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Great news. Whether or not you believe these substances have significant therapeutic potential (I do), it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmle

by darawk 4y ago

Great news. Whether or not you believe these substances have significant therapeutic potential (I do), it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmless. Nobody gets addicted to them, there are no known negative health effects. There is absolutely no justification whatsoever for their criminality, and there never has been.

bil7 4y ago
While I am also in complete favour, stating that there are no negative health effects is somewhat false. Abusing any kind of psychedelic can lead to HPPD [1], a very real long term disorder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...
- MacsHeadroom 4y ago
  I would classify HPPD as widely harmless. If you poll non-users you'll find that many people have HPPD like effects and can't recall ever not having them. Seeing a slight trail behind a bright fast moving object is inconsequential in life.
  - kortex 4y ago
    Brains are quite nonlinear. I wonder how many people already had visual artifacts and assorted weirdness, but never paid attention to them because the brain just paves over it, until an experience highlights those artifacts, and now they can't not notice them.
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    >If you poll non-users you'll find that many people have HPPD like effects and can't recall ever not having them. Yep https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-around-with-mild-hallucinations-all-the-time/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-a...
  - tsol 4y ago
    Many people with psychedelic-induced HPPD report them being a difficulty, though. Take this case study: >These symptoms persisted for the last 13 years, with little change in intensity and frequency. All efforts at treatment, psychopharmacological as well as psychotherapeutic, failed to alleviate the symptoms. Often the patient was unable to focus properly with her eyes and tired rapidly while performing intense visual tasks – these deficiencies being detrimental to her studies and professional work as an architect. As a consequence, the patient became depressed with latent suicidal impulses. She also found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘ abnormal’ perceptions. This papering over of side effects that people insist on is why so many are so hesitant to legalize these drugs. It's doing no favor to the cause when so many refuse to acknowledge the danger that's inherit in some kinds of psychoactive drugs.
    - darawk 4y ago
      There are a couple of things to keep in mind here: 1. The link between psychedelic use and persisting minor visual disturbances is reasonably well established. 2. The link between psychedelic use and serious, problematic visual disturbances or psychiatric issues is not well established at all, and modern evidence calls into question[1]. Even if we do take at face value the attributions of problematic HPPD to psychedelics (which we really shouldn't), the prevalence of this phenomenon is extremely low. So low that there isn't much in the way of empirical data to estimate its prevalence - just case reports. And case reports are a notoriously unreliable way to reason about etiology. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968
      - tsol 4y ago
        >2. The link between psychedelic use and serious, problematic visual disturbances or psychiatric issues is not well established at all, and modern evidence calls into question[1]. You are misinterpreting this. This is saying there's no link between psychedelic use and increased cases of psychosis. That isn't the same as debilitating HPPD, or any depression/anxiety caused as a result. In fact in that same article he highlights this; >But he has concerns about Krebs and Johansen’s overall conclusions, he says, because individual cases of adverse effects use can and do occur. >For example, people may develop hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), a ‘trip’ that never seems to end, involving incessant distortions in the visual field, shimmering lights and coloured dots. “I’ve seen a number of people with these symptoms following a psychedelic experience, and it can be a very serious condition,” says Grob.
- worik 4y ago
  It is all relative. In the case of recreational drugs it is relative to alcohol. So not "completely harmless" but "relatively harmless"
- sergefaguet 4y ago
  I have HPPD and it is kind of fun and not at all distressing or problematic for my life. Cool part of how my brain works.
PuppyTailWags 4y ago
I agree there was no justification to their criminality but would like to caution against portraying them too widely as harmless. Specifically, psychadelics should be considered very carefully(and potentially not partaken in at all) in context of those who have experienced psychosis or are relatives of people with psychotic disorders.
- worik 4y ago
  This is a bit disingenuous. I have known too many people with "psychotic disorders". I have learnt the hard way to show such people enormous respect. A person who cannt distinguish a real thing from a thought is somebody that can do very surprising things. These can be wonderful things, great artists etcetera. But it can also mean unexpected violence. Yes "psychadelics should be considered very carefully... in context of those who have experienced psychosis". Everything should in that context. A cup of tea should be.
