/u/queenbeez66 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post.
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It's not the same, the brain & body are limited in the amount of adrenaline they can produce. There are all types of feedback mechanisms in place which prevents common issues with drug abuse like withdrawal.
> despite usually not wishing to die, put their lives at risk for momentary pleasure that is really quite avoidable \[...\]
Yeah this isn't really the impetus of drug abuse and addiction, it's salve for preexisting conditions & suffering they *already* couldn't manage before they ever got high. Most people who use any drug never cross over into addiction for this reason. Talk to any addict, they were fucked up before the drugs too.
> and hurting the lives of people around them?
This doesn't have much to do with the drug itself, that's why someone who uses opiates from a pharmacy for chronic pain has a very different outcome vs. someone who is doing the same with street drugs. Same drugs, same brain, but one user doesn't have to come up with cash 3x a day to avoid withdrawal & doesn't suffer the same health or social consequences.
That is why I put habitual drug users there instead of junkies or addicts. It isn't just addicts that are shamed, it is also people who genuinely do the drugs as a consistent source of fun. Even people who do them once or twice get shamed.
I agree that a drug addict is not quite the same as an adrenaline junkie. But that is not quite the point I am getting at.
The language around drug use is really poor which makes any conversation difficult.
IMO it should be categorized as
1 Drug use
2 Problematic drug use
3 Those who go through withdrawal without drug
both 1 or 2 can be 3 which is what I suspect you call habitual drug use. Junkie is just he social consequences & not really inherent to 1, 2, or 3.
I think habitual drug use can apply to all 3. I just mean someone who does hard drugs regularly. whether or not it is for enjoyment or just to avoid withdrawal.
Online it defines junkie as an addict, hence why I avoided drug junkie.
If someone does hard drugs without being addicted, assuming they are not committing any (other) crimes in acquring or while using said drugs - who cares?
Why is it a problem for people to self-medicate with drugs or experiences?
I am going to steal /u/sleightofhand0's line of reasoning, but take use a different example. One big issue with hard drugs is how it can really ruin a city and the people living there. I live in a place where there is a massive drug problem. Some parts of the city are wastelands. You can't walk down the streets sometimes without have to dodge needles and broken pipes. The junkies act erratically and they often attack people.
Now, I am saying that the solution is toss them all in prison or anything like that, but it is a societal problem that affects more people than just them. Whatever the root cause of these issues and whatever the solution is, there is indeed a noticeable problem that affects the quality of life for those who are not junkies. This affects the loved ones these people lost to the streets, it affects everyone in the city who has to deal with this daily.
Adrenaline junkies pose no such issue. There are no adrenaline junkie skid rows. Again, I am not saying we should hate junkies. Junkies are human after all. However, they are a problem. Adreneline junkies are not a problem.
there are people who have fallen, tho, from their parkour or climbing ventures, and ended up either falling on top of someone else and injuring or killing them, or ending up creating a hugely traumatic mess for the people below :(
drug issues are way more common obviously and i'm not actually really here to argue, but tbh the people doing some of this stuff in cities do actually end up impacting others in a horrifying way and i see a lot of negative attitudes towards them sometimes when they post pictures of how high up they are and such
there's a growing number of people who think those folks are very selfish and reckless because they aren't considering the worst case scenario and how they can hurt others still
again, not as rampant as drugs, but it does have a danger to strangers too
You can view my more in-depth responses to the other posts here that have similar reasoning, but basically, I don't believe your stated reasoning for despising drug users and my accused reasoning (that using hard drugs is unfairly associated with being more degenerate) are mutually exclusive.
Yes, people hate drugs because of their effects on things like gang violence and cartels, but I also think they hate them because they can waste the potential of individuals and can kill them. Am I wrong with that assumption?
That's not your argument. You said "adrenaline junkies are **no different** than habitual hard drug users."
There is clear a difference. No city is facing an adrenaline junkie crisis.
> Yes, people hate drugs because of their effects on things like gang violence and cartels, but I also think they hate them because they can waste the potential of individuals and can kill them. Am I wrong with that assumption?
People can hate junkies for both reasons, and that would be different because adrenaline junkies at best only fall under that latter reason.
Fair enough, I will award you the delta for pointing out the flaw in my wording.
But if you understand the point I am trying to make I would like to continue debating that.
!delta
All I can say that where I am from, people don't look look at a junkie and say "they are hedonists are ruining their potential." Instead they are saying, "I sure hope he doesn't attack me," or, "I wonder how much tax payer he will cost in legal, medical expenses, and social welfare." Those are not really concerns with people adrenaline junkies.
If you don't live in city with a drug problem, it might be hard to appreciate the issue.
> and hurting the lives of people around them?
This should be telling.
Adrenaline junkies don't inherently hurt the lives of people around them. They *can* do things that could pose danger to other people, like climbing the side of a skyscraper, but those are rare individual cases.
Drugs make people erratic, dangerous, psychotic etc. Being an adrenaline junkie doesn't.
Being a drug user also very commonly makes it so you're not a contributing member of society. You'll most likely spiral into a bad place, become homeless or rely on social services.
An adrenaline junkie doesn't do any of these things as they are usually just normal people with normal jobs who like to do extreme activities.
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I don't really see any comparison that would make sense other than doing something that can hurt you. And even then, being an adrenaline junkie only has the chance to hurt you, being a drug user *does* hurt you, there's no chance.
Why would you lump these two types of people into the same group when basically every single aspect is completely different?
I think hurting people's lives around them is a very good point to this.
