He was on every kind of excellence list at uni, on 3 different merit scholarships (which all unfortunately went directly to the uni, not personally to him).

That weekend was in the middle of the semester; he basically quit that week, but still came in to campus to complete his TA duties which are hard to drop mid semester; then went on an around-the-world trip for a year. I met him once randomly on the street afterwards, and he said he was happier than ever before, with no intention of going back to his studies or any other aspect of his former life.

I had told this around the time he came back from his trip to two of my friends, neither of whom knew that guy.

One’s response was “wow, that weekend saved him from decades of misery”.

The other’s response was “wow, that weekend had ruined him forever”.

20 years later, I still don’t have a firm opinion myself.

The other’s response was “wow, that weekend had ruined him forever”.

The truth is in the eye of the beholder, of course. "Save" and "ruin" is such strong language though. However, I'm willing to bet this guy is better off not worrying about others think, and maybe, by extension, you're better off for not judging.

After some amount of different hallucinogens he became lastingly weird. He would start saying things about "divine geometry" and "seeing yellow auras" when he closed his eyes and became a big believer in all sorts of supernatural (e.g. horoscopes)

He did come back to something not too far from normalcy maybe 8 years later, last time I heard from him.

Normality is a broad but pretty well-researched subject and i think it's safe to say, belief in horoscopes and other unsubstantiated supernatural phenomena ain't it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_(behavior)

In that way, "normality" is flexible: if you change your behavior in a consistent way, your new behavior is normal by that definition. You didn't become "abnormal" you simply redefined your normal.

Now the article goes on to mention that you could also define this relative to a larger population, etc, which supports your point - but the very fact the headline definitely doesn't align with your claim shows that this is not as straightforward as you make it out to be.

But I for one feel everybody around me finds "weirdness" unbecoming. I find it to be an inescapable reality that people will care about you less and not want to get you for any manner of tiny deviation (e.g. as an extreme example, just if you said "beep" outloud every 10 minutes this would be reason enough for I think half of the population or more to not want to associate with you)

In my friends case though, I think what scared me the most was he became very unclear/metaphorical in speaking about even basic topics and didn't seem to realize how much trouble people had understanding him.

I want to demystify this a bit. I don't think it's as unusual as you suggest.

I assume you haven't had any substances lately. What do you see when you close your eyes? If you're like I've always been, you see floaters, a few spots of light here and there, maybe a faint "ghost" of the image your eye had seconds before, especially if it was bright. I first noticed that in childhood. In childhood I also noticed that in low light, like in my parents' car in the evening, I would see this light occasionally. I read in some places that this is a possible explanation for when kids complain about seeing monsters in the closet, or similar. As I got older I noticed this sort of thing less.

Later I started getting migraines, though, and when I get those symptoms I also see light that isn't there. Sometimes when I have a headache I can see it come in waves when I close my eyes.

Later still, I got a little into meditation, and I noticed I could make those perceptions come about by manipulating my breathing.

And finally, I did a low dose of psilocybin exactly one time in my life. I saw colors when closing my eyes. It was pretty much the same as all those experiences above, only a little more intense.

But you know, we also see faces in clouds. Sometimes we think we spot recognizable objects, then look closer and longer, and they're not there. Our brains are taking shortcuts based on limited data all the time, without drugs. What the drug does, in my layperson's understanding, is make your brain very eager to make these connections. Just as you might see a face in a random, noisy pattern when you're not looking closely, your brain is eager to interpret whatever visual data it gets and run with it. When your brain is deprived of sensory input, such as in darkness or with eyes closed, seemingly it can do this more.

I would say about your friend, don't rush to judge them for describing a particular wrinkle of how his brain works. Perhaps they got a little too into talking and thinking about it, or came to the wrong conclusion. But the experience itself is not that remarkable, and happens to sound-minded people all the time.

I would recommend psychedelics, but like anything, it depends on the person. There are dangers, but those dangers can be controlled quite well. At the population level, it is safer than coffee. At the individual level, it varies, just like anything else.

I will note that after taking ~110 μg of LSD-25 on several occasions, my overall cognition improved dramatically.

I have eye floaters and I can live just fine with them jumping around, still doesn't change the fact they are annoying and if I could get rid of them I would; if they were caused by something I did and I could change that, I would.

I'm sure most people with HPPD, if given the choice, would never have done psychedelics in the first place; HPPD is why I stayed away from psychedelics.

My understanding is that many spiritual traditions have historically viewed psychedelics as ego’s way of “grasping” for enlightenment, for many before they are prepared for what they may experience.

A “bad trip” can leave someone in a state of confusion that they aren’t quite prepared to deal with.

Here's an interesting post about it maybe being due to extremely high "openness" caused by psychs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...

I suspect this is much more common than anyone realizes: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-o...

