I'm tempted to just leave this alone, because your arguments are so misinformed that it hardly seems worth it, but I feel that I need to put my little disclamer on this node, to protect anyone who happens to read it, and is incredibly impressionable to the outspoken opinions of popular society, like yourselves.

I agree with Footprints, to a degree. If someone who is totally healthy, mentally and physically, takes drugs, they will very likely not be harmed (unless they do something stupid, like shoot an entire bag of heroin, but if they're dumb enough to do that, they no longer qualify as mentally healthy). They will not become addicted, as the symptoms of physical addiction are fairly easy for a strong person to overcome, and it takes multiple uses to become physically addicted to anything.

The area where this gets confused, that leads to people saying things like some of the above, is when someone who is mentally and/or physically unhealthy begins taking drugs. In some cases, the person may become so enthralled with the feeling they get, that it becomes all that matters in life to them. This will allow them to betray their friends, steal, lie, cheat, and do all of those nasty things that the nice people from D.A.R.E. told us drug addicts do.

If you are a healthy person, and use drugs in moderation, they will not drive you insane, and they will not make you kill people. If you are already fucked up to begin with, excessive drug use will probably only make the siuation worse, and should be avoided.

<flame>ioctl, I find it fascinating that you know all those people in your town that had that messed up stuff happen to them. There was this kid in my town who took too much acid, and thought he was a glass of orange juice. He was a friend of a friend. Really, I mean, I didnt actually know him, but a friend of mine's cousin used to run with him. Now, go forward some of those really terrifying emails about how we shouldn't flash our brights anymore.</flame>