10 ms·

Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science

120 points by benbreen 3y ago

dang 3y ago
This is Ben's new book! One of Hacker News's resident historians.
- tbalsam 3y ago
  Oh, is this a pinned post? First time I think I've ever seen a post with so few votes do this before! :D
  - dang 3y ago
    Not pinned, but it was a SCP pick (per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
    - tbalsam 3y ago
      Ah, thanks, very coolio! Great to see this as a feature, haven't quite seen that mechanic well and I think it's a really great way of implementing it! :D :)
tbalsam 3y ago
While I'm not the biggest fan of companies trying to land grab the psychedelic craze, there are things that would be nice to have, like psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated strongly with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow too big) over time. Sure, we haven't necessarily seen a ton of direct linkage to IRL use, yet, AFAIPK, but still it's something that's been strongly shown, and most 5-HT2A psychedelics also activate 5-HT2B. Curious about selectivity against 5-HT3 as well as the nausea can be a problem. Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream. Like, sure, maybe it's technically possible, but are you going to find a compound that selective (likely not) and is it actually going to remove all psychomometic effects (lol no, how do you think these things work)? There's always tradeoffs, it's like the weirdly detached desire to "reduce hallucinations" in language models but keep the same level of performance. Like, how do you think it's going to learn? You can't just magically make an unbiased perfect estimator with no variance for some limited capacity and data, your variance must live somewhere and in language models it tends to (generally) live in the higher level correlations between concepts. A good dose of basic mathematics and information theory really could set these fields straight. In any case, some of the future here looks exciting.
- engeljohnb 3y ago
  > psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated strongly with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow too big) Do you have a source for that? I'm a cardiac sonographer and I've never heard of aortic hypertrophy.
  - dkasper 3y ago
    I hadn’t heard of it either but it does seem like there are some studies. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55920-5_16 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55920-5_... Cardiac valvulopathy is likely not an adverse effect to consider when psychedelics are used occasionally but this may be different for “microdosing” which involves low doses of psychedelics taken daily or multiple times per week.
- gavinray 3y ago
  > Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream. This is actually an area of active research with promising developments, FWIW: https://psychedelichealth.co.uk/2023/06/13/non-hallucinogenic-psilocybin-derivative-clinical-candidate/ https://psychedelichealth.co.uk/2023/06/13/non-hallucinogeni...
  - binary132 3y ago
    It's hard for me to understand what is meant by "similar characteristics to psilocybin" without hallucinogenic effects. Is the idea that the hyperreality of the subconscious / inner life would dominate conscious perception, but without the confusing or distressing associated overload of the physical senses, e.g. seeing or hearing things that aren't there? It's almost impossible to imagine the one aspect of the dreamlike state dominating the mind without the disruption of the other, but even if the senses are perfectly unperturbed I would think the unconstrained and disordered psyche alone could be very upsetting or confusing.
    - tbalsam 3y ago
xhkkffbf 3y ago
When I was younger, I heard lots of stories about how Margaret Mead was the best anthropologist. Then, later I started hearing about how some rivals were digging up how she just made up half of the stories because she wanted to believe something different. I wonder if there's been any more exploration of her research and whether she applied this wishful thinking to LSD too.
- losteric 3y ago
  Did you ever wonder to validate the things you "started hearing"?
  - cubefox 3y ago
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201702/margaret-mead-and-the-great-samoan-nurture-hoax?amp https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/...
  - xhkkffbf 3y ago
    Yes, that's why I'm asking here. Maybe someone else has some insight.
isoprophlex 3y ago
Having myself spent a period of my life thinking that all the world's problems would vanish if only we all took more LSD, MDMA and DMT... and since realizing that there really is no substitute for honesty, self-sacrifice and hard work... I'm reminded of Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing: ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.
- api 3y ago
  Most people who try these things briefly entertain these ideas. They are really interesting and have the potential to trigger positive breakthroughs in a person’s thinking. They also have high potential in therapy for things like PTSD and depression. But all you have to do is spend a little time around drug users or pay attention to the discourse in psychedelic friendly circles (Joe Rogan and Russell Brand anyone?) to see that drugs are not some kind of magic enlightenment in a pill. If they were there’d be more enlightened drug users.
  - bugglebeetle 3y ago
    There is also the example of the Canadian psychologist, Elliot Barker, who tried to treat criminal psychopaths with LSD, only for researchers to later learn that it made them more psychopathic and re-offend at higher rates.
    - lend000 3y ago
      Interesting, do you have a good source for this? Based on personal experience, it does seem somewhat intuitive that psychedelics would make you be more comfortable being "you", regardless of who you really are.
      - bugglebeetle 3y ago
