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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

See! Whatever is actually deadly (even if it's not by its nature but because of too people doing it wrong like in this particular case) people will stop it themselves. People buy and sell psychedelics because these are, unlike strong opioids, not deadly and there is little if any reason to ban them yet governments all over the world do and insist it is more important than education, violent crime prevention and everything (in many countries possession of some doses of LSD is enough to put you in prison for much longer than a murder).

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Psychedelics (particularly tabs) are not as safe anymore because of increased availability of cheap designer drugs that have similar effects to LSD, but are much less safe. The NBOMEs and bromo dragonfly are two examples of such drugs that have been implicated in accidental deaths. I was reminded of this recently when an old acquaintance of mine who was a heroin addict died. I assumed it must have been the usual H + fentanyl OD, but he actually had a heart attack after taking some psychedelic tabs

Nice point. Nevertheless there is much less sense in taking these if better options are available (opiate addicts are usually forced to take whatever they can find by their urge) and the information is well-available (e.g. the second link on Google to bromo dragonfly leads to PsychonautWiki wich immediately shows you an honest warning banner: "Bromo-DragonFLY is linked to an unusually large number of hospitalizations and deaths", it also says "it produces unusually long effects which reportedly can last up to several days" - I doubt many people are brave enough to go this deep, even and especially if I were an opiate addict I wouldn't dare), people have all it takes to make up their minds so the mere fact of availability is not a death sentence.

There indeed is, however, a problem of dishonest or ignorant dealers selling really dangerous substances like that to ignorant or naïve people telling them just that's acid or kind of but I believe this problem would be much less widespread if people could get safe psychedelics legally or even if the black market itself was allowed to develop healthier so dealers had to establish reputation and care about the customers experience. Also, as far as I understand, the major reason for this kind of drugs to be developed and marketed is because classic psychedelics are too hard to produce for underground labs so they have to consider cheaper and easier alternatives.

This was why McDonalds, Budweiser, and Marlboro swiftly went out of business.

1000s of people dying every year from drug overdoses in the US would disagree with you. In fact heroin and meth, both deadly and dangerous drugs, are used far more often than psychedelics I would bet.

I have tried taking meth for about a couple of weeks a couple of times in my life and had no problems with it, I didn't even have to "quit" as the "addiction" is purely psychological (so it totally depends on a person if they are going to be affected by it or not, I wasn't, but perhaps it could be harder for me if I had no love in my life and didn't do meth solely for working efficiency so I could write code much faster and better than I usually can being handicapped by ADHD so severe that ordinary aphetamine won't help much (and you can't get either legally at my location)) if you do it right (take a really lot of piracetam, antioxidants, vitamins, eat fruits and drink a huge lot of water with electrolytes all the way, try to relax regularly, don't drink any alcohol, don't (!) take dopa/tyrosine supplements while on meth etc.) and it itself can hardly kill you. Heroin can indeed kill (unless you really know how exactly pure it is and control the dosage very seriously) but it's usually a risk the people choose to take (and you can even eliminate both the risk and the addictivity if you get substance of precisely known purity and take it in sufficiently small doses) while with poorly diluted fentanyl the risk is like a "russian roulette".

Also note that what I've meant was essentially about treating psychedelics the same way as opiates, not much about meth (which can be deadly in an indirect way (it doesn't kill by itself but given some time can easily screw a weak mind to the point of madness) for many people) nor about heroin (which can kill you quite literally). Nevertheless in both cases there always is a choice people are given many chances to make and in case of black market fentanyl there almost isn't.

"I didn't even have to "quit" as the "addiction" is purely psychological (so it totally depends on a person if they are going to be affected by it or not, I wasn't)"

I don't think "purely psychological" is implied by different people having different susceptibility to addiction. If it were purely psychological, wouldn't that imply a person could become addicted independently of ever taking the drug?

Because people who didn't ever taken a drug have never felt nearly this bright and this happy and such intensity of pleasant feelings and mental capacity is far outside of boundaries of their imagination. Once an addiction-prone person experiences that it's possible they will never want to feel ordinary again. Also, if they do it wrong (and they usually do, unfortunately so many people choosing to try drugs don't care to do research nor to spare money on supplements that are going to protect their health during the experience and help to recover after it) they are going to experience hangover caused by their body resources depletion and receptors disregulation, feel particularly bad and hurry to fix this with just another dose of the same substance taken the same (or even worse) way that caused that. I took the way depicted in the "limitless" movie (not to the point of becoming a politician :-) though) and given it up completely shortly after (as I prefer the normal state and don't really like to stress myself and undermine my health that way) but many people who are less rationally-minded, less psychologically-developed and have less-satisfying lives just go junky and I believe many of them could be saved by just being educated (not scared) better. I really don't recommend anybody to try drugs but whoever already takes them or is going to do anyway - search trough and read the darn Reddit, Quora etc thoroughly!

It is also important to emphasize that that's about just a single class of drugs you've mentioned. Popular psychedelics, although able to induce even stronger sensations usually don't cause even psychological addiction (although there are some rare people who start taking them every weekend, a normal person will hardly feel like repeating the experience soon and any kind of regular - it's just too intense psychologically and there also is tolerance, the acid wears off in some hours and won't really work until the next week) and (except some of them) hardly cause any harm (unless you're a psycho already - then you may happen to go nuts completely) or hangover. Opiates, at the same time, don't make you bright but just give a strong sense of relief kind of "I just feel good and uck everything absolutely" yet cause powerful physiological addiction, severe hangovers and serious risk of lethal overdose.

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