[HN Gopher] Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth ...
___________________________________________________________________
Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic
Science
Author : benbreen
Score : 84 points
Date : 2024-01-12 16:58 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| dang wrote:
| This is Ben's new book! One of Hacker News's resident historians.
| tbalsam wrote:
| Oh, is this a pinned post? First time I think I've ever seen a
| post with so few votes do this before! :D
| dang wrote:
| Not pinned, but it was a SCP pick (per
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
| tbalsam wrote:
| Ah, thanks, very coolio! Great to see this as a feature,
| haven't quite seen that mechanic well and I think it's a
| really great way of implementing it! :D :)
| benbreen wrote:
| Our toddler is now asleep so I am also here to do a brief AMA
| about the book and psychedelic science in the 20th century if
| anyone has questions. :)
| tbalsam wrote:
| While I'm not the biggest fan of companies trying to land grab
| the psychedelic craze, there are things that would be nice to
| have, like psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated
| strongly with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow
| too big) over time. Sure, we haven't necessarily seen a ton of
| direct linkage to IRL use, yet, AFAIPK, but still it's something
| that's been strongly shown, and most 5-HT2A psychedelics also
| activate 5-HT2B.
|
| Curious about selectivity against 5-HT3 as well as the nausea can
| be a problem.
|
| Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and
| that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream.
| Like, sure, maybe it's technically possible, but are you going to
| find a compound that selective (likely not) and is it actually
| going to remove all psychomometic effects (lol no, how do you
| think these things work)?
|
| There's always tradeoffs, it's like the weirdly detached desire
| to "reduce hallucinations" in language models but keep the same
| level of performance. Like, how do you think it's going to learn?
| You can't just magically make an unbiased perfect estimator with
| no variance for some limited capacity and data, your variance
| must live somewhere and in language models it tends to
| (generally) live in the higher level correlations between
| concepts.
|
| A good dose of basic mathematics and information theory really
| could set these fields straight.
|
| In any case, some of the future here looks exciting.
| engeljohnb wrote:
| > psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated strongly
| with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow too big)
|
| Do you have a source for that? I'm a cardiac sonographer and
| I've never heard of aortic hypertrophy.
| dkasper wrote:
| I hadn't heard of it either but it does seem like there are
| some studies. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3
| -030-55920-5_... Cardiac valvulopathy is likely not an
| adverse effect to consider when psychedelics are used
| occasionally but this may be different for "microdosing"
| which involves low doses of psychedelics taken daily or
| multiple times per week.
| gavinray wrote:
| > Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and
| that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream.
|
| This is actually an area of active research with promising
| developments, FWIW:
|
| https://psychedelichealth.co.uk/2023/06/13/non-hallucinogeni...
| binary132 wrote:
| It's hard for me to understand what is meant by "similar
| characteristics to psilocybin" without hallucinogenic
| effects. Is the idea that the hyperreality of the
| subconscious / inner life would dominate conscious
| perception, but without the confusing or distressing
| associated overload of the physical senses, e.g. seeing or
| hearing things that aren't there?
|
| It's almost impossible to imagine the one aspect of the
| dreamlike state dominating the mind without the disruption of
| the other, but even if the senses are perfectly unperturbed I
| would think the unconstrained and disordered psyche alone
| could be very upsetting or confusing.
| tbalsam wrote:
| Yes I think this is it right here. Like, at a micro dose
| (or slightly above) level it maybe makes sense, but the raw
| characteristics of how psychedelics work will still be
| there. Maybe there's some way, who knows, but I don't think
| we're likely to find out up front, somewhat similar to
| trying to turn lead into gold just because, as it were (at
| least as best as I understand. :,(((( )
| tbalsam wrote:
| Please read in context with the rest of the post! The idea is
| that it's very hard to raise the entropy of the brain without
| psychomometic effects as best as I understand, due to some
| fundamental informational qualities of those processes.
|
| It's like looking for a flu medicine and judging it by if
| makes a fever go down because a fever is an arbitrary human-
| measurable metric. Has some quality of life impacts but is
| second player to the actual health impacts of conditions
| including fever (especially ones with long term impacts) and
| is extremely superficial.
