7 ms·

Watch one of these turn out to a miracle cure for some random disease. I can understand preventing access to dangerous drugs for the average person, but keepin

Watch one of these turn out to a miracle cure for some random disease. I can understand preventing access to dangerous drugs for the average person, but keeping ourselves deliberately ignorant by blocking research was stupid.

babyshake 5y ago
It's impossible to talk about how dangerous psychedelics are without context of the dosage as well as the setting for higher doses. We don't consider alcohol to be especially dangerous only because it requires a very large amount of most forms of alcoholic beverages to result in alcohol poisoning and death.
- Dumblydorr 5y ago
  You vaguely imply psychedelics are dangerous, comparing them to alcohol, yet you provide zero evidence of their dangers. Sounds like you need to flesh out your post, it comes across anti-psychdelic with no reasoning. Especially odd because we DO consider alcohol dangerous, why else is there a 21 age minimum on it, why else is drunk driving a scourge and menace? The "danger of psychedelics" looks meek by comparison.
- rib3ye 5y ago
  Like anything else, doesn't that depend on the concentration?
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    Psychedelics have other dangers than acute toxicity. Not that I’m giving medical advice but it is extraordinarily difficult to die as a result of an overdose of most pure psychedelics which aren’t strange “research chemicals”. (Although I vaguely remember reading about a guy who accidentally took something like tens of thousands of effective doses of LSD being in a coma for quite a while) However their power is in their ability to reshape your mind… and that they can do in very undesirable ways if done wrong.
    - pvarangot 5y ago
      > and that they can do in very undesirable ways if done wrong. I think the risk of developing a long term mental illness from psychedelic use are overstated because of societies stigma with temporary psychosis. A healthy person can come back from those "psychotomimetic" episodes really quickly, even quicker than with opioid induced psychosis. It's not really mysterious or undesirable as you make it sound. People that develop long term issues from psychedelic use are also at risk of developing those from basically all other psychoactive substances, specially marihuana and opioids. The motivations for making psychedelics schedule 1 where political and not related to that risk at all though. Drinking a lot can also create temporary psychosis and long term personality changes. There's also lots of studies about how marihuana also results in psychosis or triggers mania in some people. Neither alcohol nor Marihuana show as promising results for things like fighting depression, fatigue, social anxiety, as psychedelics or at fighting PTSD as MDMA does. Alcohol and now weed are legal mostly because of other economic and political interests. The sad reality is no one gives a fuck about the people that could benefit from research into psychedelic medicine, except pharmaceutical companies that make billions out of treatments that are 20 years behind, and they want them to be schedule 1 forever.
      - colechristensen 5y ago
        With drugs you get two choices: ineffective or potentially dangerous, often both. People want to believe that the thing they like is safe, but every drug that can do anything is dangerous. That's the whole idea, a drug is a lever to make change, not a magical "make everything better" solution. You push the lever too far and you get things you don't want. It's not just temporary psychosis (which sometimes isn't so temporary). It can trigger major changes in personality, or latent mental illnesses which tend to only manifest with a push (schizophrenia is one). It's not a coincidence that psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies throughout human history. They can give people religion, and without direction they can turn people into troubling zealots for just about anything (and often the drug itself). People who experienced this and became cultural icons are part of the reason they got banned. (turn on, tune in, drop out) There is even a considerable group that want to re-name psychedelics to "entheogens" which has a rough etymology of "to put god into". I have personally felt this and it scared the fuck out of me.
- CryoLogic 5y ago
  The active dose to LD50 ratio for alcohol is somewhere about 1:13 depending on tolerance. For Magic Mushrooms or LSD, it is above 1:1000. In other words, it is nearly impossible to accidentally kill yourself via overdose on psychedelics - but somewhat easy with alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
  - sharkweek 5y ago
    But it sure is a hell of a lot easier THINKING you’re going to die while on psychedelics! I can’t handle drugs (as much as I’m curious about them) but I had a “smoked waaaay too much pot”experience in college where I was high for almost 24 hours and I spent the first six hours or so convinced I had broken my brain and was going to die.
  - bagacrap 5y ago
    I think you have to balance that against the fact that the recreational dose of lsd is so infinitesimal that 10000x that dose is still very easy to ingest in the blink of an eye. Not so for alcohol. That said, even after reading wikipedia's source on the ld50 of lsd, I remain unconvinced that there even is a lethal dose of LSD.
    - nitrogen 5y ago
      There are other forms of danger apart from lethality, and before new recreational (or therapeutic) drugs can be accepted by society, those need to be culturally understood.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - IIAOPSW 5y ago
      An excerpt from the highest ever recorded dosage of LSD. "Eight individuals who accidentally consumed a very high dose of LSD intranasally (mistaking it for cocaine) had plasma levels of 1000–7000 μg per 100mL blood plasma and suffered from comatose states, hyperthermia, vomiting, light gastric bleeding, and respiratory problems. However, all survived with hospital treatment and without residual effects." https://maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf https://maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_2306... In short, even on the rare occasion when people have taken 1000x what they should, they didn't die.
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  It's dumb that this site is designed in a way where I can't downvote this comment.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

babyshake 5y ago

It's impossible to talk about how dangerous psychedelics are without context of the dosage as well as the setting for higher doses. We don't consider alcohol to be especially dangerous only because it requires a very large amount of most forms of alcoholic beverages to result in alcohol poisoning and death.

