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I think there's a generation of young people that are now in/approaching their 30's that got severely duped into believing that the drug culture of the 50's and

I think there's a generation of young people that are now in/approaching their 30's that got severely duped into believing that the drug culture of the 50's and 60's could somehow be responsibly reinvigorated in the contemporary age. I think it's going to be a long time before humans can responsibly do mind-altering chemicals at scale. It's quite like democracy (consider Dewey); without real education (moral education) psychedelic drugs seem to have the potential to upset culture more than heal/integrate culture. I'll leverage every shitty acid trip you've ever had at a concert as rhetorical evidence of what I'm saying here!

stuntkite 4y ago
Interesting take. I think I agree with you. I think the corporate and fashie interest in psychedelic magic bullets is seriously misguided. The alt-right seems to want to use it to reprogram people and the corporate interests want to give us LCD or DMT without the "fun" so they can make it a product. Why remove the fun? Imitrex (Sumatriptan) is a migraine medication that is DMT with some extras. It'll save you from a migraine but it SUCKS. Why? Why not just give people DMT? Maybe it's more effective, maybe it's a pro-drug. With the ongoing war on drugs and the abysmal outlook of just hacking the charm of psychedelics to make people into dispassionate monsters or work robots, I don't think we are on the right road to what the substances can do for society. Also, not everyone needs to trip. Fact. In most cultures that do have psychedelic substance rituals they are used by individuals that need to go to a shaman and sort out a complication such as loss, sickness, or mental disorder. Usually the shaman is the designated tripper for the community and that lifestyle is not considered to be a super sweet gig or constant party. Drugs being illegal has relegated them to parties, which I think is the wrong way to look at mind altering chemicals. Not that getting high as fuck at a party can't be super fuckin' fun but it commodifies the experience in a way that does a lot of harm that could be avoided without prohibition. Decriminalizing everything would open the door to building those structures into society and some places in the world have had good results with decriminalization and legalization.
- kwatsonafter 4y ago
  "Drugs being illegal has relegated them to parties, which I think is the wrong way to look at mind altering chemicals." This a million times. We could build, "safe places" where people could productively use things like LSD and this activity could contribute to a body of active research. This might be a, "net loss" for society but you know what's even worse? Teenagers having a foundational spiritual experience sullied by being arrested or by being in the company of unsympathetic others. This ends up contributing to crime statistics (which is useful for the establishment, isn't it?) but does little in the way of furthering our understanding of the brain or cultural pharmacology; what to say of spirituality or freedom. It's also so bloody wasteful. Such a goddamned waste of magic and potential. The psychedelic brats with their dad's credit cards and the anal retentive aggressor lizards trying to steal my prostate energy. Hand's off!
  - stuntkite 4y ago
    > The psychedelic brats with their dad's credit cards and the anal retentive aggressor lizards trying to steal my prostate energy. > > Hand's off! Lol. Sorry, I read this but somehow did not read this last sentence. I don't know or even know if I want to know what this statement really means to you because I love it so much and I'm afraid that if you told me it might lose it's magic. If this is a serious comment and you want to clarify though, I'll take it completely seriously and deal with whatever the outcome is. Either way, shine you crazy diamond. Genuinely I think that might be one of the best sentences I've ever read.
everforward 4y ago
> I think it's going to be a long time before humans can responsibly do mind-altering chemicals at scale. I'm in that age range and among those people, and my observation is that we already do (and have for a while) mind-altering chemicals at scale. Alcohol is ancient, mind-altering, and very widely used. Caffeine is ubiquitous. Something like 1 in 6 Americans is on an antidepressant. Birth control is popular and has mood-altering effects. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't consume some form of mind/mood altering substance with regularity. I would personally put alcohol and psychedelics in roughly the same ballpark of altered mental state. The effects are different, but the degree of difference between one's "normal" self and the altered self are roughly equivalent. I don't think they're some panacea, but I would wager that if we replaced alcohol with psychedelics, we'd probably be in a better place. Not because psychedelics are some kind of fairy dust, but because alcohol is damaging in almost every sense you can imagine. It's hard on the body, it causes people to make poor decisions, and it leads to a lot of deaths due to the prior.
- kwatsonafter 4y ago
  I think that is an astute observation. Indeed if we look at the history of humans in general we have in some cases even mythological examples of, "substance use" (Kykeon, Soma). It may have been prudent to add, "at scale responsibly with an absolute minimum of human harm." I'd like to think that there's an arrangement of culture that isn't such a drag that the general mass of people need to get out of themselves regularly but perhaps that's a bit of a pipe dream. I've seen neoliberalism co-opt surfing, folk music, skateboarding, rock n' roll, sex, punk rock, tight jeans, baggy jeans, EDM, being gay, and being black in commercials and having recognized a pattern I really, really shudder to think what LSD culture will be like when it's sold alongside Baker skateboards and ripped mom jeans at Zumiez at the mall. I don't think it will be harmful at all but that's just the thing (...) all the, "revolutionary" potential will get sidelined and that's worse than a few dead Supermen or a few acid dropouts. Che Guevara t-shirts come to mind. You remember those robots things from X-Men: Days Of Future Past? How they could absorb the, "magic potential" of the mutant they targeted? What happens when the man, "absorbs" the chemical and spiritual potential of LSD, Mescaline, 5-MeO-DMT, or Psilocybin? What happens when we offend the gods by turning them into consumer products?

