I don’t understand this common response at all.

If I prescribe penicillin to a patient with a pcn allergy, the fact that I “uncovered an underlying flaw” is irrelevant. Pcn is dangerous to them and should not be prescribed to them.

This is true, in one sense or another, of the majority of adverse effects people have from medications given in therapeutic ranges. It’s basically what having an adverse effect -means-.

It doesn’t mean that medication shouldn’t be given when appropriate, but it’s not a rationale for deflecting attention from the risks of the medication.

The difference is that penicillin allergies can only be triggered by penicillin (or maybe penicillin-adjacent analogues). Mental illnesses and psychedelics don't work the same way.

Psychedelics bring these issues to the forefront, but they don't necessarily cause mental health issues, as the same issues could happen without LSD. I understand what you're trying to express with your example of penicillin, but it's not the same thing.

In my opinion, it would be more accurate to compare psychedelic drugs to activities like meditation and fasting, which also have a risk of anxiety, discomfort, and bringing out dormant mental health issues in some people.

A good mindset of psychedelic use is that you’d like things to be brought to the surface so they can be worked with and integrated.

This is precisely what makes them such useful tools for things like PTSD and why it can be a bummer if someone does Molly at a rave and winds up with a memory of being molested and her friends are too busy doing K to talk with her.

In a safe and supportive setting, this is exactly what can help people heal.

It’s when things get uncovered but not fully released and processed they can occupy ones life.

A good psychedelic therapist or sitter should be able to help someone integrat a current or former bad trip.

> In my opinion, it would be more accurate to compare psychedelic drugs to activities like meditation and fasting

I've done all 3 of these (meditation as in mindfulness), and I disagree.

Of these 3, meditation is the most harmless. It is relaxing, not discomforting (I'll hook into this again at the end of my post).

Someone can start meditating or fasting without guidance (though I recommend guidance in both cases, especially concerning fasting) and resume normal life whenever they feel like it. With psychedelics, that one doesn't fly and if you do meditation in a group such as a 10 day Vipassana course or are in a religion or cult being forced to fast then you might also feel the same pressure. But that's an outlier; in general, meditation doesn't have such -or any- pressure. It is relaxing.

Finally, I've followed a mindfulness course for people with autism and there is no such thing as that with regards to psychedelics. The psychedelics also affected my autism, and in some situations made it much worse. All of that while I wasn't aware I had autism!

> It is relaxing, not discomforting

Meditation practice is not relaxing at all. The effect after meditating might be in part feeling relaxed, but in general meditation is pretty hard work.

This is probably a very common misconception, you see all the pictures of people meditating at the beach in front of a beautiful sunset and think that meditating is like going to the spa, when in fact meditating is much more like the mental equivalent of going to the gym.

Also, in many occasions (especially during a 10 day retreat like Vipassana), it can be very uncomfortable if not outright physically painful (although usually never dangerous).

For me mindfulness is far more relaxing than studying, watching a TV series, working, programming, etc (all "active" things). Never mind socializing which is the opposite of relaxing to me, ALWAYS (autism-related). Although it differs per technique (some are easier and fit me more than others).

Especially the effect after it makes that work more fruitful, since for various hours I'll be less tense and more focused. For example, it'd make socializing more relaxing.

Those are 2 very valid reasons for me to call it relaxing. Then again, I find running and listening to certain music also relaxing. Because after a while, I get in an automated flow ("trance") akin to meditating.

The 3rd reason is that if I'm rather tired, mindfulness can potentially get me to sleep. I often (almost daily) do it before I go to sleep, and it aids me to get to sleep. I much prefer it over: overthinking, fantasizing, or masturbating/sex.

Its already painful for me to meditate whilst sitting instead of lying but one gets used to that. Its just untrained muscles getting trained. As long as you don't strain yourself, you're fine.

Psychedelics are not just spiritual/mental. They can literally alter your brain chemistry and, in rare cases, cause severe adverse effects. There need to be more studies done on the brain chemistry so we know how to predict and prevent those adverse effects.

This is the common response from proponents of LSD. To them, it's never the LSD, and instead the adverse reaction must be because the person had a mind that was predisposed to some sort of mental illness.

Even if it's true that someone has some kind of latent / dormant condition that is ultimately triggered by the LSD, then the act of taking the LSD itself was the catalyst, and the person would have been far better off not ever having taken the drug.

The drug is illegal, and the argument growing up was that the "government was suppressing free thought" or whatever nonsense was being pushed, but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. Whether connected to a predisposition of mental illness or not, it's not a hard connection and people should be extra cautious when considering whether to engage in such behavior.

Care should be taken, like with any substance we ingest. However, I disagree with your premise.

We do not know if LSD was in fact the catalyst. We don’t know if the people who got ruined after taking a single tab of LSD actually took LSD or some research chemical (which are quite commonly sold off as LSD).

Some research psychedelics are more dangerous physically, and certainly less researched, but in terms of psychological effects, all psychedelics are generally pretty similar. It's silly to assume LSD is somehow significantly less likely to cause psychological trouble.

Yeah, 2CI is for example very dangerous psychologically, and I’m sure it gets sold as LSD when an unscrupulous dealer has excess inventory.

>The drug is illegal

>but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people.

With this reasoning, skydiving, base jumping, and even the act of simply driving a car should should also be illegal. We let people do far more dangerous things, yet keep them legal. There is another reason LSD & most psychedelics are illegal. What that is, I don't know.

What's your evidence that those people are worse off having taken the psychedelics? You can't know the counterfactual isn't that those people who respond poorly to the drug would have had a similar mental break without it. Until the drug is studied rigorously all we have to go on are conflicting anecdotes. That said in the face of a lack of reliable information caution is warranted.

Even if that person would not have taken LSD and would have had a psychotic episode 5 years later due to the underlying issue, that's still 5 years of good health lost because of LSD.

Or it’s 5 years less of post-treatment life.

We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?

It seems pretty delusional to just say these people would have spontaneously lost their minds even if they didn't do extremely powerful mind altering drugs.

It seems pretty delusional to make conclusions when you don't even know if they really took LSD or something sold as LSD, but actually dangerous, and are missing basically all other important data other than "they took something and then became crazy", while the then in the sentence means "after that", as in time, not "because of that".

It’s literally guaranteed that some of them would have.

So if someone takes any medication and strokes out, has an MI, or stops breathing, we can't blame the drug because maybe that was going to happen anyway?

Usually, yes. That's why we haven't banned Tylenol.

>The drug is illegal,

Only in certain contexts (ie. some instances of interstate commerce).

I agree, it only should be available to those, who are already in danger by pre-existing conditions like chronic depression or other similar serious mental conditions.

That’s the point - there are other, slower, safer means to effect positive change on your mind that don’t run the risk of fucking up your brain from some random effect you had no way of predicting. The point is that it’s effects are powerful, which is why there is finally a revival into what exactly is happening.

This isn't a useful distinction unless you can reliably identify the flaw before the negative impact of LSD. Without a detection mechanism, this is as actionable as "LSD does bad things to some people"

It probably did but that flaw wasn't obvious at all beforehand. He was a bit eccentric but also a really bright and funny guy with a lot of friends and a very dedicated student.