|
| I think that's the idea, maybe you can avoid visual cortex
| stuff but you can't magically get no psychomometic effects
| unless somehow the medication is perfectly shooting some kind
| of entropic gap.
|
| I'm sure it's possible but I feel like it's much better as an
| accidentally discovered thing or a second or third generation
| medication thing, not a first priority, if that makes sense.
| notamy wrote:
| > Curious about selectivity against 5-HT3 as well as the nausea
| can be a problem.
|
| That would be a nice feature aiui; some people I know got into
| the habit of always taking psychedelics with ondansetron to try
| to avoid the nausea.
| bbqq wrote:
| Ginger is often suggested as well, which is another 5ht3
| antagonist. I wonder if it's linked to susceptibility to
| motion sickness, which is known to be genetic, as neither
| psychedelics nor motion give me nausea at all.
| tbalsam wrote:
| Yes, though thankfully ondnanestron has a shockingly good
| safety profile for a serotonergic antiemetic. That said,
| reducing that external complexity would be nice.
|
| CBD actual has some mild antiemesis properties as well and
| can be as immediately effective as Zofran if inhaled. I
| once backpacked with a dab pen and CBD due to having
| constant nausea, the crystal CBD isolate was easier to
| source and refill (since it's hemp derived) and the dab pen
| meant that I got nausea relief in seconds.
|
| Unfortunately CBD in ultra high doses can contribute to
| serotonin syndrome IIUC due to 5-HT1A activation (which is
| how it exerts anti-emetic effects IIUC/IIRC). So that of
| course is always a big problem and I think can make
| polypharmacy with it a bit more difficult (though I am of
| course not a doctor and this is not medical advice).
|
| That said CBD does help w.r.t. some social inhibitions due
| to autism IIRC and when I was dabbing between 300 mg - 1 g
| a day I definitely noticed a very calm, warm, low-key
| "peace" about the world that I very much appreciated. That
| was very nice indeed.
|
| Also, ginger can be nice for oral nausea as IIRC, however
| it does not cross the gut barrier as well so it takes more
| (and sometimes the spiciness can be a problem). It also
| inhibits a bunch of CYP enzymes as well which is something
| to consider (I guess many things do, but I tend to use it
| more as an emergency backup of emergency backups when I
| don't have anything else available to me. Order generally
| is Zofran -> CBD (200-300 mg sublingual if not urgent) ->
| Pepto -> Slightly more Pepto+Ginger depending upon
| urgency/availability. Refilling prescriptions can be a
| problem due to the overwhelm of autism for me, so I try to
| dole/parse it out sparing, at least as I am able to. <3
| :'))))
|
| Happy to answer any questions, sorry this was an autistic
| infodump, really like this topic here.b<3 :'))))
| LoganDark wrote:
| Nausea can also be a result of not having a safe, regulated
| source of psychedelics. You always end up having to trust
| some dude (or gal), and not all of them produce product in
| the same way or to the same standard of quality. If I could
| buy LSD from the store, then I wouldn't have to worry about
| getting an upset stomach due to impurities.
| foobiekr wrote:
| You'd probably get one anyway due to that receptor
| activation.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| When I was younger, I heard lots of stories about how Margaret
| Mead was the best anthropologist. Then, later I started hearing
| about how some rivals were digging up how she just made up half
| of the stories because she wanted to believe something different.
| I wonder if there's been any more exploration of her research and
| whether she applied this wishful thinking to LSD too.
| losteric wrote:
| Did you ever wonder to validate the things you "started
| hearing"?
| cubefox wrote:
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-
| brain/...
