America’s Drug Problem Part 1 (2011)

This video and post were originally published in 2011. Please note that the domain names mentioned, lowgenius.net and 40yearoldfreshman.com, are no longer active. Special thanks to my nephew James for the camera work!

Hi, everyone.  JH here, taking on a big issue that has had a major impact on my life all my life:  America’s Drug Problem.

The videos speak largely for themselves, but I wanted to clear up a few things pre-emptively.

• I am not endorsing, condoning, or approving of the use of drugs, legal or illegal.  I am only imparting information that I think is important for people who choose this behavior to be aware of.  One of the key side effects of our entirely broken approach to drugs education is the dangerous equivalence of drugs which are physically addictive, and drugs which are not physically addictive, and I think this false equivalence is a root cause of much of the “hard” drug abuse in western culture today.
• I blew a line and described a neuroreceptor as a “brain cell.”  A neuroreceptor is part of a brain cell, and by leaving those two words – “part of” – out, there’s a risk of confusion.  I corrected this in the transcript, but I just don’t have the resources or patience to go re-shoot an entire three-part video just for the sake of two words.
• Yes, I’m aware that the wind noise is irritating.  I’ve done my best to eliminate it in post-production, but there’s only so much you can do.  You can view a transcript on-screen using the close-captioning button, or simply read along below.
• This is the first of three videos dealing with this subject, and I strongly recommend you watch them all.  Our problems understanding the risks and differences between the drugs we’re on is only one small part of a very large problem.

Transcript:

Hey there folks, John Henry, LowGenius.Net, 40yearoldfreshman.com.

This country has a drug problem.  We actually have three drug problems, and I want to discuss them, because there’s a lot of bullshit that goes around, everybody talks all kinds of mad shit, this and that, everybody’s got their agenda, everybody’s got something to  say about it and everybody thinks this and thinks that and it’s all this conflicting information.

So, the first problem that we have, with drugs in America is that there are people that are on drugs in America…now, it’s not something that I’m proud of, or even that I really like to discuss, but it needs to be said:  I spent about thirteen years of my life wrapped up in hard drugs I know what it’s about, I know what the lifestyle’s about, I know how it works.

There’s something that a lot of people don’t understand about drugs and drugs addiction, and that’s…that there are two different types of addiction.  There’s a physical or physiological addiction that has a physical component, there’s also psychological addiction.

Now you can be psychologically addicted to anything that you use or abuse in an unhealthy manner, whether it’s, you know, sex or reading books or playing video games or World of Warcraft or Facebook or whatever, you can be addicted in that sense to anything.

Physiological, physical, addiction is a little bit different.  With physical addiction there are certain drugs that actually change the shape of the neuroreceptors in your brain.  For those of you who don’t know what a neuroreceptor is, it’s (part of a) brain cell, the neuroreceptor is basically a mouth on that brain cell that eats nutrients. And it’s shaped in a certain way so the nutrients fit into it and it seeks those out, and that’s what causes hunger and on and on.

So:  drugs that are physically addictive change your body to believe that that drug is a necessary substance for life, like food and water.  That is why physical addiction can be so very compelling, because on a primal level the addict believes and behave just as they would if they were starving, okay? That’s physical addiction, that’s the nasty shit, that’s the bad shit.  That’s what I went through for 13 years when I was doing hard drugs.

Physically addicting drugs are your methamphetamines; cocaine-based substances; opiates – heroin, morphine, oxycontin. A lot of prescription drugs, especially painkillers, mood elevators, and anti-depressants have a physically addictive component – not all of them, and I don’t have a comprehensive list of which ones are which, but keep your eyes open.

Those are physically addictive things, they WILL hook you.  Crack cocaine.

Alcohol is physically addictive.  There was a study done in the early ’80s where an anthropologist looked at the brains of dead skid row bums, dead alcoholics, and the brains of alcoholics had changed in precisely the same ways and were even generating some of the same substances as the brains of people who had died of heroin overdoses after long-term addictions. So what I’m trying to tell you is that these things are very much the same, and people don’t realize it.  Nicotine, cigarettes, is another one – physically addictive.  It hooks your body, it doesn’t just hook your mind.  Now…marijuana?  Not physically addictive. Magic mushrooms, not physically addictive.  LSD?  Not physically addictive, as far as anyone’s ever proven or shown.

Speaking from my own experience, those drugs are not physically addictive.  I’ve done them all.  I’ve also done drugs that were physically addictive, and I know what addiction feels like.  It’s a different thing.  If somebody who is a heavy pot smoker runs out of pot, doesn’t have any way to get any more…they might be bitchy for a couple of days, you know?  But they get over it, life goes on, blah blah blah whatever.  Somebody addicted to cocaine runs out, and they break into your house and steal your television set.  That’s the difference between psychological and physical addictions.  That’s not to say that psychological addiction cant be as profound as physical addiction, but it’s much more rare.

So.  I’m certainly not going to recommend that anybody go do anything illegal or abuse any kind of drugs, but even if you’re going to take drugs therapeutically and legally for pain or whatever, be aware.  Be aware of the risk of physical addiction.  Ask your doctor, is this drug physically, physiologically addictive.  Do the best you can to avoid the ones that are.

That’s our first problem, is the fact that people are using drugs and they don’t fully understand what the risks are of each individual drug and what the differences are between each individual drug.  The next video, we’re going to talk the second problem – which is the way we educate ourselves, each other, and our children about drugs.

Thanks for watching.  I’m John Henry, Lowgenius.Net.  Remember to share, like, comment, drop by my blog @ lowgenius.net and 40yearoldfreshman.com, spread it around, I need all the traffic I can get, thanks very much.