amphetamine) and methamphetamine. Drugs used to treat a medical problem are perfectly moral. In fact, I would say it is immoral NOT to use drugs to treat a medical condition, when the best treatment available. It is only recreational use of drugs that impede awareness and cause damage to your body that is immoral.

[Ana]

another approach on smoking [and drugs]: smoking cripples your ability to be productive. i am a chain smoker and i can see people who don't smoke do better than i. so i would say smoking, as well as doing drugs is a way to give up your ability to be productive, that is, to create value. of course it could be argued that one can smoke of drink or do drugs during one's free time. but then that would mean that one is just killing time instead of making use of it. after all time (life) is our one biggest asset.

regarding the initial question about smoking being or not percieved as a danger: during the second world war soldiers in my country received aside from ammunition, clothes, food and payment, a daily ratio of two packs of non filter cigarettes. that was the perception on smoking back then.

it is true that 1957 is 10 years after the 2nd world war ended, but is also some 50 years ago, so i'd say the remarks on smoking in atlas shrugged had nothing to do with the drug issue. it was simply that they hadn't figured out smoking damages health and the ability to be productive back then.

[JMeganSnow]

it is true that 1957 is 10 years after the 2nd world war ended, but is also some 50 years ago, so i'd say the remarks on smoking in atlas shrugged had nothing to do with the drug issue. it was simply that they hadn't figured out smoking damages health and the ability to be productive back then.

No, they knew that smoking and drinking were potentially injurious to your health. They are an indulgeance, like chocolates, and if taken rationally add to the enjoyment of one's life. Physical pleasures tend to be like that; there is a definite cutoff point of "too much".

There is, however, no such thing as a "little bit" high. Any amount is too much where rational functioning is concerned.

[drewfactor]

I find it hard to believe that someone (such as Ayn Rand) could smoke for many decades without explicit knowledge of the dangers of smoking, yet still not notice the pernicious physical consequences that smoking has. Perhaps because I work in health care (at a repiratory specialty hospital), I am fully aware of the tremendous damage smoking has on one's life. Just as smoking has significant physical consequences, drugs have significant physical and mental consequences; both hinder your productive capacity.

The occasional marijuana smoker, just as the occasional drinker enjoys a buzz on a Friday night, I don't think deserves any more moral condemnation than someone who decides to pollute their lungs and predispose them to lung disease for the "habit" of smoking.

[dondigitalia]

There is, however, no such thing as a "little bit" high.

Not true.

Any amount is too much where rational functioning is concerned.

True.

[Styles2112]

Pure determinism.

And what, do you think, accounts for people having "attention deficit disorder"? They have a strong tendency to stimulants you say, what accounts for their tendency to be habitually out of focus?

I gave up alcohol awhile back (and yes, I was a mighty fine guzzler). You know how? I decided to. End of story. Am I ever going to slip. No. Why not? I have decided I'm not going to do that. So easy.

Couple things to this post. As a person who's been diagnosed with ADD since he was 5 (and on Ritalin since 6-11), I'm not sure I agree with that. It's funny, after discussing much of this with my wife (an Occupational Therapist), her view on ADD is not that it's abnormal, but in that it's more normal than the rest of people. That humans were not designed to be sitting around on computers all day, smoking pot, being lazy. We were designed to be a constantly moving machine. She believes that ADD is a modern reflection of this traditional trait of humans. But, I digress. As an ADD person, the only thing I enjoy, is the occasional glass of an alcoholic drink. Usually never more than one or two (almost never more than two, usually just one) and never more than once or twice a month. I abhor the idea of drinking to get drunk (which is why I was seldom seen fri and sat nights at college, because I could never stand that crowd. ) The reason I enjoy the drinks that I do, is because they TASTE good, and because they relax me a bit, without taking anything away from me. But, I understand their dangers, and I do everything within my power to prevent true Intoxication of those drinks.

I do, however, like your story on quitting alcohol. My papoo (Greek for grandfather) had always told me a story on him with cigarrettes. He could never understand why we needed these patches and therapy for quitters today. He'd say to me,"I used to smoke two packs a day for 40 years straight, and when my father died, I just quit. No patches, no nothing, I just decided to quit." I've always wondered why it isn't just that easy for some people.

[JMeganSnow]

Perhaps because I work in health care (at a repiratory specialty hospital), I am fully aware of the tremendous damage smoking has on one's life.  Just as smoking has significant physical consequences, drugs  have significant physical and mental consequences; both hinder your productive capacity. 

How much smoking are we talking about here? My father smokes, oh, probably about five or six cigarettes a month, and his lungs are probably in better shape than mine! There's a difference between that (or having the occasional drink, or, I suppose the occasional hit) and neurotic chain-smoking.

If people drank coffee like they smoke cigarettes, they'd probably get just as sick, and a LOT faster.

[ann r kay]

Since I saw this thread I had been looking for a particular Rand quote. I finally found it:

    Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state, from a reality one cannot deal with, from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian "intuition" brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get "stoned."

    Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene an evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.

-Ayn Rand, from "Apollo and Dionysus"

How does this apply to someone who is taking something like Paxil for depression or anxiety? They are addicted to the drug, at least psychologically, because it alters their mood and helps them to function. However, isn't the drug being used in this case to allow the individual to function rationally and isn't the intent of the user to become a happy, self-confident, reasoning person?

