Didn’t intend to suggest they were the same, only that people don’t find being sober depressing and unbearable after experiencing an altered state of consciousness once. People get “high” at the doctor’s or dentist all the time and the risk of addiction from that is all but non-existent, but if someone seeks out the same drug outside a hospital setting the risk of addiction is much higher. Why? Because drugs don’t make people addicted, they keep people addicted. People become addicted when they begin to use drugs as a maladaptive coping mechanism (typically for mental illness or environmental factors, i.e. poverty), and only then does the chemical component of addiction come into play.
Didn’t intend to suggest they were the same, only that people don’t find being sober depressing and unbearable after experiencing an altered state of consciousness once. People get “high” at the doctor’s or dentist all the time and the risk of addiction from that is all but non-existent, but if someone seeks out the same drug outside a hospital setting the risk of addiction is much higher. Why? Because drugs don’t make people addicted, they keep people addicted. People become addicted when they begin to use drugs as a maladaptive coping mechanism (typically for mental illness or environmental factors, i.e. poverty), and only then does the chemical component of addiction come into play.