I never abused alcohol though some of my friends might remind me of a time or two when I was reasonably sloshed at the end of an evening. The mind altering experience of LSD sounded very exciting as related to me by my young friends, but not at the expense of my being out of control. I learned about illegal drugs and their effects mostly from addicts I worked with and from my own children. Now that you know how little substance abuse was part of my life you may want to dismiss the following treatise. The difference between a drug and a poison is somewhat unclear.
All drugs become poisons in high enough doses and many poisons are useful drugs in low enough doses.
The body can burn it like a fuel, but it causes intoxication and can kill in an overdose. Even though food, drugs and poison are unclear categories, you and I have strong reactions to them. I have noted here some perception and definitions that are being outdated by a fast moving progress in pharmacology. In the above definition we are hanging on to an old-fashioned taxonomy of chemical substances which doesn't work anymore. How long can we continue to believe that we are not an addicted culture hooked on all kinds of drugs that promise to make use happier, younger, calmer, more beautiful.