1. Social Consequences of Substance Abuse
I started working on this section 3/15/12, in the course of discussion about safety and current patterns of substance use and abuse.
I am 60 years old; probably 35-45 years older than most of the people I see attending festivals these days. I never made the 'rave' scene, and my attendance at shows is somewhat limited (although I will turn out for 'Tool' any time I get the chance). I remember the 60's and the 70's, times when (thank God) heroin was not around in rural Maine. I was about to type 'before they even developed oxycodone'- but I just looked it up and evidently it was actually developed in 1916 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone ). Alexander Shulgin was doing research with hallucinogenics (MDMA had been synthesized in 1912), but they weren't around where I was. I didn't hear about LSD until I was about 18 (Albert Hoffman synthesized LSD in 1938 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Hofmann) Things are different today.
The concerns are multiple; see the following on clandestine labs. See also the sections; 'The Prison-Industrial Complex' and 'The New Jim Crow', under 'Activism; Conspiracy Theory'.
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/pma/references/media/1997_australia_1.shtml
http://www.aema.alberta.ca/cfml/clanlab_AbEmerg.html
| 2005_02_jenkins_clandestinedruglabsandpublichealth.pdf |
| drugs_of_abuse_guide.pdf |
2. Responsible Drug use; How to keep yourself safe in the drug subculture
| is-recreational-drug-use-normal.pdf |
Normality; Definitions depending on context of analysis; Statistical Normality, Clinical Normality, Moral Normality, (personal and sociocultural aspects) Legal Normality.
| mitigating-the-negative-consequences-of-illicit-drugs.pdf |
http://www.naphp.org/index.php/fuseaction/statements.main
Duncan, D. F., and Gold, R. S.
Chapter 18: Responsibilities of the Recreational Drug User.
In: Drugs and the Whole Person, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982.
'...Why "Drugs and the Whole Person"?
'...Donald Ardell (1977) has defined the term holistic as follows.
. . . viewing a person and his/her wellness from every possible perspective, taking into account every available concept and skill for the person's growth toward harmony and balance. It means treating the person, not the disease (p. 5).
'...An holistic approach implies paying attention to several aspects of the human being, including their physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions. However, one must also consider the interaction between the individual and the physical and social environment.
'...Drug-taking behavior and the effects produced by drugs can also be examined in many ways. A pharmacologist can study the effects of particular drugs on different bodily systems in an attempt to understand how drugs work in the human body. Sociologists can examine drug-taking patterns to find out why people use drugs recreationally and how their use affects social systems. Criminologists study patterns of drug taking to try to discover how to eliminate illicit drug use, misuse, and abuse. Every scholarly discipline has its own interests to study. However, when are all the pieces joined so that we can understand the phenomena associated with drug-seeking and drug-taking behavior? The only true picture of drug-associated behavior can come from an holistic, or whole person, approach.
'...The approach compels us to examine both the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual elements of drug use, misuse, and abuse and the physical and social environmental influences. Therefore, with each class of drugs, we are interested a; its history because many of our expectations are based on the past, and many of our current actions stem from the actions of others who preceded us. We are interested in the interaction of drugs with the complex human entity that entails the physical mental, emotional, and spiritual elements.
http://drugsandwholeperson.tripod.com/index.html
Chapter 18; Responsible Drug Use;
http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/duncanian_theory/ResponsibleDrugUse.html