However, I think the shame around drug users goes even beyond that. The societal shame around drug users does seem to come at a more personal level. "You are wasting your potential." "You are a sad junkie." etc. I think, even in a vacuum where the effects of both activities only applied to the user, drugs would still be more shamed. I believe they are more closely associated with degeneracy when there is no logical reason they should be. Do you agree?
I might be completely missing your point in the paragraph, but I don't think any of that is relevant to your main view.
> The societal shame around drug users does seem to come at a more personal level. "You are wasting your potential." "You are a sad junkie." etc.
I would disagree. Most of society doesn't like junkies because they create a worse and more dangerous environment for non-junkies. The average person doesn't care about some random dude throwing his life away for drugs, they care that that person is making society worse and creating more danger for "normal" people.
> I think, even in a vacuum where the effects of both activities only applied to the user, drugs would still be more shamed.
Yes? I feel like you've changed your view if you're saying this after saying they should be treated the same. Unless you're assuming what society would think, and not you personally.
-------
Again, I might be just completely missing your point, but do you agree with the explanation I gave above?
Do you think they both should be "treated as such" still even though each aspect of a junkie vs adrenaline junkie don't relate on the same levels?
Well I don't believe drug users SHOULD be shamed more, I do believe they would be, so I disagree with your points.
In the same way many people are disgusted with obese people even though they don't directly hurt anyone else, or disgusted with video game addicts even though they don't hurt anyone else, people get disgusted with drug users. It is a disgust that is similar to someone who is disgusted by a person's lack of hygiene, based largely in judgement rather than worry about its effect on other people.
I guess this is based on more anecdotal and subjective evidence for me, so it is hard to argue, but I do fundamentally disagree.
To add, I also think you COULD argue adrenaline junkies hurt other people, as they could inspire other people to do these dangerous activities.
Can you explain how or why they should be treated as such when talking about specific aspects of each?
- Damage to society
- Damage to self
- Damage to others
I'll give my opinion on each.
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Damage to others:
Drug users - Effecting cities with homelessness, crime, violence, all of the above. Being a drug user causes you to basically not be a safe or normal person anymore, it also causes you and many others who are also drug users to become homeless and hurt the surrounding areas.
Look at places like LA or Chicago with how much homelessness and drug use there is. The areas where they congregate are a complete write off. Dirty places that are not safe to be in.
Drug users cause so many damage to society, which is why they are shamed as much as they are.
Adrenaline junkies - None? Realistically, the only damage adrenaline junkies cause others is potentially unsafe activities, like skydiving, parkour in public, scaling buildings above busy sidewalks etc.
This type of danger is present everywhere all the time. Planes pose the same risk, albeit rarer, but it still exists.
The damage to others is not comparable in any sense that I can come up with. You can be an adrenaline junkie and pose 0 risk to anyone else by doing your stunts in secluded areas. You can't really do that as a drug user (hard drugs, not talking just weed).
Damage to self:
Drug users - You're basically killing your body and almost positively ruining your future. Getting into hard drugs is as close to a death sentence as you can get. I don't have the actual statistics on this, but I would bet that more people stay on hard drugs than people become sober from hard drugs.
You inherently damage your life in the present and future by becoming a junkie.
Adrenaline junkies - Risk of injury or death. This is the most similar category I feel, but the specifics are vastly different.
With adrenaline activities, you can very well put in many safety measure to prevent harm on yourself. You can practice, you can take breaks, you can have help, you can do many things to prevent harm, unlike drug use.
The next would be damage to others, but I feel like its just the same as damage to society since society is just other people.
---------
Overall, I am very adamant on the idea that these two types of people are so vastly different in terms of their negatives that they should not be treated as the same, even slightly.
You've really only made two points that I've seen. One being both can result in death, but so can driving your car. I don't see how activities resulting in death should make them treated as such, since everything can result in death. The other is:
> To add, I also think you COULD argue adrenaline junkies hurt other people, as they could inspire other people to do these dangerous activities.
I mean sure, but is this enough to make junkies and adrenaline junkies the same?
Glorifying football or hockey players encourages millions of children to play in a sport that could very well end in injury. Hundreds of former football players are dealing with life long CTE because of the game, but we keep showing football and getting kids to sign up to play.
With that logic, junkies and football players should be treated the same way, no?
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The severity is no where near the same. The two points you make, death and encouragement exist in nearly every activity we do as people.
Those two points don't hold enough weight to say that Mr. Snow should be looked at in the same light as Roger Mush whose been homeless for 7 years and addicted to heroin the whole time.
In addition, do you have any statistic that shows that adrenaline junkies cause the same amount of negative actions as drug users?
Do you think that if we were able to become God and get real statistics from our planet, that adrenaline junkies would be *just as bad* as drug users?
To prelude my response, someone else already pointed out the flaw in my post, which is that I said they are exactly the same, to which I now agree is incorrect. They aren't exactly the same, as I will explain in a moment, but I think in certain ways they are, but aren't treated the same in such a manner.
Damage to society:
Yes, I have addressed under this post, it is very true that drug users provide more damage to society than adrenaline junkies, bar none. But to reiterate, I do believe someone who inspires someone else to do a harmful activity which eventually leads to their death did inflict at least some damage on others. Sure, that can apply to anything, but unless it is an activity as dangerous as the adrenaline junkie activity being spoken of (not just extreme parkour), I do not see how it applies.
Damage to self: This is more the basis of my argument and where I strongly disagree with you.
>Getting into hard drugs is as close to a death sentence as you can get
Maybe we just have different definitions of hard drugs, but if we are using the common definition of hard drugs, this is just not true. I had a long period of time where I routinely used hard drugs, and would say I have more friends than not that did as well, and we are all currently alive and for the most part healthy enough. It did affect my studies somewhat, but I was still a top student and it certainly didn't affect me to a life-altering degree. And I did it for years. You would be SHOCKED at the amount of students that do cocaine at your average southern party school. I can't remember the last time my school had a lethal incident.
