Day 03 - Your views on drugs and alcohol.

Everything in moderation. It's that simple. I don't understand why the government/some parents feel the need to completely prohibit alcohol to anyone under 21, especially when they all know that teenagers can and will get whatever they want to. If anything, it's better to learn about alcohol at home - enjoy a glass of wine with dinner, learn your limits. Prohibition is detrimental to its own cause, as historically proven by "The Noble Experiment", when people's proper drank was replaced with XXXXXX moonshine. Generally, those who spend their entire lives denied something are likely to develop romanticized ideals regarding that thing, and are therefore more likely to overdo it, given the chance. College parties always seem to be about getting drunk - holding down the most room-temperature shots in the least amount of time, even resorting to piss-tasting Keystone for a buzz. This is completely different to the dynamic I was raised with - have a few drinks with dinner, let them supplement the palate, enjoy the taste of the drink. I like my way more - better tipsy, better taste.

You ever drunk Baileys from a shoe?

Some drugs, ie marijuana, psilocybe mushrooms, and LSD should also be legalized to some extent; at least to the extent that the government has some control over their cultivation, to ensure some kind of quality control so that those who buy them are not also purchasing a million other poisons. On the other hand, there's a fairly common quandary among people - those who do not have any brain cells to kill are more likely to wish to completely annihilate them. Us educated folk, on the other hand, are more likely to abstain from substance abuse. Solution? I don't know. Maybe there should be an IQ test to determine eligibility of purchasing drugs. What bothers me the most about the US's take on drugs is the propaganda regarding these 'dangerous narcotics', much of which is simply scientifically wrong. For example, observe this handy chart I recently discovered on Wikipedia: 

Figure 1

What? That awful hard drug LSD which has killed so many people and torn apart so many families is actually not addictive at all?!? And caffeine, which is as addictive as marijuana, can easily be purchased at any of your hundreds of neighborhood Starbucks. By anyone. Even a 10-year-old child. And look how far up the list nicotine is! Surprise, surprise. Oh, but I am sure the things in the bottom left corner are "gateway drugs"...one puff of a joint, and you might as well be a heroin addict. Yet the CIA found LSD safe enough to administer to unsuspecting people during project MK ULTRA, not to mention that only forty year ago, before all these stringent laws were put into place, "experimenting" was totally acceptable. Hmmmm...

Woodstock, anyone?

And that's what I think about that.

I'll leave you (me) with this final tidbit:
Q: What was the last really daft thing you did?

Matt Bellamy:We hired a bouncy castle in Las Vegas for a party and decided to dress up as aliens. Peoople definitely lost it there. That was the last time I did mushrooms, actually. Dom had a dog mask on and he ran off into the desert, and I ran after him, and for a minute I was actually in a Salvador Dalí painting: if you look at his painting The Elephants I was the little person at the bottom of those elephant’s legs. I’m not really in favour of drugs, but setting aside one day a year for hallucinogenics definitely opens up new doorways.