I understand that a lot of readers of HN like solutions and read those stories with enthusiasm. But they are often that: stories, anecdotes. They rarely include properly set-up double-blind trials, even if the same actors could easily set trials up with the same circumstances.

And the article has quote hoping for trials… except tests _have_ happened. Spoiler: they were not as conclusive those stories would have you think. Reviewers from serious psychiatric publication are a bit tired of that story. Vice (not the paragon of scientific rigour) or Netflix (same) going after them only adds to the already transparent evidence that those PR efforts are paid for by Big Pharma trying to cash in, again, on a new trend.

You want to have an easy way to tell the difference, if you are not a board-certified psychiatrist? Addiction, PTSD, etc. most of the Western World has an issue with those. The larger share of the Western World (EEA, Canada, Australia, NZ; Singapore, South Korea and Japan if you want to include them in there) has state-financed medicine. There’s no organised interest for those, even in the most forward-thinking countries. One country has not effective price controls and medicine with ruinous costs —— literally, people die of the consequence of their medical debt. If those stories about wonder drugs only happen to patients from that one country, you can tell what’s pushing the press (and the shill account promoting that on social media) is a profit motive, not the passion of a few aging hippies.

Don’t get me wrong: there’s nothing wrong with a well-financed effort to make a profit and fix a problem. Mark Cuban trying to screw over Big Pharma —— I’m sure he has a marketing budget, and some of that goes to making sure there’s press. But if there’s no institutional support, it’s not because doctors hate patients getting healthy.

I’m hoping that, on top of stories, readers of HN also like and understand the scientific progress, and know that psychiatry is desperate for new, effective drugs. They hear about street drugs every day. They’ve tried.

No one working in that field would snub a molecule because it’s associated with “bad people”, aka patients: they routinely, successfully prescribe heroin (well, opioids) to surgery patients and meth (well, amphetamines) to ADHD sufferers. Doctors, pharmacist and nurses do _not_ care for how “society” sees their method. They routinely deal with people writing on the walls with their own shit, screaming all day long and trying to kill themselves to know what’s important. Hitting enough keywords to impress the editorial board of _Vice_ isn’t it.