You seem to see this oppositely than I. I see those unfortunates who succumb as failures in the art of indulgence. When I see a man with a snifter of brandy, I don't think that he must have narrowly avoided the inevitable descent into spousal abuse and cardboard housing.
But it is the same ethanol.
I know doctors, engineers, scientists and managers who covet their occasional relaxation into the arms of morphious.
I think it odd that we go to those most successful in sports, business and the arts in order to gain insight into their craft but inevitably seek the failures in the craft of opiate use for their wisdom.
I don't ask a fallen lottery winner how to manage my money and I don't ask an alcoholic how to drink.
In my opinion, all drugs fall upon a spectrum where one side is detriment and danger and the other is reward and benefit. Hallucinogens seem to be on the far right, opiates on the left but neither is deterministic.
doctors, engineers and scientists aren't poor people living hand to mouth, just waiting for a problem to destroy what little lives they have...
i don't really idolize athletes, or business people, and while i admire most good artists, i still don't seek their opinions about anything except the field of art they excel in. they're opinions about society, politics, natural science...all no more valid than anyone else's....i know that just as many, if not more people ruin their lives with alcohol as with heroin, but it usually takes a good bit longer, and they're usually better at covering it up till it gets extreme, so it's harder to follow their descent than with most heroin or meth addicts, whose descents into hell are usually much more rapid and dramatic...
you may be one of those rare individuals who can indulge, then step back, but just because you can, does not mean everyone can, it doesn't even mean that many can...it just means that you've been able to, so far...there are people out there that shouldn't indulge in anything, they barely have the mental acuity and willpower to make it through a day totally straight, and those are the ones who self destruct, usually in a messy, splattering those around them with shit way