GuitarBizarre

Pink Floyd were great without, with, and without Waters. Irrelevant comparison.

As for Amy, eh. Her music never appealed to me. Sad that she died but as others have said, entirely expected.

Someone earlier made mention of drugs being "by definition" something that changes your priorities. I'd like to quote Zappa here. "A drug is not evil, a drug is a chemical compound. The problem starts when people treat that chemical compound as an excuse to act like an *******."

I personally agree with Zappa. I've seen both sides of the coin here too. I've never once found that I can't control myself while drunk or on a substance, certainly not to a degree that has me make decisions entirely against my personality. I've also never found that a substance, even if its been the best time in the world, has been something good enough for me to actively seek out a repeat of the experience. That may just be my personality. I've been told a lot that I have good self control and strong will.

On the flipside, I've had friends with drink and drug problems, one friend in particular has had both. He has a very addictive personality and becomes very into things. And yet despite this he has now twice developed an excessive, damaging mental reliance on substances or alcohol, and yet both times he has been perfectly capable of going cold turkey on them. The alcohol experience was the more serious. He asked me to make sure I told him if he was going off the rails. I said that I was telling him (And I meant it. he was drinking to excess almost every time I spoke to him in the months beforehand). He didn't drink for six months. cold turkey, no planning.

I don't think there's a catchall, some people have terrible self control, but those people in my experience are usually crazy sober, they just stop trying to hide it when they're drunk. people who have substance problems but who are fine when sober, in my experience have always been capable of stopping themselves, usually without a great deal of help. I'm most certainly not saying situations don't exist where a persons self control is compromised by a drug, by all accounts cocaines effects include a voracious appetite for more cocaine, as a primary effect, but by and large I've found that most drugs people tend to take are not so insidious as to remove your abilities to make rational decisions, at least, certainly not until the point of being blasted out of your mind, and even then, the effect is not a total loss of control, its a weakening of it.

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