Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs
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[0] http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/only-a-handful...
[1] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ppm59z/smoking-weed-can-b...
So yes, I am in favour of democratic nanny states.
They're still everywhere, despite the fact we're pretty sure they are unhealthy at any dose.
They need better regulation, education (not the systemic industrial kind currently provided) and discussion. Marketplace of ideas and all that.
PS: we are asking the same: better regulation and education (and more boards of discussion) is the foundation of a great state.
That's the way I see it anyway; one big gradient. I don't believe the world is so black or white that the entire population exists on one extreme or the other.
The UK at the moment seems to have a bad case of regulation == nanny == bad
Whenever I hear someone saying thing s are over regulated, it means they have a great wheeze to scam someone out of cash if only it was allowed.
I fully believe that education is great and sensible regulation to the benefit of all but my core assumption about designing a society is to have sane defaults
The simplest would be something like SAYE (Save As You Earn) where your employer pushes 10% of your paycheck into a index isa each month from the age of 18.
Basically if you do nothing but accept the default, you arrive at 55 years old with a pension.
(effectively that's what is happening now in UK with pensions)
The defaults for society should leave us with a decent floor - and it's up to us to raise the ceiling.
Call it a nanny state, sensible regulation, or the only way to release a distro
Weed definitely changed me.
There used to be a saying that LSD made smart people smarter and stupid people jump out of windows. Is that a good thing?
Jokes aside, evolution is not necessarily modern civilization, technology, and laws. Those are our creations, and psychedelics have been an active part of our arrival at them. Psychedelics have been used by humans the world over for far longer than people have been making LSD in labs.
FWIW (anecdotal), I've had small psychosis ("bad trip", a BS name for that IMO) lasting a few hours to half a day on it multiple times under different circumstances (one time combination with one glass of alcohol plus not being used to either, one time where I passed out after -apparently- too much of active substance, one time combination with anti-depressant). All these 3 times occurred in The Netherlands where marihuana usage is decriminalised. Why did this happen though? Turns out, as I figured much later, I have autism, and weed made my autism-related symptoms worse in certain settings (ie. when I was not alone). Consider, for example, that I can get anxious in large groups because of all the stimulations. Consider, that weed increases these feelings and makes me even more receptive to these stimulations. Doesn't take a genius to figure that can lead to a (mild) psychosis. I've never had a psychosis on weed while I was alone though. Every psychosis I had was related to stress, apparently autism-related.
I don't want to forbid others what I did myself, but what I feel I can do is warn them and share my experience.
Many times I have asked myself if I could just stop once and it would never happen to me again (which is a lie, since there's always a trigger outside marijuana consumption), but the actual experience of dealing with psychosis have always been incredibly attractive to me.
I have to admit that I did become better at managing my own state of mind where I can not directly control the circumstances. I don't think you can control the psychosis, no - but you can teach yourself to get familiar with what is happening to you and therefore know there's nothing to be afraid of.
But my question is still that of: what if I, for once - could not directly control myself and would end up damaging or even killing myself? I don't think it will happen to me anymore simply because I went through with it. But what if I wasn't lucky enough? That still frightens me, when I think about it.
> Plus being afraid of being by myself; or alive even
I absolutely love being alone. I mean, I like to learn, read, watch, play, etc. which I can do on my own. Its when I am the least anxious. A rule of thumb is the more people around me, the more anxious I become unless I'm one of the many (not in the center of attention; though my odd behaviour can cause that). This is regardless of being in a state of psychosis.
After those 3 mild psychosis I had a long one in end of 2012 related to stress but not (AFAIK) to drugs. This one lasted for a total of approx 2 months. FWIW, the fact that I had those mild psychosis before, helped me during this time.
Is that the ideal way to threat a psychosis? I don't think so. The best thing to do -even if drugs are involved- is seeking professional help. Something I failed to do, because I distrusted that around that time.
Also, I can highly recommend mindfulness to cope with anxiety (and other negative feelings such as lack of focus/concentration, being/becoming oversensitive, even insomnia). I recently followed a course on mindfulness for people with autism and can recommend.
> I don't think you can control the psychosis, no - but you can teach yourself to get familiar with what is happening to you and therefore know there's nothing to be afraid of.
