The overall usage in the population is low because psychedelics are unpredictable. They can have long term effects on the human psyche and there is a correctly ingrained notion in society that they are dangerous to a stable mindset.
The only real long term dangers of psychedelics would be impaired driving while under the influence (obviously) and increased likelyhood of psychosis if you were already predisposed to schizophrenia or bipolar. "Dangerous to a stable mindset" what does that even mean? Is that supposed to sound scientific?
It's not only "unstable" matching the classic example of a small force on an inverted pendulum will topple it over in dramatic fashion, but it's also "chaotic" -- "exhibits sensitive dependence on initial conditions, which can often lead to seemingly random or unpredictable behavior over time, despite a system's deterministic nature."
In a 2010 study of psychedelic users, 23.9%[verification needed] reported constant HPPD-like effects, though only 4.2% considered seeking treatment due to the severity.[58] In a 2022 double-blind, placebo-controlled study, 142 subjects received LSD, psilocybin, or both, reported no cases of HPPD, and up to 9.2% of the subjects had flashbacks which were "transient, mostly experienced as benign and did not impair daily life".[
I learned my lesson when my digestive system noped out after being awake for 72 hours straight. First time in years I've ever nearly thrown up. Would not recommend.
Edit: There are also interactions with certain medications that can result in things like seizures, and very rarely people report "flashbacks" or HPPD.
Overall, in my extensive experimentation both with traditional psychiatric medications and with LSD... I think the side effects of the substance are overstated. I have far worse reactions to psychiatric medication. (Edit: your mileage may vary of course, different people will react differently to substance, illicit or otherwise - I don't mean to downplay the negative experiences that DO occur with psychedelic usage)
Now, I’ve never seen any issues with microdoses and would have no problem suggesting such to anybody. In fact I’m a big fan of broadly studying and implementing them as medicine. But what I’ve unfortunately noticed as you go up into high doses (determining actual psilocybin is difficult per mass, but this is a decent reference: https://healingmaps.com/shrooms-dosage-information-guide/) you eventually start seeing cases of… well I’m not sure exactly what you call it other than a psychotic break or injury.
Basically you know how some people seem to have various mental chains broken and are now able to live and enjoy life better because of their trip? The opposite can also happen.
One victim was a long time user that went from gradually from a medium to high dose. Then on the next move up in dose they got fucked. Basically described it as essentially having their connection to everything good in the world severed, feeling like a dead ghost trapped in a corpse, incapable of happiness or love or connection with reality. They could function and appear normal, but were in a constant sort of experiential agony. This wasn’t just a bad trip, this was their daily life for several months. After seeing doctors and trying various things to fix it, they committed suicide.
It doesn’t matter how long one has used lower doses, or how gradually one eases into it, a very small portion of the population seems to get severely injured. For the sake of example, even if such an occurrence is 1 in 10,000 or 100,000 that’d still be unacceptably high to broadly recommend a dose with that level of risk factor for the sake of having a trip or healing. But that’s also more than low enough for someone to truthfully believe and say “dude that’s not a thing no one I know has ever had an issue”
Edit: turns out it has a name: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perc...
There are also many cases that occur where someone under the influence can become temporarily dangerous to themselves and others. Basically the idea of say attacking themselves or others or some other dangerous activity enters their head, but there’s no longer the voice that immediately say “nah”, and instead they just go with it. No malicious intent, it’s just impulse with no filter, like water flowing downhill. This is much more common in comparison to full on breaks, but usually isn’t a huge deal as the person is subdued by friends and no one really broadcasts such an event, but occasionally injury and even deaths do happen.
Once you get past low doses, you’re playing chemical roulette. There’s an extremely high chance of winning, but losing does happen.
The “psychonaut community” being what it is, is loathe to admit these types of problems exist, and will generally be dismissive or hostile and accusatory if it’s brought up.
There’s also the issue of their being no good way to get hard data on this either, and determine if there are other risk factors involved that would allow certain people to know they have a hidden life destroying landmine and to stay the hell away from experimenting.
There may possibly be more subtle medically negative effects that could show up with chronic use, but I can’t really speak to that.
As an example, I was wondering if taking psychedelics could teach my brain to be able to tell when something I'm seeing is not real, but after experiencing LSD I don't think that's really possible. Still completely stable and still know for a fact that reality is always real... which means I also "know for a fact" that a dream is "real" whenever I'm inside one. I can only tell dreams apart after they end, and can't even tell whether nested dreams were real or not after a false awakening... so I never really become lucid inside them.
