
We can no longer ignore the potential of psychedelic drugs to treat depression - throwaway888abc
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/psychedelic-drugs-treat-depression
======
mettamage
In all honesty, mushrooms, weed and alcohol taught me one thing.

Do I _like_ being simply sober!

I prefer my mental quickness and sharpness over anything. When I smoke weed, I
lose my English (lol) and only speak Dutch. When I take shrooms, I don't even
dare to get off the bed. Hell, I don't even know what a bed is! And when I'm
drunk, that's just a horrible feeling, _while_ I'm drunk. I'm actually much
more fine with a hangover, since I'm already more mentally sharp then (with a
huge headache).

Drugs are fun to debug your brain with, but ultimately:

\- Sex

\- Exercise

\- Meditation

\- Yoga

\- The Wim Hof Method

\- Amazing food

That's my favorite type of drugs.

With that said, if you prefer to take drugs, by all means: go ahead ;-)

Full disclaimer: weed on a very light dose (Dutch weed though) and MDMA can be
exceptions to this on very rare occassions, according to some people I know.
They can be relationship enhancing (friends or SO) in the right setting.

~~~
hkai
That's interesting because quite a lot of people on reddit seem to believe
that drugs is the only fun thing to do in life, and the rest is horrifying -
work, money, relationship problems, housing and so on.

Perhaps that's why governments try to ban drugs: because given a chance, most
people would prefer NOT to stay sober, except for few exceptional individuals.

~~~
mettamage
I am changing my attitude on it by asking relentlessly: how is this fun?

For work the answer is: a 4 day work week helps a shit ton. I am free on
Wednesday. So if I dread the workday then I am free the next day or the day
after that which puts me at ease. Also, then when I _am_ free, I am noticing
that I don’t like the day much more. That gives me a powerful perspective to
not blame work for when I feel unhappy.

Also, my work feels kind of easy. CRUD apps are not tje difficult beasts I
studied during college.

It also helps that the founders guard work-life balance.

------
mulderc
I would say that I struggled with depression for a good chunk of my life. Then
I tried some psychedelic drugs, very low doses in a safe environment and
things changed dramatically very quickly. It is as close to night and day
difference I think I have ever experienced. I still have my issues but they
are much more in line with just the challenges of life as compared to before
when just getting out of bed was nearly impossible.

~~~
lowdose
Whats a low doses for you?

~~~
brootstrap
I am a stoner, decent weed tolerance and smoking just about daily. Took
shrooms twice. one time was shwag shroomers that did nothing. Next time i ate
one single shroom (not a big one either) . My buddy was there all fucked up
like dude keep eating. Well i tripped balls for 6 hours including a phone call
back home to my wife to get myself grounded haha.

~~~
andai
I've noticed there's a huge variation in tolerance to mushrooms, even among
people who share a similar tolerance to other substances. Like an order of
magnitude difference.

~~~
heavenlyblue
Um. You should never dose mushrooms in units of mushrooms - you must only
shred all of them and then weight the same dosage.

------
caymanjim
While it's encouraging to see a relaxation of attitudes toward drugs in
general, and some degree of acceptance by medical professionals, I take
exception to the idea that professional head-shrinking is required for
benefit. Some people are helped by clinical psychology and psychiatry. Many
people would do well to avoid all psychoactive drugs without oversight and
guidance from a trained professional. But many of us have been self-medicating
for decades and we're well aware of the benefit of burning a joint after work
or going on a canoe trip with some mushrooms. Such an approach is still
stigmatized by many mental health professionals. It takes a huge ego to think
you've got a monopoly on managing my mental state for me.

~~~
phkahler
>> It takes a huge ego to think you've got a monopoly on managing my mental
state for me.

Funny because I though destruction of the ego was one of the requirements to
achieve good mental health ;-)

Someone described their drug experience to me and said it was very important
to have their trusted friend there to help ground them as needed and guide
them through it. That guy is now ready to take on that role. Apparently going
it alone at first is a really bad idea. Do you need a psychologist? Doubt it.
They have their own issues.

------
nappy-doo
slightly offtopic:

I have struggled with anxiety. It's always been a low-level constant in my
life with suicidal ideation and mild panic attacks. I have never treated it
beyond irregular talk therapy and CBT.

The lockdown in the US and the safety of my family has triggered me severely.
I found myself unable to function, and would doom surf, opening tabs,
refreshing news, watching graphs move up and to the right. No thought, just
monkey level reactions.

I started taking medical THC, and my life has changed for the better. I can
focus. I can relax. I can live a normal life. I can approach the covid
situation with thought, not gut level reaction.

All of this is to say, if the article's drugs work for some, they need to be
available. Legal marijuana in my state has made a huge difference in my life
-- if other psychotropics or psychedelics help others, then let's get them out
there.