You can only control it so much, but the despair of feeling not in control is painful. It is a matter of accepting that and knowing that over time it will go away. What you need to do is focus on that long term. IMO it is a test of patience. As I said before, I feel like mindfulness can aid here. If you lack the faith though, do admit yourself. Right away.
> But my question is still that of: what if I, for once - could not directly control myself and would end up damaging or even killing myself?
During my psychosis I pretty much had no ego left, and could easily criticise myself without feeling any resistance or pain to that whatsoever. That is an advantage, one I feel the scientific community could indeed explore. I wasn't afraid of damaging/killing myself directly (if I was, I'd have voluntarily committed myself to a ward) but I was afraid of damaging/killing myself indirectly, getting in a worse state (after a while I slowly felt I was getting out of it). So I pretty much locked myself in a dark room with one laptop (on a decent brightness) and WLAN and a couple of bottles of water which I sometimes refreshed. The only time I went out of my bed was to pee (I barely ate; not hungry). I felt like I had that part under control though I must admit: it would've been more safe if I admitted myself at that point. In the beginning I could not sleep, and when I slept I felt like a waking dream. I had permanent headache. Both of that slowly progressed to a better state. I can also, regrettably, say that my brain was damaged; I felt less intelligent afterwards. With the correct professional aid and guidance such can be recovered till some extend, akin to with seizures.
The stereotype of the burned-out hippie exists for a reason. I personally know people who took way too much acid and never quite came back to earth; some are diagnosed schizophrenics, while others are just a bit eccentric and vague. There are a lot of really harrowing reports in the Erowid archive. HPPD is almost certainly a real disorder. I'm not advocating for DARE-style scaremongering, but I think that any honest conversation has to give serious consideration to potential risks as well as potential benefits.
Given that I was quickly disbelieving everything I had been raised to believe, and given that I was also doing teenager things like partying with friends and experimenting with various substances, there was an incredible amount of tension and arguing taking place in my home. My relationship with my parents was appalling. We fought constantly. I hated their beliefs. I hated my upbringing. They had no idea how to deal with a son who had always really been a good kid - a fun companion for my dad and a really loving child with my mom (who is still one of the most adorable, kind, caring and wonderful people I've ever known).
One night, when I was perhaps 16 years old, I came home quite late. I was high on LSD - probably the latter part of the trip. I was walking around the side of my house to get to the back door, and I paused. I started thinking about my parents. And suddenly it all became clear to me - the reasons for why they were they way they were, and the centrality of love to it all. The fact that their strictness was rooted in their deeply felt fear that I could end up doomed to spend eternity in hell. That, and a dozen other insights about them and our relationship washed over me.
This moment completely transformed our relationship. It was like a fever had broken. I still utterly disbelieved in their Christian faith - but I no longer raged against it, or felt the need to argue with them about it. I accepted them. I realized they had grown up in an environment similar to mine, but had never been able to break free of it. Instead of anger at them for this, I felt compassion for them.
I recognized that I loved them, and they loved me.
I know I could have gotten there without the acid trip, but I firmly believe that it would have taken several more years at least. That moment of insight when I was 15 or 16 years old was the kind that sometimes doesn't dawn on people until they're 30. Sometimes it never does.
Incidentally, this is just one of many moments of change that are rooted in some of the experiences I've had with psychedelics. I also, for example, shed my existentialist fear of death. But that's a different story. ;)
Dismissing someone else's assertions because they lack evidence or proper logic is not being egotistical.
For instance, my uncle who is a preacher was completely barred from using his iPad to store and read his sermons, because using such a thing as a tool to preach was somehow evil. ????
A big part of the existing doctrine is to try to help you identify things which are sinful, which basically means will separate you from God. And there's a place for that. But there is also a huge modern movement which focuses on Jesus' interaction with people, the actual words he spoke and the things that he did which are very loving, forgiving, and accepting of even the worst of sinners.
Which is more effective? (A) "Don't take those drugs, you'll go to hell!" or (B) "Hey man, I love you, and God loves you. I think these are having a very bad effect on your life. I'd like to help you with that, and will be here for you when you want to talk."
In my opinion, (A) is more of what the old-style doctrine preaches, while (B) is closer to Jesus' actual actions in the bible.