> There may possibly be more subtle medically negative effects that could show up with chronic use, but I can’t really speak to that.
In my experience LSD causes significantly increased bloodflow to the head (for hopefully obvious reasons), chronic use could result in some more permanent cardiovascular changes related to this, but I don't even know how to start searching for a source on this.
(Oops. We just switched. I'm going to go ahead and post this comment that I assume Logan didn't get to submit... for more explanation see our HN profile bio. -Emily)
In every HN drug discussion someone always pops up with some claim like this "curing basically everything" and then when askeded to justify it, they go quiet. Informative discussion this isn't, it resembles an anti-drugs agenda being pushed (which in my mind is just as stupid as a pro-drugs agenda).
So, can you justify this? Perhaps you can point out 3 comments below which claims they cure everything.
Additionally, if those who have been through that experience and think so highly of it (as I have and do, not saying it is necessarily pleasant but it was very valuable), that would tend to be evidence that they might be a good thing. But do those same people to accept there might be a positive? :( Take a guess. We need to have the discussion, and people need to be able to change their minds. But it's just not happening.
I had written a super long comment weighing the pros and cons of it but lost it because of a keyboard shortcut typo. In hindsight that's probably for the better...
I've used LSD about four times and don't regret anything, except for maybe making one of my friends feel really bad by having a breakdown in voice chat... the trip was still worth it in my opinion, but it still hurts a bit that I worried someone so much over it.
I hold the opinion that most people are right not to take psychedelics. I think there are still tons of people that could benefit from it, but only once they're actually ready to try it. I absolutely support legalizing them, and giving people the choice to try them. Maybe at a clinic, but importantly also at home.
My home is my safe space and my computer is where all my friends are, I wouldn't have wanted to do it in a clinical setting. And I definitely wouldn't have wanted to have to get a prescription for it.
> I think there are still tons of people that could benefit from it
That may well be true but-
> I hold the opinion that most people are right not to take psychedelics
- you seem to have just opposed what you said, and it sounds as if you're willing to make other adults' decisions for them, which deeply bothers me. Perhaps you meant something more nuanced.
I'm not Logan, but I can't really see how you came to that conclusion - I'll try to explain.
We do think that people who choose not to take the risk of psychedelics are justified in their decision. Even for individuals where psychedelic use could be beneficial, we think it's better for them to wait until the risk is acceptable to them - which may or may not happen.
In other words, we think the Venn diagram of "people who are justified in their decision not to take psychedelics right now" and "people who could benefit from psychedelic use" has some overlap, we just don't know how much. We also think that a lot of the people who already use psychedelics or intend to use them can benefit, just like we also recognize that plenty of other users may not benefit for one reason or another.
I apologize on Logan's behalf if the original comment was unclear.
-Emily (see HN profile for details)
I'm not saying that you are, it's just given my position that person's choices must be utterly their own[1], that's how it sounded to me. It would simply not cross my mind to think like that. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
[1] of course, bounded by the damage they can do to other people, that's a very different matter
I went to great lengths to try to clarify that we are specifically saying there is only overlap because we don't want people to try psychedelics before they are ready. "ready" means when they choose that they want to try it.
Keep in mind that I'm not the one who wrote the second-last comment of ours, that was Logan, but I highly doubt he would want to choose for anyone, either.
-Emily
*there have currently been no known deaths from LSD overdoses, even for people who took tens of milligrams (which is tens of thousands of times higher than a normal recreational dose), but there are still plenty of deaths from irresponsible actions while on LSD, and plenty more cases of people surviving but still getting absolutely fucked mentally.
Obviously an overdose of anything will kill you, including water, so what was your point.
...I was trying to add to your point because you were basically saying something along the lines of "there is no condition that requires someone to take psychedelics" and I wanted to add "plus taking psychedelics can be risky because it's easy to overdose" (which it absolutely is if you don't get the product you ordered, which is unfortunately quite common).
I'm so dumbfounded by this argument I can't even explain what I find wrong with it, sorry.
Not that I was saying that but ok, is there one?
Edit: I'm sorry, this conversation has just gone in a very odd way and I don't know how or why. Pretty sure we got wires crossed again. Anyways, no offence.
no, I was trying to agree with you.