~~~
mjayhn
I feel bad for people that aren't in a pot-legal state during this. I've
definitely added some munchie weight beyond my usual but I've barely drank a
drop since April. If I hop on twitter it seems like one of the common
conversations is drinking nightly, same with my colleagues.

I hope people with addiction problems are able to get support and help through
this. If I hadn't moved here years ago I'd probably be right there with you
and waking up like every day was groundhog day again.

Now I just need to flip this lazy-pot-smoking-time-spent back into a workout
routine which will take about 3-4 weeks of me working out consistently to a
strict habit for myself, motivation there is almost non-existent though.
Thankfully I've gone through ups and downs with exercise so many times now
that I know not doing it is self fulfilling prophecy and leads to no
improvements.

now to just.. do it..

------
ohsonice
I definitely think that we shouldn't be criminalizing drugs. I've had some
good experiences and some bad experiences on both LSD and mushrooms and
believe that they could be beneficial in medical settings under the right
supervision. That being said, people are still going to have bad reactions
sometimes. I would think that the benefits are better than the risks,
especially compared to our current approach to medicating away depression.

My current view is that I can reach similar states of joy and grounding
(including oxytocin release) through meditation, yoga, exercise, play,
community, etc. I have been in groups where everyone is partaking in
psychedelics - I choose not to and still have wonderful experiences. I think
that the drugs taught me how to get to those states but there are not the only
way.

The conspiracy theorist in me does not think that "the Man" wants us to be
grounded and open in general, including through means of drugs.

------
seph-reed
Have absolutely seen first hand the positive effects of psychedelics when done
right. I've also seen/experienced the negative effects. If there's one thing I
really hope this doesn't lead to is more certainty in spirituality.

It's totally awesome if someone wants to follow what-if-ism ("I like to think
this, but know it's wrong and will cede the point in a serious context"). If
people like to put up crystals and imagine them doing things, go for it.
Brains are weird and organic, there's no happiness in being purely sterile
about them. Everyone believes in some fantasy narrative most of the time,
doubly so when they're happy.

But if we start allowing each-other to really, fully believe in these happy
thoughts, we'll be setting ourselves up to be taken advantage of.

~~~
h2odragon
"allowing each other"?

You're free to express your doubts about my reality and my interpretation of
it, but you sound close to saying "some thoughts are too dangerous to thunk,"
and don't we already have enough of those?

~~~
seph-reed
> but you sound close to saying "some thoughts are too dangerous to thunk,"

Some thoughts are too dangerous to be thunk _indefinitely_. Thoughts can
trigger the release of chemicals in your body, essentially acting like a drug
themselves.

This can be highly addictive. Addiction can easily make a person cruel. Poorly
thought thunks are indeed very, very dangerous (ie self inflation, blaming
others for everything, believing things will fix themselves).

This doesn't mean these thoughts shouldn't ever be thought, but we should
never lose our way back home to reality. I've seen many a hippy who followed
spirituality too far, and became so hooked on their own vibe juice that they
are no longer capable of basic scientific conversations.

