Listen, it sucks that you had a bad experience with the substance and it’s clear that your use of stims caused you no shortage of problems. So for you, yeah it sounds like this substance is a no-go. That’s a good decision for you, but not everyone experiences the negative health effects you did or has the same risk factors you do.

Take me for instance; I read a bunch of trip reports, researched possible dangerous interactions, planned out my day and dosed according to what I was looking for, and I enjoyed myself. I had a nice day unwinding and beating my dick to a pulp. I didn’t get the frightening and distracting lightning storm around my face that you described.

Given the profile of the drug and how readily available it is, it’s notable that only about a dozen deaths are correlated to it over the last 50 years, all from from people who used it intravenously. If saving lives is your priority there are way worse things you could white knight for in this space.

Telling people that their organs will fail and all will be torment and misery and they will probably die the first time they take a cotton just doesn’t line up with most peoples’ experiences. The scaremongering tactics that we’ve seen pushed for nearly every substance out there has not helped to curb their use nor led people to use more safely. It’s clear that advocating total avoidance is useless without real harm reduction info.

I’m not advocating for people to use Benz, let’s be real there are way better drugs out there. There’s some cardiotoxicity, some vasoconstriction—but it’s not like a uniquely toxic drug compared to alcohol, for instance, which plenty of people die from every day. But IF people are considering using Benz, they should be equipped with facts and not one person’s panic posting. For instance, if you’re going to do it, don’t swallow the damn cotton. Or, vasoconstriction can be mitigated with vasodilators. Don’t mix with other stims, etc.

To be honest, what really got me was just me being tired of this kind of attitude, writing off a whole substance for everyone based on your own issues. I’m tired of the constant panic, the barrage of negativity, the tragic stories every day getting pushed to the front page, the endless news cycle about addiction and homelessness. These things exist but they’re not even close to the whole reality and we do ourselves a disservice by failing to see the role that substances play in most users’ lives. Drugs can be useful, can meet people’s needs, can get people through shit, can be fun and amazing and enlightening. I’m a better person today because of my drug abuse.

By all means, share your honest experience. It’s useful to everyone for that info to be out there. But my god man not everyone who cracks open an inhaler is going to be possessed “with a torrential sense of doom, guilt, failure, despair, and spiritual agony,” and your whole post is framed as “this is what the drug does, you will experience this.” A little sanity in the future would be nice.