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« on: May 21, 2005, 07:44:29 am »
1. It\'s in human (and some animals) nature to get some kind of buzz, be it drunk, stoned, poisoned or watever. Theirfor I think it is a must to have alcohol and other drugs in game. Their are animals who eat rotten fruit to get drunk and primates on tropical beaches that go steal alcoholic cocktails from customers on the beach untill they drop on the floor, drunk. We have had shaman smoke weed, eat mushrooms and that sort of stuff from way back into pre-historic times. A lot of the cave paintings are proven to have been painted in an altered state of mind (also halucinating from being so long in the dark). The BAD imago around weed is to be blamed to America, that untill the point of the second world war even promoted the growth of this crop. America has never spend more money on proving a drug is harmfull, but they have discovered nothing on weed that makes it more harmfull than alcohol, even contrary, alcohol is more harmfull. Even stuff like cocaine was generaly used in the start of the 20th century as a painkiller. So labeling weed as bad is just a social thing, look at the netherlands, they allow the use of weed and they have the lowest addiction rate in Europe (offcourse it\'s full of tourist, who see it as a drug paradise).
2. We should have original names for these things to avoid problems with parents and such, and just to keep things original.
3. Avoid to advanced techniques: bongs, cigarettes, vaporizers, pills. We need to keep things in a primitive state.
4. Doing drugs should have a negative effect on your physical (and/or mental) state, but might be necesary for some kind of shaman ritual to get into contact with the spiritual plane for instance.
5. alcohol=drugs, their is no denying it. getting drunk is poisoning your body, that\'s why they call overuse of alcohol, alcohol-poisoning.
6. medicine use and drug use are very much related, you really can\'t have the one without the other. The zulu\'s had their shaman give their warriors, a mix of herbs (weed amongs it) before going into battle. It broke the inhibitions of their warriors and they became fierce killing machines.
A virtual world without drugs wouldn\'t be right, it would be incomplete. I am against an Ostrich politic, the facts are as they are, we humans have a need to get some kind of buzz. Don\'t let this game be ruled by the American social climate.