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Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them (washingtonpost.com)
192 points by benbreen on July 1, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 198 comments




I'm the author of the OP. Happy to talk more about the history of psychedelics.

I also wanted to flag that if anyone is interested in some of the historical sources I cite here (such as the Jesuit talking about ayahuasca in the 18th century) I go into more detail in this journal article, which is open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/a...


Would it not be more efficient to challenge the evidence behind current scheduling, much less the standards used in scheduling? Trying to work around a system built by corrupt people is a bit like ignoring pests eating your garden and just making a new garden hoping they won't infest that too.


California and other states already showed with marijuana that if you have enough local popular support, you can legalize drugs and the feds will do nothing. This is especially true right now with Democrats in control of the DoJ. In fact, if you look at cities like San Francisco, all drugs are already de facto decriminalized. CA could legalize LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, ketamine, etc. tomorrow.


I live in Oregon, all drugs already are decriminalized. That doesn't solve a littany of problems and is progress, but albeit with short term thinking. Passing through states that consider what you can buy for $20 at a mom and pop shop a felony is bit more than just problematic. States passing laws relieves their citizens of pressure, but we still need to move drugs entirely to a states right or we need to correct the federal record.

State laws also marginalize people who are bound to federal services eg: veterans using the VA. A veteran cannot get ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA, or LSD based treatments or they'll be confused as an addict and dropped from VA plans.


>dropped from VA plans.

This should be illegal, "thank you for your service, where you got PTSD from seeing your friends die, we will reward you with dropping you from your healthcare plan if you self-medicate".


I'm curious why you're dissatisfied with the organically arrived at "folk taxonomic" category: psychedelics. Are you looking for a new classification in law?


In my country, LSD, mescaline, magic mushrooms, and DMT, are class A controlled substances, same as methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin and fentanyl.

Class A being drugs that pose a "very high risk of harm". Which, you know, if I could post comments on our legislation, I'd be adding a bunch of "[citation needed]"s in that list of substances that apparently have a very high risk of harm.

And like other jurisdictions, there's some real bloody oddities in the law in this area.

E.g., a man was charged for importing 18kg of DMT when he ordered 18kg of Mimosa tenuiflora root bark online, as the bark isn't explicitly handled in law as a prohibited plant like Coca leaf (class C, far lower severity of sentencing) and Papaver somniferum (class B), so it falls through to the default of "any substance containing a class A controlled substance is also class A".

So he could get life in prison, like he imported 18kg of fentanyl.

Hopefully the sentencing judge is reasonable, but the fact that he's facing the same penalty for 18kg of bark that contains about 1 - 2% DMT as you would for importing enough fentanyl to kill 9 million people shows that our law is a bit of an ass.


We had/have case back home in our rather primitive country re this, where former professional athlete started having joint issues in later age. He started growing hemp/weed for his own use, I guess he crossed 0.7% threshold for THC. He made ointments and tinctures for him, and you can't do that with 1 plant, not for serious use during whole year.

They caught him, and they are trying him like some mob kingpin, facing decades in jail and IIRC he got such sentence. EU country. Former olympic representant of our country, self medicating since current medicine can't treat him well enough.

Kill a person in cold blood, rape a child or two and you get maybe 1/3rd of that sentence. Fuck that place, never coming back.


But yet no name-and-shame for the country?


He was convicted and sentenced with 7 months home detention.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/editors-picks/87...


Nicely done judge.

But it's still ridiculous that he pleaded guilty to a charge of importing 18kg of DMT, when the results of testing the 18kg of bark he imported were that the "The bark contained 0.57 per cent of DMT."

So, about 103 grams of DMT, assuming 100% efficiency in extracting it.


This is how the US does drug busts. When the cops bust a weed grow operation, they weight the entire plant root ball and all even if its entirely immature and lacks buds at this stage of growth.


He has plenty of time at home now to extract that DMT efficiently.


This is the same way that one weighs LSD that is on paper, unfortunately. Thus a lot of paper with very little LSD on it is worse than a little bit of paper with a lot of LSD on it.


Seems that at least parts of the US government has realised that carrier medium weight should not be used for LSD.

> In the case of LSD on a carrier medium (e.g., a sheet of blotter paper), do not use the weight of the LSD/carrier medium. Instead, treat each dose of LSD on the carrier medium as equal to 0.4 mg of LSD for the purposes of the Drug Quantity Table.

https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/amendment/488


huh, ok, it seems like things have changed some time in the last 27 years https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1996/01/23/s...


> brushed aside a U.S. Sentencing Commission rule establishing a uniform presumptive weight of 0.4 milligrams for all doses of LSD, regardless of the carrier.

Oof :(


yeah, so now I wonder which it is. Of course it will also depend on the state I guess.


400 μg per dose is still probably overestimating by quite a bit.


Could you elaborate? Why is it so?



Doesn't DMT also naturally exist? So lidke any time you buy a live anim you're buying DMT.


It exists in many different plants and also in a few animals, for example the Colorado River toad.


The toad is 5meoDMT


Yes, one of the two main DMT types.


The article specifically refers not just to the cultural, but also to the legal and medical, thinking about psychedelics.


From the article:

> this new landscape demands more than just new laws. It also requires a new category for psychedelics. Are they recreational drugs? Are they medicines? Are they religious sacraments?

I'm asking why we can't just answer this question with "They are psychedelics".


Because legally, that's as meaningful as saying "they are quooquaquams".

The entire point of categorizing them is to answer questions around:

- Should they be sold to take recreationally, like tobacco and alcohol? Should there be limits, like tobacco packaging and taxes, or rules similar to drunk driving?

- Or should they only be prescribed by doctors for mental health reasons, and not allowed recreationally or in religious ceremonies?

- Or should there be exceptions for certain religious ceremonies as well? Is this open to anyone (so Catholics can invent a ceremony) or only ones that have traditionally used it? Does it require licensing or authorization?

By categorizing them, we come to answers on these questions. If they fit into existing categories, we don't have to write many new laws except to state the categories. Or if we decide they don't fit into existing categories, we come up with a new category with its own set of answers and new laws to write, but part of this whole process is determining if that's necessary or not. And even if it is, the name of the label may not be "psychadelics" because we realize there's another set of non-psychadelic compounds that make sense to be included as well (e.g. empathogens like MDMA).


> Because legally, that's as meaningful as saying "they are quooquaquams".

I don’t see how this is at all equivalent, given that “psychedelics” is a well-known term that can be found throughout decades of literature and that gibberish word you just made up has no attached meaning.

If you’re equating random gibberish words to well-known words in literature then why does anything have any meaning? Why would a new word have meaning?

Regardless, the laws generally don’t refer to “psychedelics”, they refer to specific chemicals by their name. There are numerous compounds that would be considered psychedelics that are, nevertheless, not illegal because they’re not covered by any laws (including analog acts)


Because the term found through decades of literature isn't attached to legal categories, as I explained. It's the same way the term "drug" doesn't have much legal distinction, as I can't think of any legal commonalities spanning coffee, alcohol, Lipitor, cannabis, and heroin.

> Regardless, the laws... refer to specific chemicals by their name.

Not directly, very often. I doubt there's any specific law around Lipitor. Rather, drugs are grouped into categories and then the laws that permit or restrict them are mostly around those categories. Otherwise it would all be incredibly redundant (with exceptions for certain incredibly common drugs like alcohol). And the question here is how to categorize pyschadelics for legal purposes. And saying that we just call them psychadelics answers as many legal questions as saying we call them quooquaquams -- i.e. zero.


Why can’t “psychedelics” be the name for the category?


Because that's not how controlled substances are grouped and regulated, and for good reason.


Then maybe it's the controlled substance administration that's wrong. Seriously, what level of hubris does it take to think that natural substances like psilocybin mushrooms which have existed for millions of years must be brought under the control of a polity's legislature? It's like declaring sharks or snakes illegal because they give some people nightmares. Future generations will laugh in disbelief at this idiocy.


I don't know what you're getting at here. We're not talking about values. We're talking about why the word "psychedelics" is a worthless term as far as the law is concerned.

From a values standpoint, I don't see how it would be idiotic to schedule truly dangerous drugs like 25i-NBOMe more strictly than psilocybin or LSD.


25i-NBOMe isn't "truly dangerous". It's only dangerous if mistaken for LSD and dosed carelessly, so rather than scheduling it more strictly, there should be strict requirements for accurate labeling and consistent dosing, like every other drug.


