# Drugs are Sometimes Good, Actually

*A casual post in a* [*series*](https://www.lesswrong.com/s/mifkJ4GTdnpHspv7E) *about what I wish someone had told me when I was younger.*

*(Legal disclaimer: I'm not advocating you do illegal things. If you do illegal things you're on your own.)*

Like a lot of people who were kids in 90s America, I first learned about drugs from DARE. And here's what I learned:

*   If you do drugs one time you will be addicted forever and probably die.
*   If you do drugs you'll instantly become a loser.
*   The only good drug is the drug you never do.

Now, to be clear, they're only talking about recreational drug use, not medical use of drugs. But kids aren't usually prescribed anything fun like Percocet, just boring medicine you can't have fun with, so the distinction was not super important to make to a bunch of 10 year olds.

I was pretty well bought into this. I didn't know anyone who did drugs recreationally. My parents didn't drink or smoke. I had no first hand experience to know that the link between underage drinking and heroin addiction might be non-zero but also was very weak.

Additionally, my only experience with "recreational" drug use was robotripping, and that was terrible and entirely by accident. In case you don't know, the cough suppressant dextromethorphan (DXM for short), commonly found in cold medicine like Robitussin, is also a hallucinogen. It's not a very pleasant hallucinogen, but sometimes people do it because they don't have access to anything else. Some things it does to you:

*   causes vertigo
*   causes scary hallucinations
*   at high doses puts you into a "coma" and you feel like you're dead while remaining kind of conscious

As a kid, I didn't know this. What I did know is that when I got sick sometimes I saw things and heard voices. It wasn't until I was 15 that I accidentally took two doses of cough medicine about an hour apart and proceeded to be chased around the house by giant pink capybaras that I wondered if something was up. I found an FAQ about DXM and it told me two important facts: it's a hallucinogen and some people have very low tolerance to it due to luck of the genetic draw.

But that's not how most drugs are. Most recreational drugs create positive experiences on net in the short term. There's a selection effect here: the drugs that become popular to use recreationally are those that create positive short term experiences most of the time for most people. That's why people like to take opioids and smoke weed for fun rather than take illicit antipsychotics—even people who need antipsychotics don't want to take them.

I eventually figured out that recreational drugs can be fun when I had my wisdom teeth removed and got sent home with some Vicodin. It was an eye opening experience to realize that I could put something in my body to change my perception of the world for a while and have a good time doing it.

Now don't worry, this isn't the story about how I became addicted to pain killers. Drugs can be bad for you, and I didn't suddenly forget that. I didn't suddenly become hell bent on trying every drug. I just had the insight that, oh, if I get drunk or smoke some weed or something then I'll be a bit different for a while but then come back to normal later and it'll be basically fine.

Yes, some drugs are really bad. They have dangerous side effects and are well known to ruin lives when abused, so there's a reasonable barrier to running out and shooting heroin for good reason. Doing heroin is probably not a good idea. Same for lots of other drugs like meth, crack, PCP, etc.

But sometimes drugs are a good idea (yes, this includes the legal stuff!). You can use them in a few non-harmful ways:

*   to relax from stress in a shorter amount of time than you could do naturally
*   to have a better experience than you would have without them
*   to create "spiritual" experiences that teach you something about yourself or the world
*   to learn about your own perceptions and what is fixed versus not (because it changes under drugs)

Those points about teaching you things really resonate for me. This is often the reason given for using psychedelics for spiritual or therapeutic reasons.

My own experience is that psychedelics are useful teachers. Drugs with psychedelic effects warp your everyday perception of the world. They help get your mind unstuck. If you buy into the [neural annealing model](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zcYJBTGYtcftxefz9/neural-annealing-toward-a-neural-theory-of-everything), they basically introduce a bunch of useful noise that you can learn from by later reintegrating what you observed while on them.

"But", I hear you saying, "sometimes drugs are bad. And what if they change who I am? When is the sometimes that they are sometimes good?"

So, first off, don't do drugs in amounts or for durations that are likely to have long term negative consequences. If you do higher risk drugs, mitigate those risks. If you are at all unsure if you can manage that, don't do them or only do them under the supervision of someone who has the power to physically restrain you from doing something stupid like overdosing.

Before you take anything, do your research. Come in knowing how to have a good experience and how to mitigate risks. There's tons of info on the internet. Use it.

Also, only do particular drugs and amounts of them that feel genuinely helpful. If someone is getting after you about being high all the time, you're probably doing too much.

Here's my general rules:

1.  If you feel like you need to take a drug, don't.
2.  If you've had a bad interaction with a drug or think you might, don't do it until you know why and how to prevent it.
3.  If something scares you, don't let anyone pressure you into taking it.
4.  If you source drugs by illegal means (and, again, legal disclaimer, don't!), test them. You can buy testing kits legally over-the-counter at the pharmacy.
5.  Only take something if you respect it and are open to learning what it has to teach you.

There's some obvious caveats. If you have a history or family history of addiction, stay away from drugs. If you're at risk for psychosis (mostly men under 30 with a family history, as I understand it), don't do psychedelics. If you have health problems or are taking prescription medication, don't take things that could kill you.

In general, don't be dumbass.

(This is good advice all the time, but especially when it comes to drugs.)

If you can do that, then sometimes drugs can be good.

*(Legal disclaimer redux: I'm not advocating you do illegal things. If you do illegal things you're on your own.)*