Official propaganda ... teenagers trying to fly off balconies and war on drugs and so
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Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
41–50 of 125 posts
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
After 1st psychedelic experience “damn, everyone should try this”. After further experience, no longer a huge proponent. A new user has to make a mental commitment that they will be changed and they themselves take responsibility for that and own the positives and negatives and can’t externalize that blame, otherwise they’re going to have a bad reality going forwards. My first experience was late 30s, I don’t know wh…
> A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything Just out of curiosity, do you mean the person's self-confidence may dramatically improve with use? The only reason is because I had a recent co-worker who was laid off after taking psychedelics for a decent period of time. He effectively stopped contributing to the team and started m…
Anecdotally, I found using psychedelics regularly kind of left me estranged from sober reality. Better to do it semi annually at most, imo. If you need them more frequently then that you are probably missing the point.
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#43They're not as easy to confidently and safely get as weed or coke. The first time you do acid you get a little tab that could be anything. This is probably also the reason (I guess) shrooms are more popular than acid - you can grow them and you can see that they are literal mushrooms, rather than some mysterious chemical substance made by your friend's boyfriend's cousin's roommate.
Isn't LSD easy to make if you have a high school level of understanding of chemistry? Not as easy as growing shrooms, but still it shouldn't be as hard as cooking meth.
Waaay harder than meth.
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#44It wasn't always this easy to get psychedelics I'd say. Previously much of the LSD in America flowed from large labs (which were busted) and would get distributed throughout the country through scenes like jambands (eg: the Dead, Phish). Throw in a healthy amount of War on Drugs/D.A.R.E propaganda. Things dried up for a bit. These days however acquiring psychedelics can be as easy as a few clicks of a mouse and some crypto.
I also noticed the spike on the graph in 2019. That's when Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence" book came out and it seems to have got quite popular. In this time the push for psychedelic-assisted therapy began in earnest.
I'd say psychedelics are becoming more popular these days because the old stigma about them is waning, mainstream acceptance is increasing, and supply is readily available. It's trivial to grow mushrooms or extract DMT.
I fully expect to see psychedelic-assisted therapy become an accepted form of treatment in my lifetime. Few things in America these days bring the left and right (AOC, Crenshaw, Gaetz, etc) together, but psychedelics are one that does. Psychedelics ain't just for hippies to melt into the music anymore.
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#45I have been partaking in them for the majority of my adult life. Looking at this data I’m surprised the number is not higher - 8%. My own impression is that it’s taking so long because even people familiar with them, like me, don’t actually reach for them all that often. They’re not habit forming. And talking about psychedelic experiences is a bit like talking about your dreams - it’s boring and personal.
A couple times a year my wife and I take LSD together and have hours of absolutely mind-altering sex and conversation. 10/10 would advise everybody to try them in a long marriage.
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#46“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we…
Even the popularization of the latin name Marijuana (Mary Jane) was to associate cannabis with latin American immigrants. In Spanish it's mostly called marihuana or mariguana.
Isn't Marijuana pronounced like "marihuana"?
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pretty much agree. Even if we accept that psychedelics are medicinal, there's still the paradigm that you only take medication when you are sick, and it has to be the right medication too. I do think they can help some people, but it also feels like it's being pumped way too hard as curing basically everything with little discussion of the side effects.
What are generally recognized as side effects?
Most "side effects" of psychedelics occur in the short-term, while under the influence of the substance. I will focus on LSD, as it's the substance I am most familiar with. The side effects are mostly what people call the "body load". Most notably there is vasoconstriction, increased body temperature, increased blood pressure and heart rate, and of course, the possibility of a bad trip or triggering latent schizophrenia/psychosis or bipolar disorder in those with a predisposition.
Edit: There are also interactions with certain medications that can result in things like seizures, and very rarely people report "flashbacks" or HPPD.
Overall, in my extensive experimentation both with traditional psychiatric medications and with LSD... I think the side effects of the substance are overstated. I have far worse reactions to psychiatric medication. (Edit: your mileage may vary of course, different people will react differently to substance, illicit or otherwise - I don't mean to downplay the negative experiences that DO occur with psychedelic usage)
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#48They're not as easy to confidently and safely get as weed or coke. The first time you do acid you get a little tab that could be anything. This is probably also the reason (I guess) shrooms are more popular than acid - you can grow them and you can see that they are literal mushrooms, rather than some mysterious chemical substance made by your friend's boyfriend's cousin's roommate.
FUD. Just because you can't see the acid doesn't mean it's more likely to be "contaminated" or "something else". Coke on the other hand is essentially always mixed with something, and sometimes the dealer might squeeze in a bit of whatever to hook you on his product.
Oh there's plenty of dubious shit being sold as LSD. One of the most common has been 25I-NBOMe, which has the unfortunate ability to be lethal at a dose of a couple blotters(a fairly common dose for LSD).
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
The overall usage in the population is low because psychedelics are unpredictable. They can have long term effects on the human psyche and there is a correctly ingrained notion in society that they are dangerous to a stable mindset.
100% agree based on my experiences with psychadelic enthusiasts.
So you've formed a critical opinion of psychedelics without having tried them, based only on knowing enthusiasts? This would be like hating crossfit just because you know an annoying crossfitter, or vegan food just because you know an obnoxious vegan.
Re: Why did it take psychedelics so long to become popular?
#50How do you write this much about this question without ever once mentioning that the US government hates psychedelics and ranks them Schedule 1 as soon as one gets enough traction to be noticed?
right? this is the only reason. they became demonized and now we have huge populations of people who think that mushrooms will make you rip your own skin off and eat your family alive.
the risks are insignificant versus the benefit that they possess, particularly in the macro context. if the water supply was microdosed with psilocybin the world would be a better place.