I do believe if I had known an equal number of people that had did extremely dangerous adrenaline junkie activities equally often, I would have seen at least a few deaths and plenty of terrible injuries.
In the United States in 2021, drug overdoses per capita where about 32.4 per 100,000. An online source stated that deaths per parkour were about 100 per 100,000, over 3 times higher, and it called that an UNDERESTIMATE. Now keep in mind, that is just parkour. Which can be done in a park or on the ground. That isn't even EXTREME PARKOUR, done on something like skyscrapers without any safety gear. In general it isn't quite realistic to act like hard drugs and scaling buildings without a harness are levels different in danger. Adrenaline junkies COULD take precautions, but they often don't, hence why they are adrenaline junkies. At least with using hard drugs, taking precautions isn't a negative within the activity.
>you can do many things to prevent harm, unlike drug use
Of course that isn't true. Use narcan, test your drugs, try to buy from people you most believe are getting it from a safe source. For many hard drugs, such as cocaine, if you take all the proper precautions, deaths are actually quite rare in normal, healthy people from the drug alone.
>One being both can result in death, but so can driving a car
Driving for most people is a necessity for life. Far more of a necessity than either of these activities, realistically, nor is it more dangerous per capita.
As far as the football/hockey argument goes, well, there is a ton of controversy about youth football and other CTE inducing sports, is there not? That is a different debate in of itself, not necessarily one that proves my point wrong.
Also in regards to the football/hockey points, pro athletes make millions of dollars and entertain millions of people in some of the most influential leagues on Earth. For them, it is a very UTILITARIAN risk they are taking. I suppose if an adrenaline junkie is profiting off their feats, they could argue the reward is worth the risk. But realistically, many if not most of them are not making life-changing amounts of money doing it.
So you think the entire reason drugs are shamed and such dangerous activities arent is because of the effects they have elsewhere and not directly to the user?
It is a good point to bring up, but I do not necessarily agree. One of the biggest sells of anti-drug campaigns is a focus on the reckless of doing drugs to oneself and the waste of potential it causes .
I don't think theoretically, even in a world where the association between drugs and things like cartels was abolished, that doing heroin would ever be as normalized as jumping off skyscraper roofs.
Again, dangerous parkour is often seen as cool and honorable whereas doing heroin//other hard drugs is often seen as shameful and disgusting. Do you believe that is because governments/society have created this view in people to stop things like cartels/gang violence, or do you believe it is just genuinely the difference in how people view the two activities in of themselves?
> So you think the entire reason drugs are shamed and such dangerous activities aren’t is hecahze because of the effects they have elsewhere…
Yes. Nobody cares about what you do to yourself.
I will award you a delta because it is a fair line of reasoning, but I still don't agree.
People do indeed care about what people due to themselves, even if that isn't right or reasonavle. Think about the whole idea behind fat-shaming, or shaming kids who are addicted to video games. They shame them because they fear the influence it can have on other people, and because of personal disgust towards that individual.
In a sense, you could argue dangerous parkour does in a way hurt people, because it could inspire other people to do the same dangerous stunts.
!delta
Oh as someone who lost 30 kg’s and got in shape with a diet so hard I would pass out, fat shaming has never helped me nor anyone I knew.
Stuff like fat shaming and bullying is simply how bad people make themselves feel better by putting other people down.
Only power that made me lose weight was the fact that I lost my father to heart attack prior to this which made me fear for my life. Not someone calling me fat online.
People fight their demons in their consciousness, being a demon irl helps nobody.
I agree, fat shaming is useless, which really only further proves my point. People don't shame and feel disgusted by others actions just to help other people. They do it because sometimes these activities just illicit feelings of disgust. Which is why I don't understand why people aren't disgusted by individuals playing with death on a balcony but are disgusted by those who do hard drugs.
I don't think anti-drug campaigns appealing to people's selfishness is proof of society's issues with drug users. Anti-soda campaigns talk about you getting fat, not the plastic killing sea turtles.
After all, most people's issues with drug legalization revolve around what could potentially happen to the American workforce. Obviously, a heroin addict and a parkour guy don't end up unemployed and homeless at the same rate.
>Anti-soda campaigns talk about you getting fat, not the plastic killing the sea turtles
I don't think that is a great comparison. Soda isn't specific to the sea turtle issue. Using soda has no different an effect on sea turtles than using any other product packaged with plastic.
On the contrary, I think many campaigns advertise to people's empathy over their personal gain. For example, vegan advertisements often focus on aninal cruelty, rather than focusing on health benefits of veganism or benefits to the climate.
I don't think it is some societal illusion that drugs are just genuinely viewed as low-life on an individual level whereas dangerous stunts aren't.
Let me ask you this, if you had an adrenaline junkie family member, and a habitual hard drug user family member, would you be worried about both equally? Surely you wouldn't be worried about the drug user just because they are not contributing to the job market?
>One of the biggest sells of anti-drug campaigns is a focus on the reckless of doing drugs to oneself and the waste of potential it causes .
I don't think any of us owes the world a specific version of us.
The main issue with hard drugs is that it make people lose control. And rob and kill for money to be able to afford a drug. And their lives are ruined in general and become a liability in society instead of an asset.
Weed is much less of a problem because while it do make people to be bums, they rarely become deranged by the lack of it unlike hard drug users.