stuntkite 4y ago

Interesting take. I think I agree with you. I think the corporate and fashie interest in psychedelic magic bullets is seriously misguided. The alt-right seems to want to use it to reprogram people and the corporate interests want to give us LCD or DMT without the "fun" so they can make it a product. Why remove the fun? Imitrex (Sumatriptan) is a migraine medication that is DMT with some extras. It'll save you from a migraine but it SUCKS. Why? Why not just give people DMT? Maybe it's more effective, maybe it's a pro-drug. With the ongoing war on drugs and the abysmal outlook of just hacking the charm of psychedelics to make people into dispassionate monsters or work robots, I don't think we are on the right road to what the substances can do for society. Also, not everyone needs to trip. Fact. In most cultures that do have psychedelic substance rituals they are used by individuals that need to go to a shaman and sort out a complication such as loss, sickness, or mental disorder. Usually the shaman is the designated tripper for the community and that lifestyle is not considered to be a super sweet gig or constant party. Drugs being illegal has relegated them to parties, which I think is the wrong way to look at mind altering chemicals. Not that getting high as fuck at a party can't be super fuckin' fun but it commodifies the experience in a way that does a lot of harm that could be avoided without prohibition. Decriminalizing everything would open the door to building those structures into society and some places in the world have had good results with decriminalization and legalization.

kwatsonafter 4y ago
"Drugs being illegal has relegated them to parties, which I think is the wrong way to look at mind altering chemicals." This a million times. We could build, "safe places" where people could productively use things like LSD and this activity could contribute to a body of active research. This might be a, "net loss" for society but you know what's even worse? Teenagers having a foundational spiritual experience sullied by being arrested or by being in the company of unsympathetic others. This ends up contributing to crime statistics (which is useful for the establishment, isn't it?) but does little in the way of furthering our understanding of the brain or cultural pharmacology; what to say of spirituality or freedom. It's also so bloody wasteful. Such a goddamned waste of magic and potential. The psychedelic brats with their dad's credit cards and the anal retentive aggressor lizards trying to steal my prostate energy. Hand's off!
- stuntkite 4y ago
  > The psychedelic brats with their dad's credit cards and the anal retentive aggressor lizards trying to steal my prostate energy. > > Hand's off! Lol. Sorry, I read this but somehow did not read this last sentence. I don't know or even know if I want to know what this statement really means to you because I love it so much and I'm afraid that if you told me it might lose it's magic. If this is a serious comment and you want to clarify though, I'll take it completely seriously and deal with whatever the outcome is. Either way, shine you crazy diamond. Genuinely I think that might be one of the best sentences I've ever read.

everforward 4y ago

> I think it's going to be a long time before humans can responsibly do mind-altering chemicals at scale. I'm in that age range and among those people, and my observation is that we already do (and have for a while) mind-altering chemicals at scale. Alcohol is ancient, mind-altering, and very widely used. Caffeine is ubiquitous. Something like 1 in 6 Americans is on an antidepressant. Birth control is popular and has mood-altering effects. I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that doesn't consume some form of mind/mood altering substance with regularity. I would personally put alcohol and psychedelics in roughly the same ballpark of altered mental state. The effects are different, but the degree of difference between one's "normal" self and the altered self are roughly equivalent. I don't think they're some panacea, but I would wager that if we replaced alcohol with psychedelics, we'd probably be in a better place. Not because psychedelics are some kind of fairy dust, but because alcohol is damaging in almost every sense you can imagine. It's hard on the body, it causes people to make poor decisions, and it leads to a lot of deaths due to the prior.

kwatsonafter 4y ago
I think that is an astute observation. Indeed if we look at the history of humans in general we have in some cases even mythological examples of, "substance use" (Kykeon, Soma). It may have been prudent to add, "at scale responsibly with an absolute minimum of human harm." I'd like to think that there's an arrangement of culture that isn't such a drag that the general mass of people need to get out of themselves regularly but perhaps that's a bit of a pipe dream. I've seen neoliberalism co-opt surfing, folk music, skateboarding, rock n' roll, sex, punk rock, tight jeans, baggy jeans, EDM, being gay, and being black in commercials and having recognized a pattern I really, really shudder to think what LSD culture will be like when it's sold alongside Baker skateboards and ripped mom jeans at Zumiez at the mall. I don't think it will be harmful at all but that's just the thing (...) all the, "revolutionary" potential will get sidelined and that's worse than a few dead Supermen or a few acid dropouts. Che Guevara t-shirts come to mind. You remember those robots things from X-Men: Days Of Future Past? How they could absorb the, "magic potential" of the mutant they targeted? What happens when the man, "absorbs" the chemical and spiritual potential of LSD, Mescaline, 5-MeO-DMT, or Psilocybin? What happens when we offend the gods by turning them into consumer products?