3 ms·

Psychedelics open your brain up to rewiring in some way, and can be used under direction to treat a lot of things. But of course, people who didn't like the Vie

by inigyou 3mo ago

Psychedelics open your brain up to rewiring in some way, and can be used under direction to treat a lot of things. But of course, people who didn't like the Vietnam War used them recreationally, which is why the US government made them globally illegal.

cindyllm 3mo ago
[dead]
an0malous 3mo ago
Psychedelics desolve the conceptual prison your mind is in, the government made them illegal because they build those prisons. Charitably, you could argue a functional society involves some amount of indoctrination into a set of shared beliefs and a large percentage of people losing that indoctrination would destroy society. Could the US function if everyone was a pacifist, anti-capitalist, hippie? I think that was and still is the primary concern.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Interestingly, we know the CIA tried to use psychedelics to make people become the opposite of hippies, and they failed. This was part of MKULTRA. They were banned shortly after this failure.
- bushwart 3mo ago
  Psychedelics can dissolve more than the mind's conceptual prisons, perhaps much more of the mind than one would like. How did the hippie-era stereotype of the burned out acid head disappear so quickly from popular culture?
  - gchamonlive 3mo ago
    Kary Mullis is known to have used a lot of it and discovered PCR while off psychedelics. There's also the famous Hoffman's bycicle day. The stereotype is just that, and might be a result of lack of mental stimulation rather than LSD abuse, which is possibly the safest drug in terms of toxicity.
  - scarecrowbob 3mo ago
    Why? Because it's not a very accurate stereotype. I do first aid at music festivals and volunteer at a free clinic that serves a homeless population. I see a lot of spun folks and folks in varying stages of "burned out" (to use the term from the stereotype). I'm still in EMT school, but I've had to work with a lot of folks having adverse reactions to these substances. Meth and alcohol, simply being poor, childhood trauma, getting into a bad medical situation, losing a job and not finding one; all of those things will put folks into some bad places. But most substance abuse, in my limited experience, comes down to various traumas folks get into and maybe some chemical predispositions. That's not how most of the folks I know who have had very adverse psychedelic experiences have gotten into those states. And it is generally a very transitory state. While there are long-term psychological effects from stuff like acid (and IME, MDMA, Ket, and Nitrous are worse physiologically than things like LSD, C2B, DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, etc), generally psychedelic substances lead people to doing less of those drugs over time and that has a very different effect than, say, alcohol and chronic poverty. Propaganda about these things has a hard time taking hold in the face of most folks lived reality.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Thank you for your service
  - Anonbrit 3mo ago
    Why has the stereotype of the coked-out stock trader or ketamine addicted delusional billionaire not held the same place in popular culture? Vagely functional coke heads are very, very common in certain circles
- mikert89 3mo ago
  anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse
  - virgil_disgr4ce 3mo ago
    > did Psychedelics more than a few times If you want to specify LSD, you should do that, not "psychedelics." There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. You cannot generalize that word into "many people never make it back." That is flat-out wrong, not to mention harmful.
    - mikert89 3mo ago
      i disagree. i have a unique view of this type of drug use. i was part of a large social circle of psychedelic users, over the course of many years. i very rarely took part. i watched close friends change.
    - jdietrich 3mo ago
      >There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. Psilocybin is a more selective 5-HT2A agonist than LSD and is more rapidly metabolised. At normal recreational or clinical doses, they really aren't very different. LSD isn't quite as well-researched as psilocybin as a psychiatric drug, but the data we have suggests that it isn't meaningfully different in terms of risks or benefits.
  - bossyTeacher 3mo ago
    > anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse Way to generalise. I also know people who drank water, went to sleep and never woke up. Ego dissolution is dosage dependent and you don't need to reach that point to get positive benefits. Also, many people do psychdelics that probably shouldn't.
joinjune 3mo ago
Drug use changes the way you vote. The people who were running the country during the Vietnam war recognized this and, along with the people who owned industry/media, didn't want that kind of change to go mainstream.
- tokai 3mo ago
  That was not why they started the war on drugs, and we have that on record.
  - guerrilla 3mo ago
    Always beleive the record...
  - MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
    Yeah, Disenfranchise the hippies and the blacks by targeting those communities with heavy policing. Sorta like today where there's similar drug use levels between white and black populations, but one side is more heavily policed than the other.
    - inigyou 3mo ago
      Crack cocaine and cocaine are the same drug with a different delivery method but we all know exactly why one is punished more harshly. There's a federal policy that a given quantity of crack cocaine is to be treated as 10 times that quantity of regular cocaine, IIRC?
    - deburo 3mo ago
      Perhaps you'd like to dig down into the stats using AI to find out that the gap in policing isn't really due to race. Check by poverty level, and perhaps by geographic areas.
      - MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
        I was trying to hide my power level but yeah, the point is to maintain a permanent "underclass" that can't pick and choose what work they take. If everyone was truly free, we'd have to pay the real price to clean up shit and that would mean an inversion of our pyramid scheme.
ASalazarMX 3mo ago
Every time I see "does {PSYCHEDELIC} cure {AILMENT}" studies, I fear a recreation of the opioid crisis. They need to be studied as a treatment, yes, but people, doctors, and pharmaceuticals will abuse them given the opportunity and lack of oversight.
- inigyou 3mo ago
  Psychedelics aren't even remotely addictive. People who take them usually don't want to take any more of them for months.
  - ASalazarMX 3mo ago
    While most won't give you withdrawal symptoms, they can cause psychological addiction.
    - IAmBroom 3mo ago
      In the same sense that Pinterest can do so.

