Mojo workin' wrote:In view of the self-righteous condemnation of other recreational drugs in another Tubenet thread, I should probably mention that I've seen someone die of alcoholism, have the death certificate to prove it, and that isn't exactly a rare event.
One difference between alcohol and "other recreational drugs" is the legality. Arguments can be made for or against the legalization/criminalization of both, but you can't refute something's legality. Besides, isn't it historically more natural to drink something rather than smoke something? Or sniff something? Or inject something?
Historically? Alcohol hasn't always been legal, historically, but it hasn't ever mattered much one way or the other.
I personally detest smoke, so yes, beer, rye whiskey, punch spiked with LSD, etc. would tend to be more up my alley. But smoking is surprisingly widespread. The original use for tobacco was a really giant stogie, one end set in the fire and some guy hauling on the other end until he keeled over and saw God. The Chinese smoked opium, not sure what the Turks and Arabs were smoking in those hookahs. But just about any method you can think of. There's a tree bark preparation with a lot of DMT-related hallucinogens that the guys would force up their noses with a sort of blowgun - you sit back with the thing in your nose, and the other guy gives you a blast. The concoctions they would drink usually would taste awful and get spewed back up, so it's a question of what's worse.
Historically, or rather pre-historically, alcohol would tend to be at most one of the consciousness altering options, until cities and agriculture settle in. At that point, you have an oversupply of starches if you're lucky, and you need a complacent workforce, so you start a brewery. Physiological types with the worst predispositions to alcoholism die off over time, and in a couple of centuries it becomes one of your weapons of conquest - you can turn the natives on to alcohol, and for the next few generations they won't have a lot of fight left in them. All these good things hopefully outweigh the cost to your own society, which will be enormous.
Which is not to say I'm against it, in fact I'm looking forward to an outing tonight at a local brew pub. Yesterday was delighted to find a nice Muscatel at the grocery (they spell it Moscatel like they're kidding someone, but it's the same stuff), but for a sharp hit of muscat I haven't run into anything that compares with a Chilean pisco. Did I mention the rye whiskey? I'm just saying, look it in the face. Back in the '70s someone looked at whiskey magazine ads etc. and claimed to be able to pick out skull images in the ice cubes, supposedly subliminally tickling the viewer in a way that might help sales, but maybe it was just truth in advertising.
haha!
