"To invest successfully does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding the framework."

-Warren Buffett

Well, I mentioned in an earlier post that the concept of investing would roll back around and here we are! If you missed my post about the wisdom of Warren Buffet you can find it here. This post will identify how the concept of loss myopia has negatively impacted our views about drugs and the time, energy, and health we invest in them.

What is Loss Myopia?

Loss myopia, or myopic loss aversion, is a term from the investing world that describes the tendency of short term investors to panic at the sight of a loss. Rather than using their rational mind, they tend to operate from a purely emotional perspective. In short, they panic, get dramatic, and do something dumb focused on short term rewards versus long term rewards. The small part of the picture becomes their focus and they lose touch with the larger picture.

Here are a few ways this same concept has applied to drug use and our attitudes about drugs.

Overestimating Addiction Rates and Underestimating Safe Drug Use

I have felt excited, baffled, discouraged, and finally invigorated during my new ridiculous project. In my mind it was pretty simple: Provide realistic, fun, and science-backed drug education to anyone/everyone. One factor which I did not realize the extent of, was how difficult providing divergent information could be; which, as anyone who knows me can attest, is my favorite motivator.

“Are you trying to teach people to use drugs or encourage drug use?!?!?!” Sure why not? I don’t need to advertise for drugs any more than I need to advertise for the wind. They are a force of nature, and I hope to help people learn to sail.

In courses I teach, I make the claim that there is no more emotion-laden topic than drug use. Most people have been impacted by drug use in some form or fashion, because the reality is that most people use drugs. If we define drugs as any substance that changes how we think and feel, then its easy to understand that drug use is more common that not.

Our dilemma comes in the form of our social tendency to identify drugs as either good socially acceptable drugs, or bad, non-socially acceptable drugs. “I enjoy coffee in the morning” gets a much different reaction than “I enjoy cocaine in the morning”; despite both drugs being stimulants.

You can dig up your own citations, but addiction rates tend to range from about 10-20% based on our terrible definition of “addiction”. Of those, around 50% get better with no formal treatment, so we are down to about 5-10% of people who require some form of help to address their addiction issues. However, in any discussion of drug use, we tend to focus 90% of our attention on the outliers rather than the reality that most people use drugs safely.

Our loss myopia, or our tendency to focus on extremes rather than the big picture, makes us susceptible to nonsense. On most days we can hear loud news stories about people on drugs doing terrible things! Although this story may be true, what are the odds an equally terrible thing was committed by someone who had coffee or nicotine that morning? As we hear about rare events, we condition ourselves to believe these events are the norm. Again, we allow fear to drive everything; and the world of drug education is immersed in fear.

Secrecy

Seriously? No I do not use Ketamine, heroin, cocaine, etc; but I really do enjoy posting silly memes and pro-drug messages. The fact is that yes, I am pro drug because drugs can, and normally are, used safely. However, most people hesitate to talk about them for fear of ridicule or being shunned from their profession or any other weird consequence. Also, no, please do not mail me Ketamine.

Othering

Fact, we are on a tiny rock hurdling through space at about 550,000 mph. We are in a constantly changing system where cells are dying, atoms are moving, and a lot of weird things are happening. To cope with this chaos, humans often tend to organize it into categories so we feel safe, secure, and in control.

When it comes to drugs, we also do this. Drug A = Bad!!!! Drug B = oh yeah that’s ok because (insert some nonsense reason). Often, these reasons are based in classism, racism, or simply fear.

Fear sells, fear gets clicks, and fear drives revenue.

Thanks to all who have read and provided me with feedback thus far on this weird little side project.

After gathering data over a couple of months, I am so encouraged about continuing to provide drug education in some new forms. Fun things are in the works, they may work, they may not, but either way it will be interesting. If there is content you want to see let me know.

If you hate everything about everything and think we need to be afraid at all times and that life should not involve risk, please do not let me know.