8 ms·

Better evidence is always good, but we much more drastically need better policy. Psychadelics' potential benefits are still being explored, but their risks are

by advael 2y ago

Better evidence is always good, but we much more drastically need better policy. Psychadelics' potential benefits are still being explored, but their risks are pretty well-documented and quite minimal compared to a broad swath of substances legal for adults to acquire. There is no reason consenting adults should be criminalized for seeking them out

Spivak 2y ago
Yep, we even have a name for substances that are generally recognized as safe, are consumed regularly by lots of people, and live a de facto decriminalized state— party drugs. We're doing people a disservice by not providing them in an above-board pure form, and bucketing them in with "not-even-once" drugs. How we didn't see that normalizing business dealings with criminal enterprise and then selling diy testing kits at the pharmacy wasn't a good way to handle this is beyond me. We could have taken the hint that once they're legalized in 1-2 states the safety and quality across the US jumps for some unknown reason.
- kelnos 2y ago
  Drug policy is often more about finding excuses to punish certain types or groups of people the state doesn't like, than it is about safety and health.
SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
The risks of extended-release oxycodone were well-documented and minimal too - but it turns out that causing a widespread addiction crisis isn't a side effect that shows up in clinical studies. Unsupervised courses of addictive drugs are inherently dangerous.
- dunefox 2y ago
  Good thing psychedelics aren't addictive.
  - eth0up 2y ago
    On the anecdotal side of benefits and addiction, podcast host Shawn Ryan, former Navy Seal and CIA operative, states very clearly that his experience with DMT abruptly excavated him from a pit of addiction that included alcohol and heavy prescription drugs. He described the experience as vividly showing him all the poisonous aspects of what he'd been doing. The impression was powerful enough that he immediately dropped it all and hasn't foundered since. There are extensive reports of heavy addictions being virtually vaporized through DMT. Obviously some measure of openness and desire to change is important, but I personally do not think the potential here is debatable.
  - lioeters 2y ago
    In fact there's widespread anecdotal evidence (and maybe "weak" science) that it's anti-addictive.
    - kelnos 2y ago
      While ketamine can be used to treat addiction (of other substances), my understanding is that ketamine itself can also be quite addictive. Is that not the case?
      - advael 2y ago
        I think it's pretty silly to include ketamine as a psychadelic to be frank. Ketamine is legal as a horse tranquilizer, which is to say it's primarily a sedative and a CNS depressant. However, high doses can result in a dissociative euphoric state known colloquially as a "k-hole", which I guess some people view as a kind of "trip", the mechanism and psychoactive presentation are pretty different from what you get from e.g. LSD and Psilocybin. I think the only reason these are grouped together is that ketamine is also seeing a renewed interest in research into microdosing as a depression remedy, but this seems to be mediated by a metabolite of ketamine and may be more of a direct remedy for a chemical imbalance than something like therapeutic trips. In other words, the grouping isn't psychopharmacological, but the zeitgeist of this moment in public perception of these drugs, which has been shaped by fifty-four years of the nonsensical logic of the prohibition enacted by the Controlled Substances Act in the US, some of the trappings of which have also been adopted by other nations, as often happens in a world where US policy has outsized influence both through trade and at gunpoint Personally I'm skeptical of a lot of psychopharmacological interventions for complex disorders like clinical depression. SSRIs for example strike me as a series of remarkably irresponsible experiments with drugs that appear to permanently alter cognition on wide swaths of the population. I view psychadelics and possibly ketamine as not necessarily more effective overall, but far less dangerous in terms of unknown effects
- advael 2y ago
  Others point out that no commonly used psychadelic is physically addictive. But also, the cost of prohibition dramatically outweighs the benefits. It creates pretenses for police corruption and militarization. It creates massive cartels in drugs, both criminal and "legal" (or at least low-liability for the cartel kingpins like the Sackler family), with perverse incentives all the way down. It destroys the trust between doctors and their patients by forcing doctors to serve as agents of the state when exercising the nonsensical authority to determine what substances adults can try for their ailments even with full informed consent. It destroys families and neighborhoods for "crimes" that amount to punishing self-harm with unconscionable cruelty - in effect kicking addicts while they're down. It also does not solve in any meaningful sense the problem of drug addiction. It's catastrophically bad policy that has no place in a free society
