4 ms·
It's very interesting that the most impactful and potentially revolutionary psychiatric drugs currently in trials are both illegal recreational drugs, MDMA and
by theptip 8y ago
It's very interesting that the most impactful and potentially revolutionary psychiatric drugs currently in trials are both illegal recreational drugs, MDMA and Ketamine.
I do wonder how many regular users of these drugs are (consciously or subconsciously) self-medicating, vs. purely using hedonistically. Although I can imagine the line is quite blurry.
Scott Alexander has talked about these drugs from a psychiatrist's perspective; his article on Ketamine gives a lot more technical speculation about its mode of action, plus links to academic papers, for anyone that's interested in digging more:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/08/ketamine-an-update/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/08/ketamine-an-update/
- BurningFrog 8y ago> It's very interesting that the most impactful and potentially revolutionary psychiatric drugs currently in trials are both illegal recreational drugs History will not be kind to the War on Drugs. Aside from the millions of lives it directly destroyed, it also set back several fields of science 50 years.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- pitaj 8y agoDon't forget about psilocybin.
- empath75 8y agoI was absolutely self medicating with mdma to deal with childhood trauma but it was also a hell of a lot of fun. Interestingly I brought up child abuse on an email list I was on with people I met in the rave scene many years ago and literally all of them had a history of it. I had no idea. We never really talked about it even when we were taking mdma and having deep conversations but almost everyone said the mdma helped them deal with it.
- lstodd 8y agoI wonder what would happen if they stumble upon Alexander Shulgin's research on phenetylamines and tryptamines. What other most impactful and potentially revolutionary revelations await us there ...