How do you define a "Hard drug?"

I'm interested to know what most people's idea of a "Hard drug" is. I'd like it if everyone gave some kind of response to this question as it's a matter of some curiosity to me, the attitude of others towards them, and I'd like to see if there's a general consensus of belief among non-drug users as to the nature of "hard drugs." Say, for instance, is cocaine a hard drug in your books? Is a drug "hard" simply by being a synthesised substance as opposed to a naturally occuring substance? Are there, in your opinion, varying degrees of hardness? Do you believe that people should be allowed to make informed choices regarding their own personal use of "hard" drugs? Should anyone at all be allowed to consume what you would class "hard" drugs? Is it morally indefensible to consume "hard" drugs? Don't restrict your responses to the questions raised here, i'd like to hear anything you have to say on the subject.

Antihistamines are hardcore. No, im not joking.

I really wouldn't bring this up on a forum. Religion and drugs threads bring about the most inflammation. A good example of this is here: http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14684&perpage=30&pagenumber=2

It also happened on the Phobos lab forums, which I ditched after about 10 posts because of the large proportions of morons.

Ah, right. Well I haven't been on here for too ages, so i'm unaware of the present climate for such discussion. Having said this I stopped coming on round about the point that things began to get into a sorry state, arguments became pedantic and pissy at times. Still, I would genuinely like some reasoned response to this question, particularly as I have recently experimented with ecstacy and Amphetamines. I don't say this to inflame people (although I know it may), but rather to point out that I regard myself as a (sort of) well-adjusted person who has tried and enjoyed these so-called "hard" drugs, and I'd like to see what other well-adjusted (sort of) people think of these drugs. Please don't just rip the piss out of me or simply rebuff outright though.

Appoloies and understanding if the moderator regards this as an ill-advised discussion however.

It's a pretty dodgy topic, given that this stuff is illegal in most countries. However, I'll let this thread live as long as the discussion stays calm and sensible, and no one is encouraging anyone else to break any laws or whatnot. From past experience, that probably won't be very long though.

A hard drug is one that can kill you without using "too much", like pot or LSD, they can't cause an O.D.. I think that alcohol is a hard drug too. All I do now is pretty much smoke cigarettes and weed, I gave up the other shit.

I myself am inclined to class acid as a hard drug because of the risk of a serious headfuck that comes with it. The idea that you can permanentley mangle your brain of just one trip makes me regard this drug with a fairly long pointy stick. And people I've asked told me that it "stayed with" them, and I'm not particularly fond of any drug that could permanently alter your perception of reality, even just a bit. Having said this, if I'd known the exact symptoms of a speed comedown I may well have stayed away from that. It was messy man!

Personally to me hard drugs can not be found in nature and can not be obtained even through a legal prescription. This shortens the list of the drugs which are considered to be hard dramatically and 'pays respect' to the ones which are. I will admit this isn't a perfect method of classification since many 'users', including me, can argue that a single 80mg Oxycontin pill is stronger than a bag of heroin, therefore making it more 'hardcore'. There's also a circle of fear and worry surrounding hard drugs that soft drugs do not have.

Hard drugs have a reputation where if you even say their name in the wrong place you will find yourself with a foot up your ass. Like the much respected God, if you utter his name without the proper reason you are committing a sin. This of course creates a filter for the type of people that use hard drugs. I look at drug users not as people who have a week will or have a 'disease' but as people who are adventurous and daring enough to cross the boundary today's society put on us. What hides behind that boundary is the gift we get for crossing it. This is something that unites us and gives us the ability have fun and enjoy what everyone should have a right to feel.

Drug addicts in my opinion are the people that crossed the boundary and went far too deep to find a way back. Although they aren't living by the rules and regulations of others they should set rules up for themselves. If they would have done that and respected what they dealt with I don't think they would have built the situation around them. I don't know what else to say about them, you get what you deserve.

I believe everyone has a right to their own body, I believe that if you are doing something that might be inflicting damage to it, that this should be punishment for doing it in the first place. I don't see why people should have the right to punish you when in their opinion you are already causing hurt to yourself. I don't see any reasoning behind this what so ever and it just comes off hypocritical in my eyes. Anyway, that's all I have to say for now.

