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Comment by infinity0 | Hacker News Reader

"Heroin might have helped smokers quit".

It's incredible how any anti-drug sentiment touches a nerve of the pro-drugs crowd here. Multiple people were offended enough to go and downvote every one of allegory's comments. This is fucking ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself. You claim that "we need a debate" but you react to expressions of anti-drug sentiment, by putting up a straw man interpretation and downvoting without explaining yourself. What the fuck? Your downvote deserves a downvote.

My original comment is pointing out the title is stupid and uninformative.

> Multiple people were offended enough to go and downvote every one of allegory's comments.

I can't downvote, so I'm not one of those who anger you so much, but allegory is most likely being downvoted for presenting anecdotes as conclusive evidence and dismissively referring to anyone who disagrees with him as having opinions lacking experience.

If we're dressing up anecdote as evidence then I have plenty of my own, but I'm well aware of how useless they are at informing debate.

He is not being downvoted for those fake-impassionate reasons. Some others have negated this bullshit and re-upvoted, but during the worst of it, all of his comments, even the ones that didn't exhibit what you say, were downvoted multiple times.

> My original comment is pointing out the title is stupid and uninformative.

It didn't come across that way, which is more likely why you were downvoted. I read it as a snide remark equating psilocybin to heroin and didn't understand what you meant until you explained it. Make your comment less ambiguous next time and you won't get downvotes.

It's a bad analogy because mushrooms are qualitatively different from Mushrooms. This isn't a case of switching one addiction with another.

The main problem with his posts is that he's equating opiate addiction with psilocybin use. These are two different drugs, and the latter is being used as part of smoking addiction therapy.

There's some irony to the fact that his anecdotes are about a nurse, who is someone who probably administers opiates as part of a pain treatment therapy.

Do you think all drugs are the same?

One doesn't need to think "all drugs are the same" to spot the obvious argument here: psilocybin, although not considered to be addictive, has far more dramatic side effects than nicotine.

I don't see how that's an obvious argument either. Psilocybin isn't being used here as a substitute for nicotine so it shouldn't be compared to it as such.

It's being administered once as part of an intensive CBT program. MAPS et al have done studies that have shown psilocybin and other hallucinogenic substances can accelerate change in people's thought processes. Addiction is one of many possible uses for these substances, administered in a controlled environment under medical supervision and guidance.

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