  - next_xibalba 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - seadan83 2y ago
      Obviously untrue? Washington states cannabis black market is destroyed and the benefits are manifold. The judicial system no longer deals with petty possession charges, and the selective enforcement of cannabis possession laws is a thing of the past.
      - next_xibalba 2y ago
        More intellectual dishonesty. My comment was about marijuana addiction. You chose to ignore that and address other claims.
        seadan83 2y ago
        Ah, I realize now that out of 12 some sentences, you were responding to exactly just the first. The more salient, interesting and more important points I thought were the last 11 some sentences Yes, physcadelics and marijuana have different habit formation characteristics. Since nobody is talking about marijuana here, and it is a totally different chemical compound - I assumed you were not just giving a what-about'ism response. How about nicotine addiction? Opioids, sex, gambling, sugar, alcohol? The habit formation characteristics are different and seemingly irrelevant. What was your point to smuggle in that marijuana sometimes has its habit forming characteristics downplayed? Do you have any evidence for habit formation properties of physcedlics? There is evidence for marijuana addiction that I am aware of: studies, surveys, treatment center numbers. The chemical compounds are completely different though. Why therefore are we now talking about cannabis addiction?
- andai 2y ago
  Psychedelics are famous for breaking addictions, and are apparently not addictive, though there certainly are "chronic" users, they appear to be in the minority? There's also something to be said for microdosing. It's still in the anecdotal phase afaik, but I found it very helpful for depression, anxiety and socializing.
  - SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
    Perhaps I don't know the right terminology. Ketamine, which the source article is mostly focused on, is significantly addictive. The author calls it a psychedelic, although I see other sources use that term more narrowly. LSD and MDMA, sure, are non-addictive, although LSD is active at such small doses that I'd have other concerns about making it widely available.
- wyldfire 2y ago
  > causing a widespread addiction crisis isn't a side effect that shows up in clinical studies. But increased abuse and dependence was apparent from studies. The studies were manipulated by the Sacklers and when that wasn't enough they bribed the FDA to say that their drug was "believed to reduce the abuse liability."
- eptcyka 2y ago
  They were not minimal, purdue fought the FDA a long while before it was legal. There were 0 clinical trials with humans done in the states before it was legal to prescribe and sell.
ogogmad 2y ago
Minimal? HPPD and DP/DR are incurable. When will psychedelics advocates be intellectually honest instead of being cultists and shills?
- SammyStacks 2y ago
  It's absurd to call psychedelic advocates "cultists and shills." What do you even define as "psychedelics advocates?" Are people who want further research into the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics cultists and shills? Obviously any substance will have side effects, and some will be very negative. But perhaps people with crippling mental health issues will be willing to take that risk when the science exists to allow them to give *informed* consent. Are those people cultists and shills?
  - ladzoppelin 2y ago
    I agree that not all advocates are "cultist" but I did not even know this existed as a real disease, https://www.perception.foundation/faq https://www.perception.foundation/faq. Wow , not sure if the site is accurate but either way it seems both sides of the issue need to be very honest and smart about psychedelics because info about Marijuana is just starting to be better known and that info was never in the conversation before, just like psychedelics now.
    - advael 2y ago
      There are few drugs for which withdrawal symptoms can include death, but alcohol is one of them and it's legal for adults to consume it recreationally. I don't think elucidating the risks of any substance is ever a bad thing, but it's also disingenuous to frame this as presenting "both sides" of an issue. The claim that a drug has some potential side effects simply has no bearing on the question of whether prohibition is good policy, because the case against prohibition isn't and has never been that any drug is completely risk-free or cures every disease or makes you shit rainbows or whatever nonsense, the claim is that adults should get to make those decisions for themselves
  - ogogmad 2y ago

