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Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
- seeknotfind 3y agoDismissing possible negative effects of psychedelics with a comparison to caffeine and nicotine feels off. Psychedelics are much more intense than either - on a different scale, to the point they are emotionally draining. Otherwise, I can dig it. There are a variety of factors.
- galangalalgol 3y agoOperating vehicles on psychedelics seems like a far worse idea than the other two as well. But comparing them to alcohol would probably have alcohol coming up far more dangerous in every category.
- cm2012 3y agoI don't want to try it because of risk to my mental health. The 40+ year old psychedelic enthusiasts I know are just not all there. Plus it can trigger schizophrenia, etc.
- local_issues 3y agoSame - and this isn't discussed enough in Tech circles. I know a girl who's done acid 100 times, and she's pretty "off." Kind of like a record left in the sun for a bit. She's not dumb or anything, just a little sideways. Not in a good way either - in a "can't hold a job or relationship together" way.
- lillecarl 3y agoPeople with ADHD are VERY overrepresented in substance use, and "Can't hold a job or relationship together" is an ADHD trait as well, maybe like me she enjoys being a bit whacked in the head by something to deal with the incredibly boring, mundane, slow-moving, uncreative reality most of us live in. Or acid fried her brain, but I'm sceptical.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- racked 3y agoDid you know her before she did acid, and if so, what exactly changed about her?
- bnjms 3y agoI think about what drug caused the burned out hippie vibe and between weed and psychedelics I think it’s the psychedelics. I think that because any drug that helps one draw new connections eventually starts drawing potential connections that aren’t there resulting in needing excess consideration. I’m pro psychedelic legalization and think they should be available behind the counter. I just also think they should be feared and thought of as medicine.
- brotchie 3y agoAfter 1st psychedelic experience “damn, everyone should try this”. After further experience, no longer a huge proponent. A new user has to make a mental commitment that they will be changed and they themselves take responsibility for that and own the positives and negatives and can’t externalize that blame, otherwise they’re going to have a bad reality going forwards. My first experience was late 30s, I don’t know what it would have been like having that experience 17 or 18. I don’t know if I’d want my kids to have that experience at such a young age. Psychedelics are profoundly strange. My before-the-experience expectations about what it would be like (having read an absolute shitload of literature and trip reports) and what it’s actually like were orthogonal. A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything. Once you’ve been through that (like seriously believing your reality is broken) a lot of other things in life seem easier.
- aliasxneo 3y ago> A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything Just out of curiosity, do you mean the person's self-confidence may dramatically improve with use? The only reason is because I had a recent co-worker who was laid off after taking psychedelics for a decent period of time. He effectively stopped contributing to the team and started making concerted efforts to get the CEO to establish a new, special position for him so that "real work" could get done and the "company would function 100x better." Seeing the before and after was fairly dramatic. I tried to encourage them to stop using, but that "self-confidence" was so over the top that they ignored all of us and eventually lost their job.
- uristohkrat 3y agoAnecdotally, I found using psychedelics regularly kind of left me estranged from sober reality. Better to do it semi annually at most, imo. If you need them more frequently then that you are probably missing the point.
- rjbwork 3y agoThat seems like dude was consistently disconnected from reality due to being constantly high on drugs. I think GP was referring to the long-term mental resilience and mindset shifts that can be byproducts of trips, not the effects of being under the influence.
- philipov 3y agoI would hesitate to downplay the long-term effects of heavy caffeine use.
- overrun11 3y agoWhat are they?
- lillecarl 3y agoDependency is the only one I've heard about within reasonable consumption. Think "ooof my headache I need a coffee" people.
- philipov 3y ago"nervousness; insomnia; dehydration; stomach irritation; fatigue." It's not just headaches. Fatigue in particular can be severe. If I don't drink coffee, I can barely stay awake at all.
- djtango 3y agoSomeone I knew developed psychosis and eventually committed suicide. I'm not close enough to know the full diagnosis but my understanding was that they the psychosis was brought on by drug abuse, possibly "2cb" but who knows what you're really consuming in random pills... A friend once pointed out that much discussion around drugs is completely polarised. Either drugs are evil and we must root it from the face of this earth or cannabis and psilocybin are wonder cures that fix everything from back pain and anxiety to IBS and writers block.