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Yes, that's why I'm asking here. Maybe someone else has some
| insight.
| isoprophlex wrote:
| Having myself spent a period of my life thinking that all the
| world's problems would vanish if only we all took more LSD, MDMA
| and DMT... and since realizing that there really is no substitute
| for honesty, self-sacrifice and hard work... I'm reminded of
| Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing:
|
| _... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who
| never understood the essential mystic fallacy of the Acid
| Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least
| some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel._
| api wrote:
| Most people who try these things briefly entertain these ideas.
| They are really interesting and have the potential to trigger
| positive breakthroughs in a person's thinking. They also have
| high potential in therapy for things like PTSD and depression.
|
| But all you have to do is spend a little time around drug users
| or pay attention to the discourse in psychedelic friendly
| circles (Joe Rogan and Russell Brand anyone?) to see that drugs
| are not some kind of magic enlightenment in a pill. If they
| were there'd be more enlightened drug users.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| There is also the example of the Canadian psychologist,
| Elliot Barker, who tried to treat criminal psychopaths with
| LSD, only for researchers to later learn that it made them
| more psychopathic and re-offend at higher rates.
| lend000 wrote:
| Interesting, do you have a good source for this? Based on
| personal experience, it does seem somewhat intuitive that
| psychedelics would make you be more comfortable being
| "you", regardless of who you really are.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| It's covered to a fair extent in Jon Ronson's _The
| Psychopath Test_. I believe this is the retrospective
| study on rates of recidivism:
|
| https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352266
| LoganDark wrote:
| It's not necessarily that psychedelics make you more
| comfortable with yourself. Psychedelics can reinforce the
| psychopathic way of thinking. I'm not a psychopath (...as
| far as I can tell), but I can think similarly to one when
| sober. For me, LSD can intensify that way of thinking. It
| can intensify everything, to be fair, but the way you
| think while on it can be... I guess "conducive to
| psychopathy"? If a psychopath is missing
| emotion/conscience and is given LSD, then they can end up
| with far more ways to manipulate their own thoughts in a
| way that supports their psychopathy, if that makes any
| sense.
| k__ wrote:
| Maybe, it's like with programming.
|
| You can code a game, a database, an OS, a framework, a LLM
| etc. with one tool.
| gavinray wrote:
| I had a similar phase myself. Though I still genuinely believe
| that every person should have a psychedelic experience at least
| once in their lifetime, as well as a talk-session with close
| friends while on MDMA.
|
| These two things radically shifted my life perspective and
| resolved a lot of inner issues, both after just a single time.
|
| Particularly the psychedelic experience is great for sparking
| realizations that things like hate, xenophobia, racism, etc.
| are all so absurd and non-productive.
| basil-rash wrote:
| Were you racist, xenophobic, and hateful before? If not, your
| realizations about their productivity aren't particularly
| relevant.
| fasterik wrote:
| I don't think that's true. Even if someone doesn't
| explicitly hold those views, one can still be complacent,
| ignorant, or subtly enabling of them. Seeing things from a
| different perspective can provide insight into how relevant
| certain ideas are to the larger picture of humanity.
| basil-rash wrote:
| You're saying the mindset one would have going into it is
| one of "I'm not personally hateful, xenophobic, or
| racist, but I can see how those are all logical and
| productive things to be"?
|
| I don't believe that mindset exists.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I think that's exactly the mindset of most people because
| they don't think they're being racist, xenophobic, etc.
|
| If someone were to grow up in an economy built on coal
| mining with 13 year old miners, and you're really
| effective at organizing 13 year old coal miners, then
| you're gonna be very productive.
|
| Even though everything that you're doing is existentially
| bad for everybody, they are all ignorant of it's harms.
| So even if temporally coal mining with miners might be
| the only thing that anyone is aware of to do that is
| "productive."
|
| You can make no "mistakes" and still lose just from
| ignorance
| basil-rash wrote:
| Your anecdote does nothing to address the root complaint;
| which is that if one is to make extraordinary claims (LSD
| is "great for" dismantling hated, etc.), they should have
| some actual extraordinary experience to support it.
| Something like a personal experience. Otherwise it's just
| more "LSD is so good, it solved problems I didn't even
| have" nonsense.
| fasterik wrote:
| No, that's not what I said at all. I think someone could
| _believe_ that they 're not personally hateful,
| xenophobic, or racist while still being unconsciously
| complacent, ignorant, or subtly enabling of those
| attitudes in themselves and others. I can see how a
| psychedelic trip could show someone a different
| perspective, causing them to change their beliefs and
| behavior in significant ways.
| basil-rash wrote:
| That may be true, but if someone is to make a claim that
| it is " _great_ for showing hatred...", I think more
| proof should be offered than some other person saying "I
| could see how...".
