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I acknowledge you're playing devil's advocate, so don't take this too harshly, but the truism that "Shrooms play with your brain" is meaningless as an argument
by Mordisquitos 6y ago
I acknowledge you're playing devil's advocate, so don't take this too harshly, but the truism that "Shrooms play with your brain" is meaningless as an argument against shrooms—more so when contrasting it to "just an addiction". Where is an addiction anywhere but the brain?
Of course opioids play with your brain. So do SSRI antidepressants for example, whose very name is based on their most commonly accepted mechanism of action. And it's not only strictly psychiatric drugs—ADHD medication also plays with your brain, influencing dopamine pathways. But then so do gambling, and physical exercise, and meditation! Heck, even social media plays with your brain.
The mere fact that something has an effect on the brain is not in itself an argument against it—let alone when it is being proposed as a psychotherapeutic tool.
- heavenlyblue 6y agoOpioid addiction is a clear mechanical fact. We know exactly what one needs to do in order to overcome opioid addiction (or how to avoid it on that matter).
- dwiel 6y agoIt is absolutely not as simple as clear mechincal fact. See for example the rat park experiment [1]. There is also the case of huge numbers of people addicted to morphine during the Vietnam War, who upon arriving back home to families and support networks and away from horrors of war were able to kick the habit quickly and without difficulty. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
- hombre_fatal 6y agoHow does your reasoning hold up to the fact that our countries have no clue how to deal with large opioid addict populations that have become homeless yet there are no shroom addict homeless populations, in fact it's basically unheard of that shrooms have ruined anyone's life outside of perhaps rare cases and HN anecdotes? You're comparing something that happens to anyone taking opioids long enough, to the worst thing that you can imagine to happen on shrooms, something that actually happens to ~nobody who has taken shrooms, and somehow trying to table that as an argument. Meanwhile, I can walk through tent cities in Vancouver of people getting free opioid injections from the government because they've given up so hard on this ez addiction problem. And I'm supposed to somehow see how shrooms are actually worse. You said you're playing devil's advocate, but you still have to try to make an argument. It just sounds like you're field-testing a half-baked supposition you came up with 30 seconds ago.