- annoyingnoob 3y agoWar on Drugs, Charles Manson, Nancy Reagan.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoAnd, they were the drug of choice of hippies, which were targeted by conservatives in government. Can't have any mind expanding going on in the population. Also. Kind of like how cocaine was a 'white' drug and criminal sentences were less than for 'crack' that was a 'black' drug and had stiffer penalties. The groups using a particular drug were attacked through the laws against specific drugs.
- Julesman 3y ago“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” ~ John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon
- pier25 3y agoEven the popularization of the latin name Marijuana (Mary Jane) was to associate cannabis with latin American immigrants. In Spanish it's mostly called marihuana or mariguana.
- overboard2 3y agoIsn't Marijuana pronounced like "marihuana"?
- pier25 3y agoIn Spanish? Not at all. The J has a very strong sound.
- dragonwriter 3y agoThere is considerable regional and subcultural variation, but, even when pronounced strongly its not /g/.
- Julesman 3y agoWhere exactly do people say Mariguana? Not in Mexico. If you over-pronounce Spanish the J catches in your throat a bit, but it's still an H sound.
- guerrilla 3y agoThis is not a difficult question to answer: The War on Drugs (which includes a massive propaganda campaign.)
- standyro 3y agoBecause they were made illegal in the 1960s?
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y agoI have been partaking in them for the majority of my adult life. Looking at this data I’m surprised the number is not higher - 8%. My own impression is that it’s taking so long because even people familiar with them, like me, don’t actually reach for them all that often. They’re not habit forming. And talking about psychedelic experiences is a bit like talking about your dreams - it’s boring and personal.
- soligern 3y agoThe overall usage in the population is low because psychedelics are unpredictable. They can have long term effects on the human psyche and there is a correctly ingrained notion in society that they are dangerous to a stable mindset.
- cm2012 3y ago100% agree based on my experiences with psychadelic enthusiasts.
- whalesalad 3y agoSo you've formed a critical opinion of psychedelics without having tried them, based only on knowing enthusiasts? This would be like hating crossfit just because you know an annoying crossfitter, or vegan food just because you know an obnoxious vegan.
- GauntletWizard 3y agoIf the annoying crossfitter ignored that about a tenth of his gym mates attacked people on the street, yes, I would hate crossfit.
- treis 3y agoIt's not clear why I shouldn't do that. If a significant chunk of people that do Crossfit or are Vegan are insufferable I'd avoid them lest I too became insufferable. The only reason not to would be something like sampling bias where you identify the 1% that are insufferable but don't see the 99% that aren't.
- thinkingemote 3y agoIt's because the people who took them back then are now old, CEO age and powerful and making decisions. They are not popular in the normal use of the word. But "officially accepted" is more accurate. Psychotherapy is popular. (We should expect things which are unpopular now but that the kids are into to be accepted in 40 years time.)
- badcppdev 3y agoDig the real results man: https://monitoringthefuture.org/results/press-releases/ https://monitoringthefuture.org/results/press-releases/
- clsec 3y agoYeah, if the article posted had been accurate the headline would have been: "Why did it take psychedelics, other than LSD, so long to become popular?" Here's the outline of the study* from UoM: https://news.umich.edu/hallucinogen-use-other-than-lsd-on-the-rise-among-young-adults/ https://news.umich.edu/hallucinogen-use-other-than-lsd-on-th... *the actual study link is in the UoM outline
- TechBro8615 3y agoThey're not as easy to confidently and safely get as weed or coke. The first time you do acid you get a little tab that could be anything. This is probably also the reason (I guess) shrooms are more popular than acid - you can grow them and you can see that they are literal mushrooms, rather than some mysterious chemical substance made by your friend's boyfriend's cousin's roommate.
- giantg2 3y agoIsn't LSD easy to make if you have a high school level of understanding of chemistry? Not as easy as growing shrooms, but still it shouldn't be as hard as cooking meth.
- mrob 3y agoThe opposite is true. Methamphetamine can be made with high school level chemistry, while LSD is a comparatively difficult synthesis. LSD precursor chemicals are also much harder to acquire.
- giantg2 3y agoOh, I guess I got them backwards.