------
rwmj
Does anyone know how (or if) they constructed a double-blind trial? The
effects of mushrooms are easy to distinguish from a placebo to say the least.

~~~
colechristensen
You can't really do a double blind trial.

The therapy in question isn't replacing your prozac with magic mushrooms, it
is a series of brief intense therapy sessions where the patient is given a
dose and talked to while they are under the influence of the drug.

It's just really obvious to everyone involved whether the patent got
psilocybin, LSD, or whatever else. Double blinds would work to an extent with
dosages, but still limited.

You can't do a double blind study of the effects of lighting someone's hair on
fire on their ability to solve math problems, that's about the realm of the
situation here.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
Sure, but that's missing the point.

Researchers need to study therapy sessions compared to therapy sessions with
psychedelics. If they have enough people, include a third arm with traditional
antidepressant medication.

It's not blinded, but at least we would have data to compare to existing
treatments. Double-blind isn't the only way to run a trial.

~~~
colechristensen
I wouldn't think it's missing the point, you have a different topic there.

And the A/B comparison doesn't have much room for common ground to control
for. Perhaps not a single study comparing both, but separate studies (many) of
different treatment methods and replications of those treatment methods and
then meta-analysis studies on the whole lot. (and much of this already exists)

------
esotericsean
I have anxiety and used to have REALLY bad anxiety. My girlfriend at the time
encouraged me to try weed because it helped her. I was incredibly nervous and
after just one inhalation I had one of the worst panic attacks of my life. It
was as if I had no control at all.

I understand how psychedelics can help in theory, but man I'd be so freaking
scared to even try them because I hate that feeling of losing control.

~~~
sibeliuss
Periodic reminder that weed and psychedelics are _very_ different things, with
different effects. One can't be compared to the other, though people sometimes
describe "trippy" weed experiences. Each compound produces its own effect.

~~~
brokenmachine
Of course you can compare different things to each other.

That's what comparison is for.

~~~
sibeliuss
Just saying: if weed's effects didn't work for you, no reason to assume that
psychedelics are not an option. They're different things.

------
victoriasun
I am a pretty experienced psychedelic user. It has been transformative in
helping my mental health. I'm happy to answer any questions from people who
are interested in using psychedelics to help break thru mental pain and
trauma.

------
nikivi
Would be a nice world indeed if everyone tried psychedelics. Especially
something like Salvia or DMT. As it wakes you up from the often 'mundane' life
people are living. From personal experience it inspired me to want to explore
this universe more.

~~~
aero142
There seems to be a large spread between how the person who used psychedelics
describes their experience vs how it appears to me. It used to just be the
people who were in to crystals and vibrations and other new age things, but I
see it with most people who talk about the benefits of psychedelics. Very
smart people claim to have learned profound things from their experiences but
when they explain them, they sounds like nonsense to me. They common quality
is that the experiences sound disconnected from reality. They try to explain
the experience and are fully convinced they learned some fundamental truth but
can't explain it in any way that makes sense. Like when you have an emotional
reaction to a dream but when you explain the dream, you realize the literal
description in nonsense. Perhaps disconnecting from reality a bit or
internalizing a core belief that everything OK, even when it isn't, is a good
thing for making you happy, but there seems to be a lot of downside in
breaking critical thinking in a lot of people's heads.

I used to listen to Tim Ferris and Peter Attia, and thought they were both
very logical thinkers, but since they started talking up the benefits of
psychedelics, I keep getting that same feeling that what they are describing
sounds more like trying to levitate the pentagon to end the war.

~~~
alexandercrohde
I've noticed this too.

There are a number of common-phrases I'll hear like "everything is connected"
or "everything is alive/sentient."

However, not everything is connected, effective thinking is very much about
identifying independent problems. Also I certainly don't believe everything is
alive, and I certainly don't think this opinion should be held on the basis of
chemicals rather than scientific data.

\---

Edit: And what's most disconcerting is that they seem to think these phrases
"mean" something. If they said "Well, there's really no way I can articulate
it, but it's changed my emotional outlook on a lot of things" then I'd be much
more receptive.

