Quite a problem with these new drugs like fentanyl spreading like weeds. We really need this pill to break addiction urgently.
That's what the real world looks like, and increasingly will look like. People sitting in their ivory towers in Washington and in big corporations and Silicon Valley either don't know or they don't care. I know quite few young intelligent... and depressed people. Nothing wrong with their lives or health, just depressed. I'm not sure what is the cure for this? Kick in the butt? Are we too soft for kids as society? Are we raising a generation of holy cows?
Any drug counselor would tell you that there are definitely differences in terms of which drugs people choose, which I think is chemically hard wired in them. There are people who prefer alcohol, others who would just be in a weed fog every waking moment if it were possible, some who gravitate toward coke, although the expense limits the use, and others still who drift into heroin use. Other people want uppers of any type whatsoever. As I said, I think it depends on their own internal chemical make up.
Right now there's an epidemic of heroin use, which is leading to huge spikes in death rates among young men, especially. That's what's going on in places like New Hampshire, and the midwestern rust belt, but also in white communities in the metropolitan New York area. There's also the meth epidemic in more rural areas which don't have access to these more "urban" supply lines, since it can be cooked up very easily by relative amateurs.
You have no idea the lengths to which people will go to get "high". When someone goes to jail or even just gets into trouble for virtually any reason, one of the conditions for probation and parole is not alcohol or drug use. People have to provide urine samples. They routinely try to bring in someone else's urine or dilute it with water. Now, a correction's officer of the same sex has to accompany them into the bathroom. I'll leave aside the insanity that the state won't prosecute someone without a criminal record for taking weed, but if they're on probation and use it they get sent back to prison. So, of course, there's always some enterprising souls who tries to provide an answer for profit. Enter so called "experimental" drugs. They're combinations of God knows what noxious chemicals, often produced in China, and available through the internet. The attraction? You can get high and there's no test for it.
The typical response to all of this? More rehab centers. Well, I'm telling you categorically that they don't work. I remember looking at a study of the results of one highly regarded, hard core three month rehab program (the norm is one month). Within a year 90% of the patients were back on drugs, in jail or dead. So much for that.
I think there are many more people in society than most are willing to credit who have mild, undiagnosed forms of mental illnesses, or weaknesses, if you will, in addition to people who have been diagnosed. I also think some of these "recreational" drugs do a better job at "fixing" people's mental and emotional states than most of the "prescription" drugs out there. Depressed people, bi-polar people, etc. are more prone to becoming addicted to drugs.
Then there are the people who drift into it through what I would call not clinical, genetic states of depression, but "situational" depression, through not having anything to feel proud of, to believe in, to live for, or just out of boredom, to find a group to which to belong. Sometimes people just don't want to be who they are, or where they are...
I can't explain it any better. I'm just relaying what my experience has shown me. I don't totally understand it myself, because I have no frame of reference. I don't like not inhabiting my own body or my own mind. I don't want to alter my consciousness, whether with drugs or alcohol. In my entire life I used weed once and didn't at all like it, got drunk from alcohol once and didn't like it, and never did either thing again, but I don't think I'm the norm, or at least not the majority.
I would love to have robots do everything for me so I could do the things I really love: study history, write, listen to music, travel to different countries, learn other languages, perfect my photography skills, take more dance classes, classes of all sorts, read more. If there's a book around, I'm never bored. The list is endless, actually. There aren't enough hours in the day now. I recognize, however, that most people aren't like me. How many people would study if it weren't required? If a lot of people have leisure time they spend it in front of a tv watching sports, or soap operas, or porn for that matter. They're not reading poetry.
For this to work, you have to change human beings.
Ed. I would say my INFJ personality is on full display.