source: https://www.nateliason.com/blog/drugs
How Dangerous Are Drugs, Really?
By Nat Eliason in Health
Junior year of high school I had my first drink of alcohol and realized I’d been lied to for four years.
When you start going through “health” classes in middle school, you eventually learn about alcohol and all of the reasons you shouldn’t drink it.
“You could die!”
“You’ll get in trouble!”
“It destroys your brain!”
These messages had left me wondering, as I imagine they did to most kids, why anyone would drink alcohol in the first place. I’m fairly sure I didn’t miss a powerpoint presentation or poorly acted VHS video explaining that being drunk or tipsy feels awesome and that’s why people drink. The education completely glossed over the “hey this feels good, so be careful” part.
And it wasn’t just alcohol, that messaging was the same for every other form of drug, legal or not. Don’t do it, it’s terrible for you, if you do it you’ll die, etc.
(https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5ad143610f7efd77b6f188f3/5b2f49c63ad7a615889095cb_just-say-no01.jpg)
Thank you, Pawlings School District, for the helpful graphic
It’s similar to old forms of sex education. Most schools today aren’t so naive as to teach abstinence-only anymore. They realize that sex is going to happen anyway, so they focus on how to have sex safely and not get infected with a virus or baby.
But drugs aren’t there yet. Despite knowing that most kids will at least drink or try marijuana, schools still lump all drugs together and make you believe that they’re all horrible for you, you should never do them, if you do them you’ll wind up strung out and dead on the street, and so on.
It’s not limited to what we hear in school, too. Most people are hilariously uneducated about drugs, treating them all as horrible scary things, mostly basing their opinions on the ridiculous belief that “well, if it’s not legal, it must be bad.”
The recent surge in popular opinion in favor of marijuana shows that the tide is turning a bit, but there’s still confusion on how bad different drugs really are. If we strip away what’s legal and what isn’t and get down to the root of it, how bad are different drugs really?
How Bad Are Drugs
Alright, before we dive in, the disclaimer. I’m not a doctor, I’m not giving you medical advice, and I’m not suggesting you do any of these drugs. Many are illegal in most parts of the world, and whether or not those laws should exist, they do. I am only trying to decomplicate the topic by providing my interpretations of research that I found. If you do anything stupid and die I’ll be very sad, so please don’t do that.
My interest in this topic came up in high school when, in response to my incredulity that he was trying it, my friend told me “Molly (MDMA, Ecstacy, etc.) isn’t that bad for you.”
That statement simply didn’t compute in my brain at the time. I wondered, “How could this “drug,” not be that bad for you? And how could someone so well educated and otherwise intelligent do something so bad for them?”
So, I did some research. A few Google searches later, I stumbled upon a study that sought to create a scale to assess the potential harms of drug misuse. The result of the study was a pretty little chart I’m about to show you, but before I do, I want you to quiz yourself.
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PLEASE GO TO THE SOURCE LINK AS THERE ARE MANY GREAT GRAPHICS AND ARGUMENTS, SO CLICK HERE (https://www.nateliason.com/blog/drugs).
Some graphical excerpts
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(https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5ad143610f7efd77b6f188f3/5b2f4a73f1b2d9c19c8e6b74_pasted-image-0-12.png)
Sources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17382831
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=sugar+addictive+drugs&btnG=&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C39
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
https://www.coldstonecreamery.com/assets/pdf/nutrition/nutrition_info_icecream.pdf
http://whs.rocklinusd.org/documents/Science/Lethal_Dose_Table.pdf
https://www.americanscientist.org/libraries/documents/200645104835_307.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_harmfulness
http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/perspective-alcohol-use-cancer-risk-2016081210089
Graphics: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence.