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I frequent other message boards in which people share their stories about using drugs. One story I read a while ago was from a "newbie" (novice?) sharing his ex

I frequent other message boards in which people share their stories about using drugs. One story I read a while ago was from a "newbie" (novice?) sharing his experience taking LSD. First he got some nice hallucinations but then he took a knife from his kitchen and started carving up his arm. Which, of course, meant he lost lots of blood and had to go to the hospital. Anyways, the point, for me, wasn't the story itself but how the more experienced drug users reacted. They didn't write "You're lying! LSD is a mellow drug and won't cause you to harm yourself." Nope, nothing of the sort, instead their opinion was that the novice made a "classic rookie mistake" by leaving dangerous items around. One user wrote that before he tripped he always hid all dangerous items as a precaution. What I also read on that message board was that you shouldn't experiment with psychedelia unless you have a stable psyche. Would a pill with the label "Not to be taken by people with an unstable psyche" or "Possible side effects: Knife carving of muscle tissue by user" pass any regulatory body? I think if such substance came from big pharma most people would be very skeptical.

JamesBarney 7y ago
If this did become used in a medical setting it would only be allowed to be prescribed by a small number of licensed physicians, and only in a specific type of healthcare session. These types of risks are far less if you imagine taking them in a hospital room with a babysitter, similar to how ecstacy is currently prescribed.
mschuster91 7y ago
People pull incredibly dumb stuff on alcohol all the time. No one cares, no warning labels "don't do alcohol when you're prone to being an aggressive douchebag" on alcohol, nothing. Basic drug education in schools would prevent many of these issues. Stuff like "what are the effects/risks of various popular drugs", "always have someone sober as a tripsitter", "call an ambulance when someone overdoses, there are Good Samaritan laws"... but no, schools worldwide rather teach/preach abstinence and kids end up fucked, because from where should they know if their parents are not 60s hippie kids?
- rosser 7y ago
  Seriously. This is the "anti-drug" argument I just don't get how people fall for. An acquaintance-of-a-friend dropped and then stabbed his roommate 57 times. Of course these stories can readily be found, but they just pale next to the shit drunk people do, and which we just dismiss.
  - mschuster91 7y ago
    Drunk people decide it's a good idea to get in their car, drive way over the speed limit and kill people all the fucking time and no one bats an eye. They happen simply so often that we have gone to view this as natural part of everyday life. A ten-liner in the local newspaper. Murders like you described, however, are rare (and tend to be more brutal, which in today's outrage economy means more eyeballs and more ad revenue) so they're often on national or international news. What's also a part of the difference in media attention: when I drive drunk, veer off course and run over someone, it can and will be excused as "driver lost control due to high speed and alcohol" (=frame-able as if it were an accident), but when I stab someone while high on meth, one cannot frame it as "accident". Stabbing someone is intentional, no matter if on drugs or not, and that makes for a massive difference in perception.
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
> Would a pill with the label "Not to be taken by people with an unstable psyche" or "Possible side effects: Knife carving of muscle tissue by user" pass any regulatory body? And yet alcohol kills and maims millions per year. The tool is not dangerous, it is the person who (mis)uses it.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Millions? Citations needed. Assuming this is right in some sense, alcohol has been integrated into functioning civilizations for thousands of years and still causes this kind of damage, where insane garbage like LSD hasn't, and no civilization worth talking about has managed to integrate a psychedelic drug with it and maintain a high level of civilization. And yes, I've tried it, and I've seen what it does to people: nothing positive. Sure makes people think they're clever though.
  - KptMarchewa 7y ago
    https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msb_gsr_2014_1.pdf https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alco... Page 14.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Great; some NGO, based on (citations needed) claims millions of premature deaths a year from alcohol, a substance which has been used by humans for at least 30,000 years. I look forward to their detailed report on what the projections are for widespread psychedelic use. Of course there won't be any. Because psychedelic use is at least at present a useful form of social control. I know a few people who killed themselves drinking and driving, and have a cousin who drank themselves to death. I know dozens, perhaps hundreds of people who have destroyed themselves psychologically using psychedelics. Dead people are tragic. Zombies are worse.
      - sergioj97 7y ago
        > "Because psychedelic is at least at present a useful form of social control" Why significantly more so than alcohol?
fragmede 7y ago
Prohibition is at least part of the problem. Since LSD isn't something anyone with a prescription can wander down to CVS/Walgreens and pick up a known quantity, how much LSD is in a given dose is a mystery until after empirical testing. Imagine if a can of alcohol had an unknown effect until an hour or two after drinking it, with effects ranging from a mild buzz, to being black-out drunk, to alcohol poisoning resulting in hospitalization or death. Every regulatory body would be similarly hesitant to allow it as the situation mentioned here.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  And not just that; street LSD is also not unusually mixed with various other compounds
- grumdan 7y ago
  I agree that prohibition does cause a lot of issues. This makes even less sense since one difference is that there is no equivalent to "alcohol poisoning" with LSD. A dose at which LSD is physically toxic is so high (200 times a recreational dose) that it's incredibly unlikely to take by accident. As far as I know, there are no known overdose deaths due to LSD. (However, there are analogues to LSD that are toxic: 25I-NBOMe and 25C-NBOMe).
  - droffel 7y ago
    The 25x-NBOMe class of chemicals are not analogues of LSD.
    - grumdan 7y ago
      I guess I shouldn't use terms that could also have a precise chemical meaning. My understanding is that they cause similar effects to LSD, but analogue is probably not the right word for it.
maxander 7y ago
All sorts of medical drugs have contraindications- that’s why we have doctors prescribe them in the first place. E.g., you have severe sleep apnea, you shouldn’t use benzodiazepines; if you have bad anxiety you shouldn’t take address; etc etc. LSD will take a bit more diligence (it’s powerful!) but is not qualitatively different in that respect.
stevula 7y ago
I would imagine the hypothetical clinical dose would be lower than the common recreational dose.
golergka 7y ago
I don't think that I have a stable psyche, and I have experimented with psychedelics a lot of times in my life, but I can't imagine doing something like that on LSD or shrooms. What have most likely had happened is that he was sold some other psychedelic, like NBOMe, or 2CB (which are often more easily available than LSD-25).
rolltiide 7y ago
So therefore we should imprison everyone that happens to have it on them, use that to bar them from employment for the rest of their lives, remove several of their constitutional rights including voting and discredit everything they say Okay, chief I would prefer responsible use, predictable ingredients, supply chain transparency
ryacko 7y ago
The US government did spend millions of dollars in psychedelic research before the 70s, I would hope they’ve developed protocols for safe usage at some point. Research from that time certainly could serve as groundwork for valid health treatments if done in an ethical and transparent manner.
drawkbox 7y ago
The anecdote you describe happened under the illegal black market, where production is unconfirmed and harm reduction is not available as easy. With decriminalization or even a legal market, that person maybe wouldn't have done it like that. With the black market, and criminality as it is, they probably didn't get the safety information they needed for harm reduction. One thing is for sure, prohibition creates dangerous production pipelines and enriches cartels/mafias the level of nation states and that makes danger for everyone around. The warnings on alcohol would be similar to other illegal drugs, alcohol is more toxic and dangerous than most of them. Cannabis, LSD and psilocybin (mushrooms) have the lowest toxicity of any drugs including aspirin, caffeine, nicotine and more. The information about safety and harm reduction would be clearer with a decriminalized or legal market and production would be much better with the latter, ultimately safer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bjourne 7y ago
  > With decriminalization or even a legal market, that person maybe wouldn't have done it like that. With the black market, and criminality as it is, they probably didn't get the safety information they needed for harm reduction. How do you figure that? The mind-altering effects of psychedelia aren't affected by the legality of the substances. > The warnings on alcohol would be similar to other illegal drugs, alcohol is more toxic and dangerous than most of them. That may be true but it is also irrelevant in a discussion on how dangerous psychedelia is (it's a form of what-about-ism). Plus, the analogue would be leaving kitchen knives around when drinking alcohol. I have truly never heard anyone call that a "rookie mistake". To me it seems that users are well aware of the risks involved and when they discuss among themselves they are open about it. But when they are on message boards with "opponents" (like on HN), the tone of the discussion completely changes and risks are being downplayed.
TomMarius 7y ago
Would a machine that would sometimes (in its infancy) kill you simply by itself be legal? Apparently cars got legal. Why not psychedelics?
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  Because you're in control of a car as the driver; I'm not sure why you (and others) are drawing out analogies like this. Whataboutism.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    Back then cars used to explode uncontrollably.
  - sergioj97 7y ago
    Even though I don't think the car analogy is a good one, I understand that just the fact that something can harm you doesn't make it inherently bad or unethical to use. You have enough control of your car to not kill yourself (or anybody else) as long as you drive responsibly, and take precautions. And the vast majority of people need to be teached not just about the technical aspects of driving but also about more common sense issues like why they should use their seatbelt or avoid driving under the effects of drugs, fatigue, etc. Some people (I guess I include myself here) think that LSD and other drugs can be used responsibly, too. Even though they don't have the obvious practical benefits of a car, the dangers related to their use can be significantly reduced if you take precautions and have an educated perspective. And just as with the car thing, nobody is born knowing how to safely use LSD. You need information, but that information is not readily available to most people at the moment. The internet or anectodical data are not good sources of information for this. So I guess that it may be a poor analogy, but the idea is that you can reduce the risk of using LSD to acceptable levels just as you can with a car.
newsgremlin 7y ago
Drugs have different effects on different people. This is why mental health is important. We all need to take it seriously rather than entertaining the idea as we have in recent years as something secondary to physical health. A record of mental health for each individual will allow doctors to make informed decisions when prescribing a drug or not. That's why psychedelics must be regulated and the dosage controlled to observe the effects on the individual. Anecdotes of illegal use/misuse are not useful in determining the common effects of said drug and the general benefits/side-effects.
GordonS 7y ago
I'd say a better precaution is to always trip with a trip-sitter - someone sober who can help and guide you if things start to get a bit dark/scary.
lunias 7y ago
I think you've highlighted the one of the primary reasons that prohibition is harmful. If these substances were treated like medicine, studied, and understood then we would all be much safer. Perhaps there is an actual scientific means of determining if someone has an "unstable psyche" before prescribing them the psychedelic (currently hard to discern because of restrictions on research of controlled substances). I'd imagine that if your doctor was thinking about this as a potential treatment for you then they'd want you to experience it there at the office, in the care of trained professionals, to gauge your reaction before sending you off into the unknown. Also, there are people who would die if they ate a PB&J. The difference is that, with regard to peanut allergies, we have data on how to test patients and how to protect them from exposure. With psychedelics it's either D.A.R.E or some guy on the internet - and the information provided by those sources is so contradictory that you're left rolling the dice. I'd predict that psychedelics are very safe for almost everyone without a severe pre-existing mental condition (this is my experience as a guy on the internet).
4ntonius8lock 7y ago
Really? Psychotic reactions aren't uncommon. Not to mention insanely complex, unpleasant side effects. Many anti depressants have a suicide idealization side effect. Ambien has people sleep driving/walking (very dangerous). And alcohol... do we really need to give any explanation there? It isn't a matter of intensity of issue (given that suicide is generally worse than cutting), and it isn't frequency (since we have many more side effects from legal drugs). The issue is the media, and the way your mind selects news stories to create the reality you perceive. Looking at stats and numbers is a great way to overcome this bias.