  - PuppyTailWags 4y ago
    I'm sorry for whatever happened to you that is causing you to behave as if someone who had experienced psychosis cannot live a full, functioning, well-managed life. Someone with a well-controlled schizophrenia spectrum/psychotic disorder/mood disorder with psychosis does not generally have to be careful about "everything". Someone who experiences psychosis due to insomnia, dehydration, or drugs generally does not pose a risk to themselves or others once the causal factor is removed. I understand your reaction may be coming from a place of trauma but please understand it is misinformed.
    - worik 4y ago
      > you to behave as if someone who had experienced psychosis cannot live a full, functioning, well-managed life It is true that it is possible to manage psychosis. But it is also true that if you live with some one with psychosis you must respect the illness. Denying that is dangerous. Unexpected violence is dangerous, and unexpected violence is a common symptom of psychosis.
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deepdriver 4y ago
Certainly in terms of short-term judgement impairment, this isn't true: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/teendeathbridgefall/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/teendeathbridgefal...
notch656a 4y ago
Honestly I couldn't give a shit if there were horrible effects. Kidnapping someone off the street and throwing them in a padded room with a doctor over watching to make sure they're medically OK is perfectly safe, but ought to be illegal. Buying rat poison and eating it is completely unsafe, but if that's someone's thing then they're free to have at it. Of course, if I buy rat poison, I have a pretty pure product and I can look up the ld50 and make a scientific estimate on how much I can take before I die. Not so with some random shit off the street.
- itintheory 4y ago
  Most rodenticides, and a great many other hazardous household chemicals actually carry a warning that they are illegal to use in a way different than described in the instructions.
- worik 4y ago
  > Of course, if I buy rat poison, I have a pretty pure product and I can look up the ld50 and make a scientific estimate on how much I can take before I die. Not so with some random shit off the street. True. Where I live (Aotearoa) drug testing has been made legal and there are many opportunities to take your stash along to the spectrometer (I am not a chemist, unsure about the actual nature of the instrument, except it is reliable) and get it tested.
giantg2 4y ago
"it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmless." I wouldn't go that far. Any substance that alters perception, inhibition, etc has the potential for some social impact. For example, public drunkenness, DUI, liquor license etc were created because intoxicated people caused some sort of problem and laws were created around that. While these were created for alcohol, it's likely similar laws would be created for other substances.
- notch656a 4y ago
  My state has no law against public drunkenness and there is no discernible difference here between other states I have lived in which had such a law. Honestly I think that was written as a religious feelzy.
  - dolni 4y ago
    You're oversimplifying. "The law" is not the only thing that dictates peoples' behaviors. There are lots of other reasons why drinking may be more or less bothersome in some states versus others. Different places have different customs, particularly around drinking. Those customs combined with alcohol may create more or less of a public nuisance.
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  - giantg2 4y ago
    I bet your state has a disorderly conduct or similar. The laws between states aren't vastly different on this sort of thing in most cases.
    - MauranKilom 4y ago
      And that same law would apply to tripping people as it does to drunk people, so I don't understand what this is getting at.
MisterTea 4y ago
> socially harmless. Nobody gets addicted to them, there are no known negative health effects. Not true. My friend woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed after a bad trip on mushrooms. He saw his dead body in the street and was convinced he was dead and a ghost. He then went running around Manhattan traffic jumping on cars. An English teacher in high school witnessed her friend jump to her death from a balcony after taking LSD. The woman said she felt light as a bird, took off running, hopped up a chair and dove over the railing to the pavement 20 feet below. She broke her neck. I am not saying psychedelics should remain banned. But to casually call them harmless is incredibly irresponsible. They need to be taken under supervision by people with experience. This is called trip sitting. Not all trips are good as emotions and state of mind can effect the outcome. Things can go wrong fast. Be safe.
- dekhn 4y ago
  From my read of the scientific literature, most situations like the ones you describe are at least partially caused by underlying disorders that pre-existed (and manifested). And the second one you describe is a pretty common story to be told (same rumor at my college).
  - MisterTea 4y ago
