Freedomain Radio

You go guy!

I used marijuana very heavily for about 5 years in my late teens/early 20's, smoking several times a day almost every day.

I abused alcohol for about 5 years early 20's, drinking about 2-3 times per week in excess to all my friends and sometimes drinking extremely heavily. I quit for about 10 years and am now a light social drinker (1 drink/month) who occasionally (3-4 times/year) has 4-5 drinks at home, usually during the summer.

I used LSD a dozen times or so late teens/early 20's.

I used cocaine several times in my early 20's and had a very heavy cocaine addiction in my late 30's, nasally insulfating 1/2 ounce of cocaine per week.

I have nasally insulfated heroin about 15 times in my late 30's.

I have used mushrooms in my teens/early 20's maybe 10 times or less, once in my 30's.

I have used benzodiazapines and anti-depressants in my 30's to assist in the management of depressed mood and anxiety.

I have recently been using Provigil as a mood enhancer, productivity enhancer.

I have also used a transdermal gel to boost my testosterone level this year. Doctor's have a VERY wide range of what is acceptable when it comes to an adult males testosterone level. Only in extreme cases will they prescribe it with insurance paying for it in the usa (it needs to be REALLY, REALLY low). So you can be a 36 year old man, with a very low libido, other symptoms of low testosterone, and have the same level of testosterone of tons of men in their 60's and 70's but not 'qualify' for testosterone to be paid for by your insurance company because your level does not meet the criteria to be diagnosed as having 'andropause'. The range doctors consider normal is HUGE. You could be very low for your age per the average but not have 'andropause'. In fact you could be only a few points above it and be in the 'normal range'. I use a gel to boost my testosterone and love it. I don't use it for any body building goals.

 My doctor is willing to script me for as much viagra as I want but that does NOTHING for sex drive/libido. Testosterone controls that. I used to be hungry and lustful for sex in my 20's, now I am married and don't get to share that lust with my wife, the woman of my dreams, unless I use something to boost my testosterone. Some doctor's will prescribe it to bring your levels to what they were in your 20's. It's nice (understatement of the decade) to feel like a verile young man agin!

I do not recommend alcohol or drug use unless prescribed by a physician, and think that other things should be tried first. I did not/and sometimes do not follow what I recommend to others as the best course of action.

 

My main drug is the computer. Though I don't spend as much time on it nowadays, it still sucks up a big part of my days. I use it for everything - watching movies, reading, posting on forums, gaming, and general goofing off.

I also used to be a heavy coffee drinker. The difference between six or seven cups, two cups a day and none is HUGE. Not numerically (seven isn't a large number) but in terms of vitality. I feel so much more virile having removed junk from my diet, and replacing it with foods that give energy by actually nourishing the body, instead of kicking it.

Finally, I'm work around people that smoke all day - this includes marijuana. It doesn't have much of an effect on me.
 

I smoked 1-2 cigs a day for a while about a year ago, but now I'll only have one every once a blue moon and sometimes not even that. I really didn't find it difficult to quit.

When I started college, I began smoking pot off and on until it became almost every weekend. I also binge drank sometimes on the weekends, especially if there was nothing really to do for school. I have some theories as to why that all started around that time, but that wasn't quite the question .

I have quit pot and binge drinking since finding FDR. It wasn't extraordinarily difficult to quit pot; I think partly because the feeling of it just became less enjoyable the more I starting waking up to the truth and everything that was possible to me.  There are times here and there when I still want to do it, but I just explore my feelings during those times and end up learning something sometimes. Alcohol was a bit harder to quit, and I think partly because I'm strangely just absolutely immune to hangovers. But again, nothing was really terrible about quitting. I think even when I was in the throws of these things, I still had some control over it, if that makes sense. I'd have a time when I would do a lot relative to my usual habit, and I'd be able to back off for a while and reduce my usage. I had some random boundaries in fantasy land where pot was not harmful. So I think the ability to have some restraint really helped. I met some people in college who were just totally unable to go four days without binge drinking, despite massive hangovers. Sad stuff.
 

I get the impression that smoking pot is much more prevalent in the US than here in the Netherlands were it is legal. The few times I was in a coffee shop here, it was filled with foreigners. At my high school you could once in a while smell something in the bicycle basement, but it was certainly not widespread at the time. It seems that other prevention mechanisms have taken over in absence of government coercion, and/or the state making it forbidden, crushes the credibility of the danger, because it forbids lots of things with silly arguments. A bit like:normally I would be careful crossing the street, but if the state commands me to be careful crossing the street, it can't be that dangerous. The message seems to get flushed with the credibility of the announcer.

pcrs:

The message seems to get flushed with the credibility of the announcer.

What message?  Your claim seems nonsensical to me.

I think it's really cool that i found the fdr chat board, and that folks here agree with me that dealing psychedelics to adults is morally superior to democracy.

It's curious that only cannabis retail is legal in netherlands, yet cultivation and importation are illegal there.  Ie, every coffeeshop in netherlands still relies on the black market for supply.

I smoked a couple of cigarrettes a day on and off from the age of  14, giving up for a few months and then starting again for a few months. I gave up for good on my 30th birthday 6 years ago.

I drank heavily at weekends all the way through my 20's- I was a social drinker and drinking was a ritualistic part of my circle of friends. In my 30s it went down to less getting drunk and but more regular drinking- a glass of wine with every evening meal. In the last year that has gone down to a couple of glasses of wine a week.

I had cocaine once when I was 21 in Los Angeles, with my older cousin. I found it unpleasant to take (snorting powder is disgusting) and not at all worthwhile as an experience. I enjoyed driving down the freeway in his Mustang far more than arriving at the place where we did the coke.