EDIT: BTW DID J00 MISS MY DRUG RANTZ?!

Easy. They are hard when they aren't chewable.

nxn said:

I believe everyone has a right to their own body, I believe that if you are doing something that might be inflicting damage to it, that this should be punishment for doing it in the first place.

i agree completely, and am completely in favor of someone's right to use drugs, although i refuse to and probably will continue to refuse to use them myself.

myk said:

Easy. They are hard when they aren't chewable.

Occam's razor prevails yet again.

Mithrandir said:

I myself am inclined to class acid as a hard drug because of the risk of a serious headfuck that comes with it... ...if I'd known the exact symptoms of a speed comedown I may well have stayed away from that. It was messy man!

I'd certainly agree. I don't really get ecstacy or speed comedowns, apart from a certain mental blankness for the rest of the day, but nothing I've ever taken comes close to psilocybin mushrooms. I noted a completely different pattern in the way I was thinking, and I'd get to the conclusion of a train of thought much faster.

The physical stuff was just as amazing - my perception of time would quite dramatically speed up and slow down, and the visuals were unlike anything I'd ever seen. Neon blue trails following movement, and walls washing down a different colour with each beat of the music, like a hundered tubs of paint were tipped over from the roof at once. However, I could feel insanity biting my heels pretty much all the way through, which was a little disconcerting... I felt if I either just let go or tried to hold control a little too much, either way I'd end up temporarily insane.
One of my two friends present had started babbling about suicide at the start of the night, which wasn't exactly pleasant... He had a very insecure, nervous and extremely paranoid disposition though, and people like that should _always_ stay away from drugs. He levelled out in the end though, and we all had an utterly engrossing conversation with everything flowing so freely we were literally finishing eachothers sentences often.

So yeah, I'd class it and LSD along with heroin, as hard drugs and although probably the best drug experience I've had, I haven't done it since and wouldn't do it again.

Son nxn,would you class acid as harder than 'shrooms even though they are of a similar nature? And (a pragmatic point)would you say that a a disdainful attitude towards harder drugs is symptomatic of or an intrinsic attribute of hard drugs?

Yeah, insecurity with regards to my own mental state is the main thing stopping me from doing hallucinogenics. I think too much basically, too much shit going on in my head, although recently I have begun to reconcile it all and feel a lot better about the way I am. And this process began after I took ecstacy for the first time. That drug did two things for me: 1) It reminde me what it is to be happy and love everyone and everything for no reason at all, and 2) It sorted my spine out. No shit.
Oh, and although the comedown immediately after speed was messy, It was certainly one of the best experiences I've ever had. It was just such an enjoyable mess with my perception, and I thought I was a complete Pro, my confidence was up there man. I'd like to detail it but that's coz i've drunk a lot of coffee and I don't drink it much. Buzzin'.

Oh, by-the-by ToXiCFLUFF, are you sure you don't get comedowns? I mean do you think maybe they just integrate themselves into the fabric of your normal life that you don't notice them? I say this because a couple of days after the speed and pillz session I actually was coming down, my serotonin was completely drained. I felt thirteen again for days. Deftones never sounded so good. Anyway, at the time i was convinced that it was other things bringing me down (I scapegoated girl-trouble at the time), and it was only a few days later that i realised the truth because it just felt so much like I was in a depressed state for a 'good reason' not just a clinical thing.

Mithrandir said:

Son nxn,would you class acid as harder than 'shrooms even though they are of a similar nature? And (a pragmatic point)would you say that a a disdainful attitude towards harder drugs is symptomatic of or an intrinsic attribute of hard drugs?

Like I said before I don't consider drugs found in nature to be hard drugs. Besides that real acid should be a lot stronger than shrooms are, although this generally isn't the case here. Also LSD has that "hard drug fear™" around it, not a lot of people would want to do it even though the same people wouldn't have a problem with doing shrooms.

The only one attribute of hard drugs that cause them to be what they are is the fear and worry that follows them which is probably caused by examples of addicts and permafried LSD heads. Drugs you can get with a prescription might have their own examples of people who got lost in them, but their existence is still justified because of their medical uses. There is no reason for coke, ecstasy, or heroin to exist other than to get high on.