| fasterik wrote:
| I don't think I understand your argument. Your claim was
| that if someone wasn't already racist and xenophobic,
| then their epiphanies about that subject on psychedelics
| is irrelevant. However, a very common experience people
| have on psychedelics is the feeling that everything,
| including the entirety of humanity, is part of the same
| thing, and that anything other than love for all of it
| comes from an artificially limited perspective. I think
| that's extremely relevant to having a different
| perspective on racism and xenophobia and their absurdity,
| even if the person wasn't racist and xenophobic going in.
| basil-rash wrote:
| If someone who wasn't racist says they took LSD and found
| themselves one with all races, and ended up continuing to
| not be racist, that doesn't tell me in any way that LSD
| is "great" for dismantling racism.
|
| All I'm saying is that if someone is to make
| extraordinary claims "this drug _is great_ against
| racism", they should be able to back it up with more than
| "well I wasn't racist before, and I'm still not, and
| besides we're all one so why would someone else be?"
| fasterik wrote:
| You should go back and re-read gavinray's post. I don't
| think they were making a claim anywhere near as strong as
| the claim that LSD is great for dismantling racism.
| basil-rash wrote:
| > Particularly the psychedelic experience is great for
| sparking realizations that things like hate, xenophobia,
| racism, etc. are all so absurd and non-productive.
|
| I'm well aware of the claim. I'm the one who protested it
| to begin with. And I still have found no evidence that
| the parent hadn't realized any of those beforehand.
| fasterik wrote:
| I don't think that's a charitable interpretation of what
| they said, and not how I interpreted it, but ok. It seems
| like I'm not going to convince you otherwise.
| basil-rash wrote:
| I just want evidence for the claim, but nobody wants to
| provide it, or even consider that requesting evidence is
| a valid response.
|
| This is the exact kind of behavior that gets the psychs-
| solve-everything crowd dismissed.
| fasterik wrote:
| If you Ctrl+F for my other responses in the thread,
| you'll see that I'm not advocating for psychs-solve-
| everything. I think a reasonable interpretation is that
| gavinray was giving their personal experience, not making
| a sweeping scientific claim. It would be like if I read a
| book that gave me a perspective on racism I had never
| thought of before, and I said "this book is great at
| showing you how racism is absurd!" It's not the kind of
| claim you would jump on and ask for a scientific study.
| In general, it's a good idea to take the most charitable
| version of what someone says, because people aren't
| always perfectly precise in their language.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| I've personally seen someone go from racist, xenophobic and
| hateful to not in the space of a single trip.
| nerbert wrote:
| Wow, I'd love to witness something like that one day. My
| circle doesn't include a lot of these people, and maybe
| that in itself is part of the more general problem.
| basil-rash wrote:
| And if they wanted to talk about it, I'd listen. Where I
| protest is when people make grandiose claims like "this
| solved so many problems for me, it even solved problems
| that I didn't have!", which only serve to perpetuate the
| modern hippie-dippie stereotype.
| fullshark wrote:
| How would you even see that? Can you describe in more
| detail?
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| We were both tripping. Fairly recent acquaintances, I had
| no idea about his views, until it came up during
| conversation. We ended up talking about it for several
| hours. I stayed non-judgemental and just kept probing
| with questions about why he feels this way. Eventually he
| realised he was really just angry about the failures in
| his own life and the local community he was from. He'd
| picked up a bad media diet(neocon youtube...) and found
| some kind of relief I suppose in directing his anger at
| others. There was a lot of crying. He even thanked me the
| next day.
|
| I think that's about as detailed as I can get without
| revealing private information.
|
| It was a remarkable experience and fundamentally changed
| the way I think about the human mind, extreme political
| views, political dialogue, and most of all how therapy
| should work.
| gavinray wrote:
| I wasn't racist or xenophobic, but I had a lot of spite and
| a fairly negative world-view due to experiences I had
| growing up.
|
| I had a chip on my shoulder, so to speak.
| crimbles wrote:
| YMMV. I took LSD. It didn't do a whole lot other than make me
| think I could play the piano when I definitely can't. The
| only life changing thing was I was down some cash which I
| could have spent on something else. A friend at the time took
| it and killed themselves a month later.