~~~
jes5199
I guess what gets me is that there is a hidden premise in scientific
materialism that _nothing_ is alive and _nothing_ is connected, because it
starts with inanimate fundamental parts and tries to build up to reality.

From a psychedelic perspective, that's backwards - if you start, instead, from
"what are my perceptions" and try to extrapolate out, you start to find that
the default assumptions assume there's a boundary somewhere - "light hits my
retina so I see it" "my optic nerve sends a signal so I see it" "certain
neurons fire so I see it" but there's no firm place to draw the line "this is
where the light stops and where the perception begins", your body and the
light are one machine, going from the big bang through the star through space
through objects through your eye through your brain - there's no solid
boundary between any of those things, it's one long unbroken string of
causality.

Or, you're having a conversation with a friend, and you realize that all of
the words, all of the concepts, the patterns of your speech, are all things
that you got from somewhere else, they flow through you, from person to
person, throughout history - you're not having a conversation, the
conversation is having _you_

Or, you start thinking about your life and the world and you think about
incredible pain you've experienced. And great beauty you've seen. And your
greatest fear. And your greatest joy. And you realize - the palette of your
experience has _incredible_ dynamic range, like your brain is some kind of
magnificent radio and the music it plays is every perception you have - from
colors and smells to the most complicated ideas are all things it can receive
or transmit or something .... but who is listening?

Or any of thousands of other non-normal schemas. None of these function as
scientific knowledge - they're shifts in perspective, but they don't make new
predictions (or if they do, those predictions can be re-explaned back into the
scientific materialist metaphor!).

And while the goal of science is to see reality as it really is, there's a
default perspective to science, which is to isolate components to see how they
work in a simplified context, and then to say "the complexity of reality is
just like the simplicity of the simplified contexts, only without the
simplification" which is a super interesting hallucination but I don't see why
it's any more _correct_ than any of the other visions of complexity

~~~
vokep
One of the best explanations of it I've seen. Touches on the magic feeling of
it (how would having a direct feeling of perception of the causal chain of the
entire universe possibly _not_ feel magical and profound) without depending on
the reader having had a psychedelic experience to understand.

That state of direct sense of universal causal connection is achievable sober.
Not meditation either (though I hear thats one reliable way too). I
accidentally "clicked" into it one day while thinking about the border between
my skin and inanimate objects. I thought about the idea of my skin being part
of me, my control of this reality, and the objects being somehow just entirely
separate. It started to seem to make no sense that I can understand and feel
in a deep way that my hand is _mine_ but what it touches is _something else_.
I then started thinking about how the hand seems like its mine, but really
only seems like that because of nerves etc. connecting it to my brain. That
became a thought about how I can even maintain a coherent mind across the
space the brain exists in, and soon enough it clicked and I _knew_ it. It was
simultaneously a bit exciting, and profoundly calming.

I don't think I had any direct major life improvement from that realization
alone however. It took psychedelics to understand how to use that perspective
to snap out of anger or rise above anxious fears.

------
vmception
Is anyone researching these things as a receptor cleanse? Like each receptor
is like a clogged faucet blocking seratonin binding normally and the drugs
either bind in its place or cause the creation of so much neurochemicals that
they flush out the receptors and they functionally normally for some time.

------
thrownaway954
i really hope that if they are able to iron things out, that psychedelic drugs
can be safely prescribed as an alternative for people with depression. NA and
AA (Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous) both permit alternative
forms of and narcotic medicine as long as

1) they are the only available options or last ditch effort 2) prescribed by
doctor which knows your addiction history 3) you are regularly and closely
monitored (by doctor and support group)

even with those stipulations and checks in place, relapse is something to be
concerned with. i just had a close friend relapse after 18 years cause of pain
pills that were prescribed to him. in the programs defense though, he was
ignoring rule #3 where he was ignoring being regularly and closely monitored
by doctor and support group.

