You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos (44 page)

Most people who think cocaine and caffeine are dissimilar have never tried
cocaine. Journalists and screenwriters trying to capture Joe and Mary Schmo’s attention portray cocaine as a chemical siren capable of overwhelming bliss. In reality, experienced cocaine users cannot tell the difference between a single dose of cocaine and an equal dose of the local anesthetic lidocaine.
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Here is a more grounded description that predates 1980s propaganda:

A person is physically addicted to a drug when the body suffers withdrawal symptoms if denied the drug. Physical addiction to a recreational drug is not enjoyable because the body has adjusted to having it constantly and is now tolerant of the drug. That is, the drug is no longer providing the pleasing effect but merely allowing the user to feel normal. Withdrawal symptoms can be barely noticeable with some drugs, such as marijuana, and fatal with others, such as alcohol. Contrary to popular perception, becoming physically addicted to a drug is not easy. One must acclimate the body to
always
having it in one’s system. Physical addiction to a drug
cannot
occur if the body is cleansed of it between usages.

Most drugs are processed from the body in half-lives. That means no matter how much of a drug is in one’s system at a point in time it will always take the same time period to cut that level in half. That time period is the drug’s half-life.

Most illegal drug users are occasional users, for example, they use only on the weekends. It is impossible to become physically addicted to a drug by using it only once a week, and more frequent usage can be done safely in moderation. For example, a person cannot become physically addicted to alcohol by having four twelve-ounce
beers a day. Nor would someone become physically addicted to heroin or cocaine if they drank opium or coca tea every night. (Opium is the precursor of heroin.) Of course, the weaker forms of these drugs have long disappeared with criminalization so more caution is now required. However, even with the injection of heroin, physical addiction cannot occur if a day of usage is always followed by two of non-usage.
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Note: Individual rates vary wildly based on factors like age, health, sex, weight, race, and heredity. Other drugs can play a factor as well, for example, caffeine metabolization can be increased by up to fifty percent by cigarette usage and decreased by two thirds by oral contraceptive usage.
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The reason addicts are a small minority for every recreational drug is that even before addiction is reached, constant use is
not
enjoyable. This is true with
all activities. Doing anything nonstop gets boring. For example, there are people who enjoy playing online video games but very few enjoy playing them literally all the time. Video games are not perceived as a dangerously seductive pleasure even though one study found that .7 percent of video gamers played over eighty hours a week, and at least ten “ultra-Web” users have died of blood clots from sitting too long.
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Drugs are the same way. Some people will not like a drug, some people will like a drug, and a very small percentage will want to do it whenever possible. This can be seen with the legal drug alcohol. Many people enjoy drinking periodically but the person who enjoys being drunk for weeks on end is rare. This is not because of willpower, but because it ceases to be fun. Drugs provide recreation by causing unique sensations.
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When used continuously for a lengthy duration the sensation ceases to be unique. (As opposed to when physical addiction is attained and the sensation ceases to be felt.) This sentiment was expressed by the champion boxer Mike Tyson in 1998:

That is why drug users who become addicted are usually not using drugs to “party”—the biggest fear of anti-drug zealots—but to escape a real-life problem or to medicate. Ironically, these are the same reasons anti-drug zealots, who can afford health care, are purposely addicted to antidepressants (depression) and amphetamines (attention deficit disorder, weight loss) by their physicians.

Another way the government has skewed the definition of addiction is through the hazy concept of psychological addiction. Illegal drugs such as marijuana have virtually no physical withdrawal symptoms.
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Most hallucinogens, like LSD, not only
are not physically addictive but they do not have
any
effect if taken less than several days from the last ingestion.

To defend its criminalization of these substances, the government has argued that these drugs are psychologically addictive. The application of the term
addictive
to drugs considerably less physically addictive than ingested caffeine makes the term applicable to any enjoyable activity. No one would assert we should criminalize the following activities, all of which turn into harmful compulsions for some people: having sex, surfing the Internet, watching television, playing video games, shopping, tanning, texting, and eating junk food.

A popular diet book compared junk food’s fix to that of recreational drugs, with good reason. The brain manipulates the same chemicals that recreational drugs manipulate to make us feel hungry and to reward us for eating. Quickly ingesting a large amount of sugar dramatically raises serotonin—the same chemical influenced by cocaine and caffeine.

A large sugar dose creates a quick “chemical high” that “boosts our mood, makes us feel better, or masks the stress, pain, boredom, anger, or frustration that we may be feeling,” but this high is then followed by a “big chemical downfall.”
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Studies have shown the obese have brain reward centers similar to those of drug addicts.
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Comparing crack addiction rates to the adult obesity rate of thirty-four percent led Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, to declare in April 2012 that food was more addictive than crack.
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