Having been a cannabis smoker myself for years, I can understand the danger of self-medicating with psychedelics. They aren’t entirely harmless.

Any drug with a high is a dopamine button. It’s easy to hit that button instead of doing something else to feel good. It’s easy to stop doing other things in favor of just hitting that button all day. But the effects of that button diminish over time, so you hit it more often, and the more you hit it the less other things you want to do.

Psychedelics powerfully activate and deactivate different parts of the brain, changing the way you think and process information. Controlled and intentional, this has huge potential for positive mental health outcomes. With chronic recreational use, cannabis leads toward negative mental health outcomes like depression, disordered thinking, anxiety, and low agency.