It is straight up dangerous. 5x a common dose of <1mg can kill you. Nobody that can actually execute on properly dosing it will expose themselves to the liability of doing so.

Drugs are cool and interesting, go ahead and do them, but trying to pretend that something like 25i-NBOMe is something that Joe Average will safely deal with is, frankly, pretty fucking stupid. This conversation is constantly approached with this idea that everybody is a reasonable, informed person that is fully educated on the risks, but that's just not how this works.


Well, that's an interesting idea. 20x a common dose of acetaminophen, an extremely pervasive, legal, over the counter painkiller, can kill you. Less can kill a child. Lots of drugs contain it, such as over the counter cough medicine.

People legitimately die or become seriously ill every year because they don't know this.

Granted, 5x is a lot different than 20x especially when a drug is taken for recreation rather than necessity. I've never done 25i-NBOMe, but it's my understanding that it's easy to overdose because a method of administration is blotter paper and people think they're taking LSD.

In our current world, when you get prescription drugs for the first time, you are provided with information about risks. Over the counter medicine, you aren't.

In my ideal world, if you wanted to do a recreational drug and it had risks like this, you'd have to complete a drug education course and obtain a prescription, you'd be provided with phone numbers for services like overdosing or mental health, specific to the drugs you're planning on doing, and dosage would be easy because medical professionals are doing it in a lab before they sell it to you.

The average Joe would much rather do drugs that they know are manufactured correctly, not adulterated or cut with other substances, where the dose is measured accurately, and where if something goes wrong they have a professional to help them, even if it means they have to pay a bit more than the black market - which will surely still exist.

And if someone goes through the black market and does because they did a drug that is now legal, and they didn't know the correct dose? Sad, but that's on them


Acetaminophen has a poor safety profile and I wish they would take it off the market, and that's a drug where the danger is in taking 10+ fairly large capsules of it instead of 1. The difference between normal 25i-NBOMe usage and fatal usage can be as small as putting a 1x1cm piece of paper in your mouth vs putting a 1x3cm piece of paper in your mouth.

I agree with your ideal world. The point of my original comment was that making no distinction between something like 25i-NBOMe and something like LSD, calling them psychedelics, and regulating them as such just isn't a good idea. I am not claiming that you should go to jail for having or using them.


Nobody that can actually execute on properly dosing it will expose themselves to the liability of doing so.

Nobody? Um, I'm right here? I bought a 0.1ml pipette back in the day for the precise purpose of safely dosing 25X-NBOMes volumetrically, rather than by mass.

And I'm not the only one. Hamilton Morris[0], Nervewing[1], and many others on forums such as Bluelight[2] write about their positive 25X-NBOMe experiences.

  trying to pretend that something like 25i-NBOMe is something that Joe Average will safely deal with
Of course it's dangerous for Joe Average to use NBOMes. It's also dangerous for Joe Average to buy a dodgy parachute off of the dark web and do amateur skydiving. That doesn't mean we should ban skydiving and put Joe (and capable skydivers!) in prison. Skydiving is actually quite "safe", with fewer than 8 fatalities per million jumps, but I put "safe" in quotes, because it is not skydiving that is inherently safe or dangerous, but rather it is the way that skydiving has been incorporated into society to manage its risks that is safe.

I take issue with the entire punitive premise of this discussion, namely, that substances should be placed on a continuum from safe to dangerous, or good to bad, or "soft" to "hard", so that we can determine how harshly to punish people who possess them. If anything, drugs should be regulated, not prohibited, and they should be categorized in such a way as to make clear the risks they present and how to mitigate them. Under such a scheme, you wouldn't even need to ban anything, because why would Joe Average futz around with something obscure like 25I-NBOMe when familiar LSD is available from the corner smart shop along with a pamphlet explaining how to use it properly? Why does everyone's mind immediately leap to a carceral solution?

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/researchchemicals/comments/v1oz4j/h... [1] https://nervewing.blogspot.com/2014/05/25c-nbome.html [2] https://bluelight.org/xf/threads/the-big-dandy-25i-nbome-thr...


My point on liability isn't about your personal tolerance for risk and confidence in your own work on a n=1 scale, it's about whether or not you would be comfortable doing that work for thousands of other people with the understanding that a very minor fuck up results in somebody being dead.

To be clear, I'm with you on the idea that all drugs should be legal. I don't believe in scheduling drugs to determine sentencing. I do believe in scheduling drugs according to the odds that Joe Schmoe will bungle the usage of them, in an attempt to steer people who aren't doing a an appropriate amount of research toward largely physiologically safe/well understood options.


Ah, then I misinterpreted you. My apologies.


How did drugs become illegal? Check out the documentary series Hooked. Short answer: Racism and corruption.

[addendum]

Marijuana and Methamphetamine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvGtn8RzF0U&list=PL2-GCln73g...

Ecstasy, LSD & the Raves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3id6j6nJmlo&list=PL2-GCln73g...

Opium, Morphine and Heroin:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ocqwm


This is true in China as well?


It could be, but once you have any experience with the legal system, you realize that terms are very flexible and explicitly defined.

Maybe not using psychedelics as the legal term is useful strategically.


Administrators stop trying to control every aspect of people's lives challenge 2023


So, short answer, "yes a legal category is what's being asked for".

Got it.


Is there a downside to deregulating them? (Like supplements.)


Possibly more psychotic episodes from more folks who took too much? (I'm pro de-criminalization, not sure if I'm all the way to deregulation)


There is not licensing or authorization for religion.

There is no application for approval required to be a “church”, ie: religion.

Thinking there could be some “authority” for a religious institution’s practices is beyond measure.


There absolutely is both for tax purposes as well as for legal religious exemptions.

You can't just arbitrarily call your house a church to avoid paying property taxes. Government authorities have to make decisions all the time over what they deem to be a legitimate religious organization.

You obviously don't need a license or authorization to engage in otherwise legal religious practice, but as soon as you want legal exemptions, the government most certainly has a say. And the ritual consumption of otherwise illegal drugs couldn't be a more perfect example.


> You obviously don't need a license or authorization to engage in otherwise legal religious practice

by this logic, the government could make illegal any other religious practice (in addition to psychedelic usage), because then the practice isn't "otherwise legal"


Welcome to the grey areas of the real world.


welcome to circular logic and confusing prescriptivism with descriptivism


Is there a downside to totally deregulating them?


Ocean Gate


Many drugs are already all of those.

Opioids are both recreational drugs and medicines.

Peyote is a recreational drug and religious sacrament.

This seems to ignore this fact.


I've got a question for you. Some people are very carefree with their use of psychoactive drugs. I'd say nearly everyone I've ever seen post online about trying mushrooms, LSD, etc. has done it for fun (or the experience) instead of spiritual, psychological, or medicinal reasons.

What risks are they exposing themselves to? I'd hate to have a friend hurt themselves.


Erowid is a great resource for these sorts of questions: https://erowid.org

In fact they have an answer specific to your question on mushrooms: https://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=1606

In short, there is very little risk but whether or not someone should choose to take something should still be an informed choice. As far as risk to life, there's been few or no reported deaths purely due to ingesting psilocybin. However, there are small risks around operating heavy machinery (e.g. driving) after as well as small risks around ensuring you are actually ingesting a safe psilocybe mushroom as opposed to a different toxic mushroom.


I think there's a lot more nuance than even that. Many psychedelics can trigger or exacerbate undesirable mental conditions that persist for the rest of your life.


Nah, they don’t cause undesirable mental conditions that persist for the rest of your life. Your “trip” is about 6-8 hours on a typical 3.5g dose.


As someone who is very much in favor of legalizing psychadelics and has enjoyed his experiences with them:

No, there is a lot of strong evidence that psychadelic trips can trigger underlying issues such as schizophrenia, etc.

However, some portion of these people would have it triggered these latent illnesses regardless of the use of these substances. The hard to answer question is how many people would develop these conditions without the drug use, if the drug use significantly accelerated it, etc.

On the subject of HPPD, I am more skeptical. It's very poorly understood, and there's been correlation shown for just about any sort of psychoactive substance, SSRIs, etc. Studies have claimed that anywhere from 5% to 25% of people who have taken recreational psychoactive drugs are impacted by it. Which, well, I have not done and am not qualified to do such a study, but having spoken to hundreds of users of psychadelic drugs over several decades and never encountering a single person who claimed to experience HPPD, it's hard to square up my anecdotal experiences with some of the reports.

