121–130 of 154 posts
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> anything small enough doesn't really harm you What about prions, or strange matter?
You think you can't make those any smaller?
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> is probably the worst drug of all in terms of societal destruction. We are yet to observe a society where the overwhelming majority of the population regularly uses fentanyl, crack cocaine or meth-amphetamine. I bet that if we try comparing apples to oranges alcohol would end up being relatively harmless.
Not fentanyl, but it used to be normal to get methamphetamine as a cough treatment from any pharmacy, and it worked out okay.
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Well given "therapeutic index" I had said "medication" as opposed to "commonly abused substances". I think your list skews heavily due to psychedelics tending not to be acutely toxic to the same extent as other chemical species. Statins for example are probably 10x to 20x (quick napkin math based on an animal study I found). Tylenol is 10x and is OTC. Personally I consider alcohol to be much safer than many other sub…
Two things: 1. Half of those drugs on the list do have medicinal uses. Even methamphetamine and cocaine are used medicinally (admittedly rarely). 2. Tylenol poisoning is the leading reason for poison control center calls. >80,000 U.S. Poison Control exposure cases in 2021 involving acetaminophen or an acetaminophen-containing product. https://poisoncenters.org/news-alerts/13244374
Any product that contains ethanol but is not intended for consumption will be adulterated with ingredients that make it really unpleasant to consume. Any drug, OTC or sometimes even prescription, that has a risk of abuse, will be combined with another drug that makes it impractical or dangerous to use it recreationally, or isolate it for manufacturing.
So the next time you wonder why all your cough medicine has to come with guaifenesin, or you need a psychiatrist to prescribe your lithium carbonate, you can blame all the addicts and Walter Whites out there who ruined it for honest people.
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There is no evidence of that. What you say is not supporting, but rather "conveniently makes sense". I don't dispute the utility of psychedelics. But I have observed (and this is anecdotal) that the fanatic devotees of the drugs tend to engage in magical thinking around the power/history/whatever of psychedelic substances, no matter their intelligence or accomplishment, or rigorous critical thinking in other areas.
It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth. Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoned_ape_…
It's thought that a lot of the geometric designs in Indigenous pottery and architecture are directly influenced by hallucinogenic plants like datura. There's a really great YouTube channel called Desert Lore and he covers this topic in depth in this episode. It was really fascinating: https://youtu.be/Vp4JlUEnPTs?si=j8gH0WnHRpeo1BJu
The top comment when I clicked it does not agree with the narrative: @rkozakand 10 months ago The so called "southwestern motif" is found wherever people weave. Our native rugs in the mountains of Ukraine use the exact same motif, only in different colors. It is a natural outgrowth of weaving techniques, which encourage triangles. We also have ancient pottery from what is called the Trypillian culture, which includes…
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> The "war on drugs" certainly didn't help, but research never really stopped. This is false. The scheduling of psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD was catastrophic for medical research in the United States (as well as in many other countries) from the early 1970s until the mid-2000's. Even today, research on psychedelics is challenging. > but we are struggling to turn these drugs into treatments that up to moder…
That's really wrong though: it's really hard to not feel effects of fentanyl, opioids, ketamine either.
Except ketamine therapies are being done right now with low doses where the effects are lighter than psychedelics
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Yeah, it's really gross that coffee cups are left all over the place. But yeah, rise in caffeine consumption in place of ethanol is thought to have enabled and fueled the enlightenment, and been a major factor in the industrial revolution.
Look up how much the signatories of the constitutional convention drank the night before signing the constitution. Alcohol consumption remained massive during the 1800s by our standards, people just drank we more than we do and probably more than in the 1600s and 1700s because distilled alcohol became cheap and widespread while you only had access to beer and wine before that.
> The work also benefits from recent research into the use of hallucinogens in treating mental illness, which has promoted broader acceptance of these substances. “There was long a feeling that drugs made you sick and addicted,” says José Capriles, an archaeologist at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) who excavates in Bolivia. “Today, there is a new openness,” he adds, which is freeing grant money and attrac…
I wouldn't celebrate the end of the war on drugs just yet. Even if psychedelic medicines are approved, bifurcated scheduling means that rich white people using psychedelics in clinics would be respectable medical users, but the same exact molecule used on the street by poor brown people would still be schedule 1 and used to justify continued persecution. Tails they win, heads we lose.
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And nicotine, don't forget that. Smokers built the modern world (and then developed lung cancer for their troubles).
That's what's glaringly missing. Nicotine. It's extremely mind-altering, and it's been u-bi-qui-tous in the Americas for millennia - and for centuries in Europe and the world. Makes you wonder what kind of selective pressures it exerted on the evolution of modern man. Select for chill and veg out types? For believers in cure-all panaceas (and snake oil)? For people who enjoy sucking on things? Or for something more s…
*nicotinic receptors, which are activated by acetylcholine. But I only saw nicotine mentioned once in the paper, and in the titles of two citations.
To me, it seems like a big stretch to say that nicotine "makes meaningless behavior meaningful" - could you explain how that's supported by the paper's data?
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Beer may have lead to the domestication of cereal grains. This is not my theory, here's an article about it: https://nautil.us/beer-domesticated-man-234697 Specifically, we have evidence of beer older than we have evidence of cereal domestication. There is evidence that beer's side effects were considered important for social and religious gatherings (as they are today as well). People wanted to make more beer and so…
It's proposed in a Niven-Pournelle novel that grain domesticated humans: we gave it the largest premium territories, we carefully propogated the finest varieties, and we elevated it to a holy sacrament and a symbol of sacrifice, divinity, and unity. An often missed point about grains is that distilling or fermenting them into beverages made for easier transportation, storage, and resilience. Yeah, you could store gra…
Not premium to humans.