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Ask yourself - should marijuana be legalised?


ajfclark

23-Oct-2008
3:44:20 PM

On 23/10/2008 Capt_mulch wrote:
>What, is pot illegal??

Ah Canberra... pot, porn and pyrotechnics...


DaCrux

23-Oct-2008
3:55:00 PM

On 23/10/2008 evanbb wrote:
>I genuinely feel pot balances some parts
>of my personality and makes me a better person/climber in general, even
>when not stoned.
>
I looked after a guy (I'm a nurse) who genuinely felt that pot made him a better person. So much better in fact, that he felt like superman, actually he thought he was superman and that he could fly, hence he jumped off the roof of his friends’ house and ended up with severe brain injuries. They had to remove a chunk of his skull to reduce the swelling in his brain. So now he has to wear a bright red helmet and to quote another patient, he looks like "a giant circumcised penis". My opinion about drugs hasn't changed in the past 3 years, but my care factor about what other people do is now zero. If you wanna make a dick of yourself it's your choice :)))))))


Sabu

23-Oct-2008
4:41:11 PM

On 23/10/2008 Josh Caple wrote:
>For the record, I am currently thinking of all the climbers or climbing
>related people I know who don't smoke dope at least occasionally. I can't
>think of any. Actually I've never seen M9 smoke but he's an aid climber
>so it goes without saying that his brains are mush.

Look no further!

J.C.

23-Oct-2008
5:26:27 PM

Ok, official count @ 1.

fish boy

23-Oct-2008
5:29:58 PM

I dig it...


evanbb

23-Oct-2008
5:45:24 PM

On 23/10/2008 DaCrux wrote:
>I want to make a dick of myself it's my choice :)))))))

Do I want to be baited? Yes I suppose I do, mostly because I'm having a pipe right now.

It's not nearly that cut and dried with drugs, nor anything else for that matter. Except for sport climbers who are all wankers. But the range of experiences for people using drugs makes it very difficult to make generalisations about a particular drug. If we took that approach alcohol would have banned 2000 years ago.

I suspect we'd be much better off being more tolerant, but providing better information. Making drugs illegal makes them appear more fun and so the wrong people get stuck into them in the wrong envionments. Some drug use can be rewarding and fulfilling if done properly, like good red wine with dinner, so why not foster that rather than banning it out right? This clearly doesn't work.

rod

23-Oct-2008
5:49:47 PM

On 23/10/2008 evanbb wrote:
> I suspect we'd be much better off being more tolerant, but providing
>better information. Making drugs illegal makes them appear more fun and
>so the wrong people get stuck into them in the wrong envionments. Some
>drug use can be rewarding and fulfilling if done properly, like good red
>wine with dinner, so why not foster that rather than banning it out right?
>This clearly doesn't work.

hear, hear.


DaCrux

23-Oct-2008
6:11:36 PM

I agree than making drugs illegal can make them more appealing to some people. I also agree that alcohol can be just as (if not more so) damaging as some drugs. But being a health professional I’ve seen people who were “recreational” drug users, weren’t “addicted” and only got drugs from people they trusted and yet they ended up popping an artery in their brain, having a stroke and now they’re in a nursing home in a vegetative state. I’ve also seen cannabis users who’ve had severe psychotic episodes. You can educate people about drugs but they need to realise that there is no such thing as a safe drug – all drugs have side effects – even legal ones.


Capt_mulch

23-Oct-2008
6:18:43 PM

Alan says it all:


Eduardo Slabofvic

23-Oct-2008
9:19:51 PM

On 23/10/2008 Josh Caple wrote:
>I'm curious about other drugs in the climbing community and how it has
>affected your climbing. Let's get over the judgemental thing and just hear
>experiences!

Alright, here goes (NB this is written on behalf of my "friend" who will remain nameless).

Very rarely climbed not-stoned (pot) in the '80's and early ‘90’s. All my highest grade climbs were done
stoned. Have done multi pitch routes in Yosemite and Swiss Alps stoned.

Spent 4 months in Pra Nang taking everything could lay my hands on. Would climb on a combo of pot
and amphetamines, then after climbing get stuck into the Mekong and what ever else was on offer. Then
suffered my two worst injuries in close succession, being finger tendons and flexor insertions in my elbow
(I still suffer from these 12 years later). I think I was a bit dehydrated.

Have climbed on acid and that was very crazy and don't recommend it, but felt so strong it was
unbelievable. Hard to stay focused on the climbing though, always something else to look at.

Also climbed on mushies, but didn't do it for long as there were much nicer things to do.

Lead Feral Chicken after 6 pots, soloed top toe ridge with half empty bottles on spirits down my pants on
several occasions, and love to go bouldering on a summers afternoon with two large bottles of stout.

Also remember a time at Stapleton with a young Dave J and Stuart W who were eating muslie for
breakfast (pansies!), as I and another person who shall remain nameless had the "breakfast of
champions" = a coffee and a champion ruby.

Drugs and climbing saved my life.


