++ [ originally posted by swag ] ++
It's the priest giving marital advice problem. So I definitely agree on the value of the "experimentalist" viewpoint.
But by the same token, giving in to peer pressure/expectations or temptation (for things you know won't end up being good for you in the end, like a bad girlfriend on crack) doesn't really take much courage at all... Nobody takes up smoking cigarettes, for example, because they want to come to where the flavor is.
So I wouldn't necessarily say it takes a better person per se. Just maybe a more learned person who managed to through that themselves and gained some wisdom in the process. They found a way to correct their mistakes while others perhaps avoided them in the first place.
Perhaps
better wasnt the right term for it.
Thats kinda what I mean though, people take up things like drugs for different reasons, its there choice and no-one really has the right to condemn them for that, of course it tends to end bad alot of the time. It just annoys me so many people believe they are right on the issue of drugs, that all people on them are weak people. Alot of people are merely in it for an experience, something new, you cant blame people for that it just happens that drugs have to be one of the more addictive substances you can try which is where the problem is. No-one geninely wants to be a drug-addict, but its something thats incredible hard to get off, and instead of help that alot need most people are too quick and too willing to say "well, its there own fault, let them get out of it themselves".
All I am really trying to say is that, is so easy to judge someone who has taken drugs, when you dont know how hard it is to stop doing it once you start, until you do, whilst of course your still entitled to an opinion just to reconise at least that you can only see your side and try to put yourself in someone else's shoes.