Anyways, I'm done. I wanted to also make the point that I fully believe you can pursue science and physics and all of that while still being utterly amazed at the breadth and beauty of God's work. But this post is getting too long, and people have in the past accused me of being a fence sitter for holding that opinion. I am not.
People who only believe what the Bible says is right versus people taking a drug and accepting its effects as the real truth.
Both sides should know themselves without external devices forcing a certain "truth" on them.
There's no "truth" that they show you. You just... have an experience. And then you think about it. And then maybe it changes you, maybe it doesn't.
Just like any other day, only turned up to 11, dose-dependent.
Are they just chemicals, though? Some people think they are themselves divine. One example of this can be seen in the attitude of worship of some Native American societies towards peyote or psychedelic mushrooms. Some people think they allow communication with the spirit world, or with their ancestors, or with gods.
Even if they are "just chemicals" that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't show you truth. After all, you could say your entire brain is "just chemicals" and if you are basically your brain, any truth you happen to come across is the result of "just chemicals" of one sort or another. Further, pretty much the entire world could be described as "just chemicals". That itself does not diminish the possibility of finding truth in it or through it.
Yes, rituals. When something is important, powerful, dangerous, but it's not wise to ban it, a society creates a ritual around that, to signal importance and danger. Western societies have rituals too. Not much to do with the truth.
> Even if they are "just chemicals" that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't show you truth.
That may be, but in this case it does mean exactly that. There is Charles Manson or the odd baby-killing ayahuasca cult brainwashing its disciples with psychedelics and propaganda to prove this.
> That itself does not diminish the possibility of finding truth in it or through it.
Or maybe it does... :) But that's pretty far from the original point I was trying to make.
> [Y]ou may see the content of your brain, and the world around you, in a different light. You may find some 'truths' this way, but there is no guarantee.
Or... They let you see some things that might teach you some truths. YMMV.
Are you a researcher, or are your opinions based on some research you could cite?
Now, there are several good reasons to exercise increased caution in the absence of evidence when dealing with under-developed brains of people with a lot more years ahead of them, but that's much different from a blanket strong opinion.
If you have special needs children with brain issues, early intervention is best. Doing something about the problem while they are very young can lead to lifelong enhanced productivity and quality of life. On the flip side, trying to intercede and screwing it up can have lifelong negative consequences.
I'm generally pro nutrition, not pro drug, but I'm not anywhere near as anti drug as most people imagine me to be. Anecdotally, I have known people who had anger management issues and the like who did the kind of drugs that mellow you out.
... by simply asking your parents to list their reasons of why they are against your LSD "self-education".
You did not have to open your mind with LSD in order to understand your parents at age 15.
I just looked that up and have assumed it was normal for most of my life. Sometime around when I was 3-5 years old, I was laying in bed, looking up up at the wall and noticed this visual noise. I wondered about it and resolved that "that's just how it is." I would also close my eyes and let that fuzz "set in" and see beautiful fire works and replay music in my head. Maybe just developmental hallucination or whatever.
In rooms with no lights, that visual noise actually forms into spacial "estimators", I think somewhat formed by memory of what the room actually looks like in full light. I've always noticed it, it's always been present, and I thought it was a normal function of human vision. I'm in a dark room right now and almost everything has that visual noise on it. The less light the object reflects, the more visual noise it has.
> There's a rather worrying trend of psychedelics being "sold" as a safe panacea.
I guess I missed that trend. Every time I've ever talked about psychedelics with people, it's always been "psychedelics, with disclaimer" - the disclaimer being that things can go very wrong and to be careful; read erowid for facts and contraindications; read recent "safe drug" reports; always have at least one sober person to steer things in the right direction; and have a safe place to go.
> If you believe the cheerleaders, psychedelics are powerful enough to rapidly cure mental illness and facilitate profoundly positive personality changes, but have only trivial side-effects.
I don't think I've heard it posited this way - I hear people say in some form that the effective administration of a safe dose of certain psychedelic drugs can be medically efficacious. I feel like I'm way more likely to hear drug side effects trivialized in a drug commercial.
>any honest conversation has to give serious consideration to potential risks
Agreed. It should be the hallmark of any "let's try some drugs" discussion.
