Yet many will happily drive extremely drunk or high (or both, as I’m currently seeing where I live as Californians invade). Sometimes societal regulation mechanisms like social pressure are not strong enough. Perhaps we as a society should understand what drives a man to drink until he can barely move, examining shared social traumas that many of us experience.
Culture can and does change, and not on evolutionary timescales but within decades - in Australia drink driving was absolutely rampant in the 60's-80's, but now it's really quite taboo.
"Drink drive, bloody idiot" is a slogan every Australian knows.
We should work to understand what drives use, and we are. Plenty of researchers are working on understanding the physiological underpinnings of the desire to use any given substance.
I personally suspect that over 50% of drug users are attempting to self medicate in some way. Whether or not they are consciously aware that self medication is what they are doing, that's another question entirely.
Your point about self-medication got me thinking. Perhaps we are also at a crossroads in receiving medical care as well. There is an abundance of information available related to medical care that did not exist even 10 years ago. Doctors and mental health professionals can no longer gatekeep critical information, like was tried with ivermectin.