[EC]

How does this apply to someone who is taking something like Paxil for depression or anxiety? They are addicted to the drug, at least psychologically, because it alters their mood and helps them to function. However, isn't the drug being used in this case to allow the individual to function rationally and isn't the intent of the user to become a happy, self-confident, reasoning person?

The purpose in this case isn't to destroy the mind and stop rational thought, but to improve it, i.e., to make the person more rational not less.

[ann r kay]

The purpose in this case isn't to destroy the mind and stop rational thought, but to improve it, i.e., to make the person more rational not less.

Ahhh, that is what I thought. Thanks for comfirming that I was right.

[EC]

Ahhh, that is what I thought. Thanks for comfirming that I was right. 

See try and stick with Objectivism for awhile before you deside "it's not for you". Specifically, read Miss Rands works and don't take anything said on this board to represent "Objectivism" because people here have very different levels of understanding of the philosophy. Go to the source. If you want a more specific understanding of the philosophy than her fiction can provide then read the nonfiction either The Virtue of Selfishness or OPAR is a good start.

Have fun

[Felix]

This thread was started because I read in another thread that Objectivists were against drugs and nobody disagreed. So I assumed general acceptance of the stance. And then I started thinking: Why? (My favourite question by the way) Why be against recreational drug use? To be specific, with drugs I mean Cannabis, LSD, cocaine etc. My emphasis, here will be cannabis however, since this is something I consider harmless if taken with consideration. I only took it once and I liked it. To be honest, this was one of the happiest times of my life. Why is something like this immoral? If you know that you just do this, I don't know, once every other week just for the sake of the good feeling I honestly don't see where the problem is.

I can understand that it is stupid to take addicting drugs that destroy your rational faculty. But a bit of dope every other week? I doubt that this is harmful. It might even be beneficial. It makes you relax and feel good. That's a good thing. Now I am the first one to admit that you are not very productive when stoned. From my little but intense experience I can say that you cannot do anything of use because you are way too interested with what your hand looks like. Then you have to laugh all the time and then you eat your entire fridge. Then you just lie around and feel good and you have no intention to do anything.

But as long as this happens in a controlled manner and only on occasion, it's nothing but an intensified form of a vacation. And I see nothing wrong with that.

I haven't taken anything stronger out of fear of ruining my brain. And I haven't smoked dope since my first time, because I found it frightening that this drug experience gave me one of the best feelings of my life. But I am inclined to try this again. I was even able to recreate the feeling via self-hypnosis three times.

[DavidOdden]

My emphasis, here will be cannabis however, since this is something I consider harmless if taken with consideration. I only took it once and I liked it. To be honest, this was one of the happiest times of my life.

Wull, I'd say you should get a life, but that would be unnecessarily harsh. As long as you aren't a habitual stoner who makes the weed be your primary goal in life, and never, never drive or juggle knives stoned, then it's just another form of mindless time-wasting. If you had just said "and I enjoyed it", that wouldn't be as troubling as you saying it "was one of the happiest times of my life". Do you find life generally miserable and would you like some relieve from the relentless grind of day to day existence? If so, I can see how hemp could be a relief; but that would be covering up a more fundamental problem in your existence. Now let's assume that really you meant that you enjoyed it, period. Not that you needed it in some sense, but that it's one of many things you could do: mime show or dope? In that case, I'd go for the dope. Mozart opera or dope? I'd go for the opera. The central question, as I see it, is what your choices are, and what leads you to chose one over the other.

[HaloNoble6]

I don't see what you have against mime shows.

[Dan Bidewell]

I don't see what you have against mime shows.

Mime is f_ckin ATROCIOS. And why are they always stuck behind an invisible wall? Someone should picket drama schools that offer courses in mime. It is awful!

I must admit I do like drugs, and when I have been on them I did think at the time that I was having the bst time of my life - they are good fun! - but I cannot see how they can b reconciled with Objectivism. They are a denial of reality. They may make it more interesting or more vibrant, but they do make it less real. And undoubtedly, the greatest (only true) happiness is the happiness we get from real life.

[DavidOdden]

I don't see what you have against mime shows.

No, don't get me wrong, I just love watching "Mime in a box" or "Mime walking into the wind" for hours, and hours, and hours on end. And the makeup -- it's so, I dunno, fresh and clever. I just wish Carrot Top or Gallagher wold start doing mime.

[HaloNoble6]

I think this needs a new thread.

[Felix]

I think this needs a new thread.

Definitely! And: Why mime shows????

Wull, I'd say you should get a life, but that would be unnecessarily harsh.

That's OK. That's what I thought when I first realized this and that's also what got me thinking a lot about my life. The problem is that it was really the best time of my life. So the good thing is that it showed me that happiness on earth can actually exist, something I very much doubted before. But that I got it through drugs and not something else was my problem. That's also why I stopped taking drugs immediately. Yes, most of my life is in fact dull and boring, I suppose. And some 'time off' is therefore welcome. I didn't intend to turn this into a Sigmund Freud-session, but helpful suggestions are, of course, always welcome.

I just wondered what the Objectivist stance on drugs is.

Edited November 26, 2005 by Felix