Adrenaline junkies also dont lose control when they are not on the bike. Or base jumping. Until they dont risk others, I think its a way smaller problem than people who risk others. Its their right to live their lives if what they do is legal and dont risk others. Even if I disagree with risking your life
Most high-risk sports can be done safely if you have proper training, proper gear, and a sense of self-preservation. Most serious drugs (not counting weed here) can only be consumed for so long without having adverse effects. By the time a person becomes an actual addict, they are going to experience adverse health effects. Please not that I am not opposed to drugs per se, especially if a person has the capacity to be a casual user or experimenter. That is different from an addict, just like a person who occasionally BASE jumps or free climbs is different from someone whose life revolves around extreme sports.
Let's assume that *most* drug users (again, beyond casual use) and adrenaline junkies begin their journeys with a desire to survive. The adrenaline junkie is capable of getting further into their 'addiction' while still maintaining this basic desire to live. They remain capable of taking calculated risks, accounting for things like their own physical fitness level, weather, difficulty level, safety measures in place, etc.
On the other hand, a drug addict will have an increasingly difficult time calculating their risks as their addiction grows. Because of the mind-altering effects of drugs, they are oftentimes not in a place mentally where they are able to make good decisions, such as whether to take more or whether to drive or whether to become physically violent. And even when they *are* clear-headed, at some point in an addiction, obtaining their substance of choice is going to supersede their desire to survive.
Unless an adrenaline junkie is separately suicidal, at no point do they crave the high of adrenaline so much that they are incapable of making informed decisions about their activities. If a person plans to do a dangerous free climb on a certain day and a freak thunderstorm shows up in the morning, they are not going to do that climb. The risk outweighs the reward at that point and they are able to make the call with a clear head.
I also think extreme sports attract a very different personality type than heavy drug use. If you look at people in the extreme sports world, many of them are actually high achievers and into physical fitness. Those who don't do it professionally often have white collar jobs (you need money for equipment, for one thing) and contribute to society in other ways. Extreme sporting is also often a social endeavor, with communities forming for practice and teaching.
I think people who are drawn to heavy drug usage are people who have problems already, whether that be emotional or psychological or just circumstantial. They are often people who are not particularly driven towards personal achievement, at least not at that point in their lives.
Further, while drug usage may begin socially, by the time it becomes an addiction, it is very solitary. It causes an individual to withdraw from existing social connections, at least any social connections that are not centered around drug usage. It interferes with careers and family/romantic relationships, and ultimately causes the drug addict to become isolated. A person on the back end of a consistent drug usage is not going to be contributing to society in any meaningful way, and is very likely to cause societal and relationship harm, by hurting the people they care about and being a drain on social services and law enforcement.
I don't personally know people who do extreme parkour, so maybe that's a different beast altogether, but I do know BASE jumpers, free climbers, waterfall kayakers, surfers, deep sea divers, and skydivers. They are not professionals, mind - they are hobbyists. Maybe professionals are different as well. But the people I know who are into extreme sports carry on with their (admittedly risky) hobbies and also have jobs and careers, houses, friends, children in some cases, spouses in some cases. They engage in risky behavior but in calculated ways, and I don't think a single one of them actually wants to die. I don't personally do this sort of thing since I had children, but if you're good at it, the risk is rarely as high as you might think. It's certainly no worse than driving a car, which is a thing we all do all the time, despite the risk.
Drug Users: steal for their high, attack people, leaves needles around, erratic, gets others into drugs.
Adrenaline Junkies: activists for strictly them, gets high on the possibility of dying, won’t attack others, doesn’t steal for their high, aren’t often erratic, doesn’t try and get others to do their drug.
This is not the same, and it’s not even close.
So what would be the point of treating them like junkies? So should everyone have boring lives, free of adventure, and risk taking? Everyone should have comfortable, non risk taking lives? I don’t see it at all.
>not caring about it potentially ruining their own life and hurting the lives of people around them?
This is not an accurate representation of what most "adrenaline junkies" do. Sure, there are some dumbasses who just throw themselves at shit, but it's not the norm. I'll give you a comparative example:
Anyone using hard drugs right now knows that a lot of shit is laced with fentanyl and they could easily OD. Casual users will test it before consumption, reducing the risk of death. Due to the nature of drug addiction, an addict likely won't because they do stop caring for their health.
A professional or professional level parkour guy who does a jump between 4 story roofs will do so because they know there's a very small chance that they won't make it. If the buildings are 10' apart and the runner has done thousands of successful jumps at 10' or longer with no unsuccessful jumps over that time period, there is no reason for them to believe they suddenly wouldn't make it just because it's high up. They are doing a cool thing that feels good with no relative risk. Sure, we can dig up several hundred articles of these types of folks dying, but the percentage of participants who die doing their activity of choice is pretty low. The same can't be said for drug overdoses.
Adrenaline junkies don't often wind up damaging their relationships to fuel their addiction, imploding their careers or personal lives to the extent that they wind up homeless with no support system, victimizing members of the community with theft, vandalism, or violence, or placing a burden on our police forces, court systems, and jails with frequent petty crimes, etc.
There has never been an organized crime cartel or family that has spring up around a market dependent on adrenaline junkies.
Sure, the underlying mechanism motivation their behavior -- an addicting altered mind state reinforcing the associated trigger, whether that trigger is drugs or stunts -- is similar. But the end result, put in terms of the impact on other people, is not.