by inigyou 3mo ago

cindyllm 3mo ago

[dead]

an0malous 3mo ago

Psychedelics desolve the conceptual prison your mind is in, the government made them illegal because they build those prisons. Charitably, you could argue a functional society involves some amount of indoctrination into a set of shared beliefs and a large percentage of people losing that indoctrination would destroy society. Could the US function if everyone was a pacifist, anti-capitalist, hippie? I think that was and still is the primary concern.

inigyou 3mo ago
Interestingly, we know the CIA tried to use psychedelics to make people become the opposite of hippies, and they failed. This was part of MKULTRA. They were banned shortly after this failure.
bushwart 3mo ago
Psychedelics can dissolve more than the mind's conceptual prisons, perhaps much more of the mind than one would like. How did the hippie-era stereotype of the burned out acid head disappear so quickly from popular culture?
- gchamonlive 3mo ago
  Kary Mullis is known to have used a lot of it and discovered PCR while off psychedelics. There's also the famous Hoffman's bycicle day. The stereotype is just that, and might be a result of lack of mental stimulation rather than LSD abuse, which is possibly the safest drug in terms of toxicity.
- scarecrowbob 3mo ago
  Why? Because it's not a very accurate stereotype. I do first aid at music festivals and volunteer at a free clinic that serves a homeless population. I see a lot of spun folks and folks in varying stages of "burned out" (to use the term from the stereotype). I'm still in EMT school, but I've had to work with a lot of folks having adverse reactions to these substances. Meth and alcohol, simply being poor, childhood trauma, getting into a bad medical situation, losing a job and not finding one; all of those things will put folks into some bad places. But most substance abuse, in my limited experience, comes down to various traumas folks get into and maybe some chemical predispositions. That's not how most of the folks I know who have had very adverse psychedelic experiences have gotten into those states. And it is generally a very transitory state. While there are long-term psychological effects from stuff like acid (and IME, MDMA, Ket, and Nitrous are worse physiologically than things like LSD, C2B, DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, etc), generally psychedelic substances lead people to doing less of those drugs over time and that has a very different effect than, say, alcohol and chronic poverty. Propaganda about these things has a hard time taking hold in the face of most folks lived reality.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Thank you for your service
- Anonbrit 3mo ago
  Why has the stereotype of the coked-out stock trader or ketamine addicted delusional billionaire not held the same place in popular culture? Vagely functional coke heads are very, very common in certain circles
mikert89 3mo ago
anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse
- virgil_disgr4ce 3mo ago
  > did Psychedelics more than a few times If you want to specify LSD, you should do that, not "psychedelics." There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. You cannot generalize that word into "many people never make it back." That is flat-out wrong, not to mention harmful.
  - mikert89 3mo ago
    i disagree. i have a unique view of this type of drug use. i was part of a large social circle of psychedelic users, over the course of many years. i very rarely took part. i watched close friends change.
  - jdietrich 3mo ago
    >There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. Psilocybin is a more selective 5-HT2A agonist than LSD and is more rapidly metabolised. At normal recreational or clinical doses, they really aren't very different. LSD isn't quite as well-researched as psilocybin as a psychiatric drug, but the data we have suggests that it isn't meaningfully different in terms of risks or benefits.
- bossyTeacher 3mo ago
  > anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse Way to generalise. I also know people who drank water, went to sleep and never woke up. Ego dissolution is dosage dependent and you don't need to reach that point to get positive benefits. Also, many people do psychdelics that probably shouldn't.

joinjune 3mo ago

Drug use changes the way you vote. The people who were running the country during the Vietnam war recognized this and, along with the people who owned industry/media, didn't want that kind of change to go mainstream.

tokai 3mo ago
That was not why they started the war on drugs, and we have that on record.
- guerrilla 3mo ago
  Always beleive the record...
- MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
  Yeah, Disenfranchise the hippies and the blacks by targeting those communities with heavy policing. Sorta like today where there's similar drug use levels between white and black populations, but one side is more heavily policed than the other.
  - inigyou 3mo ago
    Crack cocaine and cocaine are the same drug with a different delivery method but we all know exactly why one is punished more harshly. There's a federal policy that a given quantity of crack cocaine is to be treated as 10 times that quantity of regular cocaine, IIRC?
  - deburo 3mo ago
    Perhaps you'd like to dig down into the stats using AI to find out that the gap in policing isn't really due to race. Check by poverty level, and perhaps by geographic areas.
    - MSFT_Edging 3mo ago
      I was trying to hide my power level but yeah, the point is to maintain a permanent "underclass" that can't pick and choose what work they take. If everyone was truly free, we'd have to pay the real price to clean up shit and that would mean an inversion of our pyramid scheme.

ASalazarMX 3mo ago

Every time I see "does {PSYCHEDELIC} cure {AILMENT}" studies, I fear a recreation of the opioid crisis. They need to be studied as a treatment, yes, but people, doctors, and pharmaceuticals will abuse them given the opportunity and lack of oversight.

inigyou 3mo ago
Psychedelics aren't even remotely addictive. People who take them usually don't want to take any more of them for months.
- ASalazarMX 3mo ago
  While most won't give you withdrawal symptoms, they can cause psychological addiction.
  - IAmBroom 3mo ago
    In the same sense that Pinterest can do so.