Something is going on there - there's enough people that report the symptoms that I don't believe it's made up or anything like that - but it doesn't seem to be nearly as simply as "Anyone that does recreational drugs has a chance of developing HPPD"


Triggers schizophrenia?

Think that through.

Schizophrenia was already there, the trip made it apparent.

Associating “psychedelics” with CAUSATION is absolutely irresponsible


> Schizophrenia was already there, the trip made it apparent.

That is exactly what they are saying.


I would recommend reading up on persistent disassociative personality disorders and persistent visual artifacts from psychedelics. Both are rare but well documented side effects of psychedelic usage.

I personally know someone who has suffered visual distortions post trip for 20 years and counting at this point.


they may be interested in this, if they weren't already: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4487243

There is a foundation looking to understand why/how this happens and what we can do to moderate/manage it: https://www.perception.foundation/


Dude I know people who have had their lifelong schizophrenia start at the same time they started using hallucinogens like LSD and mushrooms. It's not a conspiracy or bullshit. People I have loved have changed in ways they couldn't control and was destructive/scary for them.


How do you know that it's not the other way around - they started using hallucinogens because their schizophrenia started and the confusion around a drastic change in mental state caused drug seeking behavior?


Schizophrenia commonly starts showing symptoms in the mid to late twenties - so while the two may be linked it's also likely that schizophrenia onset happens to be the age that many people start seriously taking drugs.


I don't disagree that these substances are known triggers for those with predispositions, but be careful with your logic - that's exactly the same format as autism/vax conspiracy folks use, when in reality the common cause is age. Symptoms of autism can start to manifest around the time childhood vaccines are being given, just like schizophrenia and related conditions manifest in teenagers and young adults (also groups known to try drugs). In the latter case we do also have evidence that psychedelics are associated with increased risk/earlier onset, but you wouldn't be able to tell from the timing anecdote.


That’s not what they said, psychedelics can trigger preexisting vulnerabilities to mental disorders. A psychotic break can do enormous damage.


please top minimizing the real risks of using psychedelics (especially for certain groups of people predisposed to mental health issues). You make normalizing them harder and you do more damage than if you were just honest about it. The war on drugs resulted in a lot of lies being spread about these substances. Don't do the exact same thing just because it's on the other side of the argument.


What's your agenda? I seriously don't understand why you'd say such things, if HPPD and DP/DR are real.


That might be your experience, but it negates the experience of the 'non-survivors' so to say.


>Answered by murple in 2001

I think I may have read this exact post 10+ years ago. Reminds me of old homes that have since been sold. What links to this Q&A?

This is an example of some of the better sources of info on that site: https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml


They are not doctors. I would not trust that website as a source of medical advice.


I was explicitly told to read up on several topics from Erowid by my psychiatrist upon starting an antidepressant. Her comment was: "I can't tell you what you'll experience, but if you're willing, here's some resources". I read the comments, including quite a bit of medical research that I would have been otherwise unaware of, and was prepared for some of the weirder effects that can come with it (the drug itself is a dopamine receptor augmenter).

The fact of the matter is that a lot of researchers depend on the folk knowledge that is stuffed into Erowid for their own research because it's one of the higest quality sources of information on the actual effects of various substances that people have been putting into their bodies. Much of the research on these substances cannot be funded easily (federal law in the US bans the use of federal funds to research LSD, marijuana, etc due to their classification by the DEA of "intractably bad for society, useless for medicine, and not worthy of academic study.") This means that researchers have to turn to these contemporaneous accounts.

Nobody calls Erowid "medical advice." It's the tripper's notebook, shared and amalgamated by many a substance user. It's the closest thing we have to a Merck Manual for things that alter your mind.


That's fine if you don't trust it and if you want medical advice, you should always talk to your primary care provider for that advice.

However I work with doctors, and through that have had the ability to discuss the site with various medical doctors. In general, they have also noted it as a good resource. They've also noted there is limited ability for them as medical doctors to assess the medical side effects of various drugs due to the illegality of them in their jurisdictions. Thus, the need for resources such as Erowid. If you want your medical doctor to be able to give you medical advice about psychedelic drug use then help push for continued legal reclassification of and access to psychedelics for medical researchers.


That's OK, I don't trust doctors who lack any first hand experience of these substances. I'm deeply skeptical of the push to medicalize their administration, given the parlous state of that industry.


In my (admittedly limited) experience there's quite an overlap in expertise between the better-informed illicit experimenters and the left side of the bell curve for psychiatric professionals.


> What risks are they exposing themselves to? I'd hate to have a friend hurt themselves.

Have your friend research Erowid, a place where people have posted all possible sorts of information about mind-altering substances and their risks.


That is a good source. I've forgotten about that site for years. Thank you.


I would imagine the same risks as someone doing it for spiritual, psychological, or medicinal reasons


Since we’re speculating. I would imagine like just about all human experience, framing, priming and setting matter quite a lot.


I agree that set and setting are huge factors in your psychedelics experience. I am 'speculating' but also do have a lot of experience in a variety of psychedelics.

I'm not sure where "intent" falls on that spectrum. The vast majority of my experiences have been "for fun" or "for the experience" at music festivals, concerts, or at home..

I have also taken ayahuasca and changa with a shaman. I was doing it "for the experience", but how is that different from someone else who was in the same room as me doing it an attempt to treat depression or anxiety? How would the risks be different?

Being an anxious or depressed person in general may increase risk factors of negative experience. This is still not related to intent.


Anxious or depressed people benefit from the experience more so than someone of speculatively sound mind.


I think by the nature of their position, they have more to potentially benefit.

But it's totally possible for an anxious person to end up worse.


Yeah both are valid


Given that, it seems like fun and pleasure are probably safer than medicinal.


Recreational will happen despite the restrictions. Why not tax it an apply the funds where socially needed?


Right, I'm confused what they are trying to accomplish gatekeeping others intent.


How is that gatekeeping? I'm trying to ask about what the risks are for people who take it at a party or a festival or at home for fun.

>Psychedelics like psilocybin have a remarkably benign safety profile relative to other Schedule One drugs, not to mention very different social, cultural and historical roles. Lumping psychedelics together with powerful opioids like fentanyl misdirects resources, diminishes buy-in from the public and undercuts the legitimacy of federal drug laws.

The author of the article does not specify what risks these drugs have. Simply that they are relatively less dangerous than synthetic opioids.


There are some studies, and LSD is quite safe. Way safer than alcohol, for example.

But being on a very tight Schedule I (like MDMA, also quite safe), worse even than morphine, good luck researching the risks. It's a catch 22: we don't know the risks, so we ban studies about the substance. We don't have studies about the risks, so we cannot unban it.

When LSD was liberally consumed (1960's), there were almost no deaths related to it. And the very few reports are suspiciously "suicides" or "near suicides", which all of them seems to be accidents while tripping, like any drunk commit everyday (and not like LSD makes you suicidal by choice). More serious reports have found zero deaths directly linked with LSD toxicity: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29408722/


MDMA is not quite safe. We have decades of research to prove otherwise now. r/DrugNerds have been putting out study after study pointing this out. The protocols required and safety measures for how often to dose are not what folks are going to be doing generally. It is neurotoxic.

LSD on the other hand, yes quite safe (and even good) for your brain, unless you're prone to mental illness or currently suffering from mental illness.


Let me put it in another way: safety profile of MDMA is better than lots and lots of other clinically approved drugs. And much safer than substances like alcohol, that are not only neurotoxic but hepatotoxic, carcinogenic, highly addictive and with worse withdrawal.

There was a time when MDMA was prescribed to thousands of people, and nobody had a problem. Of course some people will always abuse any substance, we currently have people killing themselves with food or sugar. But the best solution is not to classify it as Schedule I, which in practice is a full ban even for research.


You're continuing to make bad claims. I'm taking the time to debunk them because the safety of people reading these comments is important to me.

MDMA is far more neurotoxic than alcohol. The oxidative stress put on the brain is potent. When you add elevated body temperature, which most folks on MDMA are likely to find themselves experiencing (dancing, hot club, lots of people), the damage climbs precipitously. In primates, damage to the brain has been detected after even single use.

