View Single Post
Old 07-25-2007, 01:01 PM   #33 (permalink)
Jinn
Lover - Protector - Teacher
 
Jinn's Avatar
 
Location: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Pot will forever be tainted in my mind. I won't allow it in my life.
The illegality and stigma seems to be clouding the issue a bit.

Compared (as an analogy) to alcohol, the situation is much clearer.

There are alcoholics and there are people who drink one glass of wine a day for the perceived heart benefits.

There are people who are hopelessly addicted, and use it to self-medicate their dissatisfaction with life. You always see them drunk, and they’re hurting people they love by getting drunk so often and so recklessly.

There are people who drink recreationally and you’d probably never know they drank if it weren’t for a few bottles in the trash can.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the alcohol itself, and everything to do with the maturity, responsibility, intelligence, and self-control of the individual consuming it.

Replace alcohol with marijuana and the analogy does not fail.

I'm sorry that you will never be with someone who smokes marijuana, but it's similar to those I know who won't be with someone who drinks. I think it's a bit extreme to blame the substance and decide with such black-and-white polarity to exclude mates because of it, but it's nonetheless a personal choice.

I can't help but think that you still judge recreational non-habitual smokers. Maybe I'm wrong. I think perhaps your perspective would change after smoking only once. You'd recognize that despite the temporary perceptual and cognitive changes, you are still the same person inside before, during, and after.

EDIT:

Quote:
You may say, well that's their problem, but I've seen a number of close friends completely alter their outlook on life once they started smoking regularly. A number of them dropped out of college. One guy may or may not graduate after 6 years in college. I firmly believe that this would not have happened to them had marijuana never entered their lives.
You seem to be under the impression that this "change" in their personality was brought on by the drug, rather than pre-existing mental conditions being brought to the fore by their use of the drugs.

If it wasn't marijuana, it's very likely that another drug (or another sitation) would've unveiled their latent tendency to behave so poorly.

EDIT x2:

I don't smoke, by the way. Don't really like the taste/smell or the mental effects (in case my use is a factor the perception of my credibility).
__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Last edited by Jinn; 07-25-2007 at 01:07 PM..
Jinn is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73