    > From my read of the scientific literature, most situations like the ones you describe are at least partially caused by underlying disorders that pre-existed (and manifested). Do you have a qualifying medical certificate and professionally diagnosed my friend? The answer is no. So don't try to down play a serious incident you have ZERO knowledge of. > And the second one you describe is a pretty common story to be told (same rumor at my college). When my teacher told us the story she was quite emotional and serious. It could be a well intentioned lie to discourage "drug use" but again, you have no way of knowing the truth so knock it off.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      > Do you have a qualifying medical certificate and professionally diagnosed my friend? It's weird that you yourself don't require these kinds of qualifications to participate in this discussion. I guess you don't need them in order to disqualify people from disagreeing with you.
pstuart 4y ago
I agree with you, save for the negative health effects. It's very rare but sometimes it breaks people (firsthand witness to this way back when). It still should be legal but we should be honest about risks.
alecfreudenberg 4y ago
Many people have bad trips that end up in irreparable self harm or harm to others, often inducing death by police. Psychedelics radically impact cognition and consciousness, and not always in a safe way. It's not always just a 'woah man' giggling in a park. People climb high things and fall. They run into traffic or harms way. They often attack first responders that are attempting to deescalate. Thought loops are dangerous and psychotic breaks are an obvious possibility to anyone who has done these substances.
- darawk 4y ago
  Yes, this can happen, but it is extremely rare. Advil probably has a higher death rate than psilocybin.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Tylenol is an even better choice: "Paracetamol poisoning is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      Acetaminophen/paracetamol falls in the weird zone of drugs that would never have gotten approved by the FDA for OTC use if they were discovered today.
- worik 4y ago
  - tsol 4y ago
    Because you're incorrect. Some people face serious side effects. It can trigger mental illness in those that have a predisposition. It can cause HPPD. Here's a report I just dug up for an earlier comment: >These symptoms persisted for the last 13 years, with little change in intensity and frequency. All efforts at treatment, psychopharmacological as well as psychotherapeutic, failed to alleviate the symptoms. Often the patient was unable to focus properly with her eyes and tired rapidly while performing intense visual tasks – these deficiencies being detrimental to her studies and professional work as an architect. As a consequence, the patient became depressed with latent suicidal impulses. She also found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘ abnormal’ perceptions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736944/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736944/
mistermann 4y ago
In the long run, they could be dangerous to profit margins of defense contractors.
novok 4y ago
No, if you are susceptible to schizophrenia, it can trigger it and turn it into full blown schizophrenia including all the other comments about potential downsides.
- darawk 4y ago
  https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968
  - jack_pp 4y ago
    yeah, it just happens most anyone with friends who do psychedelics have had some of them go on psychotic breaks that take months or years to fix. It's not super common but I'm gonna trust my own observations of reality over studies that usually fail to replicate
    - worik 4y ago
      > not super common but I'm gonna trust my own observations of reality over studies that usually fail to replicate You mean you are going to prefer anecdotal evidence over scientific research? The "studies that usually fail to replicate" are the ones supporting a LSD inducing schizophrenia. Your "own observations of reality" are interesting to you, but do not form a basis for creating public policy
      - adnzzzzZ 4y ago
        >You mean you are going to prefer anecdotal evidence over scientific research? Yes, if it has the potential to ruin my life and the life of people I care about, as it is plainly obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all to the world around them that these drugs are extremely harmful to a subset of the population.
        worik 4y ago
        > these drugs are extremely harmful to a subset of the population. I pay attention. Decades of observing. Some negative effects (the paranoia induced by repeatedly taking magic mushrooms for instance). I too have heard horror stories, I just have not witnessed them. But then I prefer to pay attention to the scientific research by people like David Nutt You do what you want based on your own prejudices and if you must your bigotry. But places like thos that influence public policy statements like: "as it is plainly obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all to the world around" as an argument against scientific research simply does not belong here
codebolt 4y ago
> it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmless Considering that the place with the highest psychedelic drug use is also the place with the highest number of mentally ill and homeless, that seems a rather preposterous assertion.
- darawk 4y ago
  Psychedelic use in SF is not primarily among the homeless population. That population is using very different substances.
- uoaei 4y ago
