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READ THIS-illigal substance use

Thread Status: Hello , There was no answer in this thread for more than 60 days.
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aahunt03

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Jul 10, 2004
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Just read the thread on illigal substances and drug use while diving. I was outraged. I had to let myself cool down before writing this. For everyone who thinks that drugs are okay, they are not. No matter what all of your friends say, they are not okay. I nearly lost many people who I love to drugs, and it is not funny. I am in the United States Navy, and am proud to say that I am. Here, we have a Zero Tolerance Policy, and all are regurlarly tested. If you show positive on a drug test, no if's and's or but's, you are given a dishonorable discharge. That means you cant even get a job at Mcdonalds! Drugs are serious. They are no joke. You may think you are invinsible, but the fact is you are not. People die everyday because of drugs, wheather it is because of an overdode, a mix of drugs and alchocall, or due to prolonged usage. It is not worth it. Now a days, (not to sound old, only 19) the way drugs are made can mean the difference between life or death. Wheather it is a one time experimental thing, or you have used drugs over the years. DO NOT USE DRUGS OR ILLIGAL SUBSTANCES! I will have to say that 90% of the people who read this will agree with me. If you dont, I dont care, you are wrong. Drugs kill you. Never mix somthing that will impair your ability to think while preforming a dangerous activity, you can kill or injure yourself and others.

That is all I have to say.
 
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Yeah i agree drugs are bad, and should never be mixed with activities such as driving, but i get frustrated when people focus on illegal drugs, when the "legal drugs" are so often ignored. Look at the statistics, tobacco alone kills 390000 people a year, and alcohol kills around 80000 a year, not inlcuding road accidents attributed to this, in the US alone. If you compare that to ALL illegal drug deaths combined, (around 4500), its staggering.

Tobacco kills more people each year than all of the people killed by all of the illegal drugs in the last one hundred years, thats a fact.

Heres another fact: There has never been a recorded death due to marijuana at any time in US history.

I think lots of people have had positive drug experiences too. Getting invloved with drugs can lead to numerous.
 
I refrained from giving my opinion on the other thread because of some heated debate but I feel that I must say my piece here:
Firstly as has been said, any form of drugs whilst freediving, driving or other should not be tolerated or considered, not only for your own safety but for the safety of others. I would dispute the statement that "There has never been a recorded death due to marijuana at any time in US history" OK not directly maybe but just try and tell me or anyone else that not one single person hasn't been killed in an accident of one form or another as a result of impaired jugment as a consiquence of using marijuana or any other drug be it legal or otherwise! I'll hazard a guess that if you go through every coronors report for car fatalities alone you will find many thousands that died from head injuries but also had marijuana in their blood.
The list of my reasons for not taking recreational drugs is endless but if your life isnt good enough without taking them, it most certainly will never be good enough with them!
 
I agree that mixing a recreational drug with freediving is a pretty stupid thing to do. But you're missing the point. Every man should have freedom over what he does with his own body (the only thing that can truly be proven to belong to him) - the only exception is when he puts others at risk, which is why it's wrong to mix drugs with driving on public roads (you put other drivers, not just yourself, at risk).

Which is why, to go a bit off-topic, your argument against drugs in general is not valid. I'm not arguing that drugs are good for you, or that they don't "kill you slowly". I'm arguing that it's wrong to prohibit people from making their own decisions. Before you disagree, consider this.

There have been numerous threads lately along the lines of "permanent brain damage because of apnea." The answers are not clear. Some say that the opposite is true - a "permanent IQ increase due to regular apnea". Some say they feel their memory getting worse over the years but aren't sure if it is related to apnea or not. I don't think a conclusive answer is near on the horizon, but let's pretend it was. Let's pretend that it was proven that regular apnea created permanent brain damage (something which is as difficult to prove IMO as the statement that regular marijuana use does the same).

Now, I'm going to assume you're on a freediving message board because you love freediving. If you found out that it might slightly alter your brain over the rest of your life, you'd be faced with a decision - continue, or don't. But it's YOUR decision, and you should get to make it. It would be unfair for the government to limit your choices because of the potential short-term or long-term conseqeuences (blackout and death, hypothetical brain damage, respectively) those choices could have on your own body.

My issue is not with your statement that freediving + drugs = stupid, or even that drugs = stupid in general (although I do disagree with the second, you're entitled to your opinion). It is with the statements DO NOT DO "x" WITH YOUR OWN BODY, which go hand in hand with your apparent head-over-heels agreement with our nation's unconstitutional and unfair drug laws. There's a huge difference between friendly advice and a legal mandate. If asked, I would also advise anyone against mixing drugs and diving.
 
Originally posted by Alison
The list of my reasons for not taking recreational drugs is endless

The other night, in an apology to me for your lashout in the equipment forum, you used "too much wine" as an excuse for your attitude.

Wine is a recreational drug.

Originally posted by Alison
but if your life isnt good enough without taking them, it most certainly will never be good enough with them!

By your own logic, one should conclude that you think your life isn't good enough without wine, and it will be better with it.

I'm not saying that's actually true (wine completing you); I'm pointing out that your logic is messed up. Using a drug does not mean you think your life is "not good enough" without it and the drug will make it better.
 
FREEDOM ?

I'm a little skeptical of the personal freedom argument where
drugs and diving are concerned.

One reason for my skepticism derives from the apparent conflict
between Bob's freedom to risk his own safety and well-being, which I would agree is sacrosanct, and the practical consequences his intoxication may have for others.

I don't like fishing corpses out of the water. I don't like having to explain to the dead person's loved ones why, why, why. I don't like repairing the damage done to freediving in general by these deaths. I don't enjoy the autopsies, the recriminations, the guilt, the sorrow, the mess, the investigation, etc. and etc.

So, if, as seems undeniable, intoxication increases (and unneccesarily) the liklhood of me going through all that, then Bob's freedom to risk his life getting stoned and diving directly conflicts with my freedom to live as I wish.

The other reason for my skepticism is that as a practical matter, my personal experience with advocates of "drug freedom" is that many of them are very eager to use the force of the state -or transnational authority- to restrict or eliminate other freedoms, which apparently offend them. Their cry for "freedom" is often (although, to be sure, not in all cases) a call for the freedom to behave as they think "free" people SHOULD behave - or else. One can easily call to mind numerous controversies in which drug freedom advocates tend to come down on the side of more restrictions, more regulation, more prohibition.

Tobacco never killed anybody. Pot never killed anybody. Smack
never killed anybody. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE, including themselves. That is the essential truth, and until the debate on drugs and diving is framed in terms of personal accountability for behavior and its conequences, we are just grinding water.

Aloha.
 
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Originally posted by The111
The other night, in an apology to me for your lashout in the equipment forum, you used "too much wine" as an excuse for your attitude.

Wine is a recreational drug.
This is true but then I wasnt driving or otherwise but surely that outburst from me just goes to show that we are not ourselves when under the influence of any drug. And I am genuinely sorry for that outburst :)


Originally posted by The111

By your own logic, one should conclude that you think your life isn't good enough without wine, and it will be better with it.

My life is a mess, I'm not denying it rofl
 
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Believe it or not Paul, I really agree with you quite a bit. I would never freedive on drugs (unless it was something I did very regularly, and there is nothing like that for me) and would recommend very strongly against it for anyone, just to be on the safe side - although I have a friend who drinks and smokes (mj) like no other, on a daily basis, and he has often met me for a dive after a 6 pack or something similar. I keep a close eye on him, but he's really no different than usual, since he's used to being in that state of mind. Anyway, going off topic a little here, the point of this post wasn't to make provisions under which it "is" ok to mix the two dangers.

My point is that your argument about dead people inconveniencing others could easily be turned against you via freediving or something else you love. Traffic incidents inconvenience me like nothing else, and they don't seem to be letting up, but fortunately neither does driving as a whole. I skydive regularly, and this year has been a particularly bad one for fatal incidents, compared to the past several years. There are many people I know who think skydiving is insane, stupid - there are even some people who preposterously say it is addictive and once I feel that adrenaline rush I am an unstoppable junkie. While it is a damn satisfying feeling and I joke that I'm "addicted", the notion as they view it as absurd. Fortunately for skydiving, people have never become so inconvenienced enough by dead skydivers to regulate the sport unfairly - although there is quite a bit of regulation.

Even moreso than skydiving, the average person thinks freediving is stupid. How many times have you scared the crap out of a SCUBA diver? Try sitting down to lunch with several of your co-workers and explaining what you did under the surface of the water this weekend. Observe their responses. They fully expect you to die sometime soon, they think your actions are so foolish.

Me? I don't use drugs regularly, and as such I would never mix them with diving. For me, it's an unsafe thing to do (mixing the two). But it's not fair for me to call someone else's actions unsafe because those same actions would be unsafe for me. If that were true, my deep freedives would truly be unsafe, since from a co-worker's perspective they are. Every person has a different margin of safety, and you can't prove what someone else's is or isn't. The only person who can judge that is the person wearing the shoes. Unfortunately, many people are bad at that, so deaths happen - hell, even the good ones make mistakes. But freedom IS freedom, regardless of how stupid you or someone else considers it. I don't think the argument of "inconvenient corpses" is enough to override personal freedom. Maybe if I ever get really, really overrun in corpses I'll change my mind, but for now I vote for freedom, including the freedom to kill yourself (yes, even willingly, not that I would).
 
Re: FREEDOM ?

Originally posted by Paul Kotik

Tobacco never killed anybody. Pot never killed anybody. Smack
never killed anybody. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE, including themselves. That is the essential truth, and until the debate on drugs and diving is framed in terms of personal accountability for behavior and its conequences, we are just grinding water.

Aloha.



".......PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE, including themselves."

I am curios, what do you guys (Paul and The111), think about "gun control" and if the "personal freedom" concept extends in to posession of weapons as well?
 
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Re: Re: FREEDOM ?

Originally posted by roy_nexus_6
I am curios, what do you guys (Paul and The111), think about "gun control" and if the "personal freedom" concept extends in to posession of weapons as well?

I do (think it extends to weapons). I don't own any weapons, but if I felt I needed/wanted one, the choice should be mine.
 
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owning guns

well, first of all, I must say that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Mine is based in such a harsh manner because of where I grew up, in the US, where drugs are not tolerated nearly as much as in other countries. With that in mind, on the topic of the freedom to own a gun. I currently own 2 shotguns, 4 rifles and a bow. I grew up in the outdoors, hunting and fishing. People in the US have tried to legally debate this topic over the years, and have been looking to change the Bill of Rights, which clearly states that US citizens have a legal right to own and bear arms. I support the freedom to own a gun. It is not the gun makers fault when some gangster from "the hood" steals one, then kills somone with it. (this is the topic that the democratic liberals try to debate, and cannot succeed in most cases.) Actually, I am planning on getting another gun shortly. Owning a gun is not illigal. It is what you do with it that is illigal.
 
well, I have made the decision not to reply to this thread anymore. These threads just cause too much disruptrion and conflict amoung members. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and these opinions differ greatly from person to person. A Deeperblue forum mentor stepped in and closed the origional thread, which I believe was a good decision. So if you guys are going to argue and debate different topics like this, I will stay out of it, and have no further part in it.

12, July, 2004
aahunt03
Thanks
 
aahunt03

This is an international forum and so you'll be getting tons of different opinions. The trick is not to take everything too seriously. Mostly we are a pretty nice bunch here with good feelings and alot of kidding around. Sometimes someone will take something too seriously and turn from a mild mannered guy into a raging Hulk. People blow off steam once in a while, sometimes a certain posting triggers it. But then, don't judge the person too much. My experience in life has been that sometimes the people that laugh most at you will end up being your best friends. The world isn't black and white but all shades of color. If you're in the Navy and are lucky enough to travel with it, take advantage of this. Learn from the people you meet, there is wisdom in everyone, look past the differences and go to the core. That's where you'll find humanity.

Welcome to DB :)

Adrian
 
Personally, I dont care much about people doing drugs (not that I do :duh). If those people want to take the risks involved, so be it! When it comes to doing drugs in sport (especially risk sport like freediving), it is a big NO from me. The risk involved is even bigger and fatal accidents can easily happen. Imagine a freedivier dies, and later it is found out that he was on drugs, can you imagine the face freediving will have? It is the same thing with paintball, everyone things they are a bunch are war obsessed freaks wanting to kill everyone. In fact it is only a bunch of teenagers wanting to have a lot of fun!!! Oh well, everyone has a right to their own opinion...
And if you are mad at me and want to scream at me, go ahead! :eek:
 

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rofl
Another classic from Snorkel Bum! I certainly don't take drugs, and belive that whatever "benefits" one can get are offset by the destruction/alteration the physiology in subtle and not so subtle ways, some of them permanent, but now i'm going to be confused as to what people mean exactly when they refer to "reef fish!"

