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Comment by octatrack | Hacker News Reader

The early decade or so of electronic music parties were truly magical. People were mostly on MDMA and/or LSD and did not consume much alcohol. Sadly, these days alcohol culture has taken over, and people often use cocaine or speed to remain energetic while drunk. It’s a different kind of vibe - more about escaping versus opening the mind as it is with MDMA or psychedelics.

There are still places where more conscious partying happens. These are typically psychedelic trance or deep techno festivals.

Alcohol truly is one of the worst drug we use - just look at Dr. David Nutt’s research [0]. I really wish young people clubbing these days gravitated towards less harmful drugs.

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210.am...

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> Alcohol truly is one of the worst drug we use

I also highly recommend episode about alcohol from Huberman Lab: https://hubermanlab.com/what-alcohol-does-to-your-body-brain...

They eye opener for me was how "moderate" alcohol use (like 6 beers over the weekend or 1 beer every day) causes lasting effects. One of them is increasing cortisol levels throughout the week.

As Homer Simpson famously mused, “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems”.

What would you expect weekly consumption of 6 tablets of MDMA or some other psychedelic drug to cause? Organ damage, cognitive decline, and anxiety are among the list.

> or some other psychedelic

MDMA, sure, would have severe consequences if consumed so much.

Psychedelics, such as mushrooms or LSD, would cause hardly any harm and simply would stop working due to tolerance build up, unless the user keeps doubling the dose every time.

6 days of LSD a week or even weekly can easily make you believe really weird things (often with a spiritual bend), though it depends on the dosage. I'm pro LSD but I've seen a ton of people change massively from overly frequent use.

I'm not personally defending alcohol, but I think the reason it works for so many people is as long as you drink moderately the effects aren't so psychologically divisive (it works about the same on everyone), the health effects aren't that severe, and tolerance to it doesn't quite work like it does with other drugs. Since so many people drink, it opens up the largest number social opportunities when compared to anything else.

Hate it all you want, but I don't think anything will ever replace it. All its serious competitors have been around for just as long. There must be some deeper biological reason for it to be favored so heavily. I really don't think it's just marketing and cultural norms.

> There must be some deeper biological reason for it to be favored so heavily.

Or perhaps the fact that it's legal and readily available in every grocery store, restaurant and entertainment venue? Unlike any other mind altering substance we use.

Hard disagree with the effects of alcohol being universal. Some get energetic, some get tired, others get happy while others still get rowdy. I would say that the range of personalities hidden behind a few drinks are more varied than they are with say MDMA.

Likewise for comparing the availability of alcohol to other substances on a time line: MDMA only became widely known in the 70s! That's nothing compared to the millenia we've known how to make booze.

Shortly, I don't think either one of the arguments holds up to scrutiny.

I’ll admit alcohol is perhaps less phenomenologically diverse than psychedelics, but I don’t know of anyone in the history of the world who took a decent dose of MDMA then went home and beat the daylights out of his wife and children.

Frequent occurrence on alcohol (and a quite distinct one than the “a few beers with my friends” that alcohol can also confer)

It's also the experience and ritual of drinking alcohol. It's something you do slowly and consistently over the course of a night which is practically an activity in of itself, similar to smoking tobacco.

Taking a pill loses all of that.

I had several of those magical experiences on psychedelics at electronic music parties when I was younger, and was anti-alcohol for a long time. But due to drug prohibition, alcohol was always so much easier and far more available... eventually it sucked me in. Now I'm an alcoholic who can't imagine life without booze, even as it likely shortens my lifespan. I kinda wish that hadn't happened.

I’m sorry, but the article you linked is just sensational - its header claims alcohol is more harmful than heroin. Alcohol usage is extremely widespread, so of course its negative effects are more obvious in the population than other drugs. Personally, I’d rather be surrounded by a group of alcohol abusers than a group of psychedelics abusers.

If you give addicts pure heroin a lot of them can function just fine. We should consider the negative consequences of prohibition rather than just the drugs themselves.

Opiates are generally easier on the body than people realize when distributed in a controlled setting. Alcohol does much more damage directly to the body. That's part of why opiates or opioids are still widely prescribed for pain in hospitals, and vodka shots aren't.

It's the addiction that's a bitch. Of course heroin street addicts end up in bad shape-- but a lot of that is from tangential effects, not directly from the drug itself.

"...when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered" is the context for that, which you've removed. The article goes on to talk about why David Nutt thinks that, and given that he's spent his life researching various drugs in society I think his opinion is worth more than a cursory glance at the headline. I'm not sure whether I'd rather be around heroin addicts or alcholics (both of which I've known in the past) because they both have significant downsides, but it's worth noting that heroin isn't a psychedelic. I'd much rather be around people on psychedelics rather than the other two.

That context is irrelevant given the fact that alcohol usage is so widespread compared to heroin. Do you seriously claim that society would function better if every normal alcohol user converted to use heroin?

Furthermore, my point on psychedelics was about psychedelics, which was the context of the comment it answered, not heroin.

Alcohol kills, both with acute and chronic health problems. It also has long term cognitive and physical costs. For a significant proportion of its users it becomes habitual and for some, full-on addictive.

Alcohol is also associated with violence, both public and domestic.

Psychedelic use is none of those things. Psychedelics in general are far less likely to be addictive, use is not associated with violence. There are some health effects, LSD for example is a stimulant and vasoconstrictor, but in general they are not taken in large enough doses or often enough to cause harm.

I think your hunch as to who you would rather be around is a bit weird, frankly.

> Personally, I’d rather be surrounded by a group of alcohol abusers than a group of psychedelics abusers.

Can you elaborate a bit on this take? We've all seen how far people abusing alcohol can go. Where as the worst I see from psychedelics users is that they can struggle to talk about anything other than how've they've somehow figured out the universe and that everyone should take psychedelics.

Psychedelics, namely ones like LSD and magic mushrooms, are known to cause psychotic episodes which turn violent. Their prevalence despite the rarity of the drug strongly suggest a high risk of unpredictable violent action.

Anecdotally, people are much more likely to have violent episodes when using alcohol than psychedelics. I'd be surprised if relevant scientific studies didn't support these observations.

Have you been to European dance/hard dance festivals? Most people are on X or other psychedelics there

Yeah, I wish I found those places, I really hate alcohol.

I do hope I see it legalized one day, because someone like me can't even think of where to start to look for them.

Tomato tomato.

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