Would You Be Friends With Your Friends if You Didn’t Do Drugs Together?

“Drugs are a gateway to friendship,” said Luke, a 27-year-old doctor from Manila, Philippines. Luke, as well as the other names in this story, is a pseudonym used to protect the subjects from the legal repercussions of using drugs. 

Luke occasionally uses weed, LSD, and MDMA with his friends whether they’re just hanging out, going to bars and clubs, or going on out-of-town trips. He also considers substances like alcohol and coffee to be drugs, and said that, at least in his social circles, “a lot of friendships have drugs as their centerpiece.” 

There’s something about entering altered states of consciousness that brings people closer together. Sometimes, it’s the silliness of the experience, like finding everything funny when you’re stoned. It might also be the effects of the drugs themselves, like the feelings of love induced by MDMA, the collective closeness from LSD, or the mysterious connected consciousness from ketamine.  

But what would become of these friendships without the drugs? 

“I feel like I do have stronger friendships with the people I do drugs with. I’m not sure if it’s because of the drugs. Or is it because of the amount of time I spend with them? Or is the reason I spend a lot of time with them that I do drugs with them?” said Luke.

Naturally, people who use drugs spend more time together. LSD trips can last for 12 hours at a time, and cocaine can fuel conversations all through several nights. But some say time spent high is quality time, too. 

“Doing drugs with your friends does make you closer. I think a big part of this is that you become uninhibited, so you’re less in your head and more in the moment,” said 25-year-old Katya, who is also based in Manila.

Katya uses several drugs with different friend groups. She said that getting high allows her and friends to be more honest and vulnerable with each other, letting them show sides of themselves they might normally want to hide. 

Drugs set the stage for people to be candid with one another, through experiences that might not happen if it wasn’t for the drugs. For some, these include getting through drug-induced existential crises or running around and telling everyone how much they love them. For others, it might be sitting and munching all day or dancing all through the night.

Alfonso, 27, also from Manila, uses weed, LSD, MDMA, and cocaine with his friends, and agreed that getting high and uninhibited can lead to memorable experiences and closer friendships. But there’s also one other thing. 

“We’re also in a country where [these drugs are] illegal, so when you do [them] with other people, it’s like we’re taking this risk together,” said Alfonso. “There’s already an immediate bond.” 

He has friends he met over their use of the same drugs as well as friends he met sober and eventually started using drugs with. In general, he thinks the people from both camps would still be his friends if they did not use drugs. Friendships from the latter would just have continued, while friendships from the former could have started in other ways, because he’s found that drugs are not the only thing he has in common with these friends anyway. 

Drugs can sometimes deepen certain friendships, he said, but they’re not necessary for a friendship to thrive. They are just another thing he and his friends do. Take them out and the friendship might change, but not disappear. 

“No, our friendship wouldn’t be the same [without the drugs], although I don’t think that that makes it more or less valuable, because I think we’d still have the friendship,” said Alfonso. One is not better than the other by default, but Alfonso said that friendship and drug use could be a problem when friends enable each other’s drug use to a point of addiction. 

The tricky thing about drugs is that they have the potential to show you some pretty beautiful but also some pretty ugly sides of a relationship. People who use drugs together may indeed be keeping each other locked in loops of negative and dangerous behaviors. Just imagine someone who gets their roommate to skip work or miss out on family responsibilities to stay home and get stoned, or someone who pushes cocaine on co-workers until those co-workers start being jerks in the office.

On the other hand, people who use drugs together can look out for each other through their highs (and lows), communicate more honestly than they might with others, and express their creativity more openly—all things that help them recognize the good in each other even when they’re sober. 

“My experiences with drugs have really brought me to realize how kind some people are, how caring some people are, and how creative some people are. I’ve felt so taken care of so many times by my friends while I’m on drugs and I’ve been the same for them,” Katya said.

Luke, who sometimes skips drugs like LSD and MDMA, and has never used cocaine despite being around people who do, agreed. In the times he didn’t partake in the drugs, he said he didn’t feel like he was missing out. He still felt bonded with them, even though they were high and he was not. 

“It does not negate the euphoria or the collective experience I feel because I’m already with my friends, I am already doing the activities with them. I don’t need to be on drugs or to be completely inebriated in the same way in order to enjoy these experiences with my friends,” said Luke.

Katya also said that she would be friends with a lot of the people she uses drugs with even if they didn’t use drugs, but added that that’s not true for all of her friends. She said there are some people she’s only really friends with when they’re high. Provided she’s looking out for herself while she’s with these people, she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with that. 

“Some of my friends, we just enjoy [getting high] together. I had someone call these friends before entertainment value only friends, which they were using in a negative context. But I don’t find that having some friends just for entertainment value or just to get fucked up with is a bad thing,” said Katya. “Some people would say that’s being irresponsible with your time, like you should be only spending time with people who are value-adding to you, but I think enjoyment is a great value to be added to any life.” 

Of course, you can apply this line of questioning to anything that brings people together: Would you be friends if you didn’t like the same music, have the same job, or live in the same city? 

The question can also be flipped on its head for people who do not use drugs: Would you be friends with people if you did use drugs together?

While it’s easy to be dubious about friendships formed through drugs, this just goes to show that healthy friendships can exist with or without them. 

“I think a lot of the time, friendships do grow and develop quicker because of drugs, although for a genuine friendship to be formed, you also have to enjoy spending time together sober or you should also have sober experiences,” said Katya. “If your entire relationship is based on drugs, you guys are just friends, there’s nothing wrong with that. But to have a genuine relationship, you must also know what that person is like sober.” 

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely that of the interviewees. VICE neither endorses nor encourages consumption of narcotics/psychotropic substances.

Follow Romano Santos on Instagram.