HPPD happens with the eyes open, in the light, and is usually more pronounced than something like a floater[3] (which can also be seen in the lights, with the eyes open).
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_cinema
The best description is that I basically don't see flat even colors anywhere. There is always some amount of colorful noise. It's not that bad, and I can mostly tune it out. But it is always there.
I know phosphenes are normal, visual stuff that happens when you close your eyes. I have them all the time.
I don't know if it's related, but I regularly get migraines that are usually not painful, just uncomfortable and accompanied by strong auras.
I just looked that up and have assumed it was normal for most of my life."
I've always had visual snow and similar symptions as described for HDDP, color patterns and flashing/movement, visible on any flat-colored surface and especially with closed eyes (similar to what Prisoner's Cinema is described as being). I have never taken any drugs in my life, other than alcohol.
Honestly, I've always just thought it was a normal part of the visual processing that happens in the brain.
Everyone gets this. Visual artifacts are a fact of human vision.
If effects like walls breathing, significant visual snow, people's faces shifting/morphing and a skewed perception of proportions are interfering with your daily life, that's more than what we commonly experience. Abusing psychedelics (especially certain ones) can bring about this type of experience after they've left your system.
It’s not like it’s possible to have a placebo effect here. I was an isolated depressed, angry young man at 24 who had never had a relationship and all of my interpersonal relationships were completely toxic and was afraid of being touched, working at a minimum wage job.
Within three years of using ecstasy, I had hundreds of friends, learned how to DJ, was promoting parties, networked my way into a well paying it job, had a long term relationship, and eventually was djing for crowds of 1000+ people.
I’m not sure how I’d have gotten from a to b without using mdma and acid. I still had some work to do to integrate all of that and learn how to do it while sober but man, just being able to experience happiness and love and having open conversations with people amd talk about my feelings and just being hugged by strangers was so instantaneously life changing for me it was almost miraculous.
That said— I did mdma waaaay too much and don’t recommend doing it as much as I did. I think I got everything valuable I was going to get out of it the first 4 or 5 times. Everything after than that was just partying.
[0] is entirely about how safe psychedelics are. It opens with an anecdote about eight people who took several thousand times a normal dose with no adverse effects (then later mentions that alcohol's ratio of lethal dose to effective dose is ten).
[1] is about experiencing bad side-effects (while you're high, not lasting) from marijuana. It makes an unlinked reference to conflicting studies about association with schizophrenia, but that's it.
I'm not saying that all drugs are great and people should just have at it; our policies on drug use should be focused on harm reduction. In order to do that it's critically important that we have real empirical data about how drugs are used and can be abused, not more baseless scaremongering about people "succumbing to the spell" of drugs.
Which is even more pronounced when the brain hasn't finished to develop itself .
Advertising drugs as trivial is dangerous ,it could lead to youth experiment with drugs much younger at much larger scale.
While I agree that people should be cautious about taking any mind altering drug, from what I've seen alcohol seems to be even more dangerous (compare your first link with the information here[1] and here[2]). The big difference is that there is immense societal pressure to consume alcohol all the time (and this pressure occurs everywhere - you'll even get it at work events). Contrast that with something like this pro-psychedelic piece, which only advocates the potential of a small number of uses of psychedelics in one's entire lifetime.
[1] https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohol-health/overview-alcohol-co... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns/alcohol-poisoning-deaths/inde...
Yes, that's the point. I want drugs to be legalised because I recognise the harm that is caused by keeping them illegal. But our society's complete failure to promote the public health message around alcohol[1] means that I'm reluctant to push the legalise message.
[1] you only get one type of health benefit if you're an older woman drinking small amounts; for everyone else there's either no benefit or increasing levels of harm
I'd like to see arguments from both sides from people with deep knowledge in the subject rather than people who happen to have a voice.
I'm all for taking recreational drugs to have fun and I'm all for "recreational drugs" used in a clinical setting, like ketamine for treating depression and addiction, LSD for addiction and end of life care, or MDMA for PTSD. But I don't think we'd see social benefits and an improved society from dosing everyone up on LSD and MDMA. I don't think that psychedelic experiences are profoundly religious or spiritual. I don't go around recommending that everyone takes a bunch of drugs. People will if they want to, but I'd never pressure someone into doing them.