Mithrandir said:

And this process began after I took ecstacy for the first time. That drug did two things for me: 1) It reminde me what it is to be happy and love everyone and everything for no reason at all, and 2) It sorted my spine out. No shit.

Ecstacy really did quite a bit for me too. I tried it one night, and then had more of it 12 hours later just before a gig. I'd always been really shy as a kid, but on ecstacy I was able to approach perfect strangers comfortably, without nerves or unease for the first time. And after that, I kind of reflected upon the experience and decided to try and emulate that kind of approach to, well, approaching and interacting with new people without any narcotic influence. After about 3 months of constantly pushing myself to an almost unpleasant degree to overcome general insecurity in that area I was able to be present comfortably in groups or with strangers. The drugs didn't have much directly to do with this, but they kind of planted the notion, which then slowly gestated in my mind.


//Edit: Well this is ironic*:

Mithrandir said:

Oh, by-the-by ToXiCFLUFF, are you sure you don't get comedowns? I mean do you think maybe they just integrate themselves into the fabric of your normal life that you don't notice them? I say this because a couple of days after the speed and pillz session I actually was coming down, my serotonin was completely drained. I felt thirteen again for days. Deftones never sounded so good. Anyway, at the time i was convinced that it was other things bringing me down (I scapegoated girl-trouble at the time), and it was only a few days later that i realised the truth because it just felt so much like I was in a depressed state for a 'good reason' not just a clinical thing.

One note here, try to avoid multiple posts and use edit if possible - just saves the mods some work.*

Anyway, as for comedowns, physically I feel exhausted (which doesn't bother me so much) and mentally I just feel fairly blank, like I just can't think at full capacity. No periods of depression or low spirits afterwards, although my ex-girlfriend gets them for about 5 days after.

Grr. I just had to double post after saying that, didn't I :)

I blame multiple windows open with the same thing and the fact that it's 5:35 am. It's better than holding myself accountable for my own stupidity. In fact - in the spirit of the current psychological zeitgeist - I blame my parents.

ROFL!! I saw that =]

nxn said:

ROFL!! I saw that =]

Damnit, I tried to sew it all up real quick.

Yeah by the time I hit the quote button to try and post "oh sweet irony" you already edited it.

I guess I consider crack, cocaine, heroin, LSD, Acid as hard drugs. Prolly others, but I can't think of them at this moment. And I think of Heroin to be the worst.

:D
Aye, I just didn't want to make an extravagantly long post in the hopes that people would read several broken up. heh. Yeah, the "planted the notion" thing is how its working with me now, gradually. Five days? Nasty! She has my good wishes and respect for being able to handle that. Although the worst comedown I have ever witnessed was a cockney friend of mine. As the evening was winding down, about seven a.m. i think, he finally polished off the remnants of the speed that had been left to him by my other friends. That is to say, over the course of about twelve hoursm he had something in the region of 21 lines. Twenty-one. Shit, I even called my dad up to come pay us a visit when we moved on to my mates house the next day, to give him some friendly advice as to how to handle it. Thing is, we thought he was on the mend so we fed him a few bongs, disregarding the advice given to us by my dad, and... um his head wasn't straight for a couple of days afterwaards. It was a bit scary, but he and the rest of us learnt from that. Paranoid delusions didn't look fun. Sixteen bongs in a row just to get to sleep certainly was though.
I find the idea that a drug is only hard as long as society as a whole (however that may be defined) regards it as such rather interesting. I don't think I've ever thought of it quite like that before. I think personally though I still retain some idea of absolouteness as regards the nature of hard drugs, i.e. crack is hard (but not to say un-touchable); perhaps If you'd put this to me before the E-xperience I would have assimilated this view as a sensible way of looking at things, but now I fear as a symptom of trying to sort my head out I have begun to regard the world less-and-less as a sphere of relativity. Viewing the worls in such a manner certainly is good for exercising your brain, but after a while... I'm willing to trade that for a nice snug bed deep within the rabbits fur, to be assertive in my internal dialogues. At least it means I have some platform of stability to ground my observations in. This is why I sometimes envy fundamentalists and thugs. They have such firmly grounded convictions that it all becomes much simpler, Life is a fluid stream but with a discernible course and workings. I'd like that.

