I don't understand the controversy. We know full well the natural world is full of substances with significant impact on our bodies. Many such substances can even on average be harmful, but when used correctly, they are beneficial. Opioids come to mind first and foremost. It's not controversial to give e.g. serious accident victims a shot of morphine.
Why are investigations into medicinal use of shrooms or marijuana controversial? Is it the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff?
I presume the main reason for the controversy is the prevailing dogma "Drugs are evil".
This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the
correctional system for years.
After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this".
Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach.
This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs:
The problem is that in many western cultures suffering is being regarded as a virtue and happiness as a great sin especially if achieved by using substances rather than through other actions.
You can glaringly see that where people with chronic pain are denied access to medicinal cannabis, for example here in the UK. You can only receive treatment through a private medical clinic which costs hundreds and sometimes thousands per month, so it is only reserved for the wealthy.
NHS says there is no evidence it works, so they will not refund any treatment and in the meantime thousands have to resort to asking gangs for supply. If it doesn't work then why people take it? Do they fake chronic pain to get high?
Some of it is basically racist propaganda that entered the public consciousness and became "true".
Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil.
Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)
I completely agree to you: a terminally ill person should be given whatever substance they want and even advised to take whatever a drug if it can make their last moments happier. Even if it's addictive or harms health - they don't need to maintain healthy living and society integration any more so why not?
I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.
I highly recommend The Emperor Wears No Clothes by the late Jack Herer for a comprehensive insight into the history and reasons for drug prohibition.
It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well.
An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon.
It's almost like asking "why are sex scandals controversial." You could come up with all sorts of arguments for or against the controversy in any specific case... but it kinda doesn't matter. When something is controversial, people argue for and against it by definition. Sex scandals have always been. Some of the oldest writing we have is basic law codes. Sex just seems to always attract controversy, even if taboos differ between cultures.
Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo.
So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold.
Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative.
If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped.
The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.
I think a lot of the controversy dates back to the anti-war and civil rights movements. Psychedelics were outlawed to tackle the first, opioids to address the latter. Now there were "legitimate" charges to ring them up for instead of civil disobedience.
Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.
To be honest it is more harmful than beneficial, these drugs can have a short term side effect of racing thoughts, distorted reality, increased heart rate, paranoia, etc, these effects are well known but people like riding rollercoasters. Long term harmful side effects include onset of schizophrenia, bipolar and psychosis, lung cancer, etc. More people are using drugs like shrooms and weed recreationally than medicinally and at an age where the brain isn’t fully developed. Considered yourself lucky not being exposed to anyone with problems caused by these substances.
Culture evolves slowly, often only changing dramatically across generations. Multiple generations in USA (which is a dominantly exported culture globally) have adopted the "drugs"-are-bad idea as a core belief (it's also worth noting that core beliefs tend not to be very nuanced or discerning, as in this case there's very little ability to discern between different types of "drug" substances).
Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing.
Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief.
Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.
There is multi-billion dollar industry to support. It's comprised of the Prison Industry, Police/Police Unions, Judicial System/Prosecutors/Administrators, etc.
As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?).
It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.
I suspect that one of the reasons is the experience with medical marijuana in some states, in particular California. There getting a marijuana prescription was so easy that dispensaries became a large distribution channel for recreational users.
This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.
Agreed. Especially when the current common palliative treatment is to load them up with opiates such that they are asleep, high, or massively in pain and also constipated in the rare lucid moments.
> "They’re afraid that there’s more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they’re afraid to go in, and they don’t want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control."
The cynic in me believes the controversy is manufactured (“war on drugs”) rather than based on logic and due only to the fact that corporations make money on prescriptions, but not on things you can grow or forage on your own.
I think it's a left over from the eighties, as a response to the hippie areas romantic view of such drugs. I also believe that is why, for example, LSD is so stigmatized.
Playing the devils advocate, and I think this is a pretty strong point against shrooms: while opioids cause harm, their harm is incredibly mechanical (it’s just addiction) and can be managed well.
Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
Anecdote: I have suffered from anxiety since I can remember. I had the opportunity to take psilocybe a few times (always took about quarter of a dose than my trip-mates, out of fear of a bad trip, and most of the times had just subtle perceptual distortions), and the following days/weeks always seemed unusually serene.
I recall one afternoon my friend and I picked and took some mushrooms (they grow in abundance at a certain time of year where I live), when I was perhaps 15 years old. We didn't take a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.
That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it wasn't like me, but I'd completely forgotten about it, and now had a single evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!
I sat down, and... it just flowed. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was good, really good! My mind felt amazing - like my consciousness had been expanded. I'd never felt such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.