I'm not necessarily saying that the author falls into this camp, but I think that a lot of the time people try and make up medical or spiritual reasons for why they should legalise drugs, when they just want to take them recreationally. Just admit you want to take a bunch of drugs and get weird, there's nothing wrong with that!
And one last thing: I'm not sure about shrooms, but pissing on LSD is a terrible experience. Every little detail of the toilet is magnified and in perfect clarity, and the toilet either feels like it's 6 inches away or 6 feet away.
For the brochure version: http://www.swt.org/oshare/Lettvin-Leary/Lettvin-Leary-LSD-De...
Leary's sitting in the lotus position was always a red flag to me ;) I don't advocate a prohibition at all, but I think there's something wrong with attempting to conceive some sort of an ideology to back up the drug use.
Lettvin's point - "but the problem is whether the navel really replaces TV" - still stands ;)
> All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole life-style that he helped to create...
> ...a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody-or at least some force-is tending the Light at the end of the tunnel...
> ... This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries.
I think that HST had the right idea. He was under no illusion that drugs were just a bunch of fun and that life was a carnival. Of course, the man killed himself at 67, so I don't know if he's a great role model. In fact, he's no better than Leary, he just went over the deep end of hedonism instead.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/453917-we-are-all-wired-int...
Could it be that there's something wrong with not having one?
Most traditional societies with long histories of psychedelic use have some sort of ideology or framework in which to fit and to interpret the psychedelic experience. This is used to guide and structure the experience, and it could be argued that it's precisely when such a framework is lacking that all sorts of problems start to occur for many users of these substances -- they are thrown back on their own devices for interpretation of the experience, and many of them are incapable of doing so constructively.
Our own society is really just in its infancy in trying to integrate psychedelic use in a constructive, helpful manner. Psychedelic use in a sacred context is one approch that some people are trying, psychedelic use in a medical or therapeutic context is another. The jury is still out on which of those is better. Maybe none of them is. Perhaps in the future we'll find an even better one.
Honestly, people are different and they react differently to drugs.
I knew someone who did a lot of LSD, but he never had a single visual hallucination, while such hallucinations are incredibly common for just about everyone else who takes the drug.
Also, I think set and setting and probably intelligence and life experience as well really affect what you get out of psychedelics.
A die-hard materialist taking them in a clinical setting, expecting his experience to be "just noise in the brain" might be more likely to get something more superficial than someone who is deeply religious, who takes the psychedelic in a church or temple and who expects a spiritual communion with his or her deity.
But, of course, you never know, and either of them might get the surprise of their lives. The other day I was listening to Erik Davis interview a researcher who'd administered psychedelics to thousands of subjects, and said that the people who have the hardest time with them are die-hard fundamentalists and die-hard materialists -- people who have something to prove.
You aren't connecting to some higher power, you're connecting to your brain in a different state. Like having the radio tuned between two different channels.
It can still be mind expanding, one thing I've definitely discovered from psychedelics is that our senses are subjective. But I think that people who are trying to find a higher meaning in life should look elsewhere, rather than drugs. Because you won't find a higher meaning, you'll just think you did, it's an illusion.
So how do you distinguish the illusion from the real thing, as far as higher meaning goes?
In any case, different people have different things revealed to them on psychedelics, and interpret those things in different ways. Some of them might be true, some not. Also, some of their interpretations of those things could be accurate or not. I'm really not sure how you could tell and ahead of time pronounce them all to be illusory or false.
Let's say that someone took psychedelics and realized that love was the most important thing for them in their life, or that they need not fear death. Are these things necessarily false or illusory just because the realizations were made under the influence of psychedelic drugs? Maybe they are false, but maybe not.
There's no fundamental reason that drugs are any worse than alcohol except social stigma and manipulation.
A most bizarre example imo is Portugal. It is a fine-able offense to carry drugs (up to 10 days), but not criminal. Yet it is criminal to produce or distribute drugs. How does that work if consumption of the end product is not criminal.
It's like it must be illegal on principle because drug cartels (or whatever), but we understand the end effect is not something criminal. Weird..
Baby steps I guess
Portugal have made the decision that although drugs are bad (in their opinion), the users of drugs are not bad people, but rather the victims of bad people (the dealers).