If people want to take drugs, that's their prerogative but after “playing” with drugs when I was younger, the only recreational drugs I can recommend are certain psychedelics if people care about their health, physical or mental. You can replace alcohol and ecstasy in many settings with a very low dose of psychedelics and get similar social opening effects with none of the damage of either.


Would it be possible to provide some of these studies?

Whenever I look I can only find reference to long term exposure, and meta-studies reviewing more moderate use seem to show minimal, if any, issues, e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014976341...

To my knowledge, the one study that people held up as showing damage from MDMA usage after a single dose was later retracted, as they had mixed up the vials of MDMA and methamphetamine. They were never able to replicate the results after resolving this mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retracted_article_on_dopaminer...

Disclaimer: I have taken MDMA a couple of times over the years, though I have never particularly enjoyed the experience and have never considered doing it regularly.


Sure, happy to. Here's a meta-study [1] that cites another meta-study showing single use harm. [2] This study [3] shows changes in serotonin patterns seven years after administration in primates.

MisterYouAreSoDumb was a legendary Redditor who frequently commented on the topic of harm. This one's a collection of references and a good TL;DR. [4] It's ten years old now but there's still a treasure trove of material here. Another comment from them that is the beginning of a series. [5] And as I mentioned earlier, the safety protocols required to mitigate the damage are extensive. You cannot rely on users going the distance to have a less-harmful experience. You must assume it's being taken under non-ideal conditions, with plenty of redosing, which is multiplicatively more damaging, as the axon terminals involved will simply run dry.

Hope that's helpful.

I'm not here to judge. I've also taken MDMA in my youth and quite a lot of it. But I do wish we had these resources available then as we do now so I could have made a more informed decision.

My personal, anecdotal, experience is I had a bunch of pretty magical experiences with MDMA in my youth which I've never been able to reproduce since. That was personal confirmation that irrevocable changes had occurred due to use. The internet is chock full of similar stories.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181923

[2] https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12869661

[3] https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/19/12/5096.full.pdf

[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/Drugs/comments/15ix0s/comment/c7mvi...

[5] https://www.reddit.com/r/DrugNerds/comments/13lp0b/mdma_neur...


Thanks! These are interesting.

Couple of notes I made from my first perusal.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181923

They point out that they showed neurotoxicity in animal studies with doses higher than those typically for recreational users. In studies of human users, they did find evidence of brain structural alteration, but no large-scale cognitive impairment of clinically relevant proportions. Fairly significant evidence of impact to memory.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/19/12/5096.full.pdf

They chose dosages for MDMA here that are extremely high. 80-120mg is the standard recreational dose with anything above 150mg being considered high, but the dosage they chose would be the by-weight equivalent of a 160lb person taking 340mg of MDMA. This looks intentional - they say in the study the selected a dosage that was known to cause brain lesions. The sci-hub study references a species-specific dose scaling chart that explains some of this, but it also disclaims that the science of the dose scaling is disputed. I'm not super sure what to make of it - it stands to reason that too much of anything can be dangerous, but it doesn't seem like the science is close to being settled on whether or not these dosing differences make sense.

I haven't yet had a chance to go through all the references from the reddit post, but I'll work through them.

I think it's pretty compelling evidence that there is risk in taking MDMA long term, or in very high dosages on more acute timescales. I don't know that what I have read so far counters the science in the meta-study I linked around more moderate use, since that did draw primarily on observational studies that included imaging of human users. I'm no expert, though, and hopefully no one reading this is taking my understanding of the science as anything resembling authoritative.

It does further highlight a lot of the potential risks in taking street drugs, though - you never know the actual potency or chemical composition of what you're being sold.

>My personal, anecdotal, experience is I had a bunch of pretty magical experiences with MDMA in my youth which I've never been able to reproduce since. That was personal confirmation that irrevocable changes had occurred due to use. The internet is chock full of similar stories.

Hmm. There's a lot of experiences I found magical at one point in time that I've never been able to reproduce, none of them related to drugs. I think it's hard for humans to disentangle their perceptions from the novelty of new experiences, the impact of their mental state, point in life, etc. etc.

At any rate, thank you again for the wealth of information.


MDMA is also addictive, because it makes you feel good (it's not called "ecstasy" for nothing), and builds tolerance rapidly, so you need to keep increasing the dose. No, it's nowhere near as dangerous as meth/heroin/cocaine, but I have seen people spiral into pretty dangerous usage patterns, including switching to harder drugs when ecstasy isn't cutting it any more and they're stuck in a multi-day depressive withdrawal slump.

For all practical purposes, none of this applies to LSD, since trips are much more intense and unpredictable. Although there is a small subset of psychonauts who adopt an extreme sports mindset and intentionally push the envelope by taking larger and larger doses.


Sadly, “LSD is safe” doesn’t mean “things sold as LSD and that feel similar to LSD are safe”. Lots of research chemical LSD analogues feel very similar to LSD but are dangerous. Just wanted to leave that disclaimer in case anyone on the fence about trying it reads this. Be careful.


Caffeine is a psychoactive drug.


And for those that can't metabolize it properly, it causes serious issues, from heart problems to chronic sleep deprivation to heavy mood swings and depression that can last months


How is that relevant?


You know how the end of every pharma ad lists hundreds of possible side effects? Human biology is too hard to predict and everyone is different.

Some drugs are fine for 99% but there may be a 1% chance of permanent psychosis for some people - with no current way to predict why.

I.e. depending on the drug, the risks can be super high but rare, like BASE jumping.


The risks are that one is in a very vulnerable state mentally.

The more popular psychedelics become the more bad actors will take advantage of this.

A trip sitter is a great idea in theory but just rarely actually happens.

The deepest thing I have learned on psychedelics though is that the very idea there are experiences that are "fun" and experiences that are "spiritual" is complete nonsense. The person sitting alone in a room on a spiritual quest of some sort looking down on the person dancing at a rave is an utter fool.


As far as the cover photo, I don't think ketamine (a replacement for PCP) and MDMA (an analogue of drugs like Adderall (amphetamine class)) qualify as psychedelics. It makes more sense to classify psychedelics as 5-HT2A partial agonists, meaning LSD, psilocybin, DMT and analogs like bufotenin, and mescaline, from a pharmacological perspective. See:

(LSD, mescaline, psilocybin) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756147/

(DMT) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9768567/

Ketamine and MDMA in contrast act through different pathways, the former being a dissociative anaesthetic acting via the NMDA receptor, and MDMA acting as much via dopamine receptors (though unlike other amphetamines, it also increases serotonin levels significantly). In popular use, these are so-called party drugs, and users often have no idea what they're taking (amphetamines and ketamine have been commonly sold as MDMA). I don't know why they've been lumped in with true psychedelics so frequently, but they're much more likely to be used recreationally as a replacement for alcohol, cocaine, etc.

Secondly, I think naive users should be aware that the true psychedelics are indeed dangerous if not treated with caution and respect, in the same sense that a motorcycle is. Drive a motorcycle too fast, bad things happen. Ingesting a large amount of psychedelics is similar. There are at least two particular dangers: immediately, a psychedelic overdose leaves the user ambulatory, so they can end up falling off cliffs, walking into traffic, and otherwise oblivious to dangerous situations. Secondly, some people have traumatic responses to very large doses of psychedelics that can take months to recover from (dissociation from reality, paranoia, etc.).

Still, I think these drugs can be immensely beneficial and people should be able to access them, much as people should be able to drive motorcycles. Perhaps one solution is that they should only be supplied in low dosage packaging (aka microdose amounts), such that people don't accidentally take large doses with the common unfortunate consequences. It's generally not a good idea to think of them as 'recreational' either, although many people are going to use them that way.


Just because they act through different pathways doesn't mean they're not psychedelics.

They're not Tryptamines, sure, but they are psychedelic even if they act differently from "classical hallucinogens" (to borrow a similarly strange term I've read in scientific literature).

Salvia is also not a 5-HT2A agonist, does that mean it's not a psychedelic?


What a weird thing to gatekeep.

What you have mentioned are called classic psychadelics .

Something being a psychadelic has nothing to do with it's pathways.

Let's take a look at the definition .

Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or psychedelic "trips") and/or an apparent expansion of consciousness

This fits ketamine perfectly, I have tried many substances and ketamine is one of the most powerful substances I have tried .