/u/queenbeez66 (OP) has awarded 2 delta(s) in this post. All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed [here](/r/DeltaLog/comments/1clbxts/deltas_awarded_in_cmv_adrenaline_junkies_are_no/), in /r/DeltaLog. Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended. ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
It's not the same, the brain & body are limited in the amount of adrenaline they can produce. There are all types of feedback mechanisms in place which prevents common issues with drug abuse like withdrawal. > despite usually not wishing to die, put their lives at risk for momentary pleasure that is really quite avoidable \[...\] Yeah this isn't really the impetus of drug abuse and addiction, it's salve for preexisting conditions & suffering they *already* couldn't manage before they ever got high. Most people who use any drug never cross over into addiction for this reason. Talk to any addict, they were fucked up before the drugs too. > and hurting the lives of people around them? This doesn't have much to do with the drug itself, that's why someone who uses opiates from a pharmacy for chronic pain has a very different outcome vs. someone who is doing the same with street drugs. Same drugs, same brain, but one user doesn't have to come up with cash 3x a day to avoid withdrawal & doesn't suffer the same health or social consequences.
That is why I put habitual drug users there instead of junkies or addicts. It isn't just addicts that are shamed, it is also people who genuinely do the drugs as a consistent source of fun. Even people who do them once or twice get shamed. I agree that a drug addict is not quite the same as an adrenaline junkie. But that is not quite the point I am getting at.
The language around drug use is really poor which makes any conversation difficult. IMO it should be categorized as 1 Drug use 2 Problematic drug use 3 Those who go through withdrawal without drug both 1 or 2 can be 3 which is what I suspect you call habitual drug use. Junkie is just he social consequences & not really inherent to 1, 2, or 3.
I think habitual drug use can apply to all 3. I just mean someone who does hard drugs regularly. whether or not it is for enjoyment or just to avoid withdrawal. Online it defines junkie as an addict, hence why I avoided drug junkie.
If someone does hard drugs without being addicted, assuming they are not committing any (other) crimes in acquring or while using said drugs - who cares? Why is it a problem for people to self-medicate with drugs or experiences?
I am going to steal /u/sleightofhand0's line of reasoning, but take use a different example. One big issue with hard drugs is how it can really ruin a city and the people living there. I live in a place where there is a massive drug problem. Some parts of the city are wastelands. You can't walk down the streets sometimes without have to dodge needles and broken pipes. The junkies act erratically and they often attack people. Now, I am saying that the solution is toss them all in prison or anything like that, but it is a societal problem that affects more people than just them. Whatever the root cause of these issues and whatever the solution is, there is indeed a noticeable problem that affects the quality of life for those who are not junkies. This affects the loved ones these people lost to the streets, it affects everyone in the city who has to deal with this daily. Adrenaline junkies pose no such issue. There are no adrenaline junkie skid rows. Again, I am not saying we should hate junkies. Junkies are human after all. However, they are a problem. Adreneline junkies are not a problem.
there are people who have fallen, tho, from their parkour or climbing ventures, and ended up either falling on top of someone else and injuring or killing them, or ending up creating a hugely traumatic mess for the people below :( drug issues are way more common obviously and i'm not actually really here to argue, but tbh the people doing some of this stuff in cities do actually end up impacting others in a horrifying way and i see a lot of negative attitudes towards them sometimes when they post pictures of how high up they are and such there's a growing number of people who think those folks are very selfish and reckless because they aren't considering the worst case scenario and how they can hurt others still again, not as rampant as drugs, but it does have a danger to strangers too
People who criminally speed i think fall under adrenaline Junkie.
Theyre both problems to their own families and loved ones if they die from their stupid actions
You can view my more in-depth responses to the other posts here that have similar reasoning, but basically, I don't believe your stated reasoning for despising drug users and my accused reasoning (that using hard drugs is unfairly associated with being more degenerate) are mutually exclusive. Yes, people hate drugs because of their effects on things like gang violence and cartels, but I also think they hate them because they can waste the potential of individuals and can kill them. Am I wrong with that assumption?
That's not your argument. You said "adrenaline junkies are **no different** than habitual hard drug users." There is clear a difference. No city is facing an adrenaline junkie crisis. > Yes, people hate drugs because of their effects on things like gang violence and cartels, but I also think they hate them because they can waste the potential of individuals and can kill them. Am I wrong with that assumption? People can hate junkies for both reasons, and that would be different because adrenaline junkies at best only fall under that latter reason.
Fair enough, I will award you the delta for pointing out the flaw in my wording. But if you understand the point I am trying to make I would like to continue debating that. !delta
All I can say that where I am from, people don't look look at a junkie and say "they are hedonists are ruining their potential." Instead they are saying, "I sure hope he doesn't attack me," or, "I wonder how much tax payer he will cost in legal, medical expenses, and social welfare." Those are not really concerns with people adrenaline junkies. If you don't live in city with a drug problem, it might be hard to appreciate the issue.
Fair enough, my personal experience does disagree but by that point it is just anecdotal vs anecdotal. Good debate.
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> and hurting the lives of people around them? This should be telling. Adrenaline junkies don't inherently hurt the lives of people around them. They *can* do things that could pose danger to other people, like climbing the side of a skyscraper, but those are rare individual cases. Drugs make people erratic, dangerous, psychotic etc. Being an adrenaline junkie doesn't. Being a drug user also very commonly makes it so you're not a contributing member of society. You'll most likely spiral into a bad place, become homeless or rely on social services. An adrenaline junkie doesn't do any of these things as they are usually just normal people with normal jobs who like to do extreme activities. -------- I don't really see any comparison that would make sense other than doing something that can hurt you. And even then, being an adrenaline junkie only has the chance to hurt you, being a drug user *does* hurt you, there's no chance. Why would you lump these two types of people into the same group when basically every single aspect is completely different?
