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Comment by Falkon1313 | Hacker News Reader

Maybe try reading a couple of paragraphs further?

“By the time I got to medical school, no one even talked about it,” Ross said.

Besides, substance abuse programs focus heavily on the current headliner addiction drugs - opium in the late 19th century, alcohol in prohibition times, cocaine in the 80s, crack thereafter, prescription painkillers and heroin again now; with a secondary focus on whatever's not the current headliner. How many recent (or non-recent) news stories are there about an epidemic of LSD addicts or mushroom addicts?

Kind of like asking how someone gets to be a web developer without being fluent in Fortran and COBOL.

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That doesn't answer my question at all. If I only took an interest in what other people were talking about I'd be pretty poorly informed; I don't see how you can learn effectively without being motivated by internal curiosity.

The relative absence of psychedelic addicts in itself would be grounds for wondering how they got to be tightly controlled substances in the first place. I'm not suggesting that he should be expert, but that he should at least have a base level of familiarity with the field.

I'm not fluent in fortran or COBOL, but at least I know what they are, and I'm also familiar with lots of languages that I'll probably never have occasion to use, like APL, brainfuck and so on.

It's because it allowed free thought man, and the man doesn't want people to think freely...

The funny thing about this is, while I definitely don't believe it in the moustache-twirling-government-villain sense of the mind-control variety, I do think that it's a least _a little_ true - particularly with how public use of LSD may have played an important role in the anti-war movement (Vietnam War). It's widely documented that many people attributed it as a turning point.

Not even that many people need to have tried it; it's one of those consciousness-raising things, where people that you'd normally respect the opinions of start espousing this belief, and that reduces cognitive dissonance in others in a kind of "belief wave".

> How many recent (or non-recent) news stories are there about an epidemic of LSD addicts or mushroom addicts?

Not sure how you mean that question. You cannot get addicted to LSD - even psychologically you cannot get addicted really. LSD is too heavy and simply won't work if taken too frequently.

> Kind of like asking how someone gets to be a web developer without being fluent in Fortran and COBOL.

Completely OT, but I really dig that metaphor!

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