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Drugs - Quotes

Many of the drugs commonly used in the prevention and cure of illness can impair sexual performance, as can alcohol and illicit “recreational” drugs such as cocaine... Alcohol is a brain depressant. In small amounts, it reduces anxiety and inhibition, and this may allow sexy feelings to emerge that otherwise would not be given the chance. In larger doses, however, alcohol rapidly impairs physical and mental functions, including sexual response, in both men and women. It reduces testosterone levels, and many men find it difficult to get an erection when they are drunk. Barbiturates and other hypnotic drugs have a similar action.
Antidepressant drugs have mixed effects on sensuality. They may bring back desire and sensual sensation after these have been dampened down by depression, but they also tend to impair the mechanics of orgasm. It is usually only by coming off antidepressants that a person can get his or her sexual desire, arousal, and performance fully back to normal again. (Anne Hooper in her book Ultimate Sexual Touch, pp.128-129)

A study using mice found that cocaine caused more damage to adolescent brains than to brains of adults or babies. Researchers believe that other drugs have a similar special effect on teenagers. (Nicola Morgan, Blame My Brain, p.153)

Overall, research shows that taking any drugs while the brain is still in development is bad for you. (Kurzgesagt, 7m22s, posted 10 June 2018, accessed 17 October 2020)

No drug is completely safe, even paracetamol comes with side effects.
(James Gallagher, BBC health and science reporter, posted and accessed 15 May 2014)

One of the first duties of the physician is to educate the masses not to take medicine.
(Sir William Osler, 1849–1919)

The Truth About Drugs
Drugs are essentially poisons. The amount taken determines the effect.
A small amount acts as a stimulant (speeds you up). A greater amount acts as a sedative (slows you down). An even larger amount poisons and can kill.
This is true of any drug. Only the amount needed to achieve the effect differs.
But many drugs have another liability: they directly affect the mind. They can distort the user’s perception of what is happening around him or her. As a result, the person’s actions may be odd, irrational, inappropriate and even destructive.
Drugs block off all sensations, the desirable ones with the unwanted. So, while providing short-term help in the relief of pain, they also wipe out ability and alertness and muddy one’s thinking.
Medicines are drugs that are intended to speed up or slow down or change something about the way your body is working, to try to make it work better. Sometimes they are necessary. But they are still drugs: they act as stimulants or sedatives, and too much can kill you. So if you do not use medicines as they are supposed to be used, they can be as dangerous as illegal drugs.
(Foundation for a Drug-Free World, dated 2006-2020, accessed 31 May 2020)

Against a dark/grey background, an upright human hand. The palm of the hand has superimposed on it an eclipsed sun. Fire is visible at the edge of the eclipse. Fire leaks downwards.

Why Do People Take Drugs?
People take drugs because they want to change something in their lives.
Here are some of the reasons young people have given for taking drugs:

To fit in
To escape or relax
To relieve boredom
To seem grown up
To rebel
To experiment

They think drugs are a solution. But eventually, the drugs become the problem.
Difficult as it may be to face one’s problems, the consequences of drug use are always worse than the problem one is trying to solve with them. The real answer is to get the facts and not to take drugs in the first place.
(Foundation for a Drug-Free World, dated 2006-2020, accessed 31 May 2020)

Portugal’s [drugs] policy rests on three pillars: one, that there’s no such thing as a soft or hard drug, only healthy and unhealthy relationships with drugs; two, that an individual’s unhealthy relationship with drugs often conceals frayed relationships with loved ones, with the world around them, and with themselves; and three, that the eradication of all drugs is an impossible goal.
(Susana Ferreira, The Guardian, posted 5 December 2017, accessed 20 July 2023)

I did have a big crisis that brought me into the [psychiatric] system, things from my childhood that I struggled with strongly. The [anti-psychotic] medication numbed some of the symptoms, but they also numb your own power and your own ability to deal with yourself. I lost my own story somehow.
(Mette Ellingsdalen cited at BBC, posted and accessed 19 February 2021)

Drug "pleasures" are a substitute for somatosensory pleasures [affectionate touch and body movement missed out on in infancy or adolescence].
(See James W. Prescott, Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence, 1975; accessed online 16 June 2021)

Drug ‘therapy’ is treatment not prevention. Genetic engineering and medical drugs, unfortunately, dominate the political-social-monetary landscape for changing and controlling individual behaviour rather than changing our society and culture for changing and liberating human behaviour from the chains of our self-destruction.
(James W. Prescott, PhD, How Culture Shapes the Developing Brain and the Future of Humanity, Byron Child magazine, March-May 2004; accessed online 17 June 2021)

I’ve done irl therapy, online therapy, all kindsa meds, meditation. None of those things ever did as much for my mental health as lucking into a new job with better hours and a salary high enough to pay down my debt. (Rafi, 18 June 2021 tweet; irl = in real life)

While I believe everyone should quit smoking (and am happy to dish out scare stories to anyone struggling to quit), I also believe that before banning substances that people use to self-medicate the unbearable shiteness of everyday life, you need to implement major life-improving social and economic change.
(Eleanor Margolis, The Guardian, posted and accessed 11 December 2021)

One thing an addiction does, and especially heroin, is to fill the void where relationships should have been. (Philippa Perry, The Guardian, posted and accessed 24 September 2023)

Psychedelics can certainly increase openness – but this can be openness to Nazism, eco-fascism or UFO cults as well as to peace and love...
Psychedelics have the potential to help people break out of repetitive, destructive thoughts, to help them discover new possibilities and new joy. But the effects of psychoactive drugs can never be detached from their setting.
(Ross Ellenhorn and Dimitri Mugianis, The Guardian, posted and accessed 18 October 2022)

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