I took ecstasy twice, when I was 23 and 25. I had very little (I think it was half a pill each time) and didn't really feel much. Who knows what crap was in those pills anyway

I smoked dope quite a lot as a teenager and then every now and then in my 20s. I haven't done that for about 8 years.

I feel sad about how much of my time I spent drunk in my 20s. Rampant alcohol binging is like a national sport here in England. People numb themselves out so that they can bear to socialise with each other in such rotten relationships, rather than breaking free.

Oh yeah, I tried to take magic mushrooms with a friend when I was about 14. However, I think we picked the wrong kind of mushrooms as nothing really happened. We spent hours waiting expectantly and saying things like "ooh! ooh!, I think its starting! its like my fingers are...oh, wait, no, that's nothing, I was just waving them back and forth quite fast. False alarm."

 

Why do you think Brits drink so much?

Stefan Molyneux:

Why do you think Brits drink so much?

My 2 cents, same reason people in Houston drink a whole lot, to avoid the reality of their bad relationships mostly.

Yeah probably the same reason why everyone drinks to excess. It blurs the bars of the relationship prisons.

Colleen:

I have some theories as to why that all started around that time, but that wasn't quite the question .

 

I'd really appreciate hearing theories for why people started up with drugs/alcohol & why they chose to quit or continue usage.   

For me, I'm quite sure I was using the drugs/alcohol to dissociate from my childhood: sexual abuse (perpetrators were not FOO, but multiple occurrences were in my home while my parents were home) & emotional abuse/neglect from my FOO.

After experiencing several "friends" disappear, OD, & one man I was romantically involved with violently commit suicide, I moved away from the scene, fearing my own end I suppose.

I kept the drinking, but quit all the rest.  I was in a physically abusive relationship then & drank to get through each day.  I finally escaped from that guy by getting a job, which he had forbidden, & refusing to quit even as he abused me for my show of independence.

My drinking stopped after a very dramatic evening in which I awoke in a hospital bed, unable to recall how I'd gotten there.  I had apparently drunk so much that I was unable to tell a co-worker trying to take me home from an afterhours meet-up where I lived/how to get there.  He got scared & ? = me in hospital, no external injuries.  That was weeks before my planned wedding date & it became clear that if I didn't quit, things couldn't continue. 

Unfortunately, I have very little working memory of that time in my life (~2yrs. ago), I just remember struggling/fighting to keep myself from drinking.  Haven't had a drop since!

Nathan:

Stefan Molyneux:

Why do you think Brits drink so much?

My 2 cents, same reason people in Houston drink a whole lot, to avoid the reality of their bad relationships mostly.

I thought it was the shitty weather. 

I've smoked about 20 cigarettes in my entire life (though I get a pack a day worth of secondhand smoke by going to school where I do) and I very very rarely drink, and then never to excess. Never anything stronger than that, nor have I ever wanted anything.

Congratulations, Laura - and to everyone else who's managed to quit the bad stuff.

Fortunately, one of the few good things my parents did with raising me was to give me a strong distrust of drugs and tobacco and alcohol. My parents almost never drank, smoked or took anything (though my dad did used to smoke and occasionally drink beer when I was a little boy - an amusing story about *that* in a moment), so fortunately they were good "role models" for me in that regard.

When I was about 4 or 5 years old, my maternal grandpa was a major chain-smoker. One day he was in his bedroom taking a cig when I came in and asked what he was doing - I was just very innocently curious. So he held the cig for me and let me have a taste. It was SO nasty that I'm proud to say I've never touched any tobacco ever since!

Okay, a drinking story. As my parents told me, supposedly when I was about 18 months old, Mom and I were in the kitchen, Mom was working on something and I was seated at the table. My dad and grandpa came in from the garage to take a break, opened a couple of cans of beer, then had a sudden idea and went back to the garage. Mom stepped out of the kitchen briefly for some reason... and a few minutes later, one of them came back and found me sitting on the floor, a can of beer in my hand, burping and quite happy.

My drinking history has been very, very timid since. In my grade-school days, I'd sometimes come home from school, and my dad would be sitting in the driveway in a neighbor farmer's truck, both drinking Coors and yakking away. I'd come sit with them for a while, and they'd let me have sips of their beers. I thought it tasted strange but pretty good. Fortunately they never let me have more than an occasional sip.

By my high school years, I saw a lot of my small-town schoolmates always going to parties to get wasted. Being the rather introverted lone-wolf that I am, I never wasted my time with it. I honestly didn't and still do not understand how getting super-dizzy, nauseous and puking up one's own guts, and basically losing all self-control is supposed to be "fun." I think my own *lack* of control over my own life under the rule of my tyrannical dad quite possibly gave me a sense of desiring to *take* any self-control I could find - including a decision to not party and get drunk. It wasn't an act of rebellion against "teenage peer-pressure," it wasn't *just* because my parents told me getting drunk was bad... it's what *I* wanted for myself.

In my adult years (I'm 32 now), the number of beers in a year can probably be counted on one or possibly two hands, usually just having a beer with a good dinner when out with friends.

Hard drugs like cocaine or ecstacy or heroin I've never had *any* interest in taking, period.

"Light" stuff like pot I used to distrust, though I'll confess in recent years I became curious, and twice tried smoking pot with a friend of mine who smokes it regularly. Honestly... other than giving me a coughing fit and feeling only *slightly* dizzy... it didn't do a thing for me. No "high," no nothing. Two times, not gonna bother with it again.

I *am* curious about other natural drugs like psychedelic mushrooms. Years ago I'd toyed with the idea of seeking some kind of "enlightmenment" through their use, but I've found enough enlightment through my own natural, unaltered senses and thoughts to fill that bill. However, I am curious to have a psychedelic *experience*, though I'm not actively seeking it. If the opportunity falls in my lap, I'll give it a try.