Could psychedelics transform mental health?
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
However, as we’ve seen with marijuana, it’s not regulated like medicine. It’s sold in what closely resemble head shops and called medicine with a wink and a nod to be used recreationally. It’s a strategy that circumvents the moral argument against recreational drug use, which I believe exists for a good reason: we don’t want society continuously drugged like Brave New World.
So if it’s really medicine, which I don’t doubt certain circumstances, then it should be taken seriously and the manufacture and prescription should be regulated like other medicines, and not just a facade that masks the normalization of recreational drug culture.
Could you expand on that? What makes that wrong, exactly?
I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious about your point of view.
What does it matter if you disagree with him or not?
Quoting Huxley, in his letters to Orwell discussing the difference between 1984 and Brave New World:
“Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.”
What if taking certain drugs actually liberated rather than enslaved you?
Psychedelics, constructively used, might actually help people see through the power structures used to control them in ordinary life, and could be a strong catalyst for positive social change.
Take a look at the ideals that psychedelic use encouraged in the 60's and 70's counterculture. These people were not after being lulled further in to sleep by "narco-hypnosis", as Huxley terms it. They were after dropping out of the dominant society, about building their own alternative societies, about being peaceful and loving towards each other, about resisting the powers who told them to give their lives to chasing profit, or climbing the corporate ladder, or killing people in wars, or hating other people.
Of course, they did not all realize their ideals in the long run (though some did... the environmental movement, which has been incredibly successful, had its roots in that time), but it wasn't like these people were an army of brainwashed zombies programmed to obey. If anything, they questioned and disobeyed too much for mainstream society to tolerate, and there was a huge reactionary backlash against them -- they who had been greatly influenced by psychedelic drugs.
I suggest you take a look beyond Huxley's "Brave New World" (which he wrote in 1932) to his later book "Island" (which he wrote in 1962), in which he himself describes a utopia based around the use of a psychedelic sacrament. His thinking on drugs had clearly evolved in the 30 years since he wrote the former novel.
Also, Huxley is famous for having asked for and received LSD on his deathbed. There is a touching account of this event written by his wife here:
https://erowid.org/culture/characters/huxley_laura/huxley_la...
The solution is to knowledge. The most bad stories we hear about drugs are from ppl who don't know much(or anything at all !!!) about the stuff they take.