Prolonged fasting and meditation can generate non-ordinary mental states (which you could call psychedelic trips if you like) but the mechanism and the effects are not the same. When it comes to psychoactive compounds, classification matters a lot, at least from a pharmacological perspective. For example, MDMA dependency is a lot more likely than LSD dependency from an abuse perspective as it hits the dopamine reward circuitry in the brain, and this is generally true of all the tryptamine-class psychedelics.

As far as ketamine, it's an organochlorine compound whose regular use is associated with liver and urinary toxicity, I can't believe anyone who knows about this would want to take it regularly or recreationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine


You can't call prolonged fasting or meditation a psychadelic because it doesn't fit the the definition neither having a abuse potential or a compound that causes damage .

The definition exists , if you want to create a new word for it you can go ahead .


The categories law has for drugs suck, psychs dont need a new category, they simply need to be unscheduled. Like daffodils.


> Happy to talk more about the history of psychedelics.

Do you know anything in the way of a connection between psychedelics and the Eleusinian Mysteries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries


Do you have any data on the level of criminality of those on psychedelics versus a control group?


I'd imagine technically it's 100% if you're in a district where possession is criminalized.


Have you ever tried psychedelics yourself?


About two months ago I was at a festival with friends and a I had a psychedelic experience. What’s funny is earlier that day I had just told my friends “I know this sounds boring but I don’t like dancing that much.” Then while I was tripping I found that I was really enjoying the dancing. I felt like I was tapping in to a part of myself that had been dormant for a long time. I felt really confident and cool and sexy dancing to the music, and had a wonderful time. The thing about this is that in the subsequent weeks and to this day the confidence is still here. I have come to realize that the pandemic messed me up in ways that I hadn’t even realized! I’m pretty in touch with myself - I go to therapy once a week but I’m usually talking about work and relationships. Dating in particular felt hard and I didn’t know why, but since rediscovering my confidence dating has been going very well for me. Now when I talk to people I like I’m finding them asking me for my number or asking me out. I had a cute friend I’ve been crushing on for a while nervously ask me for a kiss!

The point is that there are parts of us that are nearly accessible but our brain pathways need a little temporary loosening to strengthen some of those pathways, and psychedelics can do just that. They’re no panacea and it takes some experience to really gain the desired effects. But they can also just be enjoyable and they’re generally harmless, and it’s such a shame that they’re so stigmatized. I live in Oakland where they have decriminalized mushrooms and I’d like to see more decriminalization and ultimately legalization of mushrooms, LSD, and more.

I have a friend who has been doing legal ketamine therapy under the care of their therapist and it has helped them realize the ways in which they had been hanging on to old relationships which were holding them back. They’re finding out how to advocate for their own needs and they’re much happier for it.

We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

Though I should say, probably because I just listened to a bunch of Noam Chomsky last night, that allowing broad swaths of the population to become more deeply in touch with their core needs threatens the status quo and current power dynamics. Honestly tho the structures of power are so solidified I’m not sure there’s really much actual risk to them from drug legalization.


I totally agree that:

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

But our blues haven't appeared from nowhere. We have significant cultural institutions that function primarily by dividing the populace against itself. Getting healthy likely means waking up to the fact that we're under attack and doing something other than "self care" about it.

So I disagree with:

> the structures of power are so solidified I’m not sure there’s really much actual risk to them from drug legalization.

They seem pretty shaky to me. Which is for the best. Being powerful should come with a fear of the people you have power over. If you're one weird trip away from a revolution then it's probably time to start treating your people better.


There is some history in the US with regards to power structures, getting needs met, and psychedelics. Mostly in the late 60's and early 70's there was a big counterculture movement that focused on exactly those things, and the power structures at the time were certainly threatened, and created things like cointelpro.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=Overall%2....


>Getting healthy likely means waking up to the fact that we're under attack and doing something other than "self care" about it.

I pretty strongly disagree with this sentiment. The vast majority of misery in this country is self-inflicted from buying into a worldview and lifestyle that is inherently unfulfilling. The self care of conferring oneself from that mindset goes a long way.


Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it?

Being bought in means that we're afraid to talk to our families or neighbors about certain topics for fear of things getting too spicy in one way or another, it keeps us divided. Apply self care (psychedelic assisted or otherwise) for long enough that we're not afraid anymore and maybe you've achieved your mental health goals, but now you're having the kind of conversations that change things.


>Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it?

That's a complex question and I probably don't have the perfect answer. If I were to take a stab at it I would say the top causes are consumerism, politics, and trained helplessness are at the top of the list.

As for who's selling it; basiclly everyone is. Individuals and companies want you to think that whatever they are selling will make you happy. Politicians want you to think you need them to do good in the world. Your neighbors want you to be impressed with their good values and status.

In my experience and opinion, once people escape, the behavior changes in that they start actually doing things that make them happy, opposed to things that they are told should make them happy. This can take an infinite number of forms. It might mean going out and helping your neighbors instead of watching political news. It might be going for a walk instead of watching Netflix. It might mean reading a book instead of browsing twitter.


When the previous poster said:

> A crisis of unhappiness in this country

I think he was right to say "this country". I've been places where, by all objective measures, the people have it much worse, but I don't get the sense that they're unhappy the way that we are.

> As for who's selling it; basically everyone is

If that we're the case, it would be happening everywhere. We'd just call it the human condition. The contrast upon returning to the US wouldn't feel so stark.

I think there is a relatively small demographic who is selling the uniquely dissatisfying American worldview much more strongly than the rest of us are. And conscious or otherwise, they have their reasons.

If we start ignoring the programming en masse, I expect they'll switch to less subtle means of control.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I think everyone should trip at least once precisely because it helps you cast off habits of mind that aren't serving you. But when that capability is in everybody's toolkit... Well I think it's going to be a bumpy ride. Worth taking, but bumpy.


To be clear, when I say basically everyone is selling it, I'm speaking in a us centric context. I don't think the phenomenon is unique to the United States, but I do think it is more pronounced here. I too have met people that live on less than a dollar a day and are happier than people making six or seven figures.

When I say everyone is selling it, what I mean is that if they have bought into it, they are propagating it as a normative worldview. I think is accurate and the only way such ideas survive. It is systemic and relies on Broad acceptance. At the center, it depends on hundreds of millions of people believing in it.

It is helpful to step outside of that system and get a radically different perspective. Psychedelics are just one way to do this, and probably not even the best. The challenge is that even after experiencing that perspective, you step back into a world where everyone believes something different and you start to forget.

The solution is pretty simple. For one you have to make an intentional effort to be present in your life and live it in a way you find meaningful, despite external forces trying to convince you otherwise. Second, you have to surround yourself with friends and loved ones that reinforce this healthy world view.

In the end, I think I'm less cynical than you are. I don't think there are more powerful tools for mind control waiting to be deployed. I also don't think it would be a bumpy ride if more people took control of their lives to improve their happiness. Life and society would simply get better and better as more people did so.


I've always been a very verbal person but the first time I tried mushrooms I found I wasn't able to describe my experience in words and I really wanted to draw it. Up until that point in my life I had thought of words as being the de facto correct way to convey thoughts, but that experience really made me understand that words were just my way of conveying thoughts, and there really isn't a correct one. It was absolutely a transformative experience for me and made me appreciate art, all forms of it, in a deeper way.

Interestingly enough though that first experience with psychedelics was the only one I actually found transformative. I did mushrooms maybe half a dozen more times afterwards and experimented with a few other drugs including LSD and MDMA and I never really felt like any of those trips gave me any deeper insights or changed the way I viewed things.


I have been struggling a lot with dating. Despite being a quite social, and often popular guy to be around, there has been some block/hump that always stood in the way of dating. Funnily enough it struck me some weeks ago that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain to be able to show my interest romatically to others. What I'm scared of is the possibility of it having some other undesired effect though

I had a similar experience with dancing though. Thought I hated it, and I always had to force myself to do it, until I started (modestly) drinking alcohol. My body would dance for me and I would enjoy it. The effect more or less stuck around and I even genuinely have days of more confidence after a night with alcohol.

