
Could psychedelics transform mental health? - pmoriarty
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-44575139
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intellectronica
It's great that science is investigating new options, and as long as these
experiments are controlled and safe and ethical, we can hope to find new cures
and new answers. However this meme in the popular media about psychedelic
drugs being a new magic cure is dangerous - I have personal anecdotal evidence
of quite a few people who really shouldn't mess with their brain picking up
drugs and damaging their mental health and their cognitive ability, encouraged
by this trend.

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programmarchy
There’s a trend being used to legalize drugs: market then as medicine.

However, as we’ve seen with marijuana, it’s not regulated like medicine. It’s
sold in what closely resemble head shops and called medicine with a wink and a
nod to be used recreationally. It’s a strategy that circumvents the moral
argument against recreational drug use, which I believe exists for a good
reason: we don’t want society continuously drugged like Brave New World.

So if it’s really medicine, which I don’t doubt certain circumstances, then it
should be taken seriously and the manufacture and prescription should be
regulated like other medicines, and not just a facade that masks the
normalization of recreational drug culture.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" we don't want society continuously drugged like Brave New World"_

Could you expand on that? What makes that wrong, exactly?

I'm not disagreeing with you, just curious about your point of view.

~~~
programmarchy
I mean a society that is made to accept the abuses of tyranny in a narcotized
state.

Quoting Huxley, in his letters to Orwell discussing the difference between
1984 and Brave New World:

“Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover
that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments
of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just
as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by
flogging and kicking them into obedience.”

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover
that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments
of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just
as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by
flogging and kicking them into obedience."_

What if taking certain drugs actually liberated rather than enslaved you?

Psychedelics, constructively used, might actually help people see through the
power structures used to control them in ordinary life, and could be a strong
catalyst for positive social change.

Take a look at the ideals that psychedelic use encouraged in the 60's and 70's
counterculture. These people were not after being lulled further in to sleep
by "narco-hypnosis", as Huxley terms it. They were after dropping out of the
dominant society, about building their own alternative societies, about being
peaceful and loving towards each other, about resisting the powers who told
them to give their lives to chasing profit, or climbing the corporate ladder,
or killing people in wars, or hating other people.

Of course, they did not all realize their ideals in the long run (though some
did... the environmental movement, which has been incredibly successful, had
its roots in that time), but it wasn't like these people were an army of
brainwashed zombies programmed to obey. If anything, they questioned and
disobeyed too much for mainstream society to tolerate, and there was a huge
reactionary backlash against them -- they who had been greatly influenced by
psychedelic drugs.

I suggest you take a look beyond Huxley's "Brave New World" (which he wrote in
1932) to his later book "Island" (which he wrote in 1962), in which he himself
describes a utopia based around the use of a psychedelic sacrament. His
thinking on drugs had clearly evolved in the 30 years since he wrote the
former novel.

Also, Huxley is famous for having asked for and received LSD on his deathbed.
There is a touching account of this event written by his wife here:

[https://erowid.org/culture/characters/huxley_laura/huxley_la...](https://erowid.org/culture/characters/huxley_laura/huxley_laura_article1.shtml)

