Why the abuse of drugs like Morphine and Heroin condemned by the society but consumption of alcohol considered acceptable? Don’t both the type of substances act the same way on the Nervous System?
In: Biology
They work on the nervous system differently, but this is not the reason they are viewed differently.
A) Alcohol has a long history of human consumption, including the entirety of the history of most modern countries (ie USA). Alcoholic drinks have also long been used as a source of calories and fluid where clean drinking water was not available.
B) Morphine/heroin have a long history of human use, but they provide zero nutritional value (and as such are only classified as medicine or recreational instead of food).
C) Morphine and Heroin addicts tend to live a very sad life. The constant need to feed their addiction, coupled with the resulting long periods of sleep and excruciating withdrawals, leads to addicts doing little more than obtaining/ingesting their drug and sleeping it off.
D) Extreme alcoholism is equally sad and pathetic, but there are plenty of people who would be considered “functional alcoholics” that hold down a job, support families, and generally contribute to society. Other than celebrities (esp musicians and actors) who can afford to hire people to handle everything else in their life, there are very few “functional” heroin or morphine addicts.
E) Alcohol can be done in moderation for long periods of time without experiencing withdrawal or needing to regularly increase your dosage (the factory worker that has a few beers every day after work for 30 years). Morphine/heroin requires constantly increasing your dosage because it is typically done 24hr a day and your body adjusts to it.
Both have a purpose and can be beneficial, and both can lead a person to very dark and terrible places, but alcohol is more familiar to most (Western) people and doesn’t lead to those dark places as often as morphine/heroin does. I think that is the reason for the difference in reputation.
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