pravchaw

Here is an interesting article. BBC News - Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin' says Prof David Nutt

Here is the data from the study:

caboblanco

I'd be interested in the data the used in that study and how they used it. It seems very vague. For one thing more people drink then do all those other drugs combined so that could make the study invalid right off the bat

Justfor1

Actually, one of the worst combos could be combining crack & alcohol. It produces some kind of strange substance in the body & can make certain people really violent. A wide awake drunk can be very dangerous.

lillyknitting

I can't agree with you more. Anything that is a fantastic money-making enterprise is taken over by the government and so-called "legalize". It is a huge money making conglomerate pushed by government and alcohol industries (including believe it or not the NHS and AA). It is glamorized, fantasizes we are totally brainwashed as a society to believe that one cannot possibly have a good time, or socially interact in any way unless we partake in the legal drug. We have been duped, we have been conned and we are paying dearly for it, not just in money but through health and the mass destruction of society along the way.

lillyknitting

Can you please expand

Mattcake

100% agreed with this and the OP. We are taught to like alcohol; did anybody here NOT spit out their first swig of booze, or throw up almost immediately after their first taste of wine? One of the saddest sides of being addicted to this "acceptable" (ugh) poison is that it takes a lot of work, time, energy and effort to get hooked on it in the first place. People don't wake up one morning and decide to become addicts.

I'm all for looking at the big(ger) picture. In general, DON'T follow the crowd.

littlefish

amen! Now I forgot which poster said that, but, I agree. And, if most people are normal drinkers and moderate consumers of alcohol, who is drinking up all that booze?
I WAS!
The liquor companies are perfectly aware that a healthy portion of their sales is generated by the alcoholic sector of society.

pravchaw

Copy of the study is here. That is the point - the ubiquity of alcohol - though the harm to individual is very high too.

You bet - same for any business - 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers.

HereIAm321

Trent, you rocked my world with this post!

paulokes

Nice post. I'm careful how and say this and who I say it too, but I am a purebred I had no interest in other drugs, prescription or otherwise Alcohol was my problem. I mean no disrespect to anyone who had/has OTHER problems AS WELL AS alcoholism.

Alcohol is different...it doesn't have the instant pull that crack/nicotine seem to have but has been proven to be just as addictive and damaging with long term heavy use. Alcohol is INSIDIOUS, the 'social acceptability' is just one component of that.

People need to view these things however they need to view them but I know that Alcohol did things for me and to me that nothing else ever did.

P

Justfor1

I feel a need to share this. My "drug of choice" as the rehab pros would ask was alcohol. It was pot when I was younger but switched to alcohol in my early 20's. Drinking in "low class" & seedy bars plus having to live in lower income neighborhoods exposed me to crack/heroin. Now the cocaine let me stay up at night & drink more alcohol. A visible drunk person buying drugs on the street made me a victim many times. Ironically, the majority of my legal issues were alcohol & not drug related.

JenEss

The government legalizes alcohol. Therefore it is "socially acceptable".
Of course there aren't going to be commercials for illegal substances.

Alcoholism causes the same despair and devastation as "other drugs".

elliotnewbuild

From my experiences of NA meetings, almost every drug addict I've met has also had an alcohol problem. I never got addicted to heroin or anything because it wasn't about in my circle of friends and wouldn't have been socially acceptable. If it had I think I definitely would have ended up becoming an addict. My overwhelming desire to get out of my head all the time was the problem, not alcohol per se.

paulokes

I don't identify with that. Alcohol was the answer to everything in my life, kind of why the last thing I wanted to admit to being was an ALCOHOLic.

Just saying...I think it's important to have these conversations.

P

Someguy23

There's one thing that I've noticed, both in this thread and the previous one, which I think deserves to be pointed out:

Everyone, or practically everyone, who identified as dual-adicted stated that they saw more similarities than differences between alcohol and other drugs.

Personally, I've dabbled and I've experimented but I've never been addicted to anything other than booze, so I can't really understand drug addiction.

paulokes

Yep. And here's the simple fact for me...if I thought work was the answer, I would be a workaholic, if I thought girls were the answer I would be a sex addict. T'aint about chemicals and similarities for me it's about my head and the thing I thought was the answer to my head.

I'm clearly happy for other people to think differently about their own problems but that's why I stick to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous...I identify there. Wether people took other substances or not, I can relate when they talk about 'Alcoholism'.

P