If mind-altering substances are your thing, you鈥檙e spoiled for choice. Besides marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, LSD and mushrooms, a growing 鈥渓ong tail鈥� of chemicals toast your oats in every conceivable way.
There鈥檚 a reason why drugs have a reputation for being bad for you: they are. Yet at least 160 million people (and possibly twice as many) indulge at least once every year. So if you fancy a trip to an altered state, how best to get away with it?
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The answer depends on what you mean by 鈥済etting away with it鈥�. You can鈥檛 guarantee a safe experience. But an informed choice can give you the best chance of avoiding potential harm.
Double trouble
Drug harms fall into two broad categories: those that affect you, and those that affect others. The personal ones include death, health problems (including mental health), accidents, addiction, relationship breakdown and legal trouble. Harms to other people include violence, financial problems, crime and environmental damage 鈥� both at home and where the drugs are produced.
One rule of thumb is that risks become more serious with repeated use. Take addiction, for example. According to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, it can take only 鈥渁 few鈥� uses of a drug to become addicted to it, although the potential for addiction varies between drugs and people. Putting firm numbers on this is difficult, but a study published in 2005 found that among a large cohort of people who tried cocaine for the first time, two years later.
Perhaps the best guide to the harms comes from the UK鈥檚 Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ISCD), which . It found the most harmful illicit drug to be heroin, with an overall rating of 55 out of 100, with crack cocaine on 54 (see diagram). LSD and magic mushrooms are among the least harmful, and also carry the lowest risk of dependence.
Mixing drugs amplifies the risks. Taking cocaine with amphetamines or ecstasy, for example, raises the risk of acute toxicity over and above the sum of their parts. This also extends to nicotine.
And of course, most of these drugs are illegal in many places. As well as the potential for falling foul of the law, users often can鈥檛 be sure what they are taking. Some nightclubs offer a testing service to analyse the contents of party pills, but on the whole the only聽鈥済uarantee鈥� is the word of the drug dealer.
When it comes to the benefit side of the equation, the picture is even less clear. Nobody has yet done an analysis taking into account the pleasure, fun and adventure that people seek when they take drugs.
All told, you might conclude that trying to get away with taking drugs isn鈥檛 worth the risk. If so, this would also rule out a widely consumed and enjoyed substance that the ISCD rated as the most harmful drug of all: alcohol.
Read more: 鈥�Guilty pleasures: Which bad habits can you get away with?鈥�
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淕etting away with drugs鈥�
