Anyone that says alcohol isn’t physically addictive really doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about. For hardcore alcoholics alcohol is as necessary as air and less necessary than water. Watching an alcoholic detox will remove any doubt as to its physically addictive properties. The physical pain of detox, the delirium tremors and other involuntary muscle spasms will remove any doubt as to how physically addictive alcohol truly is. People die from alcohol detox and that’s a direct result of the physically addictive properties of alcohol. Detox from any other drug, save maybe heroin, is nothing compared to detox from alcohol.
If individual productivity was a baseline requirement for the social acceptance of recreational drugs then cocaine would have been legalized long ago. The legalization of marijuana here has removed the stigma and as a result there’s a lot of older retired people that take advantage of the medicinal properties of pot. The local “Bud Hut” has vanpools of elderly that stop in for their tea, bud, edibles and lotions. My conversations with some of the older folks that indulge has been eye opening. The relief they get in many cases has allowed them to drop certain meds while getting better results with less side effects. Regulating any substance based upon the extremes ignores all logic and punishes the majority unnecessarily.