        It’s covered to a fair extent in Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. I believe this is the retrospective study on rates of recidivism: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352266 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352266
johndhi 3y ago
I could be just in a bitter mood, but somehow all of these articles decrying what a terrible job we did by shutting down psychedelic research in favor of a war on drugs... Don't make me feel optimistic that we've moved on or improved as a species. Like, this attitude of "oh NOW we see, we were just dumb 40 years ago! Everything will be better because NOW we get it" strikes me as exactly the same attitude that caused this problem in the first place. The regulators etc thought they knew better and "fixed" the errors of the past by starting the war on drugs. I guess to me, like, just focus on science and principles like free speech and the funding of interesting hypotheses. I feel like we're just demonizing a new group here and not learning the lesson of: "stop demonizing."
- tastyfreeze 3y ago
  Sure, it can feel that way if you believe that the war on drugs was started to keep people safe. However, if it was started as a means to persecute "undesireables" or political opponents the current trend seems less questionable.
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  I mean this sincerely: I think you’re right about this coming from your mood. You haven’t engaged with the actual argument much. It’s pretty reasonable to say things people did in the past were wrong. You can do things from first principles, but that also gets real abstract. Eventually, people need to be for or against specific policies.
- fasterik 3y ago
  I think we actually did learn things that we didn't know the first time around. We know that it's dangerous when influential researchers go around promoting psychedelics as a panacea like Timothy Leary did. The current wave of researchers seem to be much more responsible in emphasizing an evidence-based approach, the importance of screening for risk factors, and limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled therapeutic setting.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    > and limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled therapeutic setting. Your other points I understand. This particular one I find controversial as one of the unkowns is what is an ideal setting? I've got friends that will drop a tab, and go for a beer - just as impossible for me as sitting in a 'controlled environment' [therapeutic setting] with a shrink, or a Man-retreat for ex-military types. I'd like to just have easy access to a known quality, and strength of chemical, that I can happily take, wheresoever I prefer.
pizza 3y ago
Knew that name sounded familiar.. Margaret Mead was one of the 'core group' members of the Macy Conference(s) in Cybernetics [0], whose other members included such people as John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Walter Pitts, Warren McCulloch.. [0] https://asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeople.htm https://asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeople.h...
- samstave 3y ago
  Also a wonderful anaecdote, WRT LSD and Tech - when Hoffman's 100th birthday happened they had an interview with one of the founders/first employees of Cisco, and he stated they were against drug testing, because they discovered the logic for BGP and RIP routing protocols in epiphanies due to LSD. Also, there is this letter from Hoffman to Jobs: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/read-the-never-before-pub_b_227887 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/read-the-never-before-pub_b_2...
  - krispyfi 3y ago
    That Cisco anecdote is pretty great! Do you have a source or any additional keywords I might be able to use to search for it?
    - samstave 3y ago
      >>>BASEL, Switzerland – When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool – LSD-25. "It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead – who were among the many artists inspired by LSD. "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems. https://web.archive.org/web/20180223065640/https://www.wired.com/2006/01/lsd-the-geeks-wonder-drug/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180223065640/https://www.wired... --- Kevin Herbert - https://maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_21-23.pdf https://maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_21-23.pdf
mrangle 3y ago
[flagged]
- LoganDark 3y ago
  I still wish that there were legal, regulated sources of these substances, so that those who choose to use them anyway can do so safely. There are some people who do appreciate altered perceptions/experiences from time to time, even if it's not a substitute for a sober daily life. People can get burned badly by a contaminated or adulterated supply. Harm reduction is better than fearmongering and imprisonment.
  - mrangle 3y ago
    One man's fearmongering is another's "that's objectively going to inhibit your ability to be long-term functional at a basic level, and more so the lower your socioeconomic status". >People can get burned badly by a contaminated or adulterated supply. It's almost like it isn't worth the risk.
