The idea that drug use solely represents an out of control lifestyle is a misconception. The stereotype that society holds to is that drug users are throw away people who are a detriment to society. Yet no one in their right mind would accuse Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Albert Einstein of these character flaws. Yet all of them experimented with mind altering substances. This should tell us something about why people use drugs, and what kinds of people use drugs. Through out history, a wide range of brilliant inventors, medical scientists, physicists and biologists have been known to experiment with mind altering substances.

Inventors, such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison historically accredited the ideas for some of their inventions to drug revelations. All three used drugs for a time for the purpose of expanding their minds. Steve Jobs in particular was quoted as saying that LSD was a great decision for him to use as it lead to the concepts behind numerous Apple products. These are three brilliant men who made enormous contributions to society and broke the stereotype of the useless drug user.

Medical scientists, such as Francis Crick, Kary Mullis and William Stewart Halsted used mind-altering substances as well. Many people do not understand that medical sciences require some element of creative thinking. So much is unknown about medical science that it often takes some imagination to align different possibilities in order to test them for accuracy. This gift of imagination and experimentation is what draws medical scientists to drugs.