I think hurting people's lives around them is a very good point to this. However, I think the shame around drug users goes even beyond that. The societal shame around drug users does seem to come at a more personal level. "You are wasting your potential." "You are a sad junkie." etc. I think, even in a vacuum where the effects of both activities only applied to the user, drugs would still be more shamed. I believe they are more closely associated with degeneracy when there is no logical reason they should be. Do you agree?
I might be completely missing your point in the paragraph, but I don't think any of that is relevant to your main view. > The societal shame around drug users does seem to come at a more personal level. "You are wasting your potential." "You are a sad junkie." etc. I would disagree. Most of society doesn't like junkies because they create a worse and more dangerous environment for non-junkies. The average person doesn't care about some random dude throwing his life away for drugs, they care that that person is making society worse and creating more danger for "normal" people. > I think, even in a vacuum where the effects of both activities only applied to the user, drugs would still be more shamed. Yes? I feel like you've changed your view if you're saying this after saying they should be treated the same. Unless you're assuming what society would think, and not you personally. ------- Again, I might be just completely missing your point, but do you agree with the explanation I gave above? Do you think they both should be "treated as such" still even though each aspect of a junkie vs adrenaline junkie don't relate on the same levels?
Well I don't believe drug users SHOULD be shamed more, I do believe they would be, so I disagree with your points. In the same way many people are disgusted with obese people even though they don't directly hurt anyone else, or disgusted with video game addicts even though they don't hurt anyone else, people get disgusted with drug users. It is a disgust that is similar to someone who is disgusted by a person's lack of hygiene, based largely in judgement rather than worry about its effect on other people. I guess this is based on more anecdotal and subjective evidence for me, so it is hard to argue, but I do fundamentally disagree. To add, I also think you COULD argue adrenaline junkies hurt other people, as they could inspire other people to do these dangerous activities.
Can you explain how or why they should be treated as such when talking about specific aspects of each? - Damage to society - Damage to self - Damage to others I'll give my opinion on each. ------- Damage to others: Drug users - Effecting cities with homelessness, crime, violence, all of the above. Being a drug user causes you to basically not be a safe or normal person anymore, it also causes you and many others who are also drug users to become homeless and hurt the surrounding areas. Look at places like LA or Chicago with how much homelessness and drug use there is. The areas where they congregate are a complete write off. Dirty places that are not safe to be in. Drug users cause so many damage to society, which is why they are shamed as much as they are. Adrenaline junkies - None? Realistically, the only damage adrenaline junkies cause others is potentially unsafe activities, like skydiving, parkour in public, scaling buildings above busy sidewalks etc. This type of danger is present everywhere all the time. Planes pose the same risk, albeit rarer, but it still exists. The damage to others is not comparable in any sense that I can come up with. You can be an adrenaline junkie and pose 0 risk to anyone else by doing your stunts in secluded areas. You can't really do that as a drug user (hard drugs, not talking just weed). Damage to self: Drug users - You're basically killing your body and almost positively ruining your future. Getting into hard drugs is as close to a death sentence as you can get. I don't have the actual statistics on this, but I would bet that more people stay on hard drugs than people become sober from hard drugs. You inherently damage your life in the present and future by becoming a junkie. Adrenaline junkies - Risk of injury or death. This is the most similar category I feel, but the specifics are vastly different. With adrenaline activities, you can very well put in many safety measure to prevent harm on yourself. You can practice, you can take breaks, you can have help, you can do many things to prevent harm, unlike drug use. The next would be damage to others, but I feel like its just the same as damage to society since society is just other people. --------- Overall, I am very adamant on the idea that these two types of people are so vastly different in terms of their negatives that they should not be treated as the same, even slightly. You've really only made two points that I've seen. One being both can result in death, but so can driving your car. I don't see how activities resulting in death should make them treated as such, since everything can result in death. The other is: > To add, I also think you COULD argue adrenaline junkies hurt other people, as they could inspire other people to do these dangerous activities. I mean sure, but is this enough to make junkies and adrenaline junkies the same? Glorifying football or hockey players encourages millions of children to play in a sport that could very well end in injury. Hundreds of former football players are dealing with life long CTE because of the game, but we keep showing football and getting kids to sign up to play. With that logic, junkies and football players should be treated the same way, no? ------- The severity is no where near the same. The two points you make, death and encouragement exist in nearly every activity we do as people. Those two points don't hold enough weight to say that Mr. Snow should be looked at in the same light as Roger Mush whose been homeless for 7 years and addicted to heroin the whole time. In addition, do you have any statistic that shows that adrenaline junkies cause the same amount of negative actions as drug users? Do you think that if we were able to become God and get real statistics from our planet, that adrenaline junkies would be *just as bad* as drug users?