D.Lodge

23-Oct-2008
9:38:10 PM

Hey Josh make that 2 and i am not an AID climber. Never tried it never will too concerned about the overwhelming evidence of pot bringing on mental ilnesses such as schizophrenia

Olbert

23-Oct-2008
10:20:56 PM

I dont think anyone is disputing the fact that heavy use of any drugs-legal and not- will result in damgae to the body of some sort.

Very occasional to light use of some illegal drugs can, depending on the drug, have almost no longterm effect on your body, same as alcahol.

There is also a very big difference between have a bong/joint or two for an experienced drug user and what those two guys did in the gym(what started this thread).

IMHO climbing when you are a bit stoned is not in itself dangerous. Its when people get reeeaaally baked like the two gym guys. Its the same with alcahol-as you can drive with having a small amount of it.

I do believe that there is hypocracy in the way alcahol is legal yet pot is not. Its either all or nothing, either ban alcahol(and ruin my wednesday nights) or legalise drugs which are in the same harm catagory as alcahol-ie pot. I would prefer the second option.

Whether a substance is legal or not, people are always going to abuse it and do stupid things on it. Legalising it allows it to be properly regulated and proper information be given.


wallwombat

23-Oct-2008
10:25:56 PM

On 23/10/2008 D.Lodge wrote:
>......... too concerned about the overwhelming evidence of pot bringing on mental illnesses >such as schizophrenia.

I don't smoke pot.

But I do.


Sabu

23-Oct-2008
10:46:58 PM

On 23/10/2008 Olbert wrote:
>Very occasional to light use of some illegal drugs can, depending on the
>drug, have almost no longterm effect on your body, same as alcahol.

I don't buy the "occasional" use idea. it only takes one bad batch and you're in a world
of trouble. For example there was a situation in America a while back where a bad
batch of heroin (yes i know a much harder drug than what we're talking about) resulted
in a chemical called MPTP to be formed, which gave the patients instant, permanent
and very severe Parkinson's symptoms. Only a few were actually cured and they
basically had to have stem cells directly injected into their substantia nigra to repair the
cells.
While this is an extreme example it highlights the fact that only ONE bad dose is
required before you've done permanent damage.


kezza

23-Oct-2008
11:04:50 PM

Same profession as DaCrux (almost allowed to drop the student status though)
Have been on placement in acute psych in melb, and emergency in ballarat and it's a well known fact that drug induced psychosis is on an enormous rise. Majority of those admitted to acute psych wards (anywhere) are drug induced psychosis', a significant amount of those are related to pot. Not many pt's with a true psychosis (not induced by drugs), are hard to come by these days with the amount of drug effected pt's that are clagging the system.
I'm not going to make up stats cause you'll see right through them, but it's something to take home and think about.

hero

23-Oct-2008
11:10:48 PM

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."
-- Hunter S. Thompson


ajfclark

23-Oct-2008
11:23:40 PM

On 23/10/2008 Sabu wrote:
>While this is an extreme example it highlights the fact that only ONE bad dose is required before you've done permanent damage.

It's also a very good argument for regulation and control of production.


Macciza

23-Oct-2008
11:57:38 PM

First I gotta say that if you think pot was the major contributing factor in the guy jumping then you're in
the wrong profession - the guy had problems, and was probably using pot as self-treatment.
Secondly if you think a bad batch of illicit drugs is reason to keep them illegal, then you are an idiot.
Heroin as a pure drug is less damaging then alcohol - illegality is what makes heroin dangerous .
During the alcohol prohibition era there were many cases of methanol toxicity

Alcohol is a poison - it is toxic to living cells. Cannabis activates endogenous chemical receptors
During 1996/97, high-risk drinking was responsible for 72,302 hospitalisations and 403,795 hospital
bed-days in Australia:
Alcohol is a major cause of death, injury and illness in Australian society. The annual cost of alcohol-
caused problems in Australia has been estimated to be $4 ,494 million – about 2.6 times the cost for
illicit drugs,

Rather than ask yourself - ASK YOUR LOCAL MEMBER _ SHOULD CANNABIS BE ILLEGAL?

And before you ven get around to talking about drugs, discuss the following points
Cannabis Paper and Textiles,
Cannabis for Fuel Ethanol, Seed Oil for Diesel, and other energy uses
Medicinal use and research
Religious freedom

and don't forget to mention that you would really also like to be able to grow a few plants at home . . .
Boom Shanka. Shiva, Namaste . . .


Macciza

24-Oct-2008
12:11:33 AM

>Not many pt's with a true psychosis (not induced by drugs),
So, what if the people who used to have psychosis without drugs had taken drugs then it would be the
drugs fault? I don't think so. There is no correlation between societys use of cannabis and psychosis.
We are an intoxicated society - 'life' in general likes to get out of it ; Elephants get drunk, and monkeys.
More research needs to be done on cannabis as a treatment than resources wasted criminalising and
stigmatising people with mental issues who self-medicate their Anandamide system with cannabis
Om Mani Padme Hum

GoUp!

24-Oct-2008
8:11:30 AM

I want to go climbing with Eduardo - he sounds like fun!

There are 154 messages in this topic.