Recreational_drug_use Recreational drug use is the use of psychoactive drugs for recreational purposes rather than for work, approved medical or spiritual purposes, although the distinction is not always clear (often spiritual use is considered recreational). Since more and more forms of recreational drug use are being discovered to be self-medication (including much "recovered knowledge" which was well-known 50, 100 and more years ago), including using opioids sourced from illicit or other channels for pain and its related problems as well as depression, social phobia and other recognised disorders, terms such as "unsupervised drug use", "non-, semi-, and sub-therapeutic drug use", and "allotherapeutic drug use" may be more exact terms to cover the range of activities under discussion.