[EDIT] Shit, I don't half bang on. That wasn't intended to be spamming, I swear! [/EDIT]

Mithrandir said:

I myself am inclined to class acid as a hard drug because of the risk of a serious headfuck that comes with it. The idea that you can permanentley mangle your brain of just one trip makes me regard this drug with a fairly long pointy stick.

I heard that that was a hoax. I know a few people through some message boards who are experienced with this drug. They say that there's no way that you can fuck your head permanantly up using Acid. Their stories were great by the way. Some of them had 'level 5' experiences.

Hellbent said:
I guess I consider crack, cocaine, heroin, LSD, Acid as hard drugs. Prolly others, but I can't think of them at this moment.

That's the same.

I dunno, I consider hard drugs anyhting life threatening. Coincidentaly, its the same stuff I have no desire to try. :) I say stuff like weed, cigs, cloves, other tobacco products, and aspirin are 'soft' drugs. Stuff like heroin, oxycontin, morphine, other opiates, cocaine, and PCP would be hard drugs. In an intermediate category would be stuff like LSD, alcohol, and ecstacy. Might not make much sesne, but oh well.

Disorder said:

I heard that that was a hoax. I know a few people through some message boards who are experienced with this drug. They say that there's no way that you can fuck your head permanantly up using Acid. Their stories were great by the way. Some of them had 'level 5' experiences.

Heh...I once said to my dad "I thought LSD stayed in your spinal cord and caused you to have flshbacks". My dad said "Thats a load of crap. I've done it plenty of times and I've never had a flashback. Hell, in the Navy, thats their drug of choice because it leaves the system so fast. Its always out of their systems by the time they take a piss test."

So yeah, thats what I know about it. :P

:D Heh, well I do know a couple of people who got head-fucked on acid. Though they aren't 'permanently' screwed I suppose - the first recovered after a year and now he is taking it again. The other one... The jury's still out after two years. Granted, it wasnt acid, it was shrooms plus about five other drugs at the same time. He blew his fucking head open. He's in the looney-bin right now, and he listens to a lot of Hardcore rave. That's what a bad experience does to you, kids. Aceeeeeeed!
Disorder, Could you ask for me, or send me somewhere I might ask questions regarding the after-effects of acid? only people have told me that it "stays with you" and I'd really like to check that out - it's basically the reason for classing it as hard in my mind. Oh yeah, flashbacks do occour, not with every body, but my mum only tried it once and she had powerful flashbacks for a few months afterwards. Shitty thing is, some guy slipped it in her drink then as she was beginning to trip declared hs absolute love and immediate intentions... not good trip material.

Mithrandir said:

Disorder, Could you ask for me, or send me somewhere I might ask questions regarding the after-effects of acid? only people have told me that it "stays with you" and I'd really like to check that out - it's basically the reason for classing it as hard in my mind.

You could try asking here or here.

i consider hard drugs to be drugs i wouldn't do.

i never want to be a meth addict, a crack head, a huffer, or any of those seriously fucked up people.

i wouldn't mind being a stoner but i don't enjoy smoking weed. i love magic mushrooms tho, and i'd like to try LSD but i want to be very very careful about it.

I'll rank all the drugs that I personally did from most to least hardcore, I wont rank others because I don't have a firm clue of what they're realy like:

-Crack 2/10
-Duster 3/10
-Nitrous 3/10
-Molly (ecstasy and god knows what else) 14/10
-LSD 8/10
-DXM (everyone of you probably had this in your system at one point or another) 7/10
-Ecstasy 10/10
-Heroin 9/10
-Oxycontin 8.5/10
-Cocaine 8/10
-Alcohol (to put some perspective on the rankings) 6/10
-Xanax 6/10
-Vicodin 4/10
-Adderall 5/10
-Weed 7/10

EDIT: Ranked all the drugs on a 10 level scale of enjoyment.