- captainclam 3y agoWaaay harder than meth.
- lillecarl 3y agoFUD. Just because you can't see the acid doesn't mean it's more likely to be "contaminated" or "something else". Coke on the other hand is essentially always mixed with something, and sometimes the dealer might squeeze in a bit of whatever to hook you on his product.
- solumunus 3y agoLSD is one of the most faked drugs by far. There are communities whose sole purpose is to find the real amongst the fake. It’s so bad that you’re more likely to get fake LSD than real… Cocaine is always somewhat contaminated but it’s comparatively very easy to get what people consider a quality product.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoPopular? I can count on one hand the number of people IRL who have admitted to taking psychedelics. They don't seem popular, Taylor Swift is popular.
- RajT88 3y agoI have a similar gripe. I know a few more people who have done psychedelics, but still it's tiny compared to the number of people I know who have talked about using marijuana.
- aap_ 3y agoThat's funny. I have met exactly one person who I know is a Taylor Swift fan. That is much less than the number of people who I know have taken psychedelics.
- yosito 3y agoI think this might be highly dependent on your social circles. As an extroverted 35 year old single man living in Europe, who doesn't drink alcohol, it seems like approximately 80% of my social circles have done psychedelics.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoAs a late 30’s trans woman working in tech and living in Oakland all of my friends do psychedelics.
- throwawa14223 3y ago[flagged]
- hcks 3y agoWhy is this being downvoted? Psychedelic users keep rambling about their substances alleged wonders but in real life every “acid enthusiast” I met is heavily dysfunctional in some way.
- kinakomochidayo 3y agoAddicts usually have underlying childhood and/or adult traumas to numb their pain so it isn’t surprising. But surprisingly, if used in the right context, intentions and dose, psychedelics can help with the underlying traumas and addictions. Especially Ayahuasca, MDMA and psilocybin.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fknorangesite 3y ago> Why is this being downvoted? Because there aren't only downsides. > every “acid enthusiast” I met is heavily dysfunctional in some way. This is just the Toupée Fallacy, though: if you met a perfectly functional "acid enthusiast", how would you even know?
- throwawa14223 3y agoI may have been unfair with the word 'only'. I am highly skeptical that the set of things that cause hallucinations contains benefits compared to not hallucinating for the person with no obvious need like say PTSD.
- DirkH 3y ago"So many people don't do it because they recognize the dangers and if you do do it you will forever be changed and be a different person for the worse. Don't become a bad person so you would be stupid to take psychedelics." This comment here supports my social stigma hypothesis as the actual reason people don't take psychedelics as much. Remove unfounded stigma not supported by the neuroscience literature (my strong anti-drug stance literally switched in university when my neuroscience professor pointed out how completely divorced drug legality is from their health affects) and we will all see more widespread usage.
- red_trumpet 3y agoThat graphic looks a lot like a COVID peak...
- myshpa 3y agoOfficial propaganda ... teenagers trying to fly off balconies and war on drugs and so
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- egypturnash 3y agoHow do you write this much about this question without ever once mentioning that the US government hates psychedelics and ranks them Schedule 1 as soon as one gets enough traction to be noticed?
- whalesalad 3y agoright? this is the only reason. they became demonized and now we have huge populations of people who think that mushrooms will make you rip your own skin off and eat your family alive. the risks are insignificant versus the benefit that they possess, particularly in the macro context. if the water supply was microdosed with psilocybin the world would be a better place.
- DoodahMan 3y agoIt wasn't always this easy to get psychedelics I'd say. Previously much of the LSD in America flowed from large labs (which were busted) and would get distributed throughout the country through scenes like jambands (eg: the Dead, Phish). Throw in a healthy amount of War on Drugs/D.A.R.E propaganda. Things dried up for a bit. These days however acquiring psychedelics can be as easy as a few clicks of a mouse and some crypto. I also noticed the spike on the graph in 2019. That's when Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence" book came out and it seems to have got quite popular. In this time the push for psychedelic-assisted therapy began in earnest. I'd say psychedelics are becoming more popular these days because the old stigma about them is waning, mainstream acceptance is increasing, and supply is readily available. It's trivial to grow mushrooms or extract DMT. I fully expect to see psychedelic-assisted therapy become an accepted form of treatment in my lifetime. Few things in America these days bring the left and right (AOC, Crenshaw, Gaetz, etc) together, but psychedelics are one that does. Psychedelics ain't just for hippies to melt into the music anymore.