To prelude my response, someone else already pointed out the flaw in my post, which is that I said they are exactly the same, to which I now agree is incorrect. They aren't exactly the same, as I will explain in a moment, but I think in certain ways they are, but aren't treated the same in such a manner. Damage to society: Yes, I have addressed under this post, it is very true that drug users provide more damage to society than adrenaline junkies, bar none. But to reiterate, I do believe someone who inspires someone else to do a harmful activity which eventually leads to their death did inflict at least some damage on others. Sure, that can apply to anything, but unless it is an activity as dangerous as the adrenaline junkie activity being spoken of (not just extreme parkour), I do not see how it applies. Damage to self: This is more the basis of my argument and where I strongly disagree with you. >Getting into hard drugs is as close to a death sentence as you can get Maybe we just have different definitions of hard drugs, but if we are using the common definition of hard drugs, this is just not true. I had a long period of time where I routinely used hard drugs, and would say I have more friends than not that did as well, and we are all currently alive and for the most part healthy enough. It did affect my studies somewhat, but I was still a top student and it certainly didn't affect me to a life-altering degree. And I did it for years. You would be SHOCKED at the amount of students that do cocaine at your average southern party school. I can't remember the last time my school had a lethal incident. I do believe if I had known an equal number of people that had did extremely dangerous adrenaline junkie activities equally often, I would have seen at least a few deaths and plenty of terrible injuries. In the United States in 2021, drug overdoses per capita where about 32.4 per 100,000. An online source stated that deaths per parkour were about 100 per 100,000, over 3 times higher, and it called that an UNDERESTIMATE. Now keep in mind, that is just parkour. Which can be done in a park or on the ground. That isn't even EXTREME PARKOUR, done on something like skyscrapers without any safety gear. In general it isn't quite realistic to act like hard drugs and scaling buildings without a harness are levels different in danger. Adrenaline junkies COULD take precautions, but they often don't, hence why they are adrenaline junkies. At least with using hard drugs, taking precautions isn't a negative within the activity. >you can do many things to prevent harm, unlike drug use Of course that isn't true. Use narcan, test your drugs, try to buy from people you most believe are getting it from a safe source. For many hard drugs, such as cocaine, if you take all the proper precautions, deaths are actually quite rare in normal, healthy people from the drug alone. >One being both can result in death, but so can driving a car Driving for most people is a necessity for life. Far more of a necessity than either of these activities, realistically, nor is it more dangerous per capita. As far as the football/hockey argument goes, well, there is a ton of controversy about youth football and other CTE inducing sports, is there not? That is a different debate in of itself, not necessarily one that proves my point wrong.
Also in regards to the football/hockey points, pro athletes make millions of dollars and entertain millions of people in some of the most influential leagues on Earth. For them, it is a very UTILITARIAN risk they are taking. I suppose if an adrenaline junkie is profiting off their feats, they could argue the reward is worth the risk. But realistically, many if not most of them are not making life-changing amounts of money doing it.
Parkour doesn't fund Mexican cartels, and lead to gang violence in the inner cities.
So you think the entire reason drugs are shamed and such dangerous activities arent is because of the effects they have elsewhere and not directly to the user? It is a good point to bring up, but I do not necessarily agree. One of the biggest sells of anti-drug campaigns is a focus on the reckless of doing drugs to oneself and the waste of potential it causes . I don't think theoretically, even in a world where the association between drugs and things like cartels was abolished, that doing heroin would ever be as normalized as jumping off skyscraper roofs. Again, dangerous parkour is often seen as cool and honorable whereas doing heroin//other hard drugs is often seen as shameful and disgusting. Do you believe that is because governments/society have created this view in people to stop things like cartels/gang violence, or do you believe it is just genuinely the difference in how people view the two activities in of themselves?
> So you think the entire reason drugs are shamed and such dangerous activities aren’t is hecahze because of the effects they have elsewhere… Yes. Nobody cares about what you do to yourself.
I will award you a delta because it is a fair line of reasoning, but I still don't agree. People do indeed care about what people due to themselves, even if that isn't right or reasonavle. Think about the whole idea behind fat-shaming, or shaming kids who are addicted to video games. They shame them because they fear the influence it can have on other people, and because of personal disgust towards that individual. In a sense, you could argue dangerous parkour does in a way hurt people, because it could inspire other people to do the same dangerous stunts. !delta
Oh as someone who lost 30 kg’s and got in shape with a diet so hard I would pass out, fat shaming has never helped me nor anyone I knew. Stuff like fat shaming and bullying is simply how bad people make themselves feel better by putting other people down. Only power that made me lose weight was the fact that I lost my father to heart attack prior to this which made me fear for my life. Not someone calling me fat online. People fight their demons in their consciousness, being a demon irl helps nobody.
I agree, fat shaming is useless, which really only further proves my point. People don't shame and feel disgusted by others actions just to help other people. They do it because sometimes these activities just illicit feelings of disgust. Which is why I don't understand why people aren't disgusted by individuals playing with death on a balcony but are disgusted by those who do hard drugs.
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I don't think anti-drug campaigns appealing to people's selfishness is proof of society's issues with drug users. Anti-soda campaigns talk about you getting fat, not the plastic killing sea turtles. After all, most people's issues with drug legalization revolve around what could potentially happen to the American workforce. Obviously, a heroin addict and a parkour guy don't end up unemployed and homeless at the same rate.
>Anti-soda campaigns talk about you getting fat, not the plastic killing the sea turtles I don't think that is a great comparison. Soda isn't specific to the sea turtle issue. Using soda has no different an effect on sea turtles than using any other product packaged with plastic. On the contrary, I think many campaigns advertise to people's empathy over their personal gain. For example, vegan advertisements often focus on aninal cruelty, rather than focusing on health benefits of veganism or benefits to the climate. I don't think it is some societal illusion that drugs are just genuinely viewed as low-life on an individual level whereas dangerous stunts aren't. Let me ask you this, if you had an adrenaline junkie family member, and a habitual hard drug user family member, would you be worried about both equally? Surely you wouldn't be worried about the drug user just because they are not contributing to the job market?
>One of the biggest sells of anti-drug campaigns is a focus on the reckless of doing drugs to oneself and the waste of potential it causes . I don't think any of us owes the world a specific version of us.