|
| Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and
| anecdotes around it when we need science. But it's difficult
| to be anything but subjective about it if you have
| experienced it. I suspect any critical thinking becomes
| biased and that relationship requires some analysis as well.
|
| Boring take I know but to pose a question: at the level of
| society if it is normalised, does taking psychedelics have a
| general positive or a general negative outcome?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| >A friend at the time took it [LSD] and killed themselves a
| month later.
|
| Do you think the two events could be otherwise related?
|
| As you then say "Point is there are no absolutes and a lot
| of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need
| science."
|
| >...does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a
| general negative outcome?
|
| It's a great question, but banning it, so the quality of
| the chemical supplied then may be suspect, and the dosages
| may be wildly different - and seeing what happens over 60+
| years was an incorrect move.
| crimbles wrote:
| Yes they are 100% related. The side effect was triggering
| underlying schizophrenia. Which is why we need controlled
| research.
| temp0826 wrote:
| >> does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a
| general negative outcome?
|
| If everyone took them in a context conducive to
| healing/therapy it would be positive. Unfortunately that's
| rarely the case (though it's becoming more common).
| crimbles wrote:
| Well that's not how you need to test it really and is not
| an objective measure. That's a badly posed question. It
| should be compared to other forms of therapy. And the
| criteria for entering therapy needs to be understood.
| LoganDark wrote:
| > YMMV. I took LSD. It didn't do a whole lot other than
| make me think I could play the piano when I definitely
| can't.
|
| For me, despite regularly taking high doses of psychedelics
| (so far LSD and psilocybin), none of them have been huge
| life-shattering trips. They're just recreational
| experiences.
|
| Maybe I'm just neurodivergent in a very specific way that
| isn't easily impacted by psychedelics. They're still my
| favorite substances and I still enjoy them, but it hasn't
| made that big of an impact on my life, other than being
| something to spend my money on, like you say.
|
| Or maybe people with self-proclaimed life-shattering
| experiences are just extrapolating more out of their trip
| than what actually happened.
|
| I'm sure plenty of people have legitimately improved their
| lives this way, but I don't believe the hype.
| briHass wrote:
| MDMA in particular has such obvious usefulness for
| relationship/marriage counseling therapy.
|
| After many years of experimenting with pretty much every
| conventional and 'research' drug, MDMA is the only one that
| stands out to me personally as having a lasting impact on how
| I view the world.
| verisimi wrote:
| Lol. Sorry.
|
| Surely if you have to take MDMA to stay in the marriage or
| relationship, that tells you that this relationship is one
| to end?
| Teever wrote:
| That's a needlessly pessimistic way of looking at this.
|
| Some marriages last decades, and over decades of life
| severe strains in interpersonal relationships let alone
| ones as intense as marriage can arise.
|
| MDMA has been proven helpful in breaking down barriers of
| communication and allowing people to talk about difficult
| things, and allows people to develop stronger empathy for
| the people in their lives.
|
| If it can help people who want to stay together actually
| stay together I think that's a great thing and is
| something that we should promote in the context of
| couples counselling.
| verisimi wrote:
| Perhaps yours is a needlessly optimistic way to look at
| things. Lasting for decades might not be a good thing.
|
| I know this is an unpopular opinion, and it is absolutely
| fine by me for others to do exactly as they see fit, but
| I really do think that if you have to change yourself,
| via the use of drugs, this can only be a wrong answer.
| Perhaps it is acceptable in an emergency as a short term
| solution.
|
| The reason I say this, is that if you really have made
| structural errors with your life, or have simply changed,
| it is fine to admit the failure and move on. There's no
| point in accommodating yourself to a relationship that is
| broken, via the use of drugs. You are simply prolonging
| the pain you inflict on yourself and on the other person
| in the relationship. Relationships can end, and that's
| ok. Better for everyone probably, in the long run.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The takes are neither pessimistic nor optimistic, but
| _simplistic_ IMHO. MDMA is researched for instance to
| treat war veterans with PTSD. If that works and now your
| marriage works too, what's wrong with that?