I meant lethal overdose, like heroin. I certainly I know some people who take too many drugs. Personally I don’t feel like I have to do any psychedelics ever again, but maybe I will, I don’t know. They are not chemically addictive anyway.

And your high school friend taking them at such a young age?! Maybe that’s why, I don’t know. Maybe he’s mentally ill anyway? Maybe it was the drugs? Maybe it was other drugs? That’s why I would like to see more controlled studies from reputable places like John Hopkins. The data looks relatively promising so far, but more needs to be done I think.

I don’t think his friend is mentally ill but he reminds me of someone like Eckhart Tolle.

Anyways, I had a good experience, you know some people who, from your perspective, have not. That's why we need studies.

It is possible the drugs permanently changed this person. It is also possible the drugs merely accelerated what would have happened regardless.

For most people, psychedelics are indeed pretty harmless.

This kind of thinking scans to me like pointing at the severity of plane crashes as a reason not to fly, while poo-poohing their infrequency.

I have, for about a decade now, worked with a number of groups who ritually consume some of the most powerful psychedelics on the planet. I have journeyed with hundreds of different people, and seen truly adverse reactions, where it was more than just a bad trip and the person needed medical attention, all of once.

EDIT: Yes, absolutely, there are risks, but in my experience, they can almost all be mitigated with a little honesty and self-awareness. Maybe don't play with these things by yourself if you have a family history of some kinds of mental illness. Maybe don't play with them at all if you're on certain medications, or have certain, other mental health concerns.

Like schizophrenia. Yes, let's blame "drugs" for what happens when people whose brains are already wired to believe their own, demonstrably false narratives, take them.

I replied to you because your mention of Syd Barrett was the best place to hang my "don't extrapolate from your cousin's brother's nephew's uncle's former roomate's anecdata" point, without coming across that dismissively, because it gave me the clearest opening to talk about occult mental health concerns and such.

Of course you can overdose on them. Even a sub-threshold dose of psilocin can kill many rabbits. Some brains just can't handle the alterations in perception these agents induce. I still fail to see how that's the agent's fault, and not the person who put it in themselves, especially if they're being cavalier, or showing off, or mixing things they aren't prepared to handle.

I can't go into the details of my friend requiring medical attention without violating confidences, but I can say their own behavior and attitude towards the experience beforehand were, let's call it "materially contributory" to their experience during and after.

EDIT: Phrasing.

Even after only doing it once years ago, I still see strange waves sometimes when I see ripples in water or the wake from boats. At the end of it, I was on the beach staring at the waves and the rippled the same way. I never used to see this in water before that.

Also overdose is too strong a word, and has a different connotation here than elsewhere. One can take 100 micrograms and have a wonderful experience, or one can take 100 micrograms and see the devil and never be the same. The mind is the difference maker, not the quantity of the drug.

People have taken extremely large doses and not perished (one story of people mistakenly snorting crystals thinking it was cocaine comes to mind).

Personally, I liked acid, it was far more pleasant than any other hallucinogen i've done and has the added bonus of not making you feel sick(if it's pure).

Schizophrenia typically starts manifesting in people in their teens and early twenties. It is not uncommon for people who are feeling that things are not quite right to experiment with drugs as a way to self medicate.

It appears that stressful situations can be the triggers for this, such as: Moving away from home for the first time, personal relationship issues, or experimenting with psychedelics.

It's not clear to me that the arrow of causality necessarily points the direction that you think it does.

Dang.

Perhaps it is possible to die from an overdose of psychedelics, I stand corrected. However, it seems like you can technically overdose from anything after a certain amount. You can technically die from overdosing on potassium if you eat something like 1000 bananas in a day. What I meant is that you can't overdose, just like you can't from weed (even though, I'm sure, if you smoke 1000000 blunts you would). What I mean is that you're no way near something like heroin where the difference between death and bliss isn't much at all. You'd have to be pretty insane to die from overdosing on psychedelics.

As for your friend, from what I’ve learned on psychedelics, it can give people a “religious experience”, for a lack of a better term. It seems that’s what happened to him. However, how much weight one should give those experiences is debatable. If one is going to believe in those positive experiences, shouldn’t one also believe in the negative ones?

I mean, is anyone really the same person after a few years? Especially someone you knew in high school?

He's still very intelligent, but all of his mental resources are wasted on fighting his illness so to speak. To some it might seem like he ruined his brain with drugs but I sincerely doubt the drugs did much damage at all.

The only guarantee is that your ability to change increases due to increased neuroplasticity. Whether the change is good or bad is ultimately up to you, which is why I think if these drugs were to be legalized that the intake should happen in conjunction with in-person therapy in a controlled environment and not at all something you'd just pickup at a pharmacy and take on your own like anti-depressants are today.

See, it worked!