Impossibleto overstate how good an aesthetic ‘surrounded by a halo of dozens of tiny shards of glass/ice/knives/whatever you are about to telekinetically murder people with’ is.
crying because i’ll never be surrounded by a halo of dozens of tiny shards of glass/ice/knives/whatever i am about to telekinetically murder people with
I think there’s like, a discussion to be had about addiction and medication and stuff but you can’t kill yourself with SSRIs and they’re like impossible to abuse so like. I should really just be able to buy them otc. Ditto with my trans meds
my thing with SSRIs is, like–running out of them massively decreases my ability to function, includingto make and show up for doctor’s appointments, so the fact that if/when I do run out I have to engage in the category of life admin i’m absolutely the worst at feels like an extra fuck you on top of being depressed.
Having access to them over the counter would have massively improved my quality of life at several major junctures.
this but amphetamines
I mean… my actualposition is “this but with all substances, because you have an inalienable right to do whatever you want with your own body, including being coked to the gills 24/7,” but first we gotta get the normies on board with legal weed and OTC escitalopram.
How often do you see a passed out drug user in your neighborhood?
How many times have you seen a biohazardous sharp in a public place? A playground or other area for children?
How many altercations have you had with methheads?
How many oxy robberies have you been through?
How many friends and family members have you lost to overdoses?
How many times have you been to rehab? Anonymous meetings?
And I guess I should include this too; how much money have you made selling addictive substances?
This is kind of a grab-bag, but I feel obliged to note that while you’d definitely have more random interactions with tweakers if everything were legal, there would likely be fewer overdoses, because overdoses are mainly a side-effect of the fact that drugs are black-market so their strength is wildly inconsistent. And “needles are everywhere” would definitely be less of an issue under a full-legalization regime, because then we could have injection sites wherever (even private commercial ones!) and the thought of sharps containers in public wouldn’t shock and horrify people.
But yeah, admittedly “everyone has free access to shitloads of highly addictive drugs” is a policy with, you know, downsides. But you have to weigh the costs of forbidding drugs against the costs of permitting them, and while doing that it is important to note that at least some of the things we think of as “costs of drugs” are actually costs of drug bans.
I agree that some of the costs are costs of prohibition, and ending prohibition would possibly alleviate some costs. It would also result in endemic advertising and sales of addictive substances that are currently controlled substances. Oxy was very pure, and very available once, and it still destroyed lives even before the laws against it destroyed lives. The corporations already make every consumable and phone game as addictive as possible, don’t deluded yourself into thinking they’re not salivating at the prospect of selling the Good Stuff at every corner store.
People like to inject in nice places that make them feel good, like parks and playgrounds, and they drop the needle because of the hit. None of that changes with legalization. And a lot of addicts are broke and homeless because of addiction, so classy for profit injection sites (read: neo opium dens, just what your cyberpunk distopia was missing!) are going to be out of their price range once they’re hooked.
I stand by my vote for marijuana legalization, but by now that’s in large part because I’ve repeatedly seen it to be a far safer and less harmful alternative to alcohol, for both the user and everyone around them (only downsides for bystanders are secondhand smoke, the odor, and the fire danger inherent to any kind of smoking if it’s smoked. Also annoying giggling).
But I’m tired of the sharps. I’m tired of “is that guy passed out or dead?” I’m tired of watching people kill themselves by inches and dancing on the knife’s edge daily, or sweat and puke and shit and cry for days at best trying to kick the habit. I’m tired of knowing this is getting routine. I’m tired of watching people who won’t pay the price of violence and sharps in their neighborhood and workplace and community snootely refute that awareness of the human cost is relevant to having an option @tanadrin . I’m tired of watching intelligent people think it can’t happen to them @rationalists .
I’m tired of people in the class poised to profit pretend that this is a pure moral position. Be honest, say, “I want to burn people alive for profit” or “I’m so fucking stupid I’m shilling for people who want to burn me alive for profit.”
Any of us can end of a gutter junkie, hoping someone would let us suck their cock for a hit. Any of us could watch our lives go up our noses, into a vein, or the lives of people we love. The line is so fucking thin, one person tragedy poorly coped with, one car accident, a taste of the bullet with your name on it.
And the corporations are champing at the bit to light us all on fire to make a buck, they’ve done it again and again and again, with different substances, in different countries, and they do not care about you or anyone you love. The world runs on addiction and it has for a very long time. The US government flooded Black communities with crack. Entire nation states have destroyed each other with addictive substances before, that’s how we got Hong Kong FFS. Don’t shill for people who want to kill you.
