As I’m sure you can all imagine, this topic has crossed my mind several times over the last month, especially with another situation adding a lot to it. It’s the ethics behind the use and abuse of substances.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with experimenting (just so long as its done safely) and I’m also not opposed to the responsible recreational use of drugs. I think they should be treated the same as alcohol.

It’s also generally considered acceptable, or at least excusable, and definitely laughable when a 21 year old gets drunk and pukes all over himself (I probably wouldn’t find it funny if it was a woman who puked all over herself, but that’s due to some residual chauvinism). If it’s a 30 year old doing that, then its a bit embarrassing, since it’s expected that by that point you should know your limits and by 40 there really is no excuse.

After the initial experimentation, you should know your limits and keep the use of substances recreational. I don’t care if it’s drinking beer, smoking a joint, or snorting lines of coke, if you don’t make an ass of yourself more than a few times a year, don’t alienate your friends and family, don’t neglect your children, and don’t fuck up your job, then have fun. If on the other hand, you’re making an ass out of yourself routinely, alienating your friends and family, neglecting your children, putting your job in jeopardy, or getting yourself into legal trouble, then you have a problem and you need to get it under control or, if you can’t control it, just don’t don’t do it.

Risk is inherent in life. Every time we go out in public there is a risk of being the victim of violence, every time you travel there is a risk of an accident, heck, every time you eat or drink something there is a risk of contamination. We should all live life mitigating the risks associated with the activities we engage in. The reason for this and the reason that I would insist that it is ethically imperative is due to the risk of emotional harm it can bring to your loved ones if you die. Of course if you have people who are depending on you for their survival or wellbeing, such as children, then the amount of acceptable risk is drastically lower.

Reasonable people wear seatbelts while they drive and helmets while riding motorcycles, ATVs, skiing, snowboarding, and doing other high speed activities with your head exposed to minimize the risk of an accident being fatal. The same could be said for wearing condoms, especially if you’re in a group that’s at increased risk of contracting HIV or your partner(s) falls in one of those groups (i.e. gay men, people who live in certain areas, etc). By the same token, reasonable people who engage in the recreational use alcohol or other drugs do so in a way that minimizes the risk of harm or death and keep the impact it has on friends and family as close to zero as possible. This would include not doing certain drugs due to an unacceptable risk of overdose and certain people staying away from substances that most people can handle (if that’s not clear, stay away from dope and alcoholics should no’t drink).

Where I hesitate on this and would appreciate some feedback, is if the ethical objection to self destructive behavior is the emotional harm it can cause loved ones, where do you draw the line?

A lot of families will use emotional blackmail to try to get an atheist or LGBT family member to change, unfortunately they show gross ignorance of how people work, but in most cases the believing family member does this out of genuine love and with the best of intentions. They think we are risking hellfire or at the very least will make it so that they will have to spend eternity without us. Just like how it’s painful to fear the loss of a loved one due to substance abuse, they fear our actions will make them lose us. They may try to say it’s about their concern for what they think you have lost, but it’s not, it’s all about the eternity with you they think they’ve lost.

From my viewpoint, the risk of an eternity in hell is exactly zero. One thing about not growing up with any concept so grotesque, is that the concept is pretty unfathomable. I also view the risk of a loved one having to spend an eternity without me as being as close to zero as possible without actually being zero, about where I would place the risk of dying by being gored by a flying unicorn ridden by a leprechaun-sasquatch hybrid (damn, that would make a cool tee-shirt).

So while I think there’s no risk of them losing anything with me, they think there’s little hope of not losing an eternity with me. Objectively, there’s a huge difference here since there is a lot of empirical data about the danger of substance abuse, while there’s no empirical data to support even the plausibility of an afterlife. Unfortunately, we’re not talking about objective motivations here, we’re talking about emotional pain.

Now that I’ve completely destroyed the point I was trying to make, allow me to salvage it. Don’t be a dick and do something that will cause your loved ones to have a reasonable chance of spending the rest of their lives with out. Warn the self destructive people you care about of the risks of their actions, then warn them again if they don’t get the message, then shut the fuck up and let them live their lives. If it’s too painful for you then don’t go out of your way to spend time with that person.

You also need to cut those who love you a little slack the first few times they try to “save” you from your sinful ways, but if they don’t stop then tell them to shut the fuck up. Just don’t turn around and be the asshole that spends Christmas dinner at your religious parent’s house lecturing about how there was no historical Jesus.