[ref: http://www.nationaldrugstrategy.gov.au/internet/drugstrategy... ]
"[...] lifetime use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, or peyote, or past year use of LSD, was not associated with a higher rate of mental health problems."
https://www.nature.com/news/no-link-found-between-psychedeli... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3747247/
> Of those, 14% described themselves as having used at any point in their lives any of the three ‘classic’ psychedelics: LSD, psilocybin (the active ingredient in so-called magic mushrooms) and mescaline (found in the peyote and San Pedro cacti). The researchers found that individuals in this group were not at increased risk of developing 11 indicators of mental-health problems such as schizophrenia, psychosis, depression, anxiety disorders and suicide attempts.
Emphasis on "at any point in their lives".
In epidemiological surveys, lifetime use == reports using at least once.
Not necessarily. For smoking you need to smoke 100 cigarettes before qualifying for lifetime use.
The anti-depressant business model is genius: (a) They're sold at a very high price point, (b) they generally make you factually dependent for quite some time (and they're quite hard to quit). It's one of big pharma's preferred multi-billion cash cows.
Now you know who's interested in spreading fear, doubt and uncertainty regarding cheap and effective competing substances such as LSD and psilocybin. And this industry has the resources to effectively influence public discussion forums such as HN, Reddit, Slashdot, etc.
Anti-depressant meds are very cheap. This is one of the problems of meds, they're much cheaper than a course of talking therapy.
They don't cause dependence.
Most people don't have problems coming off SSRIs, SNRIs, NASAs etc.
> And this industry has the resources to effectively influence public discussion forums such as HN, Reddit, Slashdot, etc.
You might want to read any of the posts dang has mad about accusing people of astroturfing: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by...
That's also in the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Don't accuse others of astroturfing or shillage. Email us and we'll look into it.
You say that with such authority, but in my personal experience they can absolutely cause dependency. I've had long-lasting withdrawal effects from certain SSRIs that were both physically and mentally painful.
Discontinuation effects exist, are unpleasant, require correct tapering, but are not dependency.
'Classic psychedelic use is associated with reduced psychological distress and suicidality in the United States adult population.'
> “Since the early 1990s, approximately 2000 doses of psilocybin (ranging from low to high doses) have been safely administered to humans in the United States and Europe, in carefully controlled scientific settings, with no reports of any medical or psychiatric serious AEs, including no reported cases of prolonged psychosis or HPPD (Studerus et al., 2011).”1
Then, to address 'controlled environment':
> “Lifetime classic psychedelic use was associated with a significantly reduced odds of past month psychological distress (weighted odds ratio (OR)=0.81 (0.72–0.91)), past year suicidal thinking (weighted OR=0.86 (0.78–0.94)), past year suicidal planning (weighted OR=0.71 (0.54–0.94)), and past year suicide attempt (weighted OR=0.64 (0.46–0.89))”13
And
> According to US government statistics, magic mushrooms have been used by 22.8 million Americans at least once.12
While they can lead to this, tendency doesn't seem to be the right word to use.
I'm quite passionate about this topic and I think it's very important that people writing publicly and sharing opinions on these substances are accurately informed, and try to present statics and put references into context.
Does the above change your mind on this? If not, what would change your mind a little bit towards thinking that they don't have a tendency to do this?
Could it also be the case that people with potential mental illnesses is more likely to try drugs? Therefore being a correlational relationship instead of a causal one?
> Is there proof that they have a tendency of triggering "latent" conditions, instead of generating the conditions?
Personally, I've had panic attacks (originating from paranoia) bought on by historical heavy use - the correlation isn't subtle at all. Did my paranoia drive me to the initial peace associated with the drug? I'd have a hard time arguing otherwise - it really, really helped at first. My life was altered positively days after the previous dosage. If I take it now the situation becomes unbearable in less than 5 seconds. Anecdote disclaimer, as well as not being the same psychoactive drug (but it is psychoactive).
[1]: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
Psychosis is literally damaging and the earlier and more violently one is subjected to it the worse their lifetime prognosis will be.
Which is not to say that I encourage recklessness with psychedelics, but that forasmuch as that is a concern with LSD or psilocybin, we're got bigger fish on our hands. Marijuana is much more available than either of those.
Correlations can be very useful in providing clues about how all these things work together, but determining what “triggers” what takes an incredible amount of carefully teasing out the real meaning of the data.
There are anecdotal reports of problems with these drugs, but that’s true for all drugs. Currently there is no just significant weight of evidence to draw the conclusions your making.
In light of that evidence, it's entirely possible the human experience itself, and not some more mechanistic action or first order effect of the drug, cause the increase in mental illness.
I'm trying to find this source, but am coming up short and on mobile, but will look into it later.