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      > One man's fearmongering is another's "that's objectively going to inhibit your ability to be long-term functional at a basic level, and more so the lower your socioeconomic status". That's not the kind of fearmongering I'm talking about. I'm talking about withholding information about drugs, talking only about the risks they pose and all the reasons why nobody should ever take them. The "war on drugs" isn't just about telling people about the very real risks of drugs, it's about convincing people that these risks are all drugs are, and that if they want to take them, they are on their own and will face criminal charges or imprisonment. That is trying to scare people so much about drugs that they avoid them purely on the basis that they are scary and risky and illegal. While this works on a lot of people, it does not work on everyone, and those that want to try a substance anyway are left completely on their own. They do not have a safe supply, they do not have reliable sources of information about the substance they plan to take, they do not have instructions or help to take it in a way that is safe. It's not a good justification to say that this is okay because nobody should be taking these substances in the first place. You can't just prevent all drug use. Plus, some people legitimately have brain chemistries that would benefit from things like psychedelic trips or microdosing, even outside of a clinical environment under the supervision of a medical professional. There is little reason to make it difficult for them to take a substance like LSD safely and responsibly if it is a substance that can be used that way. To be clear, I'm not talking about junkies or drug addicts here. There are communities of people who seek mind-altering experiences as a form of curiosity and adventure, and not as a coping mechanism to escape reality or generate endless pleasure. It can be a recreational activity that doesn't deserve the stigma that it has gotten. > It's almost like it isn't worth the risk. The problem is that risk is artificially created. That risk does not have to exist. People could have access to safe, regulated supplies of drugs, just like pharmacies have access to safe regulated supplies of potentially life-altering medication for things like ADHD. Just like you can buy cough medicine from the store and not be afraid that it has fentanyl in it and that you could get sick and die from touching the package. (Fentanyl isn't anything like that by the way, that's such ridiculous exaggeration on the part of the media.)
50 3y ago
UCSC should also have a psychedelics studies program (is there any better place?), particularly on account of their already unique (and wonderful) History of Consciousness program. I remember an old and dear chemist friend of mine there who made me aware of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). I still have his copy of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History he lent me after taking a sociology course on drugs in society, if I recall correctly.
mitchbob 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240114171707/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-01-12/margaret-mead-wanted-to-save-the-world-through-lsd-the-government-had-other-ideas https://web.archive.org/web/20240114171707/https://www.latim...
benbreen 3y ago
Our toddler is now asleep so I am also here to do a brief AMA about the book and psychedelic science in the 20th century if anyone has questions. :)
- libraryatnight 3y ago
  Mushrooms have had a profound positive impact on my life so I'm drawn read anything in the orbit of psychedelics, but I'm even more interested after this interview! I pre-ordered a copy. It was cool to see your mention of Ginsberg and the Beats, my wife and I just stopped through City Lights and the small, but pretty neat, Beat museum that's nearby. Anyway, congrats on the book, I look forward to reading it!
- darkclouds 3y ago
  [dead]
deepnotderp 3y ago
I always find it interesting that whenever an article about psychedelics gets posted, the comments are always “We don’t know yet if this is positive, we need much more evidence and science!” Yet the standard of rigor for alcohol, weed, SSRIs and tiktok is somehow not as stringent.
- pcchristie 3y ago
  Even more than that, it's always mentioned by the scientists, advocates, and journalists ad-nauseam too.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  I don't. None of those things completely mess with your perspective of reality like psychedelics. Idk it's like comparing code correctness for a calculator vs a control module for a spaceship. Totally different ballparks.
- scythe 3y ago
  >alcohol, weed, SSRIs and tiktok Only one of these is conventionally understood to confer a net benefit in its most common use cases, and the SSRIs have been subject to extensive testing and approval processes. I disagree with the sibling commenter that alcohol does not dramatically alter your perception of reality. He simply isn't drinking enough. Likewise it is more than possible to limit the psychedelic dose so that it does not lead to heedlessness; Shulgin noted that many users prefer what he called a "plus-two" instead of the highly disorienting "plus-three". While the medical application of psychedelics is probably going to be subject to the same rigorous approval process that characterizes the medical application of other things, the primary benefits attributed to conventional psychedelics are not easily reconciled with the usual endpoints of contemporary medicine. People claim to have experienced improvements in moral character, reasoning about certain problems, interpersonal trust, and other behavior changes which are not considered targets of treatment by contemporary medicine. There have been a few limited studies looking at psychedelics for depression and anxiety, but the improvements are just OK, though the prospect of just taking a drug once instead of daily is certainly attractive. Meanwhile, the non-prescription use of psychedelics has been "experimented" with in a few cases, particularly in the Netherlands, Oregon, and Florida. Unfortunately, while incidents of psychedelic-influenced misbehavior are rare in general, they seem to become more common when the availability of these drugs is decriminalized. My hypothesis is that people are more likely to be reckless when they are not afraid of getting caught. A system of licensure for users would hopefully help prevent this.
Unbefleckt 3y ago
There's always this odd religious angle to psychedelics that users and advocates have that I find deeply off putting.
- abyssin 3y ago
  And that angle is also often visible when socializing with researchers in that field, except they try to hide it.