- lo_zamoyski 3y agoWhen we typically speak of "drug (ab)use", we have in mind drug use that frustrates the exercise of reason or some other faculties and their use in accordance with reason in one way or another. Alcohol, for instance, taken in small amounts is fine because in small amounts, it have a relaxing effect that causes no harm and does not frustrate the exercise of reason. Indeed, if you're experiencing distress and anxiety, a small amount of alcohol can help restore the use of reason by calming the anxiety that may be in fact impeding the exercise of reason. But in large amounts, our use of reason, among other faculties, is very much frustrated, putting to one side the other harms this causes. And because reason is that by which we know the truth and discern good from evil and reason morally and make decisions, it is evil to frustrate that faculty. And in doing so, open yourself up to evil and making bad decisions. So taking such a drug, and in immoderate amounts, is itself an immoral decision. We have a moral obligation to be rational, and intentionally harming or acting against our own rationality is evil. The same can be said of any drug. The small amounts of cocaine in Vin Mariani were not the amounts taken by drug fiends snorting it into their noses and rubbing it on their gums. I'm sure Leo XIII and Pius X were experiencing a bit more energy in a manner analogous to what coffee drinkers experience. Some drugs, however, may simply be bad in any effective dose. Some speak of microdosing psychedelics. I have no knowledge of the effects of doing so, but it sounds a bit SV gimmicky and some studies seem to suggest that is the case. In any event, the doses typically taken, those that cause hallucinations and a warped sense of reality, do frustrate the exercise and use of reason, with the added risk of traumatic experiences that can cause lifelong problems. This is gravely immoral for just the reasons I've given, so the intuition that psychedelics are something to be avoided is correct. Intentionally causing delusional thinking is gravely immoral. That people are feeding a morbid curiosity in psychedelics seems to track closely the spiritually barren and nihilistic age we live in. New Age and drug culture is a piss-poor substitute for the splendor of truth. They're not rooted in reason, but cheap emotion, and what we call the "spiritual" is ultimately a rational matter (though, of course, you may experience emotional states as a consequence). It is better to address the actual problem instead of escaping into a degrading, mediocre ersatz.
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoYour logic doesn't follow. Even if we entertain your (wildly baseless) assertions that substance use impairs your rational abilities to the point of muddying your ability to differentiate between right and wrong, it does not follow that that makes them wrong: plenty of people are perfectly happy to do evil unimpaired, just look at the billionaire class, or the right wing. If someone had a predilection towards evil acts, then a muddying of their perception of right and wrong would be a good thing, as they could just as easily be swayed to inadvertent good as a person predisposed to good could be swayed to unintended evil. Your argument also relies on a curious, self-contradictory framing of ethics. Are acts evil in of themselves, or are they evil because of their consequences? Arguing that the frustration of one's rational faculties is evil because it increases their likelihood of committing other evil acts asserts a consequentialist framing, but you then proceed to vilify the act in of itself, in isolation from any further actions. If it's evil because it could lead to evil acts, then it shouldn't be evil if the effects are weathered in isolation from potential victims. If it's evil in of itself, then it can't be argued to be such due to its potential consequences.
- jessepasley 3y agoThe only psychedelic I've found valuable/insightful was mdma, and I've done many psychedelics. LSD, mushrooms, etc are kind of entertaining, but I've never really had a 'mind expanding' experience with them. I found them too emotionally exhausting to really find them worth continuing.
- treis 3y agoY'all talking about the US drug war didn't read the article or if you did did not understand it. The era the article talks about (mostly) predates the existence of the US and all of it is before the war on drugs.
- beezlewax 3y agoPretty sure they've been used since prehistoric times. Hell even animals partake
- weare138 3y agoDraconian drug laws. Most psychedelics are classified as Schedule 1 drugs, the most legally restrictive and punishable classification.
- tb_technical 3y agoI'm afraid that if I use psychedelics I'll become a crunchy old white man that never shuts the fuck up about them.