By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I'd ever written, and about twice the target length.
A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of shocked - it was a masterpiece, dammit, and normally I pretty much got straight A's in English regardless! The teacher called me back after class - he told me what I submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at university level, or by a published author. He also asked who wrote it, because "it obviously wasn't you" - he didn't believe my insistence that I'd written it. He couldn't prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this ever again".
Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results with such drugs can be utterly incredible - also keep in mind the effect is not only while using the drug, but afterwards too. The first time I k-holed on ketamine (many years later), it felt like I somehow understood the universe itself, and my mind felt incredible for 2-3 weeks afterwards.
A cautionary tale though. Later as a 15/16 year old again, we took an insane amount of mushrooms one night after something terrible had happened. Hundreds of them. I kept finding myself in the corner of the same room, staring at a troll (an hallucination). It seemed like it had happened a hundred times, and was pretty frightening. It was like being trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I later spent several hours shivering uncontrollably on a bed. It was a long time ago, but I guess the whole thing lasted at least 12 hours. I've never touched mushrooms or any other hallucinogen since, and I doubt I ever will, even if as an adult I wouldn't be as irresponsible as I was as a kid.
And, of course, we have the excellent first-hand accounts of Alexander and Ann Shulgin in PiHKAL; which covers many psychedelic drugs and notes their effects at varying dosages. (It also covers synthesis.)
Electronic copies of the book used to be widely available online, but I can't vouch for any links that have turned up in a quick search a few minutes ago. Hard copies are still available, and are probably more complete and/or safer.
I'm going to say something against micro-dosing, but I'm not against it in any way. But for those trying to use this in a medicinal or therapeutic way, you'll want a full dose. Mushrooms would be 2-3 grams, LSD would be 200 mics, etc. THese are generic recommendations depending on variety or process method. Point is, you need a higher dose to be more thorough in making breakthroughs.
Magic spirit medicine of nature.. heals the heart. No surprise these patients lives are getting changed. Highly recommend those adventurous to try it, very rare that someone doesn’t have some trauma to heal from.
If anyone's looking for a good book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan made me think completely differently on them (the book isn't about changing your mind on psychedelics fyi)
For me it's summed up in one of the addict stories that I read somewhere, where the guy said the hallucinogenic "spirits" basically told him to get off hard drugs or they would kill him.
One of my past colleague smoked pot everyday and one night was franticly searching for his "dose" and he was getting extremely frustrated because he couldn't find it.
He told me that it got to a point where he got mad and literally blacked out! He found himself in a black void which he described as very disturbing and hellish because all he could feel was dread and the sound of screams.
He never touched any substances after that and was shook up when he told me that story.
To be plain, this sort of clear benefit and experience is what the DEA fights against. Because it is a federal law enforcement agency and not a medical entity, it's focus isn't on serving Americans but preserving the anointed order of the state.
While obvious, the ongoing harm done by ascribing medical responsibilities to an LEO doesn't capture the interest of elected officials. Unless the electorate forces their interest, that won't ever change.
Which psychedelics (shrooms, acid, peyote, salvia, ketamine, ayahuasca) would be best for endogenous, treatment-resistant depression? If there are any with a proven effect, do they have to be taken periodically?
Ketamine is not generally considered a psychedelic. It's a disassociative.
I don't think I've ever seen a study comparing this in the way you describe, but from piecing together other papers I recall seeing I would say probably psiloc(yb)in, possibly DMT ("ayahuasca"), with LSD and mescaline (peyote/san pedro) being qualitatively similar. All of these are primarily serotonergic.
I'd be surprised if Salvia does jack shit in that domain, regardless of how trippy the experience can be. It acts very differently.
(Speaking for tryptamines as I’m not to sure about the others). It might require periodic doses until you actually resolve your trauma, which more often than not takes a lot of uncomfortable digging. It’s typical to spend at least a couple of weeks at an ayahuasca retreat, drinking several times throughout the stay. In my experience, unless you’re somewhat lucky, won’t have that life changing experience on your first session.
[+] [-] rich_sasha|5 years ago|reply
Why are investigations into medicinal use of shrooms or marijuana controversial? Is it the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff?
[+] [-] fsloth|5 years ago|reply
This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the correctional system for years.
After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this".
Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach.
This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs:
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
[+] [-] varispeed|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colechristensen|5 years ago|reply
Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil.
Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)
[+] [-] qwerty456127|5 years ago|reply
I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.
[+] [-] soulofmischief|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well.
An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon.
https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/
[+] [-] netcan|5 years ago|reply
Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo.