|
| (I too, strongly believe there are times for cutting your
| losses instead of molding yourself into someone else's
| preferred shape. But not all relational problems are like
| that!)
| verisimi wrote:
| No doubt there are exceptional cases for taking a drug.
| But promotion of mdma as a solution to relationship
| problems seems unhinged. That's what I object to.
| Downvote away!
| fragmede wrote:
| Right. Is it the case that two broken people are just
| numbing themselves and staying in a broken relationship
| with the help of drugs, or is it the case that MDMA is
| able to heal people and their relationships, so the
| people and relationships are _healed_ from past traumas
| and they 're not staying in something that doesn't serve
| them anymore. If you have to be high to stay together
| because you hate each other, that's unhealthy and the
| drugs aren't helping. If the drugs let you see past the
| bullshit and that you really do love each other, I say
| take those drugs.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I had the same experience, minus MDMA (never had the chance)
| and the racism stuff. Completely changed my mental shape at
| age 47 when I tried mushrooms for the first time (also my
| first psychedelic). Not a do-frequently thing but genuinely
| mind opening.
|
| The people using microdosing to be more effective at work,
| well... good grief.
| jseliger wrote:
| I don't think psychedelics are a panacea but they'll likely
| help the world move in a positive direction:
| https://jakeseliger.com/2023/09/25/strange-trip-
| psychedelics....
|
| MDMA may also be the only, or among the few, things that really
| work in and for couples therapy (it's also not a panacea).
| Banning it is a travesty.
|
| There's an interesting alternative world chronicled in part by
| Michael Pollan in _How to Change Your Mind_ , and by others, in
| which psychedelics are integrated into therapy, psychiatry, and
| other forms of medicine and improvement.
| cubefox wrote:
| Unlike LSD or psilocybin, MDMA causes addiction, so there is
| some ground for a ban.
| LoganDark wrote:
| The effects of LSD and psilocybin can still sometimes
| result in some degree of psychological addiction, just not
| physical dependence.
|
| MDMA can cause permanent tolerance and brain damage, and
| even though there has been plenty of research and testing
| by harm-reduction communities (like Bluelight), it's still
| not fully understood how this works or how to guarantee the
| substance's safety. This is probably why it should stay
| banned, at least for now.
|
| LSD and psilocybin are much safer, in my opinion. I would
| probably say LSD is the safest, since high doses of
| psilocybin can render me unconscious, but that could just
| be me.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Set and setting are critical factors in the outcome of any use
| of psychedelics, particularly for naive users unfamiliar with
| the effects. Practically speaking, this means LSD could
| plausibly be used in both cult brainwashing and cult
| deprogramming activities. That's why the CIA thought it could
| be used as a mind control / interrogation tool in the early
| 1950s (e.g. MKULTRA), while others adopted it as a liberating
| creative tool for artists (indeed, I once met a classically
| trained flutist who reported that they found it impossible to
| improvise over a jazz chord progression until they tried LSD).
|
| Personally I think a great many of the problem outcomes with
| psychedelics is related to consumerism and the desire for quick
| fixes. A society blanketed with pharmaceutical advertising and
| indoctrinated with the notion that pills fix health problems
| will tend to generate individuals who think taking some drug
| will 'fix' them. A typical outcome for such people is that they
| try some psychedelic, have a great time, and then run back to
| the well for another taste, and then have a horrible grim
| experience, reliving some past personal trauma or consumed with
| morbid thoughts of death and darkness, etc. - the so-called
| 'bad trip'. Let alone people who take so much they completely
| dissociate with sensory reality, a very dangerous situation as
| they may fall off cliffs, walk into traffic, etc.
|
| More often than not, people indoctrinated into consumerist drug
| use will instead turn to alcohol, opiates, cocaine,
| amphetamines, benzos, etc. - all drugs with fairly predictable
| feel-good effects, a variety of negative health effects, and
| high addiction potential - but not much risk of a 'bad trip'.
| In contrast, psychedelics have potential for combatting
| addiction to such drugs because they lead to introspection,
| self-reflection, and the realization that the short-term feel-
| good effects of addictive drugs are not worth the long-term
| consequences - the degradation of ones' mental and physical
| capabilities, degraded social relationships, loss of emotional
| control and so on.
