Athletic doping should be legalized, even encouraged, and athletes should be sponsored by the pharmaceutical company that made the drugs they take. This isn’t any different from sponsorship by Adidas/Nike, Underarmour, and pretty much everything in autoracing. Likewise for cognitive enhancers; it could be useful for students to know what supplements their professors take. (The coffee stains on my shirts already provide this function for my students.)
Prescription meds are a roll of the dice even after regulation, testing, and oversight. Recreational drugs formulated by an illegal lab and sold by a dealer who cares nothing for your welfare are always going to be riskier. You have no way of knowing what dosage you’re getting, what it’s been cut with, or even what it actually is. I’m saying this as an advocate of legalization. Psychedelics can be very rewarding, but they are risky stuff. If you’re afraid of Prozac, you should run screaming from LSD.
It seems like you’re basing your opinions mainly on anecdotal evidence, so here’s another anecdote: I have been on various psychoactive medicines for decades and I’ve never had much trouble with them. They’re not a cure-all, but they make things better for me with few side effects. Yes, there are risks with anything, but avoiding treatment for real problems because the treatment might not help is not a good idea.
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Why? We endanger athletes too much as it is.
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Because they do it anyway, at least if it is legalized it can be regulated. Plus, it will make it easier to know which drugs are better.
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[quote=“PhasmaFelis, post:23, topic:87109”]
Recreational drugs formulated by an illegal lab
[/quote]Well if you read my various posts on here i’ve repeatedly mentioned that my interest in this research is potential pharmaceutical versions of this microdosing. Not some toolshed brew. Again, my previous posts are all pretty clear on my interest on this topic.
Indeed. It’s not about mental health (which some thing might be a key use for these sorts of drugs), but about making better workers. There is a long history of things being presented for mental health and really being about labor, for example see this book.
It’s the struggle of the MEANING of these drugs that we should attend to, I think.
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Okay. Everything else still applies. The fact that you haven’t heard negative anecdotes about microdose psychedelics does not mean that they’re safer; it means that they’re less used and less understood. As long as you’re aware of the risks and take the proper precautions, then by all means try it, share your results (Erowid is a great place for this), and contribute to human knowledge. But please don’t deceive yourself into deciding in advance that it’s perfectly safe–or even that, if it’s safe for you, it must be safe for others. You already know that drugs like Prozac work great for some people and are harmful for others.
So what about athletes who want to compete without destroying their bodies with steroids, etc.? We just tell them to shoot up or GTFO?
Are there any? Anyway, I’m not advocating for mandatory doping of athletes.
PS: lighten up.
[quote=“d_r, post:30, topic:87109”]
Are there any?[/quote]
I’d say they’re the majority. Every time a big doping scandal breaks, everyone, including the guys who stayed clean, says that once several top competitors are doping, you have to start it you want to be able to compete with them, or else choose to sacrifice your career potential to stay clean. In the Lance Armstrong case, he bullied his teammates into doping; they felt they had to comply to stay on the team.
You are, though. If doping is legal and accepted, no one will sign an athlete who doesn’t dope, any more than they’d sign an athlete who doesn’t turn up for practice.
I haven’t said anything nasty. If you don’t want to have a discussion, don’t post in the discussion.
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[quote=“PhasmaFelis, post:31, topic:87109, full:true”]
Every time a big doping scandal breaks, everyone, including the guys who stayed clean, says that once several top competitors are doping, you have to start it you want to be able to compete with them, or else choose to sacrifice your career potential to stay clean. In the Lance Armstrong case, he bullied his teammates into doping; they felt they had to comply to stay on the team.[/quote]
Hence my question; this bird has evidently flown.
While I do agree with the idea in my initial post, I threw it out lightly, and have no interest in a heavy discussion of ethics in professional athletics. I have enough trouble deciding whether to allow my students to use slide rules in their exam on Friday.
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