"The term hard drug generally refers to illegal drugs that lead to profound and severe addiction"
You ask anyone who's currently smoking cigarettes routinely (read: daily) how addicted to them they are. I think it pretty much classifies as "profound and severe". Also, studies have likened the addiction of tobacco to heroin and cocaine, which are both considered "profound and severely addictive".
As well, ask an alcoholic how addicted they are. Same sort of response (although, I don't think alcohol abuse is AS severe as tobacco/cocaine/heroin). They have AA meetings for a reason. It must be addictive enough, otherwise, why bother?
Thus, the only part of the definition that isn't fufilled by tobacco (nicotine) and alcohol is the fact that they're still currently legal.
P.S. I didn't get my ideology from there initially, I had only read the definitions at the top of the page and went "lol wtf".
And, it's probably difficult to find citations for those statements, seeing as no one thinks of tobacco or alcohol as "hard drugs". It's only because they're legal that the social stigma has been removed (although, a stigma towards cigarette use is well on the rise, and probably for the better tbh).
The only reason alcohol's not illegal as well today, was because prohibition started too late. Alcohol was already a favourite drug of many, and attempts in the 20's and 30's to ban it were unsuccessful. Marijuana, on the other hand, was associated with the Mexicans coming from the south and stealing American's jobs, so it was easy enough to get rid of/spread lies about (not as common as alcohol use/abuse by Americans at that point).
Basically, the fewer people that use a drug, the more easily it is to ban it and keep it banned.
And basically, our current drug laws don't make any sense to start off with. Woo! Lets let people pour their money into an underground buisness closely associated with violent crime!
Srsly. Legalize and collect taxes. You're already doing it for an addictive drug and a highly addictive drug, you might as well throw the rest in (especially the less addictive ones).
Yarly, I realize that the drug laws are stupid. "Everyone knows that marijuana is just for darkies." We definitely need to legalize and start controlling things. But I think going so far as to call nicotine or alcohol a hard drug is a bit extreme.
People develop addictions to food that are definitely debilitating and severe to the point where they need to be held in a hospitable or have surgery to limit their stomach. The eating disorders then cause all kinds of problems with your body ranging from heart disease to diabetes. But we don't call food a hard drug. There's a certain point where self control and common sense needs to come into play.
If we start labelling things like that hard drugs then it takes away from the personal responsibility involved. "Oh, it's not his fault he's obese. Food is really addictive. It's not his fault he smokes. Nicotine is a hard drug. Oh, it's not his fault he beats his wife. Alcohol is a drug.' How you label things has a very profound effect on how people percieve them. People are far more willing to blame the substance for a problem if it's a hard drug as opposed to encouraging the person to take control if it's not.
I think I see food addiction in the same way you see nicotine addiction. We're pretty much predisposed to a food addiction, as it's sort of necessary to live. Nicotine's slightly different, as use of it starts a NEW addiction, which definitely isn't beneficial in any way to our survival.
For instance, we've developed drives to force us to eat food, and then we've also developed tolerance so that once we've reached satiety, we stop. Unfortunately, as us humans are pretty smart, we can completely ignore that, and just keep eating anyway. Would I call that an addiction? No, not really. I think I'd just call that being retarded.
I guess it's just the fact that food is only a psychological addiction, because the physical one is already in place. Similarly, marijuana is considered by many to be "psychologically addictive", although it possesses no physical addiction. In the same way, you could consider Starcraft or Warcraft "psychologically addictive", but that doesn't make them a drug.
Also, I don't think I would blame cocaine on a cocaine addict's problem. For anyone that chronically uses drugs, I definitely see it still coming back to them at fault, addictive or not. Because, funny story, had you've chosen NOT to experiment (and most likely came back to "experiment" many more times after that), you would NOT have become addicted. Simple as that.
tbh doesn't eating also stimulate pleasure centres in the brain?
Anyways, we're preprogrammed for nicotine too. It's the same sort of principal. We have those receptors in our brain already, we just start stimulating them more then we need to, then eventually it's like oh snap we need more. Over eating is similar, we need to eat, but then we start eating when we don't need to, all of a sudden our set point is higher then it should be and people feel the need to eat more.
Yes, it does, that's what dopamine was designed for in the first place. Telling us when things are good for us, aka food/sex (keep having offspring). It's just that drugs of abuse, well, abuse dopamine.
And, I don't know if eating works or not in the way you're talking about... I know it takes 7 minutes or something before your stomach realizes there's food in it, and stops making you feel hungry. So, if you give someone a huge plate of food, they could eat pretty much anything they wanted in that 7 minutes... but that just has to do with bigger portions, not the fact we eat more than we need to.
Aka, you're still going to get full from the same amount, it doesn't increase depending on how much you ate last time. That's how I thought it worked, anyway. I may be wrong.
Not sure of the accuracy, but according to our psych book and psych prof. the human body has a set point which is your average weight that the body attempts to maintain. It's why say if you ate a few extra ounces more then you needed each day your body doesn't gain dozens of pounds over time unless there's also a major change in lifestyle. Think about how much your food intake varies and how similar most people's weight stays. It's because your body purposely limits or expends energy to maintain that set point. Apparently though once you start overeating and you get obese your set point rises, hence why it's such a battle for people to drop weight. They need to hold it off until their homeostasis or set point switches back to a normal weight.