120 points by benbreen 3y ago

dang 3y ago

This is Ben's new book! One of Hacker News's resident historians.

tbalsam 3y ago
Oh, is this a pinned post? First time I think I've ever seen a post with so few votes do this before! :D
- dang 3y ago
  Not pinned, but it was a SCP pick (per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308)
  - tbalsam 3y ago
    Ah, thanks, very coolio! Great to see this as a feature, haven't quite seen that mechanic well and I think it's a really great way of implementing it! :D :)

tbalsam 3y ago

While I'm not the biggest fan of companies trying to land grab the psychedelic craze, there are things that would be nice to have, like psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated strongly with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow too big) over time. Sure, we haven't necessarily seen a ton of direct linkage to IRL use, yet, AFAIPK, but still it's something that's been strongly shown, and most 5-HT2A psychedelics also activate 5-HT2B. Curious about selectivity against 5-HT3 as well as the nausea can be a problem. Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream. Like, sure, maybe it's technically possible, but are you going to find a compound that selective (likely not) and is it actually going to remove all psychomometic effects (lol no, how do you think these things work)? There's always tradeoffs, it's like the weirdly detached desire to "reduce hallucinations" in language models but keep the same level of performance. Like, how do you think it's going to learn? You can't just magically make an unbiased perfect estimator with no variance for some limited capacity and data, your variance must live somewhere and in language models it tends to (generally) live in the higher level correlations between concepts. A good dose of basic mathematics and information theory really could set these fields straight. In any case, some of the future here looks exciting.

engeljohnb 3y ago
> psychedelics that don't activate 5-HT2B (associated strongly with aortic hypertrophy, i.e., your heart valves grow too big) Do you have a source for that? I'm a cardiac sonographer and I've never heard of aortic hypertrophy.
- dkasper 3y ago
  I hadn’t heard of it either but it does seem like there are some studies. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55920-5_16 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-55920-5_... Cardiac valvulopathy is likely not an adverse effect to consider when psychedelics are used occasionally but this may be different for “microdosing” which involves low doses of psychedelics taken daily or multiple times per week.
gavinray 3y ago
> Some people wish for non hallucinogenic 5-HT2A activation and that seems like a bizzarely detached from reality pipe dream. This is actually an area of active research with promising developments, FWIW: https://psychedelichealth.co.uk/2023/06/13/non-hallucinogenic-psilocybin-derivative-clinical-candidate/ https://psychedelichealth.co.uk/2023/06/13/non-hallucinogeni...
- binary132 3y ago
  It's hard for me to understand what is meant by "similar characteristics to psilocybin" without hallucinogenic effects. Is the idea that the hyperreality of the subconscious / inner life would dominate conscious perception, but without the confusing or distressing associated overload of the physical senses, e.g. seeing or hearing things that aren't there? It's almost impossible to imagine the one aspect of the dreamlike state dominating the mind without the disruption of the other, but even if the senses are perfectly unperturbed I would think the unconstrained and disordered psyche alone could be very upsetting or confusing.
  - tbalsam 3y ago

