Shaniac continues to fall down the rabbit hole...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2015/07/31/poker-crack-drugs/
What do poker and crack have in common, and which has a better high?
Poker and crack are similar to the extent that you can experience many bursts of brief highs and somewhat more prolonged lows in a given session. After a long session of either, you tend to feel “gacked out.”
Crack provides more instant relief and for me a more “fun” immediate high, but poker offers a broader satisfaction — and the high that comes with the potential of making money. Really, poker offers an entire framework for a constant flow of micro-highs and micro-lows in a well-lit, legal environment.
Your Slate piece is interesting for several reasons — in part due to its unabashed frankness and in part due to its defiance of the idea that people are either either sober or using, and there’s no in between. It seems like, for you, drug use is on a spectrum, like sexuality, and polarities are bullshit. What’s your current relationship to drugs?
I do think categorization about drug use and abuse is bullshit. The more I learn and experience on the issue, the less I think phrases like “addiction is a disease” mean anything. I think the majority of the language we use to describe drug use is, at best, misleading and probably worse than that — manipulative in a way that alienates and confuses drug users, as well as those who identify as sober.
I think everyone uses drugs, whether or not we call what they use drugs — even exercise, or food, or sex are closely correlated with drug use in terms of the human function it serves.
I still use drugs. I wake up in the morning with a cigarette and cup of coffee. Usually, I will have smoked half a joint by the time the coffee is done. I smoke grass all day every day, and if I was able to engineer my life in a vacuum, I will maintain that pattern of coffee-cigarette-joint forever.
Hard drug use ebbs and flows in my life. I still do coke. Sometimes I sniff it, but more often I’ll cook it up and smoke it. I’m still experimentally-minded, too, so, for instance, if a friend has half a bag of heroin to sniff, I’d probably partake. I like getting high as it fits into my life, as opposed to structuring my life around my desires, but I guess one mode can shift into the other pretty seamlessly, so I try to remain aware of myself.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susannahbreslin/2015/07/31/poker-crack-drugs/
What do poker and crack have in common, and which has a better high?
Poker and crack are similar to the extent that you can experience many bursts of brief highs and somewhat more prolonged lows in a given session. After a long session of either, you tend to feel “gacked out.”
Crack provides more instant relief and for me a more “fun” immediate high, but poker offers a broader satisfaction — and the high that comes with the potential of making money. Really, poker offers an entire framework for a constant flow of micro-highs and micro-lows in a well-lit, legal environment.
Your Slate piece is interesting for several reasons — in part due to its unabashed frankness and in part due to its defiance of the idea that people are either either sober or using, and there’s no in between. It seems like, for you, drug use is on a spectrum, like sexuality, and polarities are bullshit. What’s your current relationship to drugs?
I do think categorization about drug use and abuse is bullshit. The more I learn and experience on the issue, the less I think phrases like “addiction is a disease” mean anything. I think the majority of the language we use to describe drug use is, at best, misleading and probably worse than that — manipulative in a way that alienates and confuses drug users, as well as those who identify as sober.
I think everyone uses drugs, whether or not we call what they use drugs — even exercise, or food, or sex are closely correlated with drug use in terms of the human function it serves.
I still use drugs. I wake up in the morning with a cigarette and cup of coffee. Usually, I will have smoked half a joint by the time the coffee is done. I smoke grass all day every day, and if I was able to engineer my life in a vacuum, I will maintain that pattern of coffee-cigarette-joint forever.
Hard drug use ebbs and flows in my life. I still do coke. Sometimes I sniff it, but more often I’ll cook it up and smoke it. I’m still experimentally-minded, too, so, for instance, if a friend has half a bag of heroin to sniff, I’d probably partake. I like getting high as it fits into my life, as opposed to structuring my life around my desires, but I guess one mode can shift into the other pretty seamlessly, so I try to remain aware of myself.
