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Prismattic comments on Should I play World of Warcraft? - Less Wrong Discussion

12 Post author: PhilGoetz 07 October 2011 04:25AM

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Comment author: Prismattic 08 October 2011 01:18:35AM 3 points [-]

I'm mildly curious (but not quite enough to go spend 20 minutes doing web research) how much of cocaine's harmfulness is intrinsic and how much is due to the fact that the underground nature of its production means it is often cut with rat poison and the like.

Many people on LW seem to think highly of caffeine and nicotine, both of which are also addictive stimulants, but which differ from cocaine in being legal and therefore normally produced in a "safe" form.

Comment author: arundelo 08 October 2011 02:59:40AM *  3 points [-]

Anecdote! -- George H. Smith (author of Atheism: The Case Against God) talks about his experiences with cocaine (generally positive) and heroin (generally negative) in several posts here and several email messages (quoted by another user) here. He used it "on a regular basis for nearly 15 years".

A few quotes:

[...] my years of cocaine use were the most productive, intellectually and financially, of my life.

With cocaine, this problem [of knowing when to stop] is exacerbated by its illegality, which means you have to use a product that has been cut many times -- sometimes with a benign substance like baby laxative but more often with something to give it a punch, especially "crank" (i.e., speed).

To this day I remain convinced that if I had been living in a civilized country and been able to go into a drug store and purchase valium (or something similar) over the counter, I would never have touched heroin.

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