Right. I'm not anti-recreational-drug-use, but this assertion that gets repeated all the time feels damn close to a tautology.
"The drug didn't cause you to go crazy. You just had underlying craziness that never manifested before using the drug and might never have manifested if you never used the drug."
Consider this my raised eyebrow.
Even if it's really technically true, it's effectively a vacuous and unfalsifiable statement when it comes to an individual person, and one can't use the information at all when estimating the risk of their potential recreational activity.
Though I've never been diagnosed and live a normal life, I've had mood swings and extended family history of schizophrenia. Because of this, and the knowledge that there are certain triggers that can cause lifelong neurological issues, I'll never try acid or other hallucinogens.
The value of knowing that "underlying craziness" can exist is in inherently reminding us of the actual risk. Let's say someone predisposed toward neurological issues is on the fence, but ultimately decides to follow the reasoning in the comment. What liability are you going to bear for it?
My last sentence wasn't worded very well. I was speaking in a hypothetical context of someone having a mental issue revealed by drug use and some hypothetical person defending the drug as not being the "cause" of the mental illness.
My point was that the person who pedantically highlights that some drug didn't technically cause a mental illness is being anti-helpful. To go around and preach that XYZ drug doesn't cause mental problems is dishonest in any colloquial understanding of the situation, unless you state VERY clearly, at the same time, that it may TRIGGER or reveal underlying issues.
So, I was basically saying exactly what you said.
If you read my entire comment in one piece, I'm pretty sure it's clear enough that I meant that there's no actionable difference between "drug causes schizophrenia" and "drug activates latent schizophrenia" on an individual, human, level. Academically, it's a meaningful distinction, but not for an individual evaluating whether they want to try something.
What kind of question is that? They said some stuff on the internet. None, of course, as it should be.
Their point was that if you weren't gonna go crazy and you took a drug and went crazy, then in every sense of the word, the drug _caused_ you to go crazy. Whether you had some latent condition or not is irrelevant.
Yeah, it's sort of like saying "the knife didn't cause them to die, they were just an undiagonosed hemophiliac and the wound failed to close properly."
However, teasing out the steelman from this, what they mean is "becoming crazy is not a necessary effect of recreational drug use, but rather a contingent effect."
I've seen studies before trying to study this, for example cannabis and latent schizophrenia. One complication is that recreational drug use goes hand-in-hand with self-medication of undiagnosed issues.
"The drug didn't cause you to go crazy. You just had underlying craziness that never manifested before using the drug and might never have manifested if you never used the drug."
Consider this my raised eyebrow.
Even if it's really technically true, it's effectively a vacuous and unfalsifiable statement when it comes to an individual person, and one can't use the information at all when estimating the risk of their potential recreational activity.