All of this is mildly depressing though. It feels as though we are just our brains (maybe obviously), but just that we're the strange effects of the functions of a non-magical/soul-less organ in our heads primarily just meant to steer our bodies. Those thoughts make drugs both existentially liberating but at the same time also "imprisoning" for me


> All of this is mildly depressing though. It feels as though we are just our brains (maybe obviously), but just that we're the strange effects of the functions of a non-magical/soul-less organ in our heads primarily just meant to steer our bodies. Those thoughts make drugs both existentially liberating but at the same time also "imprisoning" for me

That is certainly one way of looking at things, and one of the more frequent perspectives I harbor. But I've also had enough trips down the rabbit hole to realize there's more to it than that. Way more to it.

We are definitely strange effects for sure. We are haunted atoms that formed in the core of a dying star. Weird, right? If you find that worldview imprisoning, I encourage you to question it. Magic is often simply what you need it to be, no need to get hung up on whether magic is "real" or not, because that doesn't actually matter.

Check out Discordianism if you haven't already. It's kinda like hot swapping reality tunnels. No need to commit to one ontology all the time :).


> that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain

Do you really need the permission of drugs to do what you want?

You already have your outcome. You know where you are. To what end do you need the drugs?

Let's say you do this trip.. and it turns out the thing blocking you from dating is that you were molested at a young age. Those memories come flooding back to you at 2am while you're sweating like a pig and vomiting repeatedly.

Is that the right outcome? Is that the outcome you want?

Worse yet, what if there is no deep seated reason why you're afraid of intimacy and dependence? What if you are just scared of it for no reason?

There is no secret enlightenment to be had. There is only you and your fear blocking the door, and the fear isn't real.


To sort of add to this, I’ve found that meditation has had far more profound effects than psychedelics ever did. Maybe they help to kick start things or show how much of yourself you don’t know.


You could just as easily be describing therapy. Of course people sometimes need external help to achieve their goals or change their perspectives! Sometimes it's therapy, sometimes a vacation, sometimes a heart-to-heart with a close friend and sometimes a bunch of acid.


Dropping acid is maybe not the same thing as therapy sessions with a well qualified professional who is board certified, licensed and so on.

If you just mean "try random things to see how it helps", I suppose you could start by finding Jesus or licking a cattle prod. Why limit yourself to just a few methods of magic insight?


Indeed why not try those things. People should be more open to new experiences as long as you're not hurting yourself or others. If you find that looking cattle prods makes you happy, more power to you


Well the thing about tripping is you can’t really predict what the result will be. I was able to realize I am cool and sexy because I have been doing a lot of work on myself to get over some past issues, and the trip just helped a few things click that I probably would have figured out in the next year or so either way. Success at dating is mostly about being comfortable with yourself, and that takes therapy and personal growth. If you’re doing those things, psychedelics can help make connections you are close to, but I would not think that any given trip is going to solve that particular problem if it’s not one you’re already making progress on.


>I have been struggling a lot with dating.

>I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain to be able to show my interest romatically to others

u wot m8


I don't think there's any kind of global anti-drug conspiracy.

Anti-drug fear mongering is a byproduct of few factors: ignorance (people confuse crack, LSD and say MDMA, labeling everything as drug), valid fears (LSD was legal while being underresearched and that lead to few terrible events), self-propelled drugwar cycle (drugs caused wave of fear, became a good target for politicians, that caused even more fear mongering and the cycle is closed), and valid historical concerns (many drugs are very bad and caused pretty terrible historical precedents like opium abuse in China).

People are getting more educated on drugs these days, and more questions arise in the society regarding if certain kinds of drugs like LSD should be more available. Though it would be a long road.


It's not a conspiracy, it's a well-documented effort by the US and other powerful nations to extort every corner of the planet to adopting harsh, unscientific, liberty-obliterating laws against drugs (except the state-sanctioned ones of course!) that has been going on for about a 100 years. Cracks are beginning to show (see Portugal, Uruguay and others), but that is still the global system we live under thanks to various UN conventions pushed by the US and the national-level laws that adhere to those conventions.


> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

While I agree with everything else you said, this bit concerns me. I'm certainly in favor of using these tools to help anyone who needs help. But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms, but what are we going to collectively take to address the root problem(s)? And when?


Oh I think people are unhappy because of an abusive political system designed to funnel all wealth to the top while everyone else works themselves to death. Collective action is absolutely the real solution, but psychedelics can help people locked in the mindset that things can’t change to consider a better world.

There are simple things, like the fact that we are isolated. This according to Noam Chomsky is an intentional and desirable outcome of a corporate mass media system that wants to keep us separated. And a nice psychedelic trip with friends is a great way to remember not just that you like being with your friends, but that the world that keeps you apart is genuinely inhumane, and we should start to look deeper at how to solve these issues.

Basically I think psychedelics can be a tool that leads to the collective action you have rightly pointed out is the ultimate solution.


The reverse seems much much more likely. The abusive political system pushes drug legalization as an opiate of the masses so they are more content to deal with the abusive political system. A weekend of legal drug use to make the pain go away and disrupt solidarity.


I agree with the other commenter that this is not how psychedelics work. They do not "make the pain go away" like depressants. If they have any effect on solidarity it would be to strengthen it, not disrupt it.

This is interestingly a great example of the point being made in TFA. That we need a new category for psychedelics because they are not anything like opiates etc.


Opiates are quite a different animal. A weekend of psychedelics with your friends is not going to help you ignore anything.


re: opiate of the masses

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+opiate+of+the+masse...

In short, it's not to be read literally.


I'm aware, and in context with religion is an apt metaphor. But in context with psychedelics it's not.

They're not a numbing agents, they're catalysts for change, that's why they're applicable to therapy in ways that opiates are not.


Yes and no. At some low-level the brain doesn't differential between physical pain and mental / emotional pain. It's pain, and it needs to be reckoned with. Maybe psychedelics aren't painkillers in the opioid sense. However, they do provide pain relief, and yes perhaps an opportunity for healing.

The difference really isn't all that much.


> These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms

My experience with psychedelic-assisted insight is not consistent with this. You have the right trip, identify some root-causes that you've been overlooking, and then sober-you has the rest of your life to do something with that new awareness.

They're not painkillers. If anything, they're the opposite. There are all of these rumors about LSD causing back pain because people who have been ignoring back pain trip and are suddenly aware of it again. Such an experience caused me to upgrade my chair and start practicing yoga, for instance.


> They're not painkillers

In the traditional sense (e.g., alcohol, Oxycodine, etc) no they are not. But they are mind altering, literally. And that alteration is an opportunity to break patterns, unhealthy patterns. Being in that other state of mind shows you another state of mind can exist. You experienced it. So you take that away with you and ideally build new healthier paths.


I totally agree. Isn't that quite different than what painkillers do?

Presumably your new path has something to do with a problem that you had. It's not helping you cope with having the problem, it's prodding you to solve the problem.


> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

Because that's the default.. People haven't evolved to be happy; we have evolved to barely survive to have kids and care for them so that a few become adults. Being happy is the exception, you should ask how anyone manages that.


I sort of agree with this. We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy. These <things|experiences> will bring pleasure but they don’t create meaningful happiness. As if pleasure and happiness are the same thing. But they are often conflated.

I can’t tell or teach people “how to be happy”. I’m not even sure that’s possible or if it’s something everyone can do or would really want to. But I do know that being hooked on a treadmill of pleasurable experiences isn’t it.


> We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy.

Seems like the entirely idea of happiness has been semiotically highjacked by marketing, morality, other things

When I mentally picture "happiness", all I really see is a bunch of behaviors that are frequently depicted as desirable in the aggregate by media and others

The Buddhists are a lot more sane about this than we are. Imo there's so much residue around the word "happiness", in order to achieve a sense of peace it's better to just throw it out and take each day at a time


Happiness is a state of mind, and is a (mental, emotional) place, and that place is easier to occupy if your life is setup to make it easier. A few good friends, a romantic partner, meaningful work, kids is sort of the usual and probably pretty safe recipe. It's possible to have these things and be miserable, and it's possible to have none of them and be blissfully happy.

Aristotle wrote a pretty solid book on the topic.


The default is resorting to drugs, alcohol, other destructive behaviour, and even suicide?

Maybe.

But this isn't a universal default. These escapes at this level isn't happening everywhere in every culture, is it?


Why are using drugs and alcohol automatically destructive behaviours? I imagine you know and work with many people who use drugs and/or alcohol and also have families, friends, hobbies, career trajectories and are overall reasonably happy, well-adjusted people. I mean, that describes virtually everyone I know! The problem cases certainly exist, but within my personal world, those people are the exceptions.


> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

How is this even supposed to be determined? It isn't like you can test for happiness like you test a pool for Ph levels. Assuming we can is optimistic


Sometimes people try psychedelics and have great experiences just like that! Sometimes they try psychedelics and they have baaaaaad experiences, that are essentially traumatic and result in lingering negative feelings.

Risk versus reward!

… but you don’t have to risk much, for your first time. Yes, tripping with your friends at a festival is great - but you can also do a little, on your own terms, to try it out, and get a feel for whether it’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

Possible benefits of micro dosing notwithstanding, you won’t get the dramatic effects everyone tells stories about without taking a significant dose… but that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing arrangement. You can try a little, you can increase or decrease your dosage next time, you can take notice of the conditions surrounding your hood and your bad trips, and - I mean what I’m really describing here is how to learn to use a drug responsibly. It’s like any other powerful experience, you need to be smart about how you approach it.

I think people get suckered in by unnuanced anecdotes on either side - “it was amazing, it cured my depression!” and “it was awful, it escalated my schizophrenia” are on opposite ends of a spectrum. I always think everyone owes it to themselves to experience wherever along that spectrum they are comfortable going - not necessarily a psychedelic evangelist per se, just very much in favour of careful deliberate experimentation with your own brain and body chemistry.

Glad you had a good trip! Ones where you come away learning something about yourself are the best.


> Sometimes people try psychedelics and have great experiences just like that! Sometimes they try psychedelics and they have baaaaaad experiences, that are essentially traumatic and result in lingering negative feelings.

> Risk versus reward!

Well something I did not say in my comment but I believe is very important is that it's not just "do drugs, win prizes" it's "take time over a period of years to learn how psychedelics work with your body, try some experiences in emotionally safe spaces, reflect on those trips with your friend and therapist, and develop some confidence to work your way up in dosage as you learn to understand how it works for you".

While some people may be able to randomly take a higher end dose and have a good result, I certainly advocate that people take their time to get in to these substances. I advocate for legalization because of what is possible with very careful use of them as a tool, but it takes some care to learn how to use them properly!


They are not all equal. Not the people, the experience, the substance, or the sum of all.

Without study and care and the ability to be Frank about such things as purity, setting and set, those people are going to fail to realize any “reward”.


Thanks for sharing. Great example.


I took 100ug LSD twice and I was suicidal after it for years


It sounds like you were insecure about certain things like dating and got over it via psychedelics

I mean if that works, sure. But what happens in the future if you latch onto some other insecurity? Will you just take a psychedelic again? Is that going to actually fix the problem?


I don’t know if it’s accurate to describe what I was going through as “latching on to an insecurity”. I had literally forgotten that I am cool and sexy and this led to insecurity around other cool and sexy people I liked. Once I remembered that I am also cool and sexy, I was able to see myself on an even playing field with the people I like and there was simply no cause for insecurity.

I will certainly do psychedelics again tho. When done with intention and maturity they’re fun, harmless, and have generally always been positive and emotionally productive for me. Some years ago I had a mushroom trip that was emotionally challenging, but reminded me of the mortality of my aging parents. This led me to make more of an effort to see them and spend time with them. That’s a wonderful outcome.

The thing about psychedelics is that they basically work by loosening up your brain’s “default mode network” which is the set of pathways you use to make decisions. By loosening up this network you can find adjacent connections that were almost there but had not quite clicked. So they are a tool to help you find things you have been missing. This is something I will continue to explore. On a more basic level, I found that a small dose of LSD at a dance party is very enjoyable and way better for me personally than drinking alcohol or consuming marijuana. Not that I need substances to have fun, but sometimes that’s a fun way to spend an evening.


>I mean if that works, sure. But what happens in the future if you latch onto some other insecurity? Will you just take a psychedelic again? Is that going to actually fix the problem?

If taking a psychedelic on occasion is effective in combating people's insecurities that is almost certainly one of the most massive wins in the history of mental health.

I don't think it's nearly that simple but I am baffled by the idea of "taking a psychedelic cured you of this issue so what are you gonna do if you have another issue, cure it with another psychedelic, huh?" being some sort of negative thing.


For everyone who has an experience like you, there's someone like this guy: https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/dmt-derealization-and-...

Anyway, since you were dancing, I assume you used MDMA which is much "less psychedelic" than acid or DMT (and much more of a stimulant). There's also more potential for misuse and addiction. Ketamine, too, turns out to be quite addictive by the way.

It seems clear that psychedelics are going mainstream and, unlike the 60s and 70s, they will be legal in some places. I'm not convinced that ths will be a net good, partly because it's not clear that it was a net good in the 60s and 70s, but we'll see.


You are implying a 1:1 relationship with good experiences and bad experiences. That's not how drugs work. It is important to know the actual reality of this type of ratio so that individuals who are looking to use a drug of this nature can be well informed.


No, I'm positing a 1:1 relationship between "holy shit I am a new person" in a good way and "holy shit I am a new person" in a bad way.

That's not the same as good/bad experiences.


I don't think there's nearly enough data available to posit it one way or the other - anything we say is almost certainly going to be purely anecdotal.

My anecdotal experience has been that the vast majority of people who have used DMT have not felt like a "new person", and the few that have, have felt so in a positive way.


There's nothing stopping you from dancing on acid or shrooms. In fact, that's the whole point of psytrance.


> Ketamine, too, turns out to be quite addictive by the way.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-ketamine-addiction.ht...

I have done the medically assisted Ketamine trips. No sign them being addicting to me whatsoever. It didn't do a whole lot for me, but some of the other peeps in my cohort had amazing results working through old grief.


It's well known that ketamine is addictive. Just google "ketamine addiction". It's an effective antidepressant for many people but you can't take it long term because tolerance develops quickly.


> I have met others who only stand and look at you blankly, who have lost their desire, even their self-respect. They have lost, shall we say, the structure through which their mind force previously flowed, and it has not been replaced.

> What happens to a Hindu yogi when he enters a superconscious state of bliss in which his mind opens up, turns to light, and he sees the world revolving below the state of his suspended consciousness? He has arrived at this state through many years of practice in concentration, meditation and contemplation, many years of building strong nerve fiber. But in a momentary high on LSD or any other powerful psychedelic, such as mushrooms, peyote, ecstasy or DMT, the nerve structure is strained, in a sense which we can best describe as abnormal, to allow the individual to reach this exalted consciousness. Coming out of it, the result is often a kind of shock in which the person has a great difficulty in readjusting to any kind of normal routine. [1]

[1] Living with Siva, 79


I agree, I sometimes run into people - usually corporate employee, college educated people - “straight edge” people that are just getting around to experimenting with psychadelics and say things like “I’m not really into drugs” and treading carefully for that reason

Its a smart approach

But being unable to distinguish between “drugs” is sad

Its a categorization problem, its a anti drug education problem that also categorized everything together and conflated everything with wild rumors. Its a supply chain problem as substances do need to be tested to ensure you are only getting your psychedelic.


My friend summed it up perfectly - “not exactly what you would call recreational is it?”. At some dose psychedelics reveal a huge amount of why we are the way we are to ourselves and give us more powers to change our reality than we had before. But with great power… people who see reality as very fixed or particularly have very black and white moral codes probably shouldn’t try them.


[flagged]


What are you trying to say? Who is "someone"?

You complain about "this website" while bringing in an irrelevant political argument. Much heat, no light. Who's the problem here?


This user was defending the Capitol insurrection 2 years ago with conspiracy theories. Treat everything they say as extremely untrustworthy.


Setting the discussion of this topic without everyone losing their minds as a goal to be achieved via the intentional use of psychedelics seems like a fun and interesting idea for all the people in this thread who perceive themselves as wanting to "change the world".

Before you can run, you must first learn how to walk.


Imagine being told that your 50-year-old brain surgeon is returning from to a year-long psychedelic sabbatical just prior to your surgery. LSD, ayahuasca, psilocybin, frogs, everything. They tell you that this has completely changed everything about what they think and know.