~~~
ta17711771
I know this isn't what you were saying, but, pain killers are absolutely
nothing like psychedelics, for the reason the other commenter said, and many
more.

~~~
moneytide1
Someone at work today was talking about their mother having an ulcer in her
liver due to excessive pain killer use.

I once slipped on a damp metal roof while installing rural internet. That flap
of skin between your index finger and thumb? Imagine cutting it with scissors.
No tendons were hit, but yes it hurt (instinct traded me a deep cut instead of
broken legs). That pain I heeded, but I was more concerned with the pain of
potential infection that I felt a few years before after breaking hand
blisters during springtime. Pollen entered and infected, waking me up in the
middle of the night a few days later with throbbing, swelling, extreme pain -
all I could think of was the prospect of amputation.

I value the productivity of my hands more than anything, therefore without
insurance I was not going to question throwing $200 towards treatment.

The work related cut needed stitches, with anesthesia (that I had a brief
reaction to - perhaps psychological since I was witnessing a needle go into my
hand without feeling anything). The price tag was similar. But I was
prescribed cephalexin for antibiotic... and hydrocodone for "pain". I did not
fill the pain killer prescription out of principle, because of course it will
hurt for a few days - a useful signal issued from the body to prompt me to pay
special attention to that area during regeneration.

I have been bothered ever since - these "doctors" issuing opioids like candy
for the smallest ailments (perhaps incentivized by quotas therefore personal
gain).

Pain is a useful signal, and if artificially suppressed - we are missing the
point and ignoring nature.

If you put your hand on a hot stove, and it hurts? Then yes, remove the hand
because it did not feel good. Do not suppress the pain artificially so you can
keep your hand on the hot stove.

------
loughnane
I know that there is merit to this.

Also it sometimes feels like we're living in a Brave New World prequel.

------
jimbob45
Aren’t psychedelics extremely likely to cause psychosis in users?

~~~
bduerst
Psychedelics can cause HPPD (temporary) and Visual Snow Syndrome (permanent)
in people, where they hallucinate while completely sober, sometimes
indefinitely for the rest of their lives.

As someone with Visual Snow Syndrome (not contracted from drugs) it is a
private living hell that risking it is not worth whatever trade off you get
from discovering yourself. This is going to rub some people the wrong way on
HN, but until we know more about these neurological conditions, I wouldn't
recommend doing these drugs outside of a clinical setting where there are very
clear benefits.

~~~
elric
Do you have a source about psychedelics being a cause of VS? I'm also curious
what makes you say that VS is a hallucination, when it seems much more like a
hyperawareness of visual noise.

~~~
bduerst
The short description is it's a hallucination, the long description is that
it's not a hallucination, but seeing more of what's there, all the time. Like
seeing the white blood cells in capillaries on the surface of your eye lens,
the wrinkles in the gel on the back of your eye, and triple imaging between
both feeds from both eyes overlaying a consolidated stereo view. IME
explaining visual snow syndrome (VSS) to a layman is a lot like trying to
explain color to a blind person, so I keep it short.

There isn't much known about the mechanism that causes VSS/HPPD, but the
current line in the sand that they draw for performing VSS studies is that
HPPD is temporary (<6 months) and VSS is permanent. HPPD is long known to be
caused by psychedelics, but the permanent HPPD is now being re-diagnosed as
VSS since they're the same symptoms and activity in PET scans.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of studies I can link to because they've
only just started researching it these past couple years, but the neuro
opthamologists and psychiatrist I work with have VSS patients who contracted
the syndrome after using LSD or acid, with one as far back as the 70's.

------
golf3
We can no longer ignore $my_sacred_cow

------
megamix
Religion

------
carapace
By all means decriminalize these drugs. It's a shame they were ever made
illegal in the first place.