xhkkffbf 3y ago

When I was younger, I heard lots of stories about how Margaret Mead was the best anthropologist. Then, later I started hearing about how some rivals were digging up how she just made up half of the stories because she wanted to believe something different. I wonder if there's been any more exploration of her research and whether she applied this wishful thinking to LSD too.

losteric 3y ago
Did you ever wonder to validate the things you "started hearing"?
- cubefox 3y ago
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/201702/margaret-mead-and-the-great-samoan-nurture-hoax?amp https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-imprinted-brain/...
- xhkkffbf 3y ago
  Yes, that's why I'm asking here. Maybe someone else has some insight.

isoprophlex 3y ago

Having myself spent a period of my life thinking that all the world's problems would vanish if only we all took more LSD, MDMA and DMT... and since realizing that there really is no substitute for honesty, self-sacrifice and hard work... I'm reminded of Hunter S Thompson in Fear and Loathing: ... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

api 3y ago
Most people who try these things briefly entertain these ideas. They are really interesting and have the potential to trigger positive breakthroughs in a person’s thinking. They also have high potential in therapy for things like PTSD and depression. But all you have to do is spend a little time around drug users or pay attention to the discourse in psychedelic friendly circles (Joe Rogan and Russell Brand anyone?) to see that drugs are not some kind of magic enlightenment in a pill. If they were there’d be more enlightened drug users.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  There is also the example of the Canadian psychologist, Elliot Barker, who tried to treat criminal psychopaths with LSD, only for researchers to later learn that it made them more psychopathic and re-offend at higher rates.
  - lend000 3y ago
    Interesting, do you have a good source for this? Based on personal experience, it does seem somewhat intuitive that psychedelics would make you be more comfortable being "you", regardless of who you really are.
    - bugglebeetle 3y ago
      It’s covered to a fair extent in Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. I believe this is the retrospective study on rates of recidivism: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352266 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02352266

johndhi 3y ago

I could be just in a bitter mood, but somehow all of these articles decrying what a terrible job we did by shutting down psychedelic research in favor of a war on drugs... Don't make me feel optimistic that we've moved on or improved as a species. Like, this attitude of "oh NOW we see, we were just dumb 40 years ago! Everything will be better because NOW we get it" strikes me as exactly the same attitude that caused this problem in the first place. The regulators etc thought they knew better and "fixed" the errors of the past by starting the war on drugs. I guess to me, like, just focus on science and principles like free speech and the funding of interesting hypotheses. I feel like we're just demonizing a new group here and not learning the lesson of: "stop demonizing."

tastyfreeze 3y ago
Sure, it can feel that way if you believe that the war on drugs was started to keep people safe. However, if it was started as a means to persecute "undesireables" or political opponents the current trend seems less questionable.
travisjungroth 3y ago
I mean this sincerely: I think you’re right about this coming from your mood. You haven’t engaged with the actual argument much. It’s pretty reasonable to say things people did in the past were wrong. You can do things from first principles, but that also gets real abstract. Eventually, people need to be for or against specific policies.
fasterik 3y ago
I think we actually did learn things that we didn't know the first time around. We know that it's dangerous when influential researchers go around promoting psychedelics as a panacea like Timothy Leary did. The current wave of researchers seem to be much more responsible in emphasizing an evidence-based approach, the importance of screening for risk factors, and limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled therapeutic setting.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  > and limiting the use of psychedelics to a controlled therapeutic setting. Your other points I understand. This particular one I find controversial as one of the unkowns is what is an ideal setting? I've got friends that will drop a tab, and go for a beer - just as impossible for me as sitting in a 'controlled environment' [therapeutic setting] with a shrink, or a Man-retreat for ex-military types. I'd like to just have easy access to a known quality, and strength of chemical, that I can happily take, wheresoever I prefer.

