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Comment by piva00 | Hacker News Reader

Research around substances like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, and so many others have been absolutely hampered by the War on Drugs the USA started. Hard to get objective results from something that couldn't be studied without putting researchers' careers to death.

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Doping substances are also regulated. And yet amphetamine use is everywhere competitive pressure is.

Also, I don't see any military adding LSD in the toolkit of military leaders. It has been tested as a disabling agent. But never found use as an enabling one, neither in the US nor in one of its enemies.

LSD (and other psychedelics) foster empathy, no military needs that in their fighting force, it's counter-productive for their goals...

I do t see it in widespread use in (peace) negotiations either, nor by therapists themselves - or any line of work where heightened empathy would be beneficial, such as acting.

Maybe peace negotiators are actually just actors. That would explain much of the hilariously transparent BS stories coming out of the mouths of various politicians, that everyone can sometimes realize and acknowledge as such, but other times not.

Ah, yes, the argument which ignores the fact that medical research also happens everywhere else in the world. If there was any medical value to any of this nonsense it’d already be well known in Europe, China, Russia, or India.

The Single Convention on Narcotics [0] (heavily influenced by US's policies) and the later Convention on Psychotropic Substances [1] extended the same bullshit to all signatories, so no, no other countries could research either.

I'd advise learning some history before berating me with bullshit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub...

Edit: the repercussions of these conventions extend to this day even when countries attempt to legalise just cannabis, like Germany's case when moving forward with their legalisation which infringes on EU law against illicit drug trafficking [2], procedure 2001/0114/CNS is a direct side-effect of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances [3] started... By US's policies against drugs in the 60s-70s. It's a direct link creating issues to this day by puritan American values.

Decades of potential research worldwide blocked because a politician in the US needed to get a weapon against minorities, fun, huh?

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Agai...

Counterpoint: the Netherlands.

The Netherlands has not legalised anything, cannabis is tolerated but under its laws it's illegal.

This argument ignores the fact that medical research into the potential benefits of "this nonsense" has been under way in the US for over 20 years. Johns Hopkins has a dedicated research group in this area [1], and has published peer-reviewed research for various applications of these drugs.

It's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space. (And it's probably fair to assess that the push of these substances into the black market helped create an environment where only "hippie-esque" bullshit could thrive). But the results seem pretty clear that there's real potential in these drugs to alleviate human suffering in many ways.

Does that mean that these drugs unlock magical insights or enhance the intelligence of their users? Of course not, and no one serious is suggesting that they do. But there's been plenty of real research over the past two decades that makes dismissing the medical value of psychedelics as "nonsense" a fairly silly take.

[1]: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/

> t's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space.

And the bullshit stems exactly from it being a potential career death if someone attempted to research them in depth. Without factual and objective analysis the only knowledge left is a hodgepodge of anecdotes, except for the odd Alexander Shulgin or others more scientifically rigorous minded the reports came from users who are not a good cohort of people to objectively analyse their experiences.

MAPS [0] is one of the few groups who against the odds continued to research it, lately they have been advancing research on using MDMA for PTSD, psylocibin, etc. If it wasn't a huge taboo for decades for serious researches to enter the field this type of research would be much more advanced today.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_Association_...

I totally agree, in case that wasn't clear. I was just responding to the notion in the parent comment that the whole field is nonsense, and that if it weren't nonsense, research would have come out of other countries.

(That notion seems suspect on its face, since those other countries have similarly strict drug laws, but that's not really my point - my point is that there's plenty of research in the field as of 2024, and it's not fair or accurate to dismiss it as nonsense).

twenty years of research at a respected institution and still nothing other than hippy fairy tales? sounds about right, thanks for the update.

I don't think there's any reading of my comment (or the extensive modern literature around this subject) where that's a reasonable takeaway.

> Does that mean that these drugs unlock magical insights or enhance the intelligence of their users? Of course not, and no one serious is suggesting that they do.

It's weird how people can make implicit claims of omniscience while on regular consciousness and nobody bats an eye, but far less ambitious claims on LSD are crazy talk.

It seems to me that regular consciousness epistemically privileges regular consciousness.

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