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.
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 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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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"
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.
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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:
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 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.
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 .
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...