I know a lot of people whose minds were ruined by psychedelics. It’s something you will see when you spend time in those communities. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s common.
You seem so laser focused on the promising side of things that you completely “forget” each substance is different and it’s use has serious consequences if abused, if not then do heroine.
On the subject of heroin, what about more dangerous psychoactive substance - ethanol? See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11660210 and https://www.ias.org.uk/uploads/pdf/News%20stories/dnutt-lanc...
Unless psilocybin is thoroughly tested and validated as a treatment that is as safe as SSRI, I don't think it's really worthwhile to jump into the psilocybin train.
It won't kill you for sure. But a 100% loss in sex drive isn't really something people actually want. Took a year after stopping SSRIs to get back.
They definitely don't deserve to be Class A in the UK and Schedule I in the US. Even more so, they shouldn't be classified as Schedule I by the United Nations.
I'm not sure about using it regularly, but people have been using these for ceremonies for centuries. I personally believe the choice should be left with an individual.
Should we also compare the risk of addiction/dependence? Oh, yes, lets do!
Hey, while we are at it, shall we also compare effectiveness? 2 doses vs 6 weeks? Oh, wait, that's what the study did.
I wonder how many different types of psilocybin they had to test to find the effect one for these particular patients. Because, you know, getting the "right" SSRI based coctail is actual quite hard, many people go through three or four different variants before finding the one which they think works.
Yes, I'll bet they had to compare at least as many types of psylocybin before they found the combo that worked. Right?
Apart from that, there's the massive list of side-effects, many of them extremely common.
Complete loss of libido, erectile dysfunction, or worse, your libido is unchanged but you completely lose the ability to orgasm.
Insomnia, cause that's what a depressed person needs, even less sleep and more time for rumination in bed.
Akathisia, which is an uncontrollable need to move your body, think restless leg syndrome but it's your entire body. You literally cannot sit still.
Less life-destroying but still very obnoxious: increased sweating, dry mouth (which can ruin your teeth if you don't manage it with biotene or gum or something), blurred vision, headaches, the list goes on.
This is without even mentioning the risk of serotonin syndrome yet, which can straight up literally kill you if you don't make it to a hospital. It happens when your serotonin level is too high, and can cause seizures, fever, arrhythmia, or death.
Be conservative with dosage, don't do multiple doses in the same session & don't use with other drugs
"I've seen it work"
"I've also seen it fail"
I've tried many of these substances, and know people who have gone a lot further, so I'm not speaking out of ignorance here. There are risks to these things, and it's not a positive experience for everyone. Giving people a warning about that is entirely reasonable.
It's like saying "driving in a car is dangerous, and many people art hurt every year doing so." Okay, so what? Are you saying everyone should stop driving? It's just not useful - compare it to something like telling people to wear a seatbelt or pointing out that driving in particular conditions is especially dangerous. Those are things that we can use to drive more safely. Saying vaguely that driving can be dangerous doesn't serve any useful purpose.
I used to macrodose and get immensely creative over a week or so. With a happy outlook on nature and all things uncontrollable around me.
But then the high died some day. Lethargy came back. Lack of actual structure and the 'happy go lucky' attitude derailed whatever tied my past with plans for the future.
Microdosing seemed to help from time to time, but mostly I just get distracted with random consumption instead of planned, structured and thought through creation.
Be pro-shrooms but don't act like they're safe in every case. Education is required before partaking in anything, let alone shrooms.
People who are not well are known to 'self medicate'.
For example: Increase of alcohol use among people with preexisting problems is well documented. Link between tobacco use and schizophrenia is also well documented. See: "Smoking and schizophrenia" https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19794359/ "It has been suggested that smoking may be an attempt by schizophrenic patients to alleviate cognitive deficits and to reduce extrapyramidal side-effects induced by antipsychotic medication."
Psychedelics are not the type of drug people keep using if it harms them. If they don't work for you, you really don't want to do them again.
(ps. I would not recommend _regular_ drug use of any kind)
Because generally speaking, unless something is concretely documented as dangerous we don't just assume it is dangerous "because". Especially when that "because" is because of a well-documented, decades-long propaganda campaign by the federal government.
Did you have a point to make?
As far as danger, I think that, as with many things, it's about maturity, education and harm reduction.
I had a single bad experience with mushrooms, and it put me off ever taking them again. I was too young and immature (something like 15/16), and took about 5x more than I'd ever taken before. I can see now that it was obviously very stupid. If I'd been in a different location at the time, god only knows what could have happened to me - I'd say that, if abused, mushrooms can be far, far more dangerous than driving a car.
But - if the science backs it up, psylocilin could do amazing things for those with depression. And furthermore, sensible people can have amazing experiences. So as long as education and harm reduction is in place, I'm all for it.
It is a crime that they've been locked away for so long due to Nixon and scare mongers. So many people in jail because of it. Legalize it already, sheesh.
What I am saying is that it is depressing that we are only just seeing reports from formal sources that psychedelics could be useful for some people.
No source, just anecdata, the circles I run in.
When you add all the other scheduled drugs that have no state level recreational framework, then you no studies and you also have a compounded supply chain problem where nobody knows what they’re actually consuming
There are molecule combinations out there which can cause instant parkinson’s disease
nobody can give a real case about “the friend of friend” who went crazy because of the illegality and imagined or real liability
and its not fair to say “this drug is perfectly safe stop fearmongering, oh wait you should have known about your family history of schizophrenia never mind then lol too late, but everyone else dont listen to that person” this isn’t directed at you, just a collection of things said in the psychadelic community pretty reliably
bothersome.