Adrian
 
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I have conflicting thoughts on the subject ... yes, I believe, essentially, in freedom of expression, thought, and posessing guns - although I personally think guns are one of humanity's biggest mistakes (well, ok, comes in behind the nuclear bomb, I guess ...) and would never own one (long live Michael Moore - Bowling for Columbine was brilliant!!).

But, there are always going to be those who should never be granted said freedom (those, for example, who display a complete disrespect for, specifically, the lives of others).

With regards to people dying while freediving, skydiving, etc. while under the influence of drugs - well, it doesn't give driving a bad name, when even a large number of people are stupid enough to get behind the wheel while drunk.

I think it is narrow-mindedness (e.g. people who think reading the Sunday Papers in anything other than their dressing gown is a pretty risky kind of sport) that leads to the idiotic idea, that because a sport is dangerous while under the influence of drugs, it is necessarily inherently dangerous (or at least inherently dangerous enough that it should be banned - bungee jumping, for example).

For example, give me enough beer, and "going to the toilet" suddenly becomes a dangerous sport which should be banned, for fear of me killing myself on the 20 metre pub slalom course.

If I could wish for anything, it wouldn't be world peace - it would be that everyone would open their minds up, get a sense of perspective, and respect other peoples' opinions. This would probably result in world peace anyway - for sure it would be the end of all those senseless religion-based wars (catholics probably being one of the worst groups).

Oh, and while we're at it .... a sense of humour in some people wouldn't go amiss either ;-) !!
 
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Re: Re: Re: FREEDOM ?

Originally posted by The111
I do (think it extends to weapons). I don't own any weapons, but if I felt I needed/wanted one, the choice should be mine.

The111,
Consistant follow through on one's ideas.
A rare commodity nowdays ;) . Thanks for answering.
Usually "Legalize the Drugs" crowd, abandons the "personal responsibility" slogan, once they leave the " legalize the drugs" realm. Good to see there are exceptions to this rule.

Best wishes and dive safe (as safe as you want of course :D )
 
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So I got some negative karma ... :

"catholics probably being one of the worst groups" Last time I checked it was Muslims who videotape cutting off human heads, not catholics

There was no name, to enable a private reply.

Perhaps I should have been a little less specific, and said 'Christians', since knowledge of the different 'flavours' is not particularly great.

And yes, I guess there have been marginally more _videotapes_ of muslims doing this, but the various photos of american service peoples' "good deeds" in Iraq have been fairly prevelant here in Germany in the media (not that I believe all or even most of such service people are bad).

And then there is the good old christian who marched the amis out there in the first place ...

Not to mention the various religious wars started by christians in the distant and recent past ....

My main point anyway was that a huge number of religious people, whatever flavour, are extremely prejudiced and narrow-minded, and without this, we would have a lot more peace.

Anyway, enough about religion.
 
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Ok the "pot never killed anyone" line again...

First let me say "I BELEIVE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO YOUR OWN BODY"

That being said... Weed has a LOT more tar than tobaco so a greater chance of lung cancer.
I dont recall EVER seing someone smoke a joint with a filter.... and filters FILTER out tar... so... again increase chance of cancer.
Yes I know, its not crack or heroin or meth.... but people will still kill you to take it for themselves.
Reaction time is slower than being drunk. I love vodka, but not before getting in the water.
Nitrogen isnt the only thing in your blood effected by pressure.

Ok, gun control.... man we are going everywhere today arent we?
When I walk into a bank, and I see a bulge like someone has a gun, I feel a little uneasy.
But if EVERYONE had a gun.... who would be dumb enough to pull theirs out and wave it around in a bank?
The fact that people blow people away, to keep from getting blown away themselves, makes me feel a little safer.
Sick? maybe....... but thats the world we live in these days....

sorry.... not going near the topic of religion.....
 
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