That's just what my book says though. I call half bullshit on it though. I never found it hard to be like 'GD, I eat too much crap and don't exercise enough.' I'm not in amazing shape, but def, better then I used to be and it was no great struggle. Just a matter of being like, 'oh, yea.. don't want to die.'
Interesting. No, I didn't know that. I'd only seen the videos of them dumping all of the liquor onto the ground/into the water, I didn't know they made some sort of distinction between the two...
Definitely didn't know that.... kind of interesting though that people would get so worked up if they still had beer and wine. I guess everyone loves their rum though.
I think it had to do with the temperance movement. See, a big part of the movement was this idea that all these drunkard fathers were going off and spending money that should've been spend on food/clothing for their kids on liquor, then coming home and abusing their families in one way or another. Hard liquor was a lot more expensive than beer and wine.
"The term hard drug generally refers to illegal drugs that lead to profound and severe addiction"
You ask anyone who's currently smoking cigarettes routinely (read: daily) how addicted to them they are. I think it pretty much classifies as "profound and severe". Also, studies have likened the addiction of tobacco to heroin and cocaine, which are both considered "profound and severely addictive".
As well, ask an alcoholic how addicted they are. Same sort of response (although, I don't think alcohol abuse is AS severe as tobacco/cocaine/heroin). They have AA meetings for a reason. It must be addictive enough, otherwise, why bother?
Thus, the only part of the definition that isn't fufilled by tobacco (nicotine) and alcohol is the fact that they're still currently legal.
P.S. I didn't get my ideology from there initially, I had only read the definitions at the top of the page and went "lol wtf".
And, it's probably difficult to find citations for those statements, seeing as no one thinks of tobacco or alcohol as "hard drugs". It's only because they're legal that the social stigma has been removed (although, a stigma towards cigarette use is well on the rise, and probably for the better tbh).
The only reason alcohol's not illegal as well today, was because prohibition started too late. Alcohol was already a favourite drug of many, and attempts in the 20's and 30's to ban it were unsuccessful. Marijuana, on the other hand, was associated with the Mexicans coming from the south and stealing American's jobs, so it was easy enough to get rid of/spread lies about (not as common as alcohol use/abuse by Americans at that point).
Basically, the fewer people that use a drug, the more easily it is to ban it and keep it banned.
And basically, our current drug laws don't make any sense to start off with. Woo! Lets let people pour their money into an underground buisness closely associated with violent crime!
Srsly. Legalize and collect taxes. You're already doing it for an addictive drug and a highly addictive drug, you might as well throw the rest in (especially the less addictive ones).
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People develop addictions to food that are definitely debilitating and severe to the point where they need to be held in a hospitable or have surgery to limit their stomach. The eating disorders then cause all kinds of problems with your body ranging from heart disease to diabetes. But we don't call food a hard drug. There's a certain point where self control and common sense needs to come into play.
If we start labelling things like that hard drugs then it takes away from the personal responsibility involved. "Oh, it's not his fault he's obese. Food is really addictive. It's not his fault he smokes. Nicotine is a hard drug. Oh, it's not his fault he beats his wife. Alcohol is a drug.' How you label things has a very profound effect on how people percieve them. People are far more willing to blame the substance for a problem if it's a hard drug as opposed to encouraging the person to take control if it's not.
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For instance, we've developed drives to force us to eat food, and then we've also developed tolerance so that once we've reached satiety, we stop. Unfortunately, as us humans are pretty smart, we can completely ignore that, and just keep eating anyway. Would I call that an addiction? No, not really. I think I'd just call that being retarded.
I guess it's just the fact that food is only a psychological addiction, because the physical one is already in place. Similarly, marijuana is considered by many to be "psychologically addictive", although it possesses no physical addiction. In the same way, you could consider Starcraft or Warcraft "psychologically addictive", but that doesn't make them a drug.
Also, I don't think I would blame cocaine on a cocaine addict's problem. For anyone that chronically uses drugs, I definitely see it still coming back to them at fault, addictive or not. Because, funny story, had you've chosen NOT to experiment (and most likely came back to "experiment" many more times after that), you would NOT have become addicted. Simple as that.
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Anyways, we're preprogrammed for nicotine too. It's the same sort of principal. We have those receptors in our brain already, we just start stimulating them more then we need to, then eventually it's like oh snap we need more. Over eating is similar, we need to eat, but then we start eating when we don't need to, all of a sudden our set point is higher then it should be and people feel the need to eat more.
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And, I don't know if eating works or not in the way you're talking about... I know it takes 7 minutes or something before your stomach realizes there's food in it, and stops making you feel hungry. So, if you give someone a huge plate of food, they could eat pretty much anything they wanted in that 7 minutes... but that just has to do with bigger portions, not the fact we eat more than we need to.
Aka, you're still going to get full from the same amount, it doesn't increase depending on how much you ate last time. That's how I thought it worked, anyway. I may be wrong.
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That's just what my book says though. I call half bullshit on it though. I never found it hard to be like 'GD, I eat too much crap and don't exercise enough.' I'm not in amazing shape, but def, better then I used to be and it was no great struggle. Just a matter of being like, 'oh, yea.. don't want to die.'
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Did you know that prohibition included only 'hard' alcohol? Wine and beer didn't count.
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Thanks.
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