This is a very good point. I'm not going to suggest that the commonly cited anecdotes are all wrong or misguided, but a lot of well meaning people throw around anecdotes but just like a discussion about flat earthers, everyone knows about them but virtually nobody seems to actually know any personally.
In 2016 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cited 37,461 people died due to automobile accidents. Those are easily traceable numbers because they create a tremendous amount of paperwork and news articles.
But with psychedelics there is a very odd disconnect between the perception of their danger and the extreme lack of actual medical/scientific evidence that actually gets cited.
Is this real or exaggeration for effect? It sounds implausible...
It's not instant but it's very scary stuff and 100% incurable.
Simulatable in primates and mice by giving them this drug.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000360.htm
Be careful out there, test your drugs.
It's actually pretty annoying, as I have a health condition that it might help with, and furthermore I used to really enjoy recreational use.
Some disassociatives are often put into the "psychedelic," and they can cause addiction. Ketamine begin an example. People begin chasing the previous high, which often means higher doses and more money.
Some more ignorant people put MDMA (and family) of drugs into this category as well. These drugs are highly neurotoxic, and require a lot of "prep" to take to reduce their neurotoxicity (it's arguable to what degree this prep helps). Moreover frequent user of this can in some people (ie people succeptible to depression) cause a long-term disbalance in their serotonin system (some people take weeks to recover from even one usage).
People who have some mental "precondition" (eg such as psychosis, etc) can have some extremely severe response and permanent "side effects" (for a lackeof better expressions) from psychedelics, and never recover.
An extremely small percentage of people have what's called Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD). Some people find it fun, some don't mind it, while some can't function because of it.
Quality of substance you acquire can also vary. On the black market things are often mislabelled or cut with other substances that are easier/cheaper to produce. One notable examples is NBOMe being sold as LSD. NBOMe is more dangerous for a few reasons that I won't be getting into in this post. Always test your stuff with test kits, or if you're not comfortable with that, sense a small bit of your batch to a testing lab (there's a few anonymous/free ones in Europe).
Lastly, there's always ignorance or risk of being too "casual" about taking psychedelic due to familiarity with them. This leads to accidental drug combinations (eg some antidepressants + some psychedelics) don't combined well. Aimee just diminished the other, but people reported more severe symptoms. People also combine things recreationally without researching things properly, which can be a bad combo. Speaking of antidepressants and psychedelics: a notable thing to mention is that Lithium salts and LSD have been reported to lead to terors, seizures, and maybe even death (as reported on erowid).
I'm not trying to discourage or encourage people from psychedelics. In my personal experience, they can be wonderful and provide healing experiences. However, we need to always be careful when using them, because they have such a profound effect on our minds, and we still understand so little about the mind itself. With that in mind (no pun intended), treat them with respect they deserve!
Also disclaimer: I'm not trying to discourage or encourage people from psychedelics. Personally I believe they should not be criminalised, but people should be cautious using them.
I went from depressed and basically dropping off the edge of the world to traveling across the world and starting a startup with new friends in a different continent, which was just now recently acquired.
What might interest you is all the psychedelics I did were technically legal. Shoutout to 4-AcO-DMT and 4-HO-DMT.
They are both illegal where I live (Poland). The government maintains a huge list of forbidden substances (link only in polish: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wykaz_%C5%9Brodk%C3%B3w_odurza...). This is in response to a big designer drugs crisis that started over decade ago. Which most likely than not was caused by tightening of the drug laws happened around two decades ago. It's a bad situation that will take another decade to improve, I suppose.
Having been loosely affiliated with the Goa/Psytrance scene, I too, have met some individuals who seemed to have "fried" their brains.
If those "different priorities", how you call it, also include being almost dysfunctional and therefore dependent on constant external support, paranoid and frequently incoherent then, yes, it made me judgmental too.
And this isn't even speaking of phenomena like Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD)[1].
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...
what you’re describing sounds like psychosis which is entirely different
If they had been in the midwestern USA would they also be dysfunctional but taking prescription painkillers? Mental health problems are common, and confirmation bias is real.
There is also the danger of reverse causation — and this may apply to cannabis. The epidemiology there suggests psychosis may cause people to take cannabis at higher rates, rather than the reverse.
Finally... I've also often wondered what partying so hard would do without the drugs. I've experienced festivals both with and without recreational drugs and it often feels like the sleep deprivation and over-stimulation have as large an effect on my subsequent mood as the drugs did.
I wondered about this myself.
I think it is hard to pinpoint exactly since festival-goers often also consume a mix of different substances (the infamous "candy flipping") including alcohol instead of just straight mushrooms or LSD.
ever notice how all these stories lack that?
all?
look, don’t respond to why that might be, but lets just all push for the study and a legal framework that allows for said studies to exist
no studies found.
Some of the worst outcomes I've seen have come when one drug is believed to be another, and this is something that decriminalisation would definitely help with.
That being said, psychedelics have traditionally been combined with ritual, and the lack of said rituals can be a big impediment to useful results.
no only recreational legalization would do that
Legalization would allow the government to create a testing infrastructure so drugs can be tested/validated before they're sold, that's arguably better. But it's definitely possible to create a safer drug environment with decriminalisation only.
Decriminalization is just marginally safer. Testing is a huge waste of resources unless its a stopgap towards recreational legalization with a reliable supply chain.