Podcast: Drugs For Fun – Why Do We Feel So Bad About Feeling Good?

In this 32-minute podcast, titled ”Drugs for Fun: Why Do we Feel So Bad About Feeling Good?,” host Geoff Turner explores the concept of taking drugs just for fun.

The episode is part of the podcast series, “On Drugs,” which explores drugs through personal experience, culture and history. Other episodes include “Gender, On Drugs,” and “Rehab, Recovery and the History of the 12-step System.”

The pleasurable responses people receive from illicit substances – one of the reasons we’re drawn to them in the first place – are often left out of conversations and policy. “So why don’t we talk about it?,” Turner asked.

Carl Hart, chair of psychology at Columbia University, said our inability to acknowledge pleasure as a legitimate reason to do drugs is a serious problem. As a consequence, we think of drug users as addicts, and have wound up with policy that focuses on addiction while ignoring benefits.

Pleasure is a benefit; evolutionary biology proves there’s a reason why humans seek it. Take food and sex, for example: they are pleasurable because they’re critical for survival. Pleasure is our bodies' reward mechanism, so to speak.

As it turns out, plant-based drugs activate the same “reward” mechanism as food and sex. This means there’s a reason drugs are pleasurable – and that reason may be to fend off parasites.

So, why do we demonize substances that could help us? Perhaps the answer is less about biology, or psychology, and more about philosophy. Pleasure has become coded a “cultural no-no,” said Peg O’Connor, philosophy professor – it’s pathologized.

We label things as guilty pleasures, a separation that’s largely influenced by religion. Those who refrain are seen as strong-willed, and morally grounded.

But sacrificing enjoyable aspects of life isn’t what makes us human; experiencing pleasure is. Regardless of the walls we place around drugs, there’s an evolutionary pull that always brings us back.