  Yours is an excellent example of how correlative observational studies (however formal or informal) are practically useless. Once you have experience interacting with the unhoused population, you will quickly learn that they are largely using things like crack, meth, and opioids (if at all -- many are in fact sober), not psychedelics.
  - codebolt 4y ago
    I don't find that surprising, but I'd still be interested to see a survey of what proportion of California's homeless population have used psychedelics extensively _in their past_. Because my experience leads me to believe that someone who does a lot of psychedelics in their younger years is more likely to wind up on a bad track later in life (even if they don't continue with those drugs later on).
    - uoaei 4y ago
      Bayesian thinking can pay here, as well as a little self-critique. Simply put, confirmation bias will convince you that people who do psychedelics end up on a bad track if your sample only includes people who are on bad tracks, rather than a sample composed of those who use psychedelics. More probably (and this in my experience is definitely true) many more people use psychedelics than you might naively assume, and in fact probably the proportion of people who use psychedelics and end up on good tracks is way higher than that of those who use psychedelics and end up on bad tracks. On a more meta-level, your searching and inquisition is still based on a more fundamental assumption, that homeless people are homeless for reasons stemming from their own decisions, rather than some confluence of bad events that leads one to ruin or another possible path to homelessness (e.g., they have mental health conditions which prevent integration into "normal" society without proper treatment, or that they simply want to be homeless and nomadic as a lifestyle choice). Empathy pays off here to temper un-credible assumptions and analyses.
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slibhb 4y ago
Psychedelics, especially in conjunction with SSRIs, can cause serotonin syndrome. They can cause visual disturbances that far outlast the trip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep.... They can trigger psychosis in certain people, i.e those with bipolar disorder.
- kortex 4y ago
  Alcohol, especially in conjunction with acetaminophen or other OTC pain meds, can cause liver damage. As long as alcohol is a legal substance to consume, it makes no sense to criminalize substances widely shown to have lower harm coefficients than it. There's tons of studies which mostly-objectively quantify harm/addiction caused by substances. The only drugs squarely as bad or worse than alcohol are tobacco products (also legal, contains many more psychoactives beyond nicotine), meth, crack cocaine (delivery route matters), cathinones, GHB, certain gaba-ergics, and most opioids. Nicotine in isolation, ketamine, classical psychedelics, cannabis, MDMA, most of the Shulginoids (phenethylamines and tryptamines), all fall short of the harm caused by alcohol. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.592199/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.5921...
  - slibhb 4y ago
    Sounds like an argument to ban alcohol...
    - kortex 4y ago
      Yeah well we kinda tried that, didn't end well :p. Banning cannabis was much easier due to its much smaller appeal at the time. The three first principle components of a drug's harm are the therapeutic window (log ratio of LD50 to median active dose), addictivity (harder to quantify, but we have models based on pharmacokinetics and dynamics), and degree of harm to others when altered. Alcohol is dangerously toxic on the order of ~15-25 units, has fast onset and hits GABA so rather addicting, and as a CNS depressant, is obviously very risky to others. If a designer analog came out with the profile of EtOH, it'd immediately go to Sch I.
kneel 4y ago
I wholeheartedly disagree, psychedelics can amplify mental illness and result in bizarre behavior. Decriminalizing psychedelics in a city with a large homeless drug infused population is asking for trouble.
- kelnos 4y ago
  Not sure it matters; it's not like the police enforce any laws when it comes to the homeless population here, except for when it's politically expedient to do so.
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autoexec 4y ago
While most people harping on the "there are no known negative health effects." claim are talking about the drugs making people crazy I would point out that some psychedelics can also make people become sick. It passes, no long term harm, but it still seems like a miserable time and one I'd call a "negative health effect". Sure, too much alcohol can cause people to get sick too, but then nobody ever said alcohol had "no known negative health effects" either.
- worik 4y ago
  Remember when you compare the health effects, public health or private health, of LSD and alcohol, you are making a strong recommendation for LSD.
acchow 4y ago
Society has figured out quiet quitting all on their own without the need of widespread psychedelics and capitalism has not ended because of it. There's definitely no need to hold back LSD now.
- zthrowaway 4y ago
  Quiet quitting is a new name for “lazy”. Not a new concept.
seanw444 4y ago
Depending on the dosage, the user's reaction to it, and what kind you psychedelic you're taking, it's very possible for people to end up tripping so hard that they think they're fighting for they're life, but they're actually attacking random people in the street. I'm curious to see how often these events happen as more areas decriminalize it.