JamesBarney 7y ago

If this did become used in a medical setting it would only be allowed to be prescribed by a small number of licensed physicians, and only in a specific type of healthcare session. These types of risks are far less if you imagine taking them in a hospital room with a babysitter, similar to how ecstacy is currently prescribed.

mschuster91 7y ago

People pull incredibly dumb stuff on alcohol all the time. No one cares, no warning labels "don't do alcohol when you're prone to being an aggressive douchebag" on alcohol, nothing. Basic drug education in schools would prevent many of these issues. Stuff like "what are the effects/risks of various popular drugs", "always have someone sober as a tripsitter", "call an ambulance when someone overdoses, there are Good Samaritan laws"... but no, schools worldwide rather teach/preach abstinence and kids end up fucked, because from where should they know if their parents are not 60s hippie kids?

rosser 7y ago
Seriously. This is the "anti-drug" argument I just don't get how people fall for. An acquaintance-of-a-friend dropped and then stabbed his roommate 57 times. Of course these stories can readily be found, but they just pale next to the shit drunk people do, and which we just dismiss.
- mschuster91 7y ago
  Drunk people decide it's a good idea to get in their car, drive way over the speed limit and kill people all the fucking time and no one bats an eye. They happen simply so often that we have gone to view this as natural part of everyday life. A ten-liner in the local newspaper. Murders like you described, however, are rare (and tend to be more brutal, which in today's outrage economy means more eyeballs and more ad revenue) so they're often on national or international news. What's also a part of the difference in media attention: when I drive drunk, veer off course and run over someone, it can and will be excused as "driver lost control due to high speed and alcohol" (=frame-able as if it were an accident), but when I stab someone while high on meth, one cannot frame it as "accident". Stabbing someone is intentional, no matter if on drugs or not, and that makes for a massive difference in perception.