I'm not talking about the discussion on HN specifically. I'm also talking about all the startups trying to market psychedelics for a bunch of different reasons. When the article is about how psychedelics are "popular" now, but only about 8% of the population has ever used them, then it feels similar - unsupported/biased optimism or positivity on psychedelics.
By the way I love this bit (commenting on the article, not what you said).
"Why wasn’t there a global vogue for eating San Pedro cacti or tripping on morning glory seeds in the same era when global consumers embraced so many other novel drugs?"
Try it and find out, just keep a bucket nearby.
I can't find up-to-date lifetime use rate information for psychedelics, but as of 2013 ~10% of the population had used psychedelics in their lifetime, and that was when the last-year usage was less than 4%.
I call bullshit on anyone saying societies are rational enough to identify which substances are dangerous to a stable mindset or not and that is why some substances are not used much. We aren't nearly that thoughtful with what we ingest. It is always "what will so and so think of me if I do or do not do this" as an overriding directive. Mind you, what others think of you and how that affects your social status has very strong causal mental health effects, so it is worth taking seriously. But obviously then this means the bad health effects are sometimes divorced from what the substance actually does to you independently of how worried you are others will see you.
In Vancouver Canada psychedelics have been decriminalized. You can buy shrooms for instance in stores that sell them publicaly and openly and legally with neon-capitalism ads telling you what strain will give you what kind of trip (are you looking for a hint of more socialization or more introspective?).
Accordingly bumping into random people at parties or public parks where people are high and happy to share they are high is orders of magnitude more common now. Said people are no longer as afraid that their behaviour will associate them with someone who is unlawful or a high risk taker or a leftist hippy or insert-negative-association-here. Less stigma = more usage.
Just because you have an alcohol tolerance (assuming you do) doesn't mean others do. Just thinking of myself, I'm always surprised how little it takes for alcohol to alter my psche to the point that I can't find my wallet and am speaking in tongues because I'm a huge lightweight. For some it even represents an existential risk due to overwhelming dependence. Also, if forming an difficult-to-break addiction to alcohol (super common) isn't something messing with your psyche long-term you and I have drastically different views of what constitutes "messing with your psyche."
Also I call MASSIVE BS on nicotine not doing anything significantly to the mind. Good lord, have you ever Googles "What Nicotine does to your mind" and tried reading some papers? Cognitive decline, dependence (classified as highly addictive which is a direct long-term change to your brain. How can anyone argue this isn't a significant change to your mind?), dementia, brain volume decrease, memory+attention impairment... I could go on.
What Nicotone doesn't do is cause a significant change in people's behaviour that is immediately apparent that makes them want to act in ways that are socially stigmatized - like get all cuddly... Or hug a tree... or act like a slug and laugh hysterically.... all which psychedelics tend to induce.
Again, social stigma attached to certain behaviour is the primary culprit. These are usually harmless behaviours, even if annoying.
None of which matters because as the scientific literature will attest and what I as someone who used to be strongly anti-drug will also say is:
"Despite the contrary perception of much of the public, psychedelic drugs are not addictive and are physiologically safe.[20][21][10] As of 2016, there have been no known deaths due to overdose of LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline."
If the things called Nicotine and alcohol that might fucking kill me and destroy my brain to the point I need state funds to get me rehabilitated if I'm not careful are fully legal for recreation, why in the name of all that is evidence-based do we make the thing with ZERO documented deaths illegal?
Because it is socially, culturally and politically stigmatized completely independently of its relatively low negative health impacts. Ergo, it either stays illegal or we don't use it.
I'll even end with a fresh example: in a recent lecture my friend's neuroscience prof went through the negative proven health outcomes of various drugs and concluded there really is no health-related reason for psychedelics to be illegal. At all.
You know what happened next? Some undergrads argued with the professor. Not with peer-reviewed counter-evidence or asking clarifying questions no. They responded with vehement confidence that the professor "must be wrong" and even got angry with him with complaints apparently filed. I couldn't believe it. I still struggle to.
All he did was dare to publicly break the taboo of even implicitly suggesting psychedelics should be legal recreationally because it isn't a big deal.
A person is rarely “broken” by moderate alcohol use. That’s explicitly not true of psychedelics.
The only reason not to would be something like sampling bias where you identify the 1% that are insufferable but don't see the 99% that aren't.
bingo.