But don't get confused about what's really going on.

"Set and Setting"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting)

"Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It
merely acts as a chemical key..." — Timothy Leary (who ought to know.)

These drugs are like whacking the brain upside the head chemically. For most
of us that's fun, but it's a crap shoot. "Bad trips" are a thing.

The possibilities for _precision_ therapeutic techniques are in the creation
of the _set and setting_ , through structured storytelling.

(Not to make it about me but I did some psychedelics back in the day and they
did not cure my depression but hypnotherapy did. YMMV.)

~~~
anythingnonidin
Yes, exactly. Psychedelics have been described as "nonspecific amplifiers".

A hypothesis I have is that therapists, and their patients, already know many
of the things that'll help make them happier - but the patient isn't doing
them, because they lack the motivation, or they lack the belief that they're
capable of making and sticking with those changes, so why bother trying.

Doing a psychedelic trip in that therapeutic context seems to make the patient
motivated to make the changes that they already logically knew would be
helpful, and the trip in this context makes them believe they're capable of
making and sticking with those changes - so, then they end up making those
changes.

------
rowawey
Definitely. I need something different because I have some sort of treatment-
resistant major depression that cannot be addressed with anything but
medication, regardless of life circumstances, mood, health, or exercise.
Although I'm not all that keen on psychedelics and disassociatives, I've tried
at least 13 antidepressants and only 1 of them has done anything. The only one
that's worked has been mirtazapine* with the caveats of partial GI paralysis
and major weight gain. I was on it for 9 years. I tried others as my cognitive
faculties and alertness have been declining over the past 2 years.

* Which is also a powerful antihistamine.

I'm beginning to wonder about the medical establishment's depth of
understanding and nuance on treatment of serious depression and inability to
address so-called treatment-resistant depression. For example, genetics,
inflammation, auto-immune issues, diet, GI flora, and other factors that don't
seem to be considered clinically. And then there's psychiatry, which is one of
the few "medical professions" that doesn't directly test or examine the organ
or systems they claim to treat. Psychiatry in particular seems unscientific,
arbitrary, and crude.

I don't think there's any panacea, even shrooms, ketamine, or LSD, but the
neuropharmacological field has a long way to go and depression is only going
to become more commonplace.

~~~
ajzinsbwbs
> Although I'm not all that keen on psychedelics and disassociatives, I've
> tried at least 13 antidepressants and only 1 of them has done anything. The
> only one that's worked has been mirtazapine* with the caveats of partial GI
> paralysis and major weight gain. I was on it for 9 years. I tried others as
> my cognitive faculties and alertness have been declining over the past 2
> years.

I’m also on mirtazapine and have been for a few years. It’s the first
antidepressant I tried and the doc choose it because I also have insomnia and
anxiety. It’s worked well for all three conditions so I’m happy with it. Are
you saying you thought it was causing cognitive decline and that’s why you
tried others? Wondering if it’s something I should look out for. I can
understand the concern because diphenhydramine has been associated with
dementia, and it’s an antihistamine like mirtazapine. However, I read that the
anticholinergic property of diphenhydramine was thought to be implicated here,
and mirtazapine is not anticholinergic.

I actually used diphenhydramine nightly as a sleep aid for a few years while I
was in college until a doctor told me to stop, long before I ever talked to a
psychiatrist. Oops. It’s probably not a coincidence I ended up on mirtazapine.

------
nnq
Maybe even healthy people even should be encouraged to try psychedelics or
some other potent mind altering technique at least once in their life. Maybe
make it as in initiation ceremony when they reach 18 or smth. Or maybe at
least for the people in leadership positions when they get there

The amount of closed-mindedness, at least amongst the high-IQ and well-
educated people in our society is _amazing._ It's _sad_ because most _truly
open-minded_ people in our society tend to be on the lower spectrum of
intelligence and accomplishment.