Why need a user of drug be a victim of anyone?
There's a difference between drug use (which can be constructive, or at least not harmful) and drug abuse. We should not equate the two.
Drugs (especially psychedelics, but also cannabis) could be hugely beneficial to people when used constructively. When people benefit from such constructive drug use, they should be thanking those who provide them those drugs, and not putting those people in jail or demonizing them as "bad people".
I don't disagree with you. I'm just saying that the viewpoint of the Portuguese government is that any use of drugs (outside the legal ones) is abuse, and that the abusers are the victims.
They're saying that it is still inherently bad for people to be taking drugs, but that drug users are not bad people.
This is wrong.
LSD is synthesized from ergot, a fungus that grows on rye.
An oversight like this throws the authors entire credibility into question. Know your subject matter.
It's equivalent to a terminology simplification that doesn't take away from the central point of the article.
Seriously? They teach this in 5th or 6th grade science classes in American public schools. I'm pretty sure it's common knowledge that mushrooms are fungus but not bacteria.
I’d say it should be up choice. If you want to take substance x over alcohol, take it.
Controlling and encouraging safe usage is the way to go. People that want to take drugs will find and take them anyway.
Cars probably also wouldn't be legal.
Not arguing pro war on drugs here, but there's more to mdma:
> Results show that oxytocin creates intergroup bias because oxytocin motivates in-group favoritism and, to a lesser extent, out-group derogation. These findings call into question the view of oxytocin as an indiscriminate “love drug” or “cuddle chemical” and suggest that oxytocin has a role in the emergence of intergroup conflict and violence.
Source:
Oxytocin promotes human ethnocentrism
Fun story: I live and went to school in Provincetown which is the "end of Cape Cod" to which the author is referring. One of my good friends worked for the "rescue squad" (Fire/EMT). He told me that more than once they've had to "rescue" someone wondering the dunes, high on ...something who was having medical trouble. Probably not related as Ptown is sort of an artists/spiritual place for many put please remember this before taking those shrooms - bring a sober buddy.
0) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-13/budweiser...
Compare it with US - some shops in SF look like fancy hotel lobbies, sales people incredibly knowledgeable, lots of options (candy, vapes, shatter, wax, oils, etc). Can't smoke there tho.
You wanted to criticize me, but chose to respond with a passive non-statement instead. That says a lot about your approach to communication! [Is this doing it right? I'm trying to speak your dialect.]
I still remember when I could touch and sniff weed before I bought it. Weed's hyper-marketing and strict regulations are making it much less appealing to me. I'd rather get weed directly from people who grow it, or just grow it myself. This is a rare case where a peer-to-peer service actually makes a lot of sense to me. When weed is entirely legal, I would not be surprised if there really was an Uber for weed, even though "Uber for X" is kind of joke these days.
There was during the gray-market period in Washington, following the legalization vote but before the regulation was finalized. Dealers with well publicized (prominently in local newspapers) websites and phone numbers, you'd give them a call and a few minutes later they'd pull up to wherever you were. All they were missing was the app.
"But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a [Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach."
-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, John De Quincey.
It sounds eerily a lot like the current push for psychedlica, and it originally started with upperclass knowledge workers then, too. But as the dangers of the drug became widely known, and it filtered downwards, it became regarded as a horror, and prohibition came not because the government was a killjoy and wanted to ruin people's recreational fun, but because the human toll was high and as it filtered down the criminal element took control.
The addict or user always glorifies the damn thing in the honeymoon phase, its after when the effects become known and widespread do we get the pushback. It's always the answer to everything that ails you till it isn't.
It's an important question of how drugs affect people. And there is only 1 way to answer that: rigorous scientific study.
Why we need controlled studies:
NOT self-reporting. You cannot take a substance that by definition disconnects you from reality, then take the hallucinating person's account of improvement as evidence. That is laughable.
NOT anecdotes.
MUST BE ANONYMOUS. This writer has a financial incentive to overhype to get more clicks.
No SELECTION BIAS. I want to hear accounts from the people who never recovered from acid too.
--
I largely think the drug war is absurd. But any magazine running a piece like this is absurd.
"Above all: God forbade it."