by darawk 4y ago

bil7 4y ago

While I am also in complete favour, stating that there are no negative health effects is somewhat false. Abusing any kind of psychedelic can lead to HPPD [1], a very real long term disorder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...

MacsHeadroom 4y ago
I would classify HPPD as widely harmless. If you poll non-users you'll find that many people have HPPD like effects and can't recall ever not having them. Seeing a slight trail behind a bright fast moving object is inconsequential in life.
- kortex 4y ago
  Brains are quite nonlinear. I wonder how many people already had visual artifacts and assorted weirdness, but never paid attention to them because the brain just paves over it, until an experience highlights those artifacts, and now they can't not notice them.
- LordDragonfang 4y ago
  >If you poll non-users you'll find that many people have HPPD like effects and can't recall ever not having them. Yep https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-around-with-mild-hallucinations-all-the-time/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/11/lots-of-people-going-a...
- tsol 4y ago
  Many people with psychedelic-induced HPPD report them being a difficulty, though. Take this case study: >These symptoms persisted for the last 13 years, with little change in intensity and frequency. All efforts at treatment, psychopharmacological as well as psychotherapeutic, failed to alleviate the symptoms. Often the patient was unable to focus properly with her eyes and tired rapidly while performing intense visual tasks – these deficiencies being detrimental to her studies and professional work as an architect. As a consequence, the patient became depressed with latent suicidal impulses. She also found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘ abnormal’ perceptions. This papering over of side effects that people insist on is why so many are so hesitant to legalize these drugs. It's doing no favor to the cause when so many refuse to acknowledge the danger that's inherit in some kinds of psychoactive drugs.
  - darawk 4y ago
    There are a couple of things to keep in mind here: 1. The link between psychedelic use and persisting minor visual disturbances is reasonably well established. 2. The link between psychedelic use and serious, problematic visual disturbances or psychiatric issues is not well established at all, and modern evidence calls into question[1]. Even if we do take at face value the attributions of problematic HPPD to psychedelics (which we really shouldn't), the prevalence of this phenomenon is extremely low. So low that there isn't much in the way of empirical data to estimate its prevalence - just case reports. And case reports are a notoriously unreliable way to reason about etiology. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968
    - tsol 4y ago
      >2. The link between psychedelic use and serious, problematic visual disturbances or psychiatric issues is not well established at all, and modern evidence calls into question[1]. You are misinterpreting this. This is saying there's no link between psychedelic use and increased cases of psychosis. That isn't the same as debilitating HPPD, or any depression/anxiety caused as a result. In fact in that same article he highlights this; >But he has concerns about Krebs and Johansen’s overall conclusions, he says, because individual cases of adverse effects use can and do occur. >For example, people may develop hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), a ‘trip’ that never seems to end, involving incessant distortions in the visual field, shimmering lights and coloured dots. “I’ve seen a number of people with these symptoms following a psychedelic experience, and it can be a very serious condition,” says Grob.
worik 4y ago
It is all relative. In the case of recreational drugs it is relative to alcohol. So not "completely harmless" but "relatively harmless"
sergefaguet 4y ago
I have HPPD and it is kind of fun and not at all distressing or problematic for my life. Cool part of how my brain works.

PuppyTailWags 4y ago

I agree there was no justification to their criminality but would like to caution against portraying them too widely as harmless. Specifically, psychadelics should be considered very carefully(and potentially not partaken in at all) in context of those who have experienced psychosis or are relatives of people with psychotic disorders.