by advael 2y ago

Spivak 2y ago

Yep, we even have a name for substances that are generally recognized as safe, are consumed regularly by lots of people, and live a de facto decriminalized state— party drugs. We're doing people a disservice by not providing them in an above-board pure form, and bucketing them in with "not-even-once" drugs. How we didn't see that normalizing business dealings with criminal enterprise and then selling diy testing kits at the pharmacy wasn't a good way to handle this is beyond me. We could have taken the hint that once they're legalized in 1-2 states the safety and quality across the US jumps for some unknown reason.

kelnos 2y ago
Drug policy is often more about finding excuses to punish certain types or groups of people the state doesn't like, than it is about safety and health.

SpicyLemonZest 2y ago

The risks of extended-release oxycodone were well-documented and minimal too - but it turns out that causing a widespread addiction crisis isn't a side effect that shows up in clinical studies. Unsupervised courses of addictive drugs are inherently dangerous.

dunefox 2y ago
Good thing psychedelics aren't addictive.
- eth0up 2y ago
  On the anecdotal side of benefits and addiction, podcast host Shawn Ryan, former Navy Seal and CIA operative, states very clearly that his experience with DMT abruptly excavated him from a pit of addiction that included alcohol and heavy prescription drugs. He described the experience as vividly showing him all the poisonous aspects of what he'd been doing. The impression was powerful enough that he immediately dropped it all and hasn't foundered since. There are extensive reports of heavy addictions being virtually vaporized through DMT. Obviously some measure of openness and desire to change is important, but I personally do not think the potential here is debatable.
- lioeters 2y ago
  In fact there's widespread anecdotal evidence (and maybe "weak" science) that it's anti-addictive.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    While ketamine can be used to treat addiction (of other substances), my understanding is that ketamine itself can also be quite addictive. Is that not the case?
    - advael 2y ago
      I think it's pretty silly to include ketamine as a psychadelic to be frank. Ketamine is legal as a horse tranquilizer, which is to say it's primarily a sedative and a CNS depressant. However, high doses can result in a dissociative euphoric state known colloquially as a "k-hole", which I guess some people view as a kind of "trip", the mechanism and psychoactive presentation are pretty different from what you get from e.g. LSD and Psilocybin. I think the only reason these are grouped together is that ketamine is also seeing a renewed interest in research into microdosing as a depression remedy, but this seems to be mediated by a metabolite of ketamine and may be more of a direct remedy for a chemical imbalance than something like therapeutic trips. In other words, the grouping isn't psychopharmacological, but the zeitgeist of this moment in public perception of these drugs, which has been shaped by fifty-four years of the nonsensical logic of the prohibition enacted by the Controlled Substances Act in the US, some of the trappings of which have also been adopted by other nations, as often happens in a world where US policy has outsized influence both through trade and at gunpoint Personally I'm skeptical of a lot of psychopharmacological interventions for complex disorders like clinical depression. SSRIs for example strike me as a series of remarkably irresponsible experiments with drugs that appear to permanently alter cognition on wide swaths of the population. I view psychadelics and possibly ketamine as not necessarily more effective overall, but far less dangerous in terms of unknown effects
advael 2y ago
Others point out that no commonly used psychadelic is physically addictive. But also, the cost of prohibition dramatically outweighs the benefits. It creates pretenses for police corruption and militarization. It creates massive cartels in drugs, both criminal and "legal" (or at least low-liability for the cartel kingpins like the Sackler family), with perverse incentives all the way down. It destroys the trust between doctors and their patients by forcing doctors to serve as agents of the state when exercising the nonsensical authority to determine what substances adults can try for their ailments even with full informed consent. It destroys families and neighborhoods for "crimes" that amount to punishing self-harm with unconscionable cruelty - in effect kicking addicts while they're down. It also does not solve in any meaningful sense the problem of drug addiction. It's catastrophically bad policy that has no place in a free society
- next_xibalba 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - seadan83 2y ago
    Obviously untrue? Washington states cannabis black market is destroyed and the benefits are manifold. The judicial system no longer deals with petty possession charges, and the selective enforcement of cannabis possession laws is a thing of the past.
    - next_xibalba 2y ago
      More intellectual dishonesty. My comment was about marijuana addiction. You chose to ignore that and address other claims.
      - seadan83 2y ago
        Ah, I realize now that out of 12 some sentences, you were responding to exactly just the first. The more salient, interesting and more important points I thought were the last 11 some sentences Yes, physcadelics and marijuana have different habit formation characteristics. Since nobody is talking about marijuana here, and it is a totally different chemical compound - I assumed you were not just giving a what-about'ism response. How about nicotine addiction? Opioids, sex, gambling, sugar, alcohol? The habit formation characteristics are different and seemingly irrelevant. What was your point to smuggle in that marijuana sometimes has its habit forming characteristics downplayed? Do you have any evidence for habit formation properties of physcedlics? There is evidence for marijuana addiction that I am aware of: studies, surveys, treatment center numbers. The chemical compounds are completely different though. Why therefore are we now talking about cannabis addiction?
andai 2y ago
Psychedelics are famous for breaking addictions, and are apparently not addictive, though there certainly are "chronic" users, they appear to be in the minority? There's also something to be said for microdosing. It's still in the anecdotal phase afaik, but I found it very helpful for depression, anxiety and socializing.
- SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
  Perhaps I don't know the right terminology. Ketamine, which the source article is mostly focused on, is significantly addictive. The author calls it a psychedelic, although I see other sources use that term more narrowly. LSD and MDMA, sure, are non-addictive, although LSD is active at such small doses that I'd have other concerns about making it widely available.
wyldfire 2y ago
> causing a widespread addiction crisis isn't a side effect that shows up in clinical studies. But increased abuse and dependence was apparent from studies. The studies were manipulated by the Sacklers and when that wasn't enough they bribed the FDA to say that their drug was "believed to reduce the abuse liability."
eptcyka 2y ago
They were not minimal, purdue fought the FDA a long while before it was legal. There were 0 clinical trials with humans done in the states before it was legal to prescribe and sell.