Says who? In medieval Europe (and to this very day) monastaries were growing hop (arguably a drug) brewing beer (arguably a drug). Pharmacies are arguably selling drugs. There is evidence of drug usage throughout our history, especially a.muscaria (fly agaric).
"This, it immediately impressed upon me, was an intimation of godness; it opened my heart to the divine; this was a sacrament, a fusing of the material with the ineffable. Pollan tells the story of a woman called Mary who ate two or three spoonfuls of mushrooms one day and, she told him, “had the most profound experience of being with God. I was God and God was me.”
This is supported by the works of John Marco Allegro and some of his, eh, followers. [1] [2] [3]
"And the word “drug,” like “psychedelic,” is horribly loaded. Like the miraculous weed, psilocybin comes from the earth. LSD comes from bacteria. They are not addictive; yes, they can be abused, but very few who have had a psychedelic experience want to have it again and again."
Its dangerous to throw all psychedelic drugs on one pile. Psilocybin cannot be used effectively in tandem (e.g. multiple times a week) however LSD can. LSD is actually an oddball, pharmacologically, though I'm not an expert at this field, see Wikipedia [4]
Also, LSA comes from bacteria (ergot and the like). [5] LSD is made via chemistry of human interaction (synthesised).
Now we come to my actual point: we have the scientific ability to diagnose people. We have the scientific ability to figure which medicine/cure works on them. We have the scientific ability to standardise drug dosages. Recreational drug / "natural" drug usage uses practically none of these abilities. Its experimenting often done irresponsibly. I'm all for experimenting, but it should be done in controlled settings, following the scientific method. There are scientists who are proponents of that, but articles like these are not going to win them grants because they resonate with the experimental/recreational drug use culture only. The general public is against that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sacred_Mushroom_and_the_Cr...
[2] https://logosmedia.com/the-holy-mushroom-evidence-of-mushroo...
[3] https://logosmedia.com/SecretHistoryMagicMushroomsProject
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Pha...
The ergot fungi are that, not bacteria!
Also LSA is lysergic acid; ergot infected rye contains more complex biomolecules fused to LSA or ergoline. So little pure LSA in these plants!
Sustainable business model, extremely profitable and extremely anti-competitive, .... but rules are for fools. As time permits doctors and psychologists will have their share of the spoils like tobacco.
Personally I would turn the tide and put cigarettes on par with heroin legally. 1 packet of cigarettes, six months to jail. Their profits were made by devastating our healthcare system and made people ill.
Why not try this again? This time they will sell drugs legally.
The crisis was never financial, we as humans went bancrupt.
If we as humans went bankrupt, it was when we decided to start having the government police what substances people can and cannot use.
Well, hot dang. HN seems to be about sharing information and discussion, I merely did the former, also, an ideology is a belief system, religions are basically a set of values.
If you read the text you should see it's just snippets of facts (historical in nature, and yes those two people have their agendas for the interview as far as illumination and answering questions go you can get a sense of it from watching them, arguably nothing malicious whatsoever for the masses, quite the contrary.) mostly from the links with quotes. The links themselves are fact dense from experts in their fields. Writer/scholar/researcher, and KGB defector.
"Eugene Michael Jones is an American writer, former professor, media commentator and the current editor of Culture Wars magazine. Jones is known for his writings from a perspective which defends the Catholic Church in American society and overviews the decline of the Catholic communities which were assimilated into the secular American mainstream after the 1950s."
"Yuri Alexandrovich Bezmenov (Russian: Ю́рий Алекса́ндрович Безме́нов; 1939 – 1993), known by the alias Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist for RIA Novosti and a former PGU KGB informant who defected to Canada."
-W
I'd say the one who flagged the posts is the real problem, no idea what the hair up his ass was, problems with certain facts I guess. Looking at your posts, there seems to be a systematic problem with how the site works, wouldn't it be better if there wasn't this proclivity to censorship and knee-jerk flag/downvoting. It seems to lead to an echo-chamber effect. From whoever is arguing, this ideological battle thing though doesn't seem to have much of an argument regardless, 1-2/7 posts he would feebly at best as I don't see an argument, accuse me for it, weak stuff.
The point about how ideological "battle" destroying curiosity, I don't understand frankly, people interested in the truth wouldn't be hands off, rather they would engage, those who want to of course, when "ideologies" clash I think there's a "the axe sharpens the sword" effect and ultimately the more useful or truthful argument prevails, people with weak beliefs surely tend not to seek confrontation, not that I was or wasn't doing that.
