Comment by quesera

I appreciate your thoughtful response, but I think you are being misled by the popular wisdom and where it is disconnected from ground truth.

One phrase that jumps out, because it's a bit of a cliche, is "recreational drug abuse". It can be parsed a couple of ways, and you may not intend it this way, but it's often used to imply that all recreational drug use is abuse. This is not correct or reasonable.

Caffeine is a recreational drug, as are Fentanyl, MDMA, cannabis, et cetera. All can be abused to physical detriment. But all also have medical and therapeutic uses as well.

Moving back to the the main point though, I am not claiming equivalence between music and drugs. Some drugs are as safe as music, but most are not.

But both are sometimes used explicitly for the changes in brain chemistry that they evoke. My argument is that it is reasonable to use music for the purpose, and it is also reasonable to use drugs for the purpose. You need to be more careful with the latter, but that is not a condemnation. We use lots of things responsibly, which require caution to use safely.

Your phrase "intentional dimming of reason" also suggests an incomplete understanding of recreational drugs. Some do, but some do not. Some of the legal ones do. Some of the illegal ones do not. Some of the illegal ones that do, can be used responsibly in dosages that do not.

But even further than that, dimming of reason is not necessarily always a bad decision. We do it all the time. I am assuming you are religious, so I apologize if this is offensive, but faith is an intentional decision to diminish (or devalue, or at least demote) your reasoning abilities. So is love. And patriotism. These can be healthy and productive things, in moderation.

People who choose to temporarily alter their perceptions via recreational drugs have many reasons for this choice. Some are trivial, like entertainment. Some are reasonable, like relaxation. Some are suggestive of deeper psychological problems, like escapism. And some are interesting, like breaking rigid or unhealthy patterns of thought that may be associateed with situations or ideas.

You can do serious and useful work, with the help of some recreational drugs, typically hallucinogens or entheogens. Denying that fact is denying reality. Everyone should choose their own path, and responsible use of recreational drugs can be a perfectly valid and good and healthy option. And irresponsible use of (some) recreational drugs can be less harmful than irresponsible use of other affective things.

In short: it's more complex than that. You seemed to be suggesting that any intentional altering of one's thought processes (using drugs) was a horrible no good very bad idea, but that idea is simplistic and wrong.