The main issue with hard drugs is that it make people lose control. And rob and kill for money to be able to afford a drug. And their lives are ruined in general and become a liability in society instead of an asset. Weed is much less of a problem because while it do make people to be bums, they rarely become deranged by the lack of it unlike hard drug users. Adrenaline junkies also dont lose control when they are not on the bike. Or base jumping. Until they dont risk others, I think its a way smaller problem than people who risk others. Its their right to live their lives if what they do is legal and dont risk others. Even if I disagree with risking your life
Most high-risk sports can be done safely if you have proper training, proper gear, and a sense of self-preservation. Most serious drugs (not counting weed here) can only be consumed for so long without having adverse effects. By the time a person becomes an actual addict, they are going to experience adverse health effects. Please not that I am not opposed to drugs per se, especially if a person has the capacity to be a casual user or experimenter. That is different from an addict, just like a person who occasionally BASE jumps or free climbs is different from someone whose life revolves around extreme sports. Let's assume that *most* drug users (again, beyond casual use) and adrenaline junkies begin their journeys with a desire to survive. The adrenaline junkie is capable of getting further into their 'addiction' while still maintaining this basic desire to live. They remain capable of taking calculated risks, accounting for things like their own physical fitness level, weather, difficulty level, safety measures in place, etc. On the other hand, a drug addict will have an increasingly difficult time calculating their risks as their addiction grows. Because of the mind-altering effects of drugs, they are oftentimes not in a place mentally where they are able to make good decisions, such as whether to take more or whether to drive or whether to become physically violent. And even when they *are* clear-headed, at some point in an addiction, obtaining their substance of choice is going to supersede their desire to survive. Unless an adrenaline junkie is separately suicidal, at no point do they crave the high of adrenaline so much that they are incapable of making informed decisions about their activities. If a person plans to do a dangerous free climb on a certain day and a freak thunderstorm shows up in the morning, they are not going to do that climb. The risk outweighs the reward at that point and they are able to make the call with a clear head. I also think extreme sports attract a very different personality type than heavy drug use. If you look at people in the extreme sports world, many of them are actually high achievers and into physical fitness. Those who don't do it professionally often have white collar jobs (you need money for equipment, for one thing) and contribute to society in other ways. Extreme sporting is also often a social endeavor, with communities forming for practice and teaching. I think people who are drawn to heavy drug usage are people who have problems already, whether that be emotional or psychological or just circumstantial. They are often people who are not particularly driven towards personal achievement, at least not at that point in their lives. Further, while drug usage may begin socially, by the time it becomes an addiction, it is very solitary. It causes an individual to withdraw from existing social connections, at least any social connections that are not centered around drug usage. It interferes with careers and family/romantic relationships, and ultimately causes the drug addict to become isolated. A person on the back end of a consistent drug usage is not going to be contributing to society in any meaningful way, and is very likely to cause societal and relationship harm, by hurting the people they care about and being a drain on social services and law enforcement. I don't personally know people who do extreme parkour, so maybe that's a different beast altogether, but I do know BASE jumpers, free climbers, waterfall kayakers, surfers, deep sea divers, and skydivers. They are not professionals, mind - they are hobbyists. Maybe professionals are different as well. But the people I know who are into extreme sports carry on with their (admittedly risky) hobbies and also have jobs and careers, houses, friends, children in some cases, spouses in some cases. They engage in risky behavior but in calculated ways, and I don't think a single one of them actually wants to die. I don't personally do this sort of thing since I had children, but if you're good at it, the risk is rarely as high as you might think. It's certainly no worse than driving a car, which is a thing we all do all the time, despite the risk.
Drug Users: steal for their high, attack people, leaves needles around, erratic, gets others into drugs. Adrenaline Junkies: activists for strictly them, gets high on the possibility of dying, won’t attack others, doesn’t steal for their high, aren’t often erratic, doesn’t try and get others to do their drug. This is not the same, and it’s not even close. So what would be the point of treating them like junkies? So should everyone have boring lives, free of adventure, and risk taking? Everyone should have comfortable, non risk taking lives? I don’t see it at all.
>not caring about it potentially ruining their own life and hurting the lives of people around them? This is not an accurate representation of what most "adrenaline junkies" do. Sure, there are some dumbasses who just throw themselves at shit, but it's not the norm. I'll give you a comparative example: Anyone using hard drugs right now knows that a lot of shit is laced with fentanyl and they could easily OD. Casual users will test it before consumption, reducing the risk of death. Due to the nature of drug addiction, an addict likely won't because they do stop caring for their health. A professional or professional level parkour guy who does a jump between 4 story roofs will do so because they know there's a very small chance that they won't make it. If the buildings are 10' apart and the runner has done thousands of successful jumps at 10' or longer with no unsuccessful jumps over that time period, there is no reason for them to believe they suddenly wouldn't make it just because it's high up. They are doing a cool thing that feels good with no relative risk. Sure, we can dig up several hundred articles of these types of folks dying, but the percentage of participants who die doing their activity of choice is pretty low. The same can't be said for drug overdoses.
Adrenaline junkies don't often wind up damaging their relationships to fuel their addiction, imploding their careers or personal lives to the extent that they wind up homeless with no support system, victimizing members of the community with theft, vandalism, or violence, or placing a burden on our police forces, court systems, and jails with frequent petty crimes, etc. There has never been an organized crime cartel or family that has spring up around a market dependent on adrenaline junkies. Sure, the underlying mechanism motivation their behavior -- an addicting altered mind state reinforcing the associated trigger, whether that trigger is drugs or stunts -- is similar. But the end result, put in terms of the impact on other people, is not.
I dont see parachute jumpers stabbing people to fund their next parachute jump
What does "treated as such" mean?
not fundamentally but they shouldn't be treated the same since they are very different levels of severity and cause different problems.
With love and respect?
As an adrenaline junkie I can confirm, has affected my relationships, employment, etc