ogogmad 2y ago

Minimal? HPPD and DP/DR are incurable. When will psychedelics advocates be intellectually honest instead of being cultists and shills?

SammyStacks 2y ago
It's absurd to call psychedelic advocates "cultists and shills." What do you even define as "psychedelics advocates?" Are people who want further research into the potential therapeutic benefits of psychedelics cultists and shills? Obviously any substance will have side effects, and some will be very negative. But perhaps people with crippling mental health issues will be willing to take that risk when the science exists to allow them to give *informed* consent. Are those people cultists and shills?
- ladzoppelin 2y ago
  I agree that not all advocates are "cultist" but I did not even know this existed as a real disease, https://www.perception.foundation/faq https://www.perception.foundation/faq. Wow , not sure if the site is accurate but either way it seems both sides of the issue need to be very honest and smart about psychedelics because info about Marijuana is just starting to be better known and that info was never in the conversation before, just like psychedelics now.
  - advael 2y ago
    There are few drugs for which withdrawal symptoms can include death, but alcohol is one of them and it's legal for adults to consume it recreationally. I don't think elucidating the risks of any substance is ever a bad thing, but it's also disingenuous to frame this as presenting "both sides" of an issue. The claim that a drug has some potential side effects simply has no bearing on the question of whether prohibition is good policy, because the case against prohibition isn't and has never been that any drug is completely risk-free or cures every disease or makes you shit rainbows or whatever nonsense, the claim is that adults should get to make those decisions for themselves
- ogogmad 2y ago