yeah, I think it's really more of he lived a sheltered life, yanno?
Yeah. My parents tried to shelter me from stuff like that and alcohol. My mom smokes weed too, and used to have a drinking problem too. Alcoholism runs in my family. Anyway, I'm the sort of person who isn't just going to take someone's word on something like that, I tend to want to really know how things are, because I know damn well that half of what the government says is absolute bullshit.
But some people are content to live sheltered like that.
Hopefully you can get him to at least read up on it. And be sure to personally tell him how often some of the listed effects actually happen. Sometimes websites don't mention how rare, or how little effect some of those things really have. I mean, DXM raises your blood pressure and heartrate, but unless you've already got a pre-existing condition, that likely won't even be noticeable. Hell, running raises your heartrate, and may well raise your blood pressure too, but that's not dangerous, is it?
Some people get caught up in how many effects and risks there are with that, but few of them realize that a great portion of the minor issues that are risks also happen to be possible side effects of normal drugs. Acetaminophen can cause liver damage if taken enough, antibiotics hurt your body, and can make your immune system much weaker, among other things. Every single drug has possible side effects, but the second they start talking about illegal drugs, all of a sudden simple things like it making you sweat more, or maybe causing ataxia (basically, reduced motor function, drunken stumbling, etc.) or slowing your reaction time down is some horrible evil thing that might get you killed. Ever notice that most drugs say don't mix with alcohol? That can be dangerous. They also say not to use a motor vehicle. Hmm, I think you can still get charged with impaired driving for driving when using a drug that can make you drowsy/impaired, even if you have a legal prescription...
There are just as many risks with normal drugs as there are with illegal drugs. (well, to an extent, most medical drugs aren't as hard on your body as crystal meth or heroin is...) As long as you take the necessary precautions and make sure you know what the possible effects are, you can make taking drugs much safer, as well as more enjoyable.
Oh, and as a little aside: The government paints extasy/MDMA as being this evil drug that kills lots of people and is the raver's favourite drug. What they fail to mention is that unless you're one of a very small group of people, you simply cannot die because of extasy. In a city where there are 19,000 deaths a year, 2, yes, 2 of those deaths were directly from MDMA (or possibly some other contaminant in an extasy tablet). Those 2 deaths were severe allergic reactions to something in the tablet. The other deaths in that city that are tied to extasy are only partially related to it, and wuold never have happened if the government actually taught people about the drug. Those deaths were either from people getting scared and drinking so much water that they got water poisoning and died, or from people who ended up dieing of heat stroke because they weren't careful and didn't drink enough water. I mean, if you're dancing all night, and you normally would be sweating like mad, and getting tired, wouldn't you think that maybe at some point, despite feeling fine, you should maybe drink a bit of water to cool off and stuff? Those people died because they didn't know that MDMA causes your body to be unable to properly regulate it's temperature, so they weren't sweating much, and their body didn't feel tired (another bit of an effect from the MDMA) so they simply kept dancing in a crowded, hot environment exerting themselves much more than they normally would, and eventually their body just overheated.
Those are both the most common ways people die while on MDMA, but if the government would simply educate people properly, instead of spreading misinformation and ignorance by causing the discussion of drugs like MDMA taboo, we'd have
WAY fewer deaths attributed to that drug. THAT is why I hate the government, and think that we need to change the government's way of dealing with drugs radically. They are causing more deaths, because of their scare tactics, than are necessary.