There is an inconsistency between the ability to “change your mind”, and the right to hold a lifetime credential, or more broadly, an identity or reputation. In the other direction, a person with a new brain may find themselves trapped by an old identity, reputation, or criminal record. Either way, there’s no good way to assess whether someone’s capabilities or behavior has changed to become inconsistent with past labels. This is also true for the sober passage of time and experience, but massively more so with the use of drugs (including alcohol). The main difference with psychedelics is that they affect a broader range of higher-order brain systems, whereas most other abused substances mainly affect the dopamine system, which is also disastrous, but probably takes longer to affect skill and knowledge.

Imagine all of this research results in wonderful outcomes for happiness and positive affect and sociality etc. Everybody wants the treatment. Then we discover that all we’re doing is making people dumber, and dumb people are happier. And they’re also more confident, extroverted, and relatable, even creative, as they are no longer bound to their former knowledge, reasoning, or expertise, so the perception is that they are even smarter. It’s perfect for the individual, but a potential disaster for society.

And of course, a proper screed today wouldn’t be complete without prognosticating about AI. It’s possible that some form of machine learning could and maybe should replace most forms of crystallized intelligence and skill, such that the only thing left for humans is exactly this type of “dumb genius” that we seem to find so beguiling in the majority of famous people.

https://youtu.be/GtBhclCigH0


I think the key factors to consider when talking about the best way to regard psychedelic substances is what potential benefits or harms do they have at the individual or societal level, for example an overdose that causes permanent debilitation or death. In my view, any potential regulation or guidance should be seeking to minimise the harms while maximizing the benefits. I also think historical precedent should be considered as part of the process to identifying that.

As an aside to some of the comments made in the article, you can still be religious without theism. And in a way any religious experience could also be considered as a kind of mental health medication.


We can drop the CIA concocted narratives anytime.

Calling them out is the first step.


To properly categorize these drugs we need to expand our thinking. Hmmm :-)


Read stuff from Thomas Metzinger. I think, he has really good ideas for the integration of psychedelics and meditation to get better insights to your own consciousness.


Whatever you do please don't advocate to replace ssri with psychedelics. Listen to a doctor or psychiatrist, just like it was for vaccines.

And avoid personal anecdote, they have little value compared to what a doctor says.

Thanks in advance.


It seems to me that this is a fairly dangerous take- during and after the schooling required to become a doctor, surgeon, or nurse, the real-world experiences that these medical professionals have tends, over time, to outweigh the institutional knowledge they started with.

Ideally, reading new research should be part and parcel to everybody's professional career, but a ton of the advice that you'll receive from your doctor will be informed more by experience (compounding anecdote) than anything else.


I agree with your main point, but the bit about anecdotes is tricky. We live in a society where research and information on these substances has been suppressed. As a result, anecdotes, to a large degree, are all we have.

This is gradually changing as we see new studies emerging with the relaxation of regulation. However, the picture the data paint is still quite limited compared to the wealth of personal experiences that have been recorded over the decades.


The fact that you only have anecdotes doesn't make those anecdotes more reliable.


agreed... I know a lot more folks that SSRIs have messed up in a variety ways than psychedelics... we should offer folks MORE options when fighting depression/anxiety and encourage experimentation


Counterpoint: I listened to my doctors for 8 years and took the medication they advised, didn't help me one bit.

Getting off SSRIs, changing my work situation and enjoying some LSD made a much bigger positive difference than endless sweaty nights on Prozac ever did.


The reverse works for many other people. NEVER prescribe a "one-size-fits-all" policy or perspective for psychological methodologies.


> avoid personal anecdote, they have little value compared to what a doctor says.

Doctors are like engineers. There is a body of science and research for their field. They were once trained on part of it. But day to day each individual doctor is a practitioners. What they say is often just their own anecdotes. Research on a topic may exist but it's up to personal interest and work style whether they read it.


Doctors are not like engineers.

Human health and biology is far more complex and tricky that whatever engineers deal with.


I agree with that difference, but it's not relevant to the comment I made.


My doc is great at medicine, knows fuck-all about tripping.


There are already tons of legal forms of escapism, which is exactly what psychedelics are, so I fail to see why it's so imperative that they become more socially accepted.

I've also tried my fair share of psychedelics and find it completely laughable that people try to raise them up as these spiritual or therapeutic tools. Just because they make you hallucinate does not mean they "open up your mind" or make you think any more critically than alcohol or other drugs.


I have never found psychedelics to be more than an enjoyable way to spend an evening or weekend, but a large body of psychiatrists and medical researchers take the potential of psychedelics as a a therapeutic tool quite seriously and there is scientific research to support this position. If you find it completely laughable, I would hope you have some sort of significant scientific evidence to support that position.

As for the spiritual bit, I don't understand how you could begin to argue this point. A spiritual experience is subjective and dependent on the person - if people can find meditation, walks in nature, staring up at the stars, listening to music, reading a book, etc., to be spiritual experiences, why in the world couldn't a trip on LSD do the same?


> I've also tried my fair share of psychedelics and find it completely laughable that people try to raise them up as these spiritual or therapeutic tools. Just because they make you hallucinate does not mean they "open up your mind" or make you think any more critically than alcohol or other drugs.

"I didn't have the experience some people talk about so I will ridicule and discount all those perspectives"

Cool. Great contribution, thanks. It's too bad you didn't have those experiences people talk about because maybe it would have helped check your ego.


They are being raised as therapeutic tools because research shows that empirically, psychedelics do help with some mental issues, and sometimes in better ways than conventional medicine. They need to become more socially accepted because current legislation bans a lot of research on them under cover of the war on drugs, an that legislation can be changed if public sentiment changes. If tobacco was discovered to be good for say, depression, it'd be stupid to ban researchers from acquiring any under the guise of "tobacco cause cancer so nobody should be allowed to buy it ever". On top of that, drugs are absolutely winning the war on drugs, because the current policy of punishing users for either having fun on their own time or being addicts who literally will die if they stop is absurd. There is a middle ground between throwing addicts in prison and selling heroin in cafes, and that comes with mental help and social assistance to those in positions where hard drugs and dependance on them is preferable to experiencing life sober.


It sounds like you've had very boring and uninteresting psychedelic trips. It's kind of laughable to even think that any benefits come from the "hallucinating" aspect of the trip, as you imply.


Are there alternate tools that you believe can achieve improved critical thinking or “opening up your mind.”


The Venn diagram for psychedelics include escapism, but it includes a lot more as well. Psychedelics can be a powerful tool, and for all the good that they can bring you, they can also wreck your shit for a while. It really depends on who you are, what context you take them in and what you do afterwards. This applies more broadly to other substances as well, even ones not typically seen as psychedelic, like alcohol and caffeine. There can be therapeutic effects with those as well.

For example, if you're feeling really stuck at a certain point in life and you take the time to get drunk by yourself and listen to some enjoyable music, you can end up being really honest with yourself and become aware of what you need to do to get unstuck. But you can also get drunk at a party and make a number of bad decisions that you'll regret later. It be like that when it comes to psychedelics as well.

Imho, the main benefits of psychedelics are two-fold.

One has to do with subjective experience - psychedelics can simply provide you with a different experience, a different point of view. This can help you see that there are other possibilities for the narratives you tell yourself and this can be beneficial. Depression is a good example here - it's super easy to forget what it's like to not be depressed and psychedelics can provide a temporary clarity about it that can later help get out of the depressive state.

The temporary difference in point of view can also cultivate more skepticism in general. This is especially true for certain "truths" we hold about ourselves (like insecurities, inadequacies, fears). Psychedelics can open us up to consider different causes for our behaviours and this can be therapeutic as well. But I gotta say, they can also make you lose yourself within a new false narrative, so skepticism is a powerful ally here.

The other benefit simply has to do with neuroplasticity. Most psychedelics open up a dose-dependent learning period that lasts from days to weeks. That's why something like a shroom trip doesn't really end until a few weeks after the shroom is ingested, when that learning period eventually closes. Even if you didn't experience anything spiritually or psychologically significant in the acute phase of the trip, you can still benefit greatly from the learning window that opens up afterwards.

It's a good time to try a new activity, do some self-reflection, change a habit, have a therapy session or two, connect with people on a deeper level. You might be surprised by your learning abilities after a shroom trip. But I gotta say, all this also opens you up to learning "bad things" too, so again, skepticism helps here.

Yeah, you can do all that without psychedelics as well, but there are a couple of problems here - you might be unaware that there's something you can actually do, and even if you are, you might not know what to look at or how to change your point of view about it. Psychedelics can provide a strong emotional and psychological example that can guide you in that process.




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