So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold.
Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative.
If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped.
The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.
[+] [-] etripe|5 years ago|reply
Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.
[+] [-] ojr|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janoside|5 years ago|reply
Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing.
Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief.
Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.
[+] [-] hourislate|5 years ago|reply
As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?).
It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.
[+] [-] occamrazor|5 years ago|reply
This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.
[+] [-] tyingq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trilinearnz|5 years ago|reply
- Ken Kesey, 1966
[+] [-] voisin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] surfsvammel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heavenlyblue|5 years ago|reply
Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
[+] [-] xyzal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GordonS|5 years ago|reply
I recall one afternoon my friend and I picked and took some mushrooms (they grow in abundance at a certain time of year where I live), when I was perhaps 15 years old. We didn't take a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.
That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it wasn't like me, but I'd completely forgotten about it, and now had a single evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!
I sat down, and... it just flowed. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was good, really good! My mind felt amazing - like my consciousness had been expanded. I'd never felt such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.
By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I'd ever written, and about twice the target length.
A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of shocked - it was a masterpiece, dammit, and normally I pretty much got straight A's in English regardless! The teacher called me back after class - he told me what I submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at university level, or by a published author. He also asked who wrote it, because "it obviously wasn't you" - he didn't believe my insistence that I'd written it. He couldn't prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this ever again".
Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results with such drugs can be utterly incredible - also keep in mind the effect is not only while using the drug, but afterwards too. The first time I k-holed on ketamine (many years later), it felt like I somehow understood the universe itself, and my mind felt incredible for 2-3 weeks afterwards.
A cautionary tale though. Later as a 15/16 year old again, we took an insane amount of mushrooms one night after something terrible had happened. Hundreds of them. I kept finding myself in the corner of the same room, staring at a troll (an hallucination). It seemed like it had happened a hundred times, and was pretty frightening. It was like being trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I later spent several hours shivering uncontrollably on a bed. It was a long time ago, but I guess the whole thing lasted at least 12 hours. I've never touched mushrooms or any other hallucinogen since, and I doubt I ever will, even if as an adult I wouldn't be as irresponsible as I was as a kid.
[+] [-] VectorLock|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samizdis|5 years ago|reply
Widipedia article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL
Electronic copies of the book used to be widely available online, but I can't vouch for any links that have turned up in a quick search a few minutes ago. Hard copies are still available, and are probably more complete and/or safer.
[+] [-] peteretep|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vansul|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nabla9|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] say_it_as_it_is|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joeberon|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Broken_Hippo|5 years ago|reply
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251840-mindfulness-and....
[+] [-] tiborsaas|5 years ago|reply
https://quotes.dilanka.com/post/159729327755/a-man-moved-nea...
:)
[+] [-] pedro1976|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaynetics|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nosmokewhereiam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paufernandez|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwawayamzn1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehealthycoder|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barrenko|5 years ago|reply
He's been sober since.
[+] [-] remir|5 years ago|reply
He told me that it got to a point where he got mad and literally blacked out! He found himself in a black void which he described as very disturbing and hellish because all he could feel was dread and the sound of screams.
He never touched any substances after that and was shook up when he told me that story.
[+] [-] TheAdamAndChe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ficklepickle|5 years ago|reply
"Chet", if you are reading this, I hope you are well.
[+] [-] krrrh|5 years ago|reply
https://www.notion.so/quant/Johns-Hopkins-Playlist-for-Psilo...
It’s good, and there are a lot of other interesting trip playlists on Spotify too.
[+] [-] WarOnPrivacy|5 years ago|reply
While obvious, the ongoing harm done by ascribing medical responsibilities to an LEO doesn't capture the interest of elected officials. Unless the electorate forces their interest, that won't ever change.
[+] [-] prepend|5 years ago|reply
And it’s positioned kind of like the “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
[+] [-] chenpengcheng|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blkknightarms|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turrini|5 years ago|reply
I went from years of depression to zero depression in the first profound session. And I'm not a religious guy.
I highly recommend.
[+] [-] 3np|5 years ago|reply
I don't think I've ever seen a study comparing this in the way you describe, but from piecing together other papers I recall seeing I would say probably psiloc(yb)in, possibly DMT ("ayahuasca"), with LSD and mescaline (peyote/san pedro) being qualitatively similar. All of these are primarily serotonergic.
I'd be surprised if Salvia does jack shit in that domain, regardless of how trippy the experience can be. It acts very differently.
[+] [-] temp0826|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zer0tonin|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luftbb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antihero|5 years ago|reply