worik 4y ago
This is a bit disingenuous. I have known too many people with "psychotic disorders". I have learnt the hard way to show such people enormous respect. A person who cannt distinguish a real thing from a thought is somebody that can do very surprising things. These can be wonderful things, great artists etcetera. But it can also mean unexpected violence. Yes "psychadelics should be considered very carefully... in context of those who have experienced psychosis". Everything should in that context. A cup of tea should be.
- PuppyTailWags 4y ago
  I'm sorry for whatever happened to you that is causing you to behave as if someone who had experienced psychosis cannot live a full, functioning, well-managed life. Someone with a well-controlled schizophrenia spectrum/psychotic disorder/mood disorder with psychosis does not generally have to be careful about "everything". Someone who experiences psychosis due to insomnia, dehydration, or drugs generally does not pose a risk to themselves or others once the causal factor is removed. I understand your reaction may be coming from a place of trauma but please understand it is misinformed.
  - worik 4y ago
    > you to behave as if someone who had experienced psychosis cannot live a full, functioning, well-managed life It is true that it is possible to manage psychosis. But it is also true that if you live with some one with psychosis you must respect the illness. Denying that is dangerous. Unexpected violence is dangerous, and unexpected violence is a common symptom of psychosis.

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deepdriver 4y ago

Certainly in terms of short-term judgement impairment, this isn't true: https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/teendeathbridgefall/ https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/teendeathbridgefal...

notch656a 4y ago

Honestly I couldn't give a shit if there were horrible effects. Kidnapping someone off the street and throwing them in a padded room with a doctor over watching to make sure they're medically OK is perfectly safe, but ought to be illegal. Buying rat poison and eating it is completely unsafe, but if that's someone's thing then they're free to have at it. Of course, if I buy rat poison, I have a pretty pure product and I can look up the ld50 and make a scientific estimate on how much I can take before I die. Not so with some random shit off the street.

itintheory 4y ago
Most rodenticides, and a great many other hazardous household chemicals actually carry a warning that they are illegal to use in a way different than described in the instructions.
worik 4y ago
> Of course, if I buy rat poison, I have a pretty pure product and I can look up the ld50 and make a scientific estimate on how much I can take before I die. Not so with some random shit off the street. True. Where I live (Aotearoa) drug testing has been made legal and there are many opportunities to take your stash along to the spectrometer (I am not a chemist, unsure about the actual nature of the instrument, except it is reliable) and get it tested.

giantg2 4y ago

"it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmless." I wouldn't go that far. Any substance that alters perception, inhibition, etc has the potential for some social impact. For example, public drunkenness, DUI, liquor license etc were created because intoxicated people caused some sort of problem and laws were created around that. While these were created for alcohol, it's likely similar laws would be created for other substances.

notch656a 4y ago
My state has no law against public drunkenness and there is no discernible difference here between other states I have lived in which had such a law. Honestly I think that was written as a religious feelzy.
- dolni 4y ago
  You're oversimplifying. "The law" is not the only thing that dictates peoples' behaviors. There are lots of other reasons why drinking may be more or less bothersome in some states versus others. Different places have different customs, particularly around drinking. Those customs combined with alcohol may create more or less of a public nuisance.
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- giantg2 4y ago
  I bet your state has a disorderly conduct or similar. The laws between states aren't vastly different on this sort of thing in most cases.
  - MauranKilom 4y ago
    And that same law would apply to tripping people as it does to drunk people, so I don't understand what this is getting at.

MisterTea 4y ago

> socially harmless. Nobody gets addicted to them, there are no known negative health effects. Not true. My friend woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed after a bad trip on mushrooms. He saw his dead body in the street and was convinced he was dead and a ghost. He then went running around Manhattan traffic jumping on cars. An English teacher in high school witnessed her friend jump to her death from a balcony after taking LSD. The woman said she felt light as a bird, took off running, hopped up a chair and dove over the railing to the pavement 20 feet below. She broke her neck. I am not saying psychedelics should remain banned. But to casually call them harmless is incredibly irresponsible. They need to be taken under supervision by people with experience. This is called trip sitting. Not all trips are good as emotions and state of mind can effect the outcome. Things can go wrong fast. Be safe.

dekhn 4y ago
From my read of the scientific literature, most situations like the ones you describe are at least partially caused by underlying disorders that pre-existed (and manifested). And the second one you describe is a pretty common story to be told (same rumor at my college).
- MisterTea 4y ago
  > From my read of the scientific literature, most situations like the ones you describe are at least partially caused by underlying disorders that pre-existed (and manifested). Do you have a qualifying medical certificate and professionally diagnosed my friend? The answer is no. So don't try to down play a serious incident you have ZERO knowledge of. > And the second one you describe is a pretty common story to be told (same rumor at my college). When my teacher told us the story she was quite emotional and serious. It could be a well intentioned lie to discourage "drug use" but again, you have no way of knowing the truth so knock it off.
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Do you have a qualifying medical certificate and professionally diagnosed my friend? It's weird that you yourself don't require these kinds of qualifications to participate in this discussion. I guess you don't need them in order to disqualify people from disagreeing with you.