0x8BADF00D 7y ago

> Would a pill with the label "Not to be taken by people with an unstable psyche" or "Possible side effects: Knife carving of muscle tissue by user" pass any regulatory body? And yet alcohol kills and maims millions per year. The tool is not dangerous, it is the person who (mis)uses it.

scottlocklin 7y ago
Millions? Citations needed. Assuming this is right in some sense, alcohol has been integrated into functioning civilizations for thousands of years and still causes this kind of damage, where insane garbage like LSD hasn't, and no civilization worth talking about has managed to integrate a psychedelic drug with it and maintain a high level of civilization. And yes, I've tried it, and I've seen what it does to people: nothing positive. Sure makes people think they're clever though.
- KptMarchewa 7y ago
  https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msb_gsr_2014_1.pdf https://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alco... Page 14.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Great; some NGO, based on (citations needed) claims millions of premature deaths a year from alcohol, a substance which has been used by humans for at least 30,000 years. I look forward to their detailed report on what the projections are for widespread psychedelic use. Of course there won't be any. Because psychedelic use is at least at present a useful form of social control. I know a few people who killed themselves drinking and driving, and have a cousin who drank themselves to death. I know dozens, perhaps hundreds of people who have destroyed themselves psychologically using psychedelics. Dead people are tragic. Zombies are worse.
    - sergioj97 7y ago
      > "Because psychedelic is at least at present a useful form of social control" Why significantly more so than alcohol?

fragmede 7y ago

Prohibition is at least part of the problem. Since LSD isn't something anyone with a prescription can wander down to CVS/Walgreens and pick up a known quantity, how much LSD is in a given dose is a mystery until after empirical testing. Imagine if a can of alcohol had an unknown effect until an hour or two after drinking it, with effects ranging from a mild buzz, to being black-out drunk, to alcohol poisoning resulting in hospitalization or death. Every regulatory body would be similarly hesitant to allow it as the situation mentioned here.

TomMarius 7y ago
And not just that; street LSD is also not unusually mixed with various other compounds
grumdan 7y ago
I agree that prohibition does cause a lot of issues. This makes even less sense since one difference is that there is no equivalent to "alcohol poisoning" with LSD. A dose at which LSD is physically toxic is so high (200 times a recreational dose) that it's incredibly unlikely to take by accident. As far as I know, there are no known overdose deaths due to LSD. (However, there are analogues to LSD that are toxic: 25I-NBOMe and 25C-NBOMe).
- droffel 7y ago
  The 25x-NBOMe class of chemicals are not analogues of LSD.
  - grumdan 7y ago
    I guess I shouldn't use terms that could also have a precise chemical meaning. My understanding is that they cause similar effects to LSD, but analogue is probably not the right word for it.

maxander 7y ago

All sorts of medical drugs have contraindications- that’s why we have doctors prescribe them in the first place. E.g., you have severe sleep apnea, you shouldn’t use benzodiazepines; if you have bad anxiety you shouldn’t take address; etc etc. LSD will take a bit more diligence (it’s powerful!) but is not qualitatively different in that respect.

stevula 7y ago

I would imagine the hypothetical clinical dose would be lower than the common recreational dose.

golergka 7y ago

I don't think that I have a stable psyche, and I have experimented with psychedelics a lot of times in my life, but I can't imagine doing something like that on LSD or shrooms. What have most likely had happened is that he was sold some other psychedelic, like NBOMe, or 2CB (which are often more easily available than LSD-25).

rolltiide 7y ago

So therefore we should imprison everyone that happens to have it on them, use that to bar them from employment for the rest of their lives, remove several of their constitutional rights including voting and discredit everything they say Okay, chief I would prefer responsible use, predictable ingredients, supply chain transparency

ryacko 7y ago

The US government did spend millions of dollars in psychedelic research before the 70s, I would hope they’ve developed protocols for safe usage at some point. Research from that time certainly could serve as groundwork for valid health treatments if done in an ethical and transparent manner.