pizza 3y ago

Knew that name sounded familiar.. Margaret Mead was one of the 'core group' members of the Macy Conference(s) in Cybernetics [0], whose other members included such people as John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, Walter Pitts, Warren McCulloch.. [0] https://asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeople.htm https://asc-cybernetics.org/foundations/history/MacyPeople.h...

samstave 3y ago
Also a wonderful anaecdote, WRT LSD and Tech - when Hoffman's 100th birthday happened they had an interview with one of the founders/first employees of Cisco, and he stated they were against drug testing, because they discovered the logic for BGP and RIP routing protocols in epiphanies due to LSD. Also, there is this letter from Hoffman to Jobs: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/read-the-never-before-pub_b_227887 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/read-the-never-before-pub_b_2...
- krispyfi 3y ago
  That Cisco anecdote is pretty great! Do you have a source or any additional keywords I might be able to use to search for it?
  - samstave 3y ago
    >>>BASEL, Switzerland – When Kevin Herbert has a particularly intractable programming problem, or finds himself pondering a big career decision, he deploys a powerful mind expanding tool – LSD-25. "It must be changing something about the internal communication in my brain. Whatever my inner process is that lets me solve problems, it works differently, or maybe different parts of my brain are used, " said Herbert, 42, an early employee of Cisco Systems who says he solved his toughest technical problems while tripping to drum solos by the Grateful Dead – who were among the many artists inspired by LSD. "When I'm on LSD and hearing something that's pure rhythm, it takes me to another world and into anther brain state where I've stopped thinking and started knowing," said Herbert who intervened to ban drug testing of technologists at Cisco Systems. https://web.archive.org/web/20180223065640/https://www.wired.com/2006/01/lsd-the-geeks-wonder-drug/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180223065640/https://www.wired... --- Kevin Herbert - https://maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_21-23.pdf https://maps.org/news-letters/v18n1/v18n1-MAPS_21-23.pdf

mrangle 3y ago

[flagged]

LoganDark 3y ago
I still wish that there were legal, regulated sources of these substances, so that those who choose to use them anyway can do so safely. There are some people who do appreciate altered perceptions/experiences from time to time, even if it's not a substitute for a sober daily life. People can get burned badly by a contaminated or adulterated supply. Harm reduction is better than fearmongering and imprisonment.
- mrangle 3y ago
  One man's fearmongering is another's "that's objectively going to inhibit your ability to be long-term functional at a basic level, and more so the lower your socioeconomic status". >People can get burned badly by a contaminated or adulterated supply. It's almost like it isn't worth the risk.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    > One man's fearmongering is another's "that's objectively going to inhibit your ability to be long-term functional at a basic level, and more so the lower your socioeconomic status". That's not the kind of fearmongering I'm talking about. I'm talking about withholding information about drugs, talking only about the risks they pose and all the reasons why nobody should ever take them. The "war on drugs" isn't just about telling people about the very real risks of drugs, it's about convincing people that these risks are all drugs are, and that if they want to take them, they are on their own and will face criminal charges or imprisonment. That is trying to scare people so much about drugs that they avoid them purely on the basis that they are scary and risky and illegal. While this works on a lot of people, it does not work on everyone, and those that want to try a substance anyway are left completely on their own. They do not have a safe supply, they do not have reliable sources of information about the substance they plan to take, they do not have instructions or help to take it in a way that is safe. It's not a good justification to say that this is okay because nobody should be taking these substances in the first place. You can't just prevent all drug use. Plus, some people legitimately have brain chemistries that would benefit from things like psychedelic trips or microdosing, even outside of a clinical environment under the supervision of a medical professional. There is little reason to make it difficult for them to take a substance like LSD safely and responsibly if it is a substance that can be used that way. To be clear, I'm not talking about junkies or drug addicts here. There are communities of people who seek mind-altering experiences as a form of curiosity and adventure, and not as a coping mechanism to escape reality or generate endless pleasure. It can be a recreational activity that doesn't deserve the stigma that it has gotten. > It's almost like it isn't worth the risk. The problem is that risk is artificially created. That risk does not have to exist. People could have access to safe, regulated supplies of drugs, just like pharmacies have access to safe regulated supplies of potentially life-altering medication for things like ADHD. Just like you can buy cough medicine from the store and not be afraid that it has fentanyl in it and that you could get sick and die from touching the package. (Fentanyl isn't anything like that by the way, that's such ridiculous exaggeration on the part of the media.)