Dumblydorr 5y ago
You vaguely imply psychedelics are dangerous, comparing them to alcohol, yet you provide zero evidence of their dangers. Sounds like you need to flesh out your post, it comes across anti-psychdelic with no reasoning. Especially odd because we DO consider alcohol dangerous, why else is there a 21 age minimum on it, why else is drunk driving a scourge and menace? The "danger of psychedelics" looks meek by comparison.
rib3ye 5y ago
Like anything else, doesn't that depend on the concentration?
- colechristensen 5y ago
  Psychedelics have other dangers than acute toxicity. Not that I’m giving medical advice but it is extraordinarily difficult to die as a result of an overdose of most pure psychedelics which aren’t strange “research chemicals”. (Although I vaguely remember reading about a guy who accidentally took something like tens of thousands of effective doses of LSD being in a coma for quite a while) However their power is in their ability to reshape your mind… and that they can do in very undesirable ways if done wrong.
  - pvarangot 5y ago
    > and that they can do in very undesirable ways if done wrong. I think the risk of developing a long term mental illness from psychedelic use are overstated because of societies stigma with temporary psychosis. A healthy person can come back from those "psychotomimetic" episodes really quickly, even quicker than with opioid induced psychosis. It's not really mysterious or undesirable as you make it sound. People that develop long term issues from psychedelic use are also at risk of developing those from basically all other psychoactive substances, specially marihuana and opioids. The motivations for making psychedelics schedule 1 where political and not related to that risk at all though. Drinking a lot can also create temporary psychosis and long term personality changes. There's also lots of studies about how marihuana also results in psychosis or triggers mania in some people. Neither alcohol nor Marihuana show as promising results for things like fighting depression, fatigue, social anxiety, as psychedelics or at fighting PTSD as MDMA does. Alcohol and now weed are legal mostly because of other economic and political interests. The sad reality is no one gives a fuck about the people that could benefit from research into psychedelic medicine, except pharmaceutical companies that make billions out of treatments that are 20 years behind, and they want them to be schedule 1 forever.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      With drugs you get two choices: ineffective or potentially dangerous, often both. People want to believe that the thing they like is safe, but every drug that can do anything is dangerous. That's the whole idea, a drug is a lever to make change, not a magical "make everything better" solution. You push the lever too far and you get things you don't want. It's not just temporary psychosis (which sometimes isn't so temporary). It can trigger major changes in personality, or latent mental illnesses which tend to only manifest with a push (schizophrenia is one). It's not a coincidence that psychedelics have been used in religious ceremonies throughout human history. They can give people religion, and without direction they can turn people into troubling zealots for just about anything (and often the drug itself). People who experienced this and became cultural icons are part of the reason they got banned. (turn on, tune in, drop out) There is even a considerable group that want to re-name psychedelics to "entheogens" which has a rough etymology of "to put god into". I have personally felt this and it scared the fuck out of me.
CryoLogic 5y ago
The active dose to LD50 ratio for alcohol is somewhere about 1:13 depending on tolerance. For Magic Mushrooms or LSD, it is above 1:1000. In other words, it is nearly impossible to accidentally kill yourself via overdose on psychedelics - but somewhat easy with alcohol. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
- sharkweek 5y ago
  But it sure is a hell of a lot easier THINKING you’re going to die while on psychedelics! I can’t handle drugs (as much as I’m curious about them) but I had a “smoked waaaay too much pot”experience in college where I was high for almost 24 hours and I spent the first six hours or so convinced I had broken my brain and was going to die.
- bagacrap 5y ago
  I think you have to balance that against the fact that the recreational dose of lsd is so infinitesimal that 10000x that dose is still very easy to ingest in the blink of an eye. Not so for alcohol. That said, even after reading wikipedia's source on the ld50 of lsd, I remain unconvinced that there even is a lethal dose of LSD.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    There are other forms of danger apart from lethality, and before new recreational (or therapeutic) drugs can be accepted by society, those need to be culturally understood.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - IIAOPSW 5y ago
    An excerpt from the highest ever recorded dosage of LSD. "Eight individuals who accidentally consumed a very high dose of LSD intranasally (mistaking it for cocaine) had plasma levels of 1000–7000 μg per 100mL blood plasma and suffered from comatose states, hyperthermia, vomiting, light gastric bleeding, and respiratory problems. However, all survived with hospital treatment and without residual effects." https://maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf https://maps.org/research-archive/w3pb/2008/2008_Passie_2306... In short, even on the rare occasion when people have taken 1000x what they should, they didn't die.
antonzabirko 5y ago
It's dumb that this site is designed in a way where I can't downvote this comment.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]