Nice People Use Drugs Too

[plasticseam]

Nice People Take Drugs. That's the name of a campaign launched by Release, a nonprofit service and advocacy organization in the United Kingdom. The campaign aims to inspire a more honest discussion and approach to drug use in our society and also to highlight the stigma faced by people who use or have used illicit drugs.

I first heard about the

Comments

[rex_dart]

Coffee, soda, cigarettes, Prozac, weed, steroids, Ritalin, alcohol

This list really bothered me, and it took me a minute to figure out exactly why, since Prozac and Ritalin can both be abused, but it's that this is a list of voluntary/unnecessary drugs that are used for either recreation or convenience, whereas Prozac and Ritalin are treatments for serious medical conditions.

I'm sensitive to this issue because I take lamotrigine just to function each day, and a lot of people think my medication does belong on a list of things like alcohol and tobacco rather than a list of things like insulin and penicillin.

Other than that, I liked this article, and I think that the campaign is a good one.

[stephantom]

I think it's just supposed to be a list of the most pervasive drugs in our society. And while Prozac and Ritalin are different from the others, being prescription drugs usually not used for recreation (Prozac never is, I don't think, because it has no immediate effects), they still demonstrate how our society is perfectly ok with artificially altering our brains with chemicals. And why shouldn't we be? Especially (but not even always -- I don't necessarily condemn something like Ritalin "abuse") when there is really a need for need (as with debilitating ADD symptoms or depression).

[stephantom]

Uh, a need for it, that is.

[rex_dart]

Except for the fact that they grouped them in with recreational drugs (accepted and non-accepted) instead of other medically necessary drugs, and they chose two of the most widely-derided medications as their examples. People very commonly associate Prozac and Ritalin with overmedication and laziness.

[romp]

Interesting. I wonder how widespread this will be.

It's good to challenge people's concepts that have no grounding in reality. I wonder tho' how someone could reach adulthood without figuring this out. I guess if they're don't leave the sight of people just like themselves...

[rex_dart]

People hold ridiculous misconceptions and stereotypes about all sorts of invisible minorities. Everyone knows gay people, everyone knows people with depression, everyone knows someone who receives government assistance, and yet think about the stupid, obviously untrue opinions out there about those groups. I don't think it's surprising at all that a person could go their whole life thinking badly of all drug users.

[romp]

Well, they know be acquainted with gay people, etc., but are they close to them? And more than one? Otherwise, wouldn't they see the discrepencies?

You're right that people can live a situation and still believe something that doesn't match that. Like be in a neighbourhood surrounded by loving, hard-working POC and still hold beliefs about POC that doesn't match that. But are you like that? Am I?

In h.s., I saw student council members doing lines at parties without repercussion. And poor kids and Latinos getting busted because 1) they didn't have a nice house to use drugs in and 2) they were targetted by undercover cops. Was I the only person to notice this? I can't believe that.

[rex_dart]

You're saying that you don't understand how someone could reach adulthood and hold these stereotypes about drug users, but then you say that for someone to not hold the stereotype, the people they know have to be close to them and there should be more than one. It's not that inconceivable that people aren't in that situation with drug users; certainly not any more inconceivable than with gay people. I am not close to a lot of people, and none of my friends or the family members I'm close to are what the people this ad campaign are targeting would likely define as "drug users". In my social circle, it's impossible not to know high proportions of people of color, people from a lot of economic backgrounds, and very high numbers of openly queer people; it would be impossible to avoid them. But it's very easy not to happen to meet people who do harder drugs (and don't successfully hide it, at least). I used to have acquaintances who got into harder drugs. They soon dropped out of school and removed themselves from the social circle almost

[fruhlings]

This bothered me too. The fact is, there is a stigma against those of use who use psychiatric medication. I honestly owe my life to prozac (and counseling), and when I hear people railing against these drugs (and it's not just scientologist nutjobs like Tom Cruise) and saying people with depression should be able to over it and pull themselves up by their bootstraps or something it really pisses me off.

This.

[keeperofthekeys]

Yeah, ia. I really don't talk about using adderall/ritalin to treat my ADHD because I'm afraid people will assume I'm just lazy, or abusing them. Or my favorite, "haha, I think I have ADHD too!!!!"

[maladaptive]

I get "you don't seem like you have ADHD."

Maybe it's because I'm medicated and I've had to develop a lot of coping mechanisms to get here? My friends can absolutely tell when it wears off or I haven't been on it for a few days.

[i_hate_music]

[i_hate_music]

I was actually looking for my t-shirt of them but I can't find the picture... anyway... it's a great organisation and I find it really depressing that it's such an overlooked topic.