| johndhi wrote:
| I could be just in a bitter mood, but somehow all of these
| articles decrying what a terrible job we did by shutting down
| psychedelic research in favor of a war on drugs... Don't make me
| feel optimistic that we've moved on or improved as a species.
|
| Like, this attitude of "oh NOW we see, we were just dumb 40 years
| ago! Everything will be better because NOW we get it" strikes me
| as exactly the same attitude that caused this problem in the
| first place.
|
| The regulators etc thought they knew better and "fixed" the
| errors of the past by starting the war on drugs.
|
| I guess to me, like, just focus on science and principles like
| free speech and the funding of interesting hypotheses. I feel
| like we're just demonizing a new group here and not learning the
| lesson of: "stop demonizing."
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Sure, it can feel that way if you believe that the war on drugs
| was started to keep people safe. However, if it was started as
| a means to persecute "undesireables" or political opponents the
| current trend seems less questionable.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I mean this sincerely: I think you're right about this coming
| from your mood. You haven't engaged with the actual argument
| much. It's pretty reasonable to say things people did in the
| past were wrong. You can do things from first principles, but
| that also gets real abstract. Eventually, people need to be for
| or against specific policies.
| fasterik wrote:
| I think we actually did learn things that we didn't know the
| first time around. We know that it's dangerous when influential
| researchers go around promoting psychedelics as a panacea like
| Timothy Leary did. The current wave of researchers seem to be
| much more responsible in emphasizing an evidence-based
| approach, the importance of screening for risk factors, and
| limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled therapeutic
| setting.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| > and limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled
| therapeutic setting.
|
| Your other points I understand. This particular one I find
| controversial as one of the unkowns is what is an ideal
| setting? I've got friends that will drop a tab, and go for a
| beer - just as impossible for me as sitting in a 'controlled
| environment' [therapeutic setting] with a shrink, or a Man-
| retreat for ex-military types. I'd like to just have easy
| access to a known quality, and strength of chemical, that I
| can happily take, wheresoever _I_ prefer.
| fasterik wrote:
| There are well known risks of psychosis and schizophrenia
| associated with psychedelics. Just because your friend can
| drop a tab and go to the bar doesn't mean that it's a good
| idea for everyone to be doing so.
|
| I'm fairly libertarian on drugs, but I do think there is a
| big difference when it comes to psychedelics. The potential
| harms aren't only to the person doing it, but for people
| around them who might be victims of their psychotic break.
| It's safest if there is someone around to administer a
| benzodiazepine or antipsychotic if necessary.
| johndhi wrote:
| >The potential harms aren't only to the person doing it,
| but for people around them who might be victims of their
| psychotic break
|
| Fyi research apparently shows that mentally unwell people
| are more likely to be physically harmful to others as
| compared with the average. Sounded weird to me but
| apparently there's some data.
| pizza wrote:
| Knew that name sounded familiar.. Margaret Mead was one of the
| 'core group' members of the Macy Conference(s) in Cybernetics
| [0], whose other members included such people as John von
| Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Walter Pitts, Warren McCulloch..
|
| [0] https://asc-
| cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeople.h...
| samstave wrote:
| Also a wonderful anaecdote, WRT LSD and Tech - when Hoffman's
| 100th birthday happened they had an interview with one of the
| founders/first employees of Cisco, and he stated they were
| against drug testing, because they discovered the logic for BGP
| and RIP routing protocols in epiphanies due to LSD.
|
| Also, there is this letter from Hoffman to Jobs:
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/entry/read-the-never-before-pub_b_2...
| 50 wrote:
| UCSC should also have a psychedelics studies program (is there
| any better place?), particularly on account of their already
| unique (and wonderful) History of Consciousness program.
|
| I remember an old and dear chemist friend of mine there who made
| me aware of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
| Studies (MAPS). I still have his copy of _Sweetness and Power:
| The Place of Sugar in Modern History_ he lent me after taking a
| sociology course on drugs in society, if I recall correctly.
| mitchbob wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240114171707/https://www.latim...
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