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Comment by _0qft | Hacker News Reader

I would only take them for therapeutic purposes. I'm already on anti depressants. I'm really not convinced mushrooms would genuinely help.

Psychiatrists are really not fan of those things, they are considered neurotoxic.

It's weird how often people talk about those drugs. They are still studying them to treat some specific things like PTSD, alcoholism... Yet here, people seem to believe it can treat other things as well.

I'm sorry but I would rather let professionals do their work. If you're into recreative drugs, fine, but don't advocate for drugs under a scientific premise and pretend it's a cure for other things. That's not how science works.

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"let professionals do their work"

Man, you need to do some reading on the drug war. The research has been banned for so long for all the wrong reasons. The professionals aren't allowed to just do their work.

Also, beating people over the head about "That's not how science works" is what Karl Popper called Scientism. It's actually an antiscientific position, despite best intents.

Neurotoxic? I would like to see a source for that claim. Psychedelics are certainly not to be underestimated but from what I have heard the actual physical harm they can do is negligible compared to e.g. what alcohol does to your body. If you never drink because of that then maybe abstaining from mushrooms is appropriate. Otherwise I'd say it's taking some minuscule effect and blowing it out of proportion.

As someone who personally struggled with drug-induced psychosis for several years (and met many others with similar struggles), I kindly ask that you stop generalising from personal anecdote when giving advice about mental health and psychedelic drug use to others.

Your psychosis has most probably nothing to do with neurotoxicity of magic mushrooms, unless you took the 'other' mushrooms which are poisonous like Amanita muscaria. Also you didn't mention which substance(s) you drugged yourself to get there, how pure and strong they were (something legality helps greatly with).

Overall, all pros and cons taken, there is no contest - legalization is the only correct thing to, especially given how past war on drugs panned out. Nobody advocates its the miracle cure, nobody says you should overdose on them 7x a week, or that you should even take them for that matter. Just like nobody advocates to drink themselves to death just because as an adult you can go and buy 10 liters of vodka or absinthe at once.

There is no protection against stupidity, just a hope for cure in form of education and knowledge.

You're correct that I didn't just drug myself with mushrooms, but they certainly didn't help. Marijuana was the main cause. And I likely would have stopped myself sooner if it wasn't for ignorant people telling me I couldn't and wouldn't get seriously ill from taking these substances.

This is a generalization of a personal anecdote, which is exactly what you asked the other user not to do.

Am I saying it will happen to everyone? No, but I am saying it CAN happen. Of that I am living proof.

> given how past war on drugs panned out

Legalising something doesn't make the cost disappear. You still have to police DUI, only now with more substance profiles to learn.

> There is no protection against stupidity, just a hope for cure in form of education and knowledge.

You could say the same about the war on drugs.

A psychiatrist told me about neurotoxicity. I will trust a doctor 100 times before I trust anything online.

> Otherwise I'd say it's taking some minuscule effect and blowing it out of proportion.

I don't see how psylocybin would help people with a bit of depression or other problems. I don't want to take a drug just to have some fun. I need more than that.

And no, I don't drink. Alcohol is a depressants, so I don't need that.

Psychiatry is extremely committed to other forms of medication, which are in general not particularly effective, and also extremely dangerous in various ways.

Of course there are some exaggerated claims by proponents of psychedelics. But if you look at the history of psychiatric medicine over the last 70 years or so, it is basically disastrous.

Another difference is that whereas practitioners of both psychedelic drug therapy and talking therapies such as psychoanalysis have always also been patients of their own disciplines, there is no requirement for psychiatrists to have any experience of taking psychiatric medication. In fact it would generally be frowned upon.

> They are still studying them to treat some specific things like PTSD, alcoholism...

They are still only studying them to treat health issues because we had a relapse of ~30 years of non-existent research into them.

> Yet here, people seem to believe it can treat other things as well.

That's because the professionals are finding that they treat other things as well:

https://imgur.com/frIFOcJ

> Psychiatrists are really not fan of those things

They're usually seen as psychotomimetic[0], in that they mimic madness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotomimetic

Since you mentioned anti-depressants, I would recommend listening to this podcast by Dr. Caroline Leaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4DeCV31YY

Hope this helps someone.

This is extremely inappropriate, some people need the medication or else will end up making bad life decisions resulting in dire consequences for them.

She is not a physician, she had phd in psychology or other soft sciences. I have no trouble with this, but this sounds like another one of those life coachs. Ew.

Wow, so I can drop the regimen of drugs my psychiatry team have developed over the course of a decade that made me able to function despite my extremely complex mental health needs. All I have to do is train myself to think thoughts that alter the gravitational field in my brain which will change my brain's immune system and I'll no longer be affected by fake disease? I'm sure some of her many books will help me.

Actively harmful psuedo-science crap. I'm astonished to see this being peddled on Hacker News. You should be disgusted with yourself.

Looks like nothing can make you feel better at this stage if you can't infer that the intention was to help.

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