pstuart 4y ago

I agree with you, save for the negative health effects. It's very rare but sometimes it breaks people (firsthand witness to this way back when). It still should be legal but we should be honest about risks.

alecfreudenberg 4y ago

Many people have bad trips that end up in irreparable self harm or harm to others, often inducing death by police. Psychedelics radically impact cognition and consciousness, and not always in a safe way. It's not always just a 'woah man' giggling in a park. People climb high things and fall. They run into traffic or harms way. They often attack first responders that are attempting to deescalate. Thought loops are dangerous and psychotic breaks are an obvious possibility to anyone who has done these substances.

darawk 4y ago
Yes, this can happen, but it is extremely rare. Advil probably has a higher death rate than psilocybin.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Tylenol is an even better choice: "Paracetamol poisoning is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    Acetaminophen/paracetamol falls in the weird zone of drugs that would never have gotten approved by the FDA for OTC use if they were discovered today.
worik 4y ago
- tsol 4y ago
  Because you're incorrect. Some people face serious side effects. It can trigger mental illness in those that have a predisposition. It can cause HPPD. Here's a report I just dug up for an earlier comment: >These symptoms persisted for the last 13 years, with little change in intensity and frequency. All efforts at treatment, psychopharmacological as well as psychotherapeutic, failed to alleviate the symptoms. Often the patient was unable to focus properly with her eyes and tired rapidly while performing intense visual tasks – these deficiencies being detrimental to her studies and professional work as an architect. As a consequence, the patient became depressed with latent suicidal impulses. She also found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘ abnormal’ perceptions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736944/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3736944/

mistermann 4y ago

In the long run, they could be dangerous to profit margins of defense contractors.

novok 4y ago

No, if you are susceptible to schizophrenia, it can trigger it and turn it into full blown schizophrenia including all the other comments about potential downsides.

darawk 4y ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16968
- jack_pp 4y ago
  yeah, it just happens most anyone with friends who do psychedelics have had some of them go on psychotic breaks that take months or years to fix. It's not super common but I'm gonna trust my own observations of reality over studies that usually fail to replicate
  - worik 4y ago
    > not super common but I'm gonna trust my own observations of reality over studies that usually fail to replicate You mean you are going to prefer anecdotal evidence over scientific research? The "studies that usually fail to replicate" are the ones supporting a LSD inducing schizophrenia. Your "own observations of reality" are interesting to you, but do not form a basis for creating public policy
    - adnzzzzZ 4y ago
      >You mean you are going to prefer anecdotal evidence over scientific research? Yes, if it has the potential to ruin my life and the life of people I care about, as it is plainly obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all to the world around them that these drugs are extremely harmful to a subset of the population.
      - worik 4y ago
        > these drugs are extremely harmful to a subset of the population. I pay attention. Decades of observing. Some negative effects (the paranoia induced by repeatedly taking magic mushrooms for instance). I too have heard horror stories, I just have not witnessed them. But then I prefer to pay attention to the scientific research by people like David Nutt You do what you want based on your own prejudices and if you must your bigotry. But places like thos that influence public policy statements like: "as it is plainly obvious to anyone who pays any attention at all to the world around" as an argument against scientific research simply does not belong here

codebolt 4y ago

> it's basically indisputable that they are socially harmless Considering that the place with the highest psychedelic drug use is also the place with the highest number of mentally ill and homeless, that seems a rather preposterous assertion.

