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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Any study like this takes a very narrow view of good vs bad. Can we even begin to quantify how much good alcohol has done? The amount of fun and sociability it contributes to is staggering. Same with marijuana and no doubt other drugs (i have basically no knowledge of the upside of hard drugs so can't speak to it, but if you google Benzidrine there is an Atlantic article that mentions amphetamine and some upside).

I don't disagree that there are vary bad sides to drug use, same as for driving, soda pop, cheese, whatever. But we shouldn't pretend in a vacuum that there are not also positives, and short of severe societal consequences (like with some hard drugs, perhaps) people should generally be able to choose for themselves

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Those studies also often disregard the fact that alcohol consumption is not always (even often) for intoxication, people drink wine and cocktails for the enjoyment of the drink itself, not so much for the effect it has on their behaviour.

Yes, for alcohol in particular (maybe theres also a parallel with cigars) there is the whole other dimension that it's an important part of food, gastronomy or whatever you'd call it. If I get wine pairings with my meal, it has almost nothing to do with intoxication, it's about opening up the senses and adding to what I'm eating. That puts alcohol, as it is normally used, in a very special category compared to ther drugs.

I bet an LSD pairing would open up the senses and add to what you're eating too! ;)

Granted, the world may fall in on itself and there's a small risk time will stop.

Personally, I enjoy sushi on shrooms quite a bit. Especially that feeling of wasabi. Mmmm. Just elevates the experience. Wine is good. The taste sensation changes quite a bit but the texture awareness on psilocybin is unmatched for me.

It’s a gastronomic loss that people don’t experience this.

Note token.

I did mushrooms a bit in the 90s and remember either feeling sick of having no appetite (and then being really hungry afterward). Thinking back I really don't remember any instance of eating while on them. Just for the sake of comparison, its interesting. I can picture how one could become caught up in some sensation to do with eating.

I smelled pork being cooked near me much differently than I otherwise would have.

I think shrooms/psilocybin are a loss in general, and I'm really sad that they're so unfairly heavily regulated.

It's both, even in those situations. By the time someone is doing that, it's likely they've been through years of habituation to alcohol and their brain is wired to respond positively to the stuff because of the effect.

To non-drinkers who have never drunk alcohol or have not for a long time, it seems these flavours don't work so well, and all wine is quite nasty (this is anecdotal data from observing such folk).

So yes, subjectively I love the taste of a good red, or a well made cocktail, or a fine rum. But the effect of the drug is bound up in my neurological response to it as well as just the flavour.

The state of Gujarat in India prohibits the consumption of alcohol. A lot of its cities are considered to the safest for woman in India. While alcohol is available illegally, its consumption is still frowned upon. This relative safety is sometimes correlated with Gujarat being a dry state. I tried to search for any studies but could not find any so it may just be a coincidence. I have lived in Gujarat and the night life is very family friendly and usually involves lots of street food instead of bars and restaurants!

> A lot of its cities are considered to the safest for woman in India

I like how you phrased this as if it were a meaningful metric. Is "safe for women" more useful than safe for everybody including children?

Do you have perhaps things relating to brawls, muggings, drunk driving arrests and accidents, drunk pedestrian road fatalities, suicide rates as determinants for a safe city? I'd think they're more reasonable than a vague metric as "safest for women"

By what metric is Gujarat considered safe? It ranks as one of the worst states in India for human trafficking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_incid...

Are we using Wikipedia as a reliable source of hard metric data these days?

The article directly states in its first paragraph that the list originates from a government source:

> This is a list of states and union territories of India ranked by incidents of human trafficking as of 2016, and is based on the number of convicted cases. The list is compiled from the '2016 Crime in India Report' published by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Government of India.[1]

Of course this kind of data has its own issues (e.g. incidents that don't end in a conviction because of bribery or police/judicial misconduct or that don't get caught by police at all don't end up in it), but it's probably the qualitatively best data you can get.

I have the same argument for all drugs. Including opiates. Which do in fact do a lot of good. For a while. Until they don't. Similar to alcohol. The problem is it's way harder to be a casual opiate user than it is an alcoholic.

Heres the peer reviewed article upon which the article is based.

https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...

I would encourage you to read it before marking it as a “narrow view”. It is literally taking a broad view factoring in societal impacts. It is written by highly respected experts.

Alcohol absolutely has severe societal impacts: violence rates are positively correlated to rate of alcohol consumption; clogging up hospitals with self inflicted injuries, driving under the influence, health issues (liver damage), clogging up emergency departments on the weekend etc.

I mean I could literally go on. Of all the drugs alcohol really shouldn’t be as easily available as it is.

Personally I find the argument that it does “good” pretty wishy washy and more driven by societal bias toward it as an accepted medium for socialistion. Alternatives do exist.

Most of the harm from heroin stems from it being illegal and unregulated. It obviously would be abused if legal and readily available but even that would be better addressed by spending money on health/prevention vs. police/courts/jails.

My brother died of a heroin overdose many years ago. If it had been legal, pure, and known quality that likely wouldn't have happened (he could still have been affected by addiction like our mother with alcohol, but he wouldn't be dead).

I wish that things could have been different for your brother, your mother, and you and all those affected.

Thank you so much. I do too, as well as for all the others who suffer because of these misguided policies.

It so easily could be changed, but we are collectively trapped by the delusion that the only route to safety is to make drugs illegal. You'll see it here on HN, in this thread, about how the "dangerous" drugs should not be readily available because people will get hurt if society lets them have legal access.

It's such an easily solvable problem and we collectively support the worst possible way to deal with it -- it's crazy making.

> If it had been legal, pure, and known quality that likely wouldn't have happened (he could still have been affected by addiction like our mother with alcohol, but he wouldn't be dead).

Overdoses on opiates happen even with legal opiates [1] and it's related to tolerance mechanisms. You become tolerant to euphoric effects much faster than you become tolerant to respiratory depression and nausea.

This basically makes opiates much more dangerous than any other drug class.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/featured-topics/overdose-de... - prescription opioids alone contribute to 9.2% of overdose deaths excluding alcohol.

The study is based on a group of drug experts going in a room and assigning point values to harm of different drugs. It's not really a 'study' at all in the empirical sense, it's just a social group expressing its pre-existing biases.

You sound like these guys from high school I once knew justifying their cocaine use. Saying things like “it makes me way more social” “I am not shy when I do cocaine”. Don’t forget almost all off the feel good drugs once you stop you have to come down and when that dopamine runs out your day feels like shit and all that fun you had is buried with regret and depression. Yes people can have fun but if we added all the fun trips vs bad trips would we as a society see it as a net gain? I have been on a train with a drug user lost out of their mind swearing and threatening people. So if you are counting all the fun drugs have brought you need to count those also.

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