Why do people use drugs? After all, the fact that drugs do not actually provide any sort of lasting comfort or relief should give people a feeling of “whatever” about them. Why would any person want to just experience a feeling of bliss, or relaxation, or any of the myriad other feelings that the various drugs of the world temporarily provide, when the effect is at best just a temporary one? The answers might be as many and varied as the different people who use the drugs themselves are, but the effect seems to be about the same. Every person who uses a drug for recreational use is doing so for a feeling.

While this could turn into a Sesame Street lecture about how feelings are real and drugs just give a person a false sense of feeling, this will not be the case here. Those kinds of lectures typically fall on deaf ears and blind eyes, because people really do not want to hear that crap. But there is some wisdom in the notion of wanting to feel something, and seeking it out. Would it or would it not be logical that if a particular drug gives you a feeling that you want, you should take it?

While the logic is consistent about drugs and feelings, the application of recreational drug use is far from ideal. For one thing, the feelings that most drugs produce are shallow and disorienting. In the moment, this can feel incredible – but trying to adapt back into reality, after purposefully skewing the reality in which you live, can be a very difficult task indeed. And naturally, once a person gets into the habit of being out of it, there becomes less and less motivation to stay in our version of reality for any length of time.