50 3y ago

UCSC should also have a psychedelics studies program (is there any better place?), particularly on account of their already unique (and wonderful) History of Consciousness program. I remember an old and dear chemist friend of mine there who made me aware of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). I still have his copy of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History he lent me after taking a sociology course on drugs in society, if I recall correctly.

mitchbob 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240114171707/https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-01-12/margaret-mead-wanted-to-save-the-world-through-lsd-the-government-had-other-ideas https://web.archive.org/web/20240114171707/https://www.latim...

benbreen 3y ago

Our toddler is now asleep so I am also here to do a brief AMA about the book and psychedelic science in the 20th century if anyone has questions. :)

libraryatnight 3y ago
Mushrooms have had a profound positive impact on my life so I'm drawn read anything in the orbit of psychedelics, but I'm even more interested after this interview! I pre-ordered a copy. It was cool to see your mention of Ginsberg and the Beats, my wife and I just stopped through City Lights and the small, but pretty neat, Beat museum that's nearby. Anyway, congrats on the book, I look forward to reading it!
darkclouds 3y ago
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deepnotderp 3y ago

I always find it interesting that whenever an article about psychedelics gets posted, the comments are always “We don’t know yet if this is positive, we need much more evidence and science!” Yet the standard of rigor for alcohol, weed, SSRIs and tiktok is somehow not as stringent.

pcchristie 3y ago
Even more than that, it's always mentioned by the scientists, advocates, and journalists ad-nauseam too.
bongodongobob 3y ago
I don't. None of those things completely mess with your perspective of reality like psychedelics. Idk it's like comparing code correctness for a calculator vs a control module for a spaceship. Totally different ballparks.
scythe 3y ago
>alcohol, weed, SSRIs and tiktok Only one of these is conventionally understood to confer a net benefit in its most common use cases, and the SSRIs have been subject to extensive testing and approval processes. I disagree with the sibling commenter that alcohol does not dramatically alter your perception of reality. He simply isn't drinking enough. Likewise it is more than possible to limit the psychedelic dose so that it does not lead to heedlessness; Shulgin noted that many users prefer what he called a "plus-two" instead of the highly disorienting "plus-three". While the medical application of psychedelics is probably going to be subject to the same rigorous approval process that characterizes the medical application of other things, the primary benefits attributed to conventional psychedelics are not easily reconciled with the usual endpoints of contemporary medicine. People claim to have experienced improvements in moral character, reasoning about certain problems, interpersonal trust, and other behavior changes which are not considered targets of treatment by contemporary medicine. There have been a few limited studies looking at psychedelics for depression and anxiety, but the improvements are just OK, though the prospect of just taking a drug once instead of daily is certainly attractive. Meanwhile, the non-prescription use of psychedelics has been "experimented" with in a few cases, particularly in the Netherlands, Oregon, and Florida. Unfortunately, while incidents of psychedelic-influenced misbehavior are rare in general, they seem to become more common when the availability of these drugs is decriminalized. My hypothesis is that people are more likely to be reckless when they are not afraid of getting caught. A system of licensure for users would hopefully help prevent this.

Unbefleckt 3y ago

There's always this odd religious angle to psychedelics that users and advocates have that I find deeply off putting.

abyssin 3y ago
And that angle is also often visible when socializing with researchers in that field, except they try to hide it.