Not sure If I get it, I'm not an ideologue in general, I'm not sure what that would even mean, everyone has ideals and values, changing as they may be, sure I have "I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things." But that doesn't say much, as surely the same applies to you and most people, ugh guess there's no escaping the echo chamber of acceptable ideas in this format, as long as it has centralized authorities. Subjectivity rules.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Legalising drugs would essentially force everyone to use drugs. That's the same reason why drugs are banned in professional sport.
From my experience, drugs make people less altruistic. Although it does also make them more social (but social != altruism).
This kind of puritanism and any abstaining (from coffee, tobacco, alcohol, sex, drugs, entertainment, etc) should be a personal life choice. Not mandated by law.
Drugs have been since since forever, and prohibition never really worked. It even has not so hidden racist logic baked into it, targeting minorities, civil asset forfeiture, covert wars by letter soup agencies. It must end.
Perhaps not everyone's goal is to compete in the workplace/marketplace?
> Legalising drugs would essentially force everyone to use drugs.
Just like legalizing alcohol means everyone is forced to drink alcohol? In the US prohibition brought us a surge of organized crime. Our current demand for illegal drugs creates a very, very successful business model for drug cartels in Mezo- and South America. I don't see how that's better.
> That's the same reason why drugs are banned in professional sport.
How's that going? The rules are regularly broken anyways, and all the doping happens in secret. Tons of professional and amateur athletes are doping in spite of the bans.
Well the fact is that most people drink alcohol, even kids causing more or less harm to others and to themselves. The regulation story is not really that pretty once once you see the effects on poor people/families! Now replace alcohol with cocaine or heroine and see some ugly effects.
I would allow alcohol and drugs only if I could enforce a minimum age of 22-23 and proper education though and this only because I believe people should be allowed to control their life.
Most people drink alcohol =/= people are forced to drink alcohol. You've moved the goalpost.
> minimum age of 22-23 and proper education
Teens keep finding ways to drink and smoke, even though there are laws about selling to 18-21 year olds. The laws make it slightly harder, but in no way make it impossible.
> I would allow... I believe people should be allowed to control their life.
These two things are not compatible.
Marijuana and psychedelics in general tend to have been associated with influencing people to be less obsessed with materialistic ambitions. But really drugs in and of themselves are heavily influenced by the culture surrounding them and the experiences through which people engage in them. The marijuana capitalists could certainly attempt to market weed in such a way that people feel like they haven't really lived unless theyve done X while high but that is just an echo of the booze laden bikini beer commercials etc that the alcohol industry pushes.
At some point I could see certain environments having social norms that push people to try drugs that would otherwise not just like it can be difficult to hang out in a bar without drinking if you otherwise don't have a personal prohibition against drinking alcohol. But weighing the damage caused by prohibition which is ultimately could been seen as being abused as an easy way to control minority communities through repression by the hands of the police and also facilitating the lucrative and oftentimes violent drug trade. If you look at Nixon's rational for creating the war on drugs it was very much about social control and repression and very little about health concerns.
I think that even Timothy Leary advocated at one time for something akin to a pilots license to get legal access to powerful psychedelics. They are not toys and the way it is now the stigma and black market make it far more likely for them to be misused than in a world where they were treated with an appropriate level of respect in terms of their potential uses. Very few cultures that utilize altered states of consciousness do so without a certain level of ritual and cultural respect for their power.
Take marijuana or alcohol for example, two of the most popular recreational drugs. You’re absolutely convinced that a Saturday night booze bender or big smoke up will drive them to work harder on Monday because they had such a rush?
Aside from sports which you mentioned, psychedelics and amphetamines especially are used by creatives. Writers, illustrators, directors, musicians and so on. Someone who would be "clean" would be at an ungodly disadvantage.
Although with altruism and psychedelics specifically, I would have to disagree strongly, as they actually tend to almost bestow empathy upon people who use them, that is to say that, the effect of increase in empathy is so strong that it seems as if people around and including the person who's had the experience are devoid of it by comparison. This increase in sensitivity if anything would in turn lend itself to altruism.