darawk 4y ago
Psychedelic use in SF is not primarily among the homeless population. That population is using very different substances.
uoaei 4y ago
Yours is an excellent example of how correlative observational studies (however formal or informal) are practically useless. Once you have experience interacting with the unhoused population, you will quickly learn that they are largely using things like crack, meth, and opioids (if at all -- many are in fact sober), not psychedelics.
- codebolt 4y ago
  I don't find that surprising, but I'd still be interested to see a survey of what proportion of California's homeless population have used psychedelics extensively _in their past_. Because my experience leads me to believe that someone who does a lot of psychedelics in their younger years is more likely to wind up on a bad track later in life (even if they don't continue with those drugs later on).
  - uoaei 4y ago
    Bayesian thinking can pay here, as well as a little self-critique. Simply put, confirmation bias will convince you that people who do psychedelics end up on a bad track if your sample only includes people who are on bad tracks, rather than a sample composed of those who use psychedelics. More probably (and this in my experience is definitely true) many more people use psychedelics than you might naively assume, and in fact probably the proportion of people who use psychedelics and end up on good tracks is way higher than that of those who use psychedelics and end up on bad tracks. On a more meta-level, your searching and inquisition is still based on a more fundamental assumption, that homeless people are homeless for reasons stemming from their own decisions, rather than some confluence of bad events that leads one to ruin or another possible path to homelessness (e.g., they have mental health conditions which prevent integration into "normal" society without proper treatment, or that they simply want to be homeless and nomadic as a lifestyle choice). Empathy pays off here to temper un-credible assumptions and analyses.

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slibhb 4y ago

Psychedelics, especially in conjunction with SSRIs, can cause serotonin syndrome. They can cause visual disturbances that far outlast the trip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep.... They can trigger psychosis in certain people, i.e those with bipolar disorder.

kortex 4y ago
Alcohol, especially in conjunction with acetaminophen or other OTC pain meds, can cause liver damage. As long as alcohol is a legal substance to consume, it makes no sense to criminalize substances widely shown to have lower harm coefficients than it. There's tons of studies which mostly-objectively quantify harm/addiction caused by substances. The only drugs squarely as bad or worse than alcohol are tobacco products (also legal, contains many more psychoactives beyond nicotine), meth, crack cocaine (delivery route matters), cathinones, GHB, certain gaba-ergics, and most opioids. Nicotine in isolation, ketamine, classical psychedelics, cannabis, MDMA, most of the Shulginoids (phenethylamines and tryptamines), all fall short of the harm caused by alcohol. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.592199/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.5921...
- slibhb 4y ago
  Sounds like an argument to ban alcohol...
  - kortex 4y ago
    Yeah well we kinda tried that, didn't end well :p. Banning cannabis was much easier due to its much smaller appeal at the time. The three first principle components of a drug's harm are the therapeutic window (log ratio of LD50 to median active dose), addictivity (harder to quantify, but we have models based on pharmacokinetics and dynamics), and degree of harm to others when altered. Alcohol is dangerously toxic on the order of ~15-25 units, has fast onset and hits GABA so rather addicting, and as a CNS depressant, is obviously very risky to others. If a designer analog came out with the profile of EtOH, it'd immediately go to Sch I.

kneel 4y ago

I wholeheartedly disagree, psychedelics can amplify mental illness and result in bizarre behavior. Decriminalizing psychedelics in a city with a large homeless drug infused population is asking for trouble.

kelnos 4y ago
Not sure it matters; it's not like the police enforce any laws when it comes to the homeless population here, except for when it's politically expedient to do so.

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autoexec 4y ago

While most people harping on the "there are no known negative health effects." claim are talking about the drugs making people crazy I would point out that some psychedelics can also make people become sick. It passes, no long term harm, but it still seems like a miserable time and one I'd call a "negative health effect". Sure, too much alcohol can cause people to get sick too, but then nobody ever said alcohol had "no known negative health effects" either.

worik 4y ago
Remember when you compare the health effects, public health or private health, of LSD and alcohol, you are making a strong recommendation for LSD.

acchow 4y ago

Society has figured out quiet quitting all on their own without the need of widespread psychedelics and capitalism has not ended because of it. There's definitely no need to hold back LSD now.

zthrowaway 4y ago
Quiet quitting is a new name for “lazy”. Not a new concept.

seanw444 4y ago

Depending on the dosage, the user's reaction to it, and what kind you psychedelic you're taking, it's very possible for people to end up tripping so hard that they think they're fighting for they're life, but they're actually attacking random people in the street. I'm curious to see how often these events happen as more areas decriminalize it.