First off, the term 'drugs' is as close to useless as you can get. A drug is simply a substance, other than food, that affects body/brain function. Aspirin is a drug. You used the word 'narcotics' which can refer to illegal drugs in general or just opiates/oids, barbiturates, benzos, and the like. Even if we limit ourselves to illegal drugs, we are still talking about a wide range of substances. Legality has next to nothing to do with danger. There are drugs like cannabis which are practically harmless, and there are drugs like oxycodone which are quite dangerous and very addictive.

You seem to think that user == addict, but the two shouldn't be conflated. Whether you actually believe this or not, I don't know, but that's what I read from your post, and it is surely a common misconception. Yes, there are addicts out there, and we should treat them humanely and help them get treatment, but there is also such a thing as responsible drug use. There are plenty of us out there who take safety and addiction very seriously and are very careful with out use.

I understand that it's a method of escapism akin to reading, watching films, engaging in extreme driving or mountain-climbing, although a more physiological one, with a more direct effect on the body than any of the aforementioned. I understand, too, that people don't engage in taking drugs unless they have problems they want to escape from in real life, ranging from boredom to aimlessness in living to troubles within relationships to difficult economical situation to the overwhelming fact of death of a close person, and anything in between, before and beyond.

Here's the thing. There certainly are people out there who use drugs as a form of escape, but there are also those of us out there who use drugs as a form of exploration. This is why I've never really been interested in stims or downers. I might drink some caffeinated beverage in order to pull an all-nighter for a paper or something, or I might get drunk at a new years celebration, but that is the extent of my stim/downer usage. Their effects aren't interesting, and they aren't particularly insightful. Psychedelics and dissociatives on the other hand, can be useful tools for self exploration. Of course, I'm not saying that they will give you some divine insight or something like that, but they can make you think in ways that you might not have thought otherwise. On top of that they are generally fun to do.

Anyway, the point of is this is that no two drug users are the same. We should help those who are addicted, but there is no need to take pity on those of us who use drugs responsibly.