We need _something_ that can increase the _openness_ psychologic train in
intelligent and accomplished people, especially _the ones in leadership
positions, asap, if we want to fix our societies!_

EDIT+: Toned it down a bit, hope it's less flamebaiy. It's what I wanted to
day but hopefully less inflaming.

~~~
talentedcoin
Excuse me, but some of us do not want to be forced to take drugs.

~~~
nnq
You're "forced" to leave in an environment with a certain structure
(architecture, infrastructure) under a certain set of laws. Adding a non-
damaging, mind altering temporary experience that opens people to multiple
alternative thinking perspectives instead of the single one they are stuck in
would be a _minor_ addition to their already controlled and artificial
environment.

Take going to primary school: sure, a _minority_ of people are attracted on
their own to rational critical learning, and would've learned on their own.
But for most of us, being _forced_ to go to school helped us immensely in our
life evolution...

And going to school is a much more traumatic and permanently mind altering
experience than what I suggested...

~~~
TeaDrunk
_" Adding a non-damaging, mind altering temporary experience"_ do you have
evidence that psychedelic drugs are always non-damaging? With regards, someone
who has a psychotic spectrum illness.

------
uncle_iroh
OK cool. Michael Pollan and friends have me convinced, but where do I get
psychedelics? I'm not a cool kid, don't have cool friends, and live in the
midwest. I think my neighbors a few houses down sell drugs...

~~~
leetcrew
I kinda get the impression this isn't a serious comment, but this is an active
area of research. you're best bet might be to see if any trials are being
conducted near you and try to sign up. this way you're not doing anything
illegal, and they might even pay you.

~~~
uncle_iroh
Not meant to be sarcastic, just failingly self-deprecating. Thank you for the
direction

~~~
tayo42
Buy them online, if you found hacker news, I'm sure you're smart enough to
figure out how to do it safely

Edit:forgot to mention mushroom spores are legal in most states, fun enough
experiment to grow a personal dose

~~~
h2odragon
Growing mushrooms is a great variant of indoor gardening. Its worth the effort
to step up to pressure canning gear but it isn't _necessary_ for good results.
Even total failures are interestingly colorful and "gee what's that" chances
to meet new lifeforms.

------
tw000001
I don't think these drugs should be scheduled but here's a perspective that
you're less likely to find online: I would never put myself in a position to
be indoctrinated by the modern ideologically slanted American psychological
establishment while my guard is down, so to speak.

These kinds of drugs also make people extremely open to suggestion. It's one
reason why they are used in, say, cults. We are raised to believe in the
authority of institutions and the conditioning is so powerful that when most
people read any media that seems authoritative (news, books, Wikipedia, etc)
unless they are specifically suspicious of the source, there is rarely an
innate drive to question the content. This is especially true of how people
treat advice from doctors. Now combine that with alkaloids which directly
inhibit neural circuits related to suspicion and defense.

You may agree with the tenets of modern western society now, but it's clear
that they have a checkered history (e.g. lobotomy, forced sterilization) and
no doubt we will look back on some of today's practices with the same horror
(sterilization and genital mutilation for gender dysphoria, for example)...

Point being, anyone undergoing such a treatment should be aware that they are
effectively handing over their psyche to another human being who is inevitably
influenced in some way by the zeitgeist, and it's hubris to presume that
current ideas are correct simply because they are different from ideas past.
This is also a potential avenue for mass government indoctrination under the
guise of medical treatment. Imagine modern "humane" psychedelic reeducation
camps orchestrated by your friendly authoritarian uncle sam!

~~~
carapace
Americans take so many prescription drugs that they can be measured in our
sewage. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jan-30-me-
drugs...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jan-30-me-
drugs30-story.html)

~~~
tw000001
Yes, and most of them know next to nothing about the drugs they take beyond
what their doctors have told them. I've watched this blind faith harm people
dear to me on multiple occasions.

These are the same institutions that failed across the board in preparing for
COVID. Their recommendations should be scrutinized.

