“Junkie” vs. “Adrenaline Junkie”
The only meaningful difference between a "junkie" and an "adrenaline junkie" stem from how we treat them.
Most people experiment with high adrenaline activities (sky diving, rock climbing, long distance running, skiing/snowboarding, bungee-jumping, racing cars, etc.) at some point in their lives. Many of those people continue to engage in high adrenaline activities recreationally with varying degrees of frequency.
While many of those activities can be quite dangerous and quite expensive, by-and-large, adrenaline users keep the risks and costs in check and use the high adrenaline activities to enhance their enjoyment of life, their mental or physical health, engage with friends, or take a break from the stresses of day-to-day life.
A small percentage of people become obsessed with high adrenaline activities. They may quit or lose their job. They might spend all their money on the high adrenaline activity to the exclusion of comforts that typical people find essential like housing. They might move away from their family and friends and live out of a van or in a cheap and dirty apartment with others who share their adrenaline addiction. It becomes necessary to constantly increase the frequency and intensity of the high adrenaline activities resulting in skyrocketing costs and dramatically increased risk of injury or death.
Sounds a lot like drug use right? Here's the big difference: When someone who's addicted to adrenaline decides that they are done with that lifestyle, we accept them back into society with open arms. We rarely criminalize and arrest adrenaline junkies so they can get jobs and housing whenever they need or want to. They are looked at with awe and curiosity instead of being stigmatized, shunned, and excluded from society.
We need to change the way we look at drugs as a society. Whether you know it or not, you are surrounded by people who use drugs regularly and responsibly to enhance their lives the same way that you are surrounded by people who run marathons, or ski, or skateboard, or compete in tough mudders.
The reason you might not know about the drug users is because we have criminalized drug use and pushed it into the shadows. Your friend who uses cocaine on the weekends to have a good time doesn't post about it on social media the same way as your friend who completed a triathlon. Your friend who takes pills once or twice a week to relax after work doesn't tell you about it at the watercooler the way your friend who drinks scotch does. Your friend who uses psychedelics as a way to experience more from life doesn't get to share details about their experience with you like your friend who goes camping in Yosemite.
The only time you get to see drug users in public is when their use becomes problematic. Can you imagine what you would think about alcohol if everyone hid their drinking from you and the only people you saw were the alcoholics who couldn't stand up at work or the people who drank too much and started fights or vomited on themselves? You'd probably think about it the same way you think about cocaine or methamphetamine.
Can you imagine if we treated bungee jumping like we treat heroin? If in order to bungee jump, you needed to find some criminal to take you out to a bridge somewhere and rig you up the way he was taught on the street with no oversight or regulation or guarantee that the bungee cord had the proper length or elasticity or that your harness would fit correctly. Imagine if people could take a class about heroin. If they could learn what its risks are and how to make it safer. If they could guarantee that what they were buying was at a precise dosage and free of contaminants. Imagine if they could tell their friends and colleagues about it so that if their use became problematic, there was a support system there to help them be more responsible.
It's time to change and I don't think that we can change without bringing responsible drug use out into the open. I'm fortunate to have a career and a family that allow me to speak openly and honestly about these things and I am privileged enough to make the risk of prosecution for discussing such activities lower than it is for many. So I talk about my drug use freely and openly whenever possible and if you are in a position to do so, I hope you will consider talking about your drug use as well.
I use drugs the same way I use rock climbing. I do both activities in such a way that they enhance my life and don't interfere with the things that I need to get done. I do my best to be as safe as possible with both activities and thanks to proper education about both climbing and drugs, I'm extremely good at staying safe.
On very rare occasions I push myself a little too hard at the gym and pull a muscle and on even rarer occasions I drink too much or take more than an optimal dose of a substance and have a hangover the next day. With both my climbing and my drug use, I have not put myself in a position where I feared for my life or feared permanent injury or impairment since I was a teenager. I don't go rock climbing alone and I don't use drugs without someone I know and trust being aware of what substance I'm using and how much.
The biggest risks of my drug use come from supply chain uncertainty and law enforcement; both issues directly related to the criminalization of drugs. There are plenty of extreme sports I won't try and there are plenty of drugs I won't try but those are personal decisions, and they are different for everyone.
When I was younger, I used cocaine nearly every weekend for a year and a half. I set rules for myself and made sure my friends knew to intercede if it became a problem, but I never became addicted. It didn’t ruin my life. I had a lot of fun. And then I got tired of it and stopped. Now I use cocaine once or twice a year, if that, but I’d be willing to bet that if I’d been arrested, and gone to jail, and been treated like an outcast, and lost my job, and couldn’t get another one, my drug use would have very quickly become problematic.
We know how to make skiing and skydiving and mountain biking safer. I'm proposing that we, as a society, learn how to make drugs safer. Sometimes someone is going to ride their bike into a tree or get hit by a car and there isn't much we can do about that but aren't you glad that cyclists have helmets, and reflectors, and bike lights at their disposal? Aren't you glad that if a skier injures themselves, they don't have to debate whether or not to seek medical attention for fear of being arrested? Aren’t you glad that if a ski-bum decides to give up that lifestyle and get a job at a bank or a school or a restaurant, their criminal record showing up on a background check won’t be an impediment?
If you are reading this and you are in any way unsure or uneasy about the decriminalization of drugs - ALL drugs, not just the "soft drugs" - please discuss it in the comments. I hope that together, we can make the world a better, safer place for everyone.
If you’ve read all this and you agree but you’re not in a position to speak up publicly about your drug use, perhaps you’ll consider donating to Students for Sensible Drug Policy instead. Betty Aldworth, Stacia Cosner, Lauren Padgett, Katie Stone, and dozens of other wonderful and dedicated people help run this amazing organization with hundreds of chapters on college campuses in more than 26 countries around the world. They are educating the next generation of people who will make the policy changes that I’m talking about here a reality.