drawkbox 7y ago

The anecdote you describe happened under the illegal black market, where production is unconfirmed and harm reduction is not available as easy. With decriminalization or even a legal market, that person maybe wouldn't have done it like that. With the black market, and criminality as it is, they probably didn't get the safety information they needed for harm reduction. One thing is for sure, prohibition creates dangerous production pipelines and enriches cartels/mafias the level of nation states and that makes danger for everyone around. The warnings on alcohol would be similar to other illegal drugs, alcohol is more toxic and dangerous than most of them. Cannabis, LSD and psilocybin (mushrooms) have the lowest toxicity of any drugs including aspirin, caffeine, nicotine and more. The information about safety and harm reduction would be clearer with a decriminalized or legal market and production would be much better with the latter, ultimately safer.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bjourne 7y ago
> With decriminalization or even a legal market, that person maybe wouldn't have done it like that. With the black market, and criminality as it is, they probably didn't get the safety information they needed for harm reduction. How do you figure that? The mind-altering effects of psychedelia aren't affected by the legality of the substances. > The warnings on alcohol would be similar to other illegal drugs, alcohol is more toxic and dangerous than most of them. That may be true but it is also irrelevant in a discussion on how dangerous psychedelia is (it's a form of what-about-ism). Plus, the analogue would be leaving kitchen knives around when drinking alcohol. I have truly never heard anyone call that a "rookie mistake". To me it seems that users are well aware of the risks involved and when they discuss among themselves they are open about it. But when they are on message boards with "opponents" (like on HN), the tone of the discussion completely changes and risks are being downplayed.

TomMarius 7y ago

Would a machine that would sometimes (in its infancy) kill you simply by itself be legal? Apparently cars got legal. Why not psychedelics?

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Because you're in control of a car as the driver; I'm not sure why you (and others) are drawing out analogies like this. Whataboutism.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  Back then cars used to explode uncontrollably.
- sergioj97 7y ago
  Even though I don't think the car analogy is a good one, I understand that just the fact that something can harm you doesn't make it inherently bad or unethical to use. You have enough control of your car to not kill yourself (or anybody else) as long as you drive responsibly, and take precautions. And the vast majority of people need to be teached not just about the technical aspects of driving but also about more common sense issues like why they should use their seatbelt or avoid driving under the effects of drugs, fatigue, etc. Some people (I guess I include myself here) think that LSD and other drugs can be used responsibly, too. Even though they don't have the obvious practical benefits of a car, the dangers related to their use can be significantly reduced if you take precautions and have an educated perspective. And just as with the car thing, nobody is born knowing how to safely use LSD. You need information, but that information is not readily available to most people at the moment. The internet or anectodical data are not good sources of information for this. So I guess that it may be a poor analogy, but the idea is that you can reduce the risk of using LSD to acceptable levels just as you can with a car.

newsgremlin 7y ago

Drugs have different effects on different people. This is why mental health is important. We all need to take it seriously rather than entertaining the idea as we have in recent years as something secondary to physical health. A record of mental health for each individual will allow doctors to make informed decisions when prescribing a drug or not. That's why psychedelics must be regulated and the dosage controlled to observe the effects on the individual. Anecdotes of illegal use/misuse are not useful in determining the common effects of said drug and the general benefits/side-effects.

GordonS 7y ago

I'd say a better precaution is to always trip with a trip-sitter - someone sober who can help and guide you if things start to get a bit dark/scary.

lunias 7y ago

I think you've highlighted the one of the primary reasons that prohibition is harmful. If these substances were treated like medicine, studied, and understood then we would all be much safer. Perhaps there is an actual scientific means of determining if someone has an "unstable psyche" before prescribing them the psychedelic (currently hard to discern because of restrictions on research of controlled substances). I'd imagine that if your doctor was thinking about this as a potential treatment for you then they'd want you to experience it there at the office, in the care of trained professionals, to gauge your reaction before sending you off into the unknown. Also, there are people who would die if they ate a PB&J. The difference is that, with regard to peanut allergies, we have data on how to test patients and how to protect them from exposure. With psychedelics it's either D.A.R.E or some guy on the internet - and the information provided by those sources is so contradictory that you're left rolling the dice. I'd predict that psychedelics are very safe for almost everyone without a severe pre-existing mental condition (this is my experience as a guy on the internet).

4ntonius8lock 7y ago

Really? Psychotic reactions aren't uncommon. Not to mention insanely complex, unpleasant side effects. Many anti depressants have a suicide idealization side effect. Ambien has people sleep driving/walking (very dangerous). And alcohol... do we really need to give any explanation there? It isn't a matter of intensity of issue (given that suicide is generally worse than cutting), and it isn't frequency (since we have many more side effects from legal drugs). The issue is the media, and the way your mind selects news stories to create the reality you perceive. Looking at stats and numbers is a great way to overcome this bias.