You do know that cocaine in the US is still considered a Schedule II drug, meaning research is currently being conducted on its use in medical scenarios, whereas marijuana is a Schedule I and forbidden from authorized study? Ketamine may be known as a party drug, but it&#x27;s also being tested in the treatment of PTSD. Research isn&#x27;t always conducted in a lab, and some people are willing to be guinea pigs for a variety of personal reasons.<p>I didn&#x27;t mention alcohol and those authors to make light of addiction, but to elaborate that even socially acceptable drugs can carry with them negative long-term outcomes. If you think for a minute that you&#x27;ll achieve in your entire lifetime what O. Henry and F. Scott Fitzgerald did in &lt;45 years - during the early 20th century when dietary input care standards were extremely lacking (&quot;The Jungle&quot;) and medical science was barely out of primitive conditions (e.g. soap) - then by all means, lets see how much of an impact you&#x27;ve had on society at large. These were high performers who achieved heights that you can not begin to conceptualize with the outlook you&#x27;ve constructed.<p>It&#x27;s like you totally ignored my caveats that every individual has individual tolerances, personality traits, or genetic factors which render drugs a risk-bearing proposition! You&#x27;ve made the very, very common mistake of assuming that without alcohol those writers would have been as uninhibited or determined to perform their art. It&#x27;s like the &quot;deal with the devil&quot; that artists understand and fear - if doing something results in success, then along with it comes a lot of baggage to continue down that path.<p>You&#x27;ve done <i>nothing</i> but try and re-inforce that drugs such as alcohol lead to inevitable ruin, and completely glossed over the achievements those individuals did. Do you honestly think that O. Henry went to the bottle because it was his muse, or can you fathom the concept that the bottle was the way he coped with his insecurities as a pathway to actually doing something constructive with his life?<p>Wise up. Don&#x27;t believe that you can cite Wikipedia and some friends who got divorced and use that to go toe-to-toe with somebody who has seen both the bright skies and pits of hell that is called life. What if you&#x27;re part of the problem holding back our species?