Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#121

Post by lotsofpulp » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

throwaway413 wrote: post #83

lotsofpulp wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t excuse my parents behavior just because it came from “love”. They didn’t know any better, but they also refused my attempts to educate them multiple times. To me, that says their ego and need to assume things about their “afterlife” was more important than pursuing valid data and analysis, not a good trait in my opinion.

What about your ego telling you that you’re any more right than they are? How do you know you’re right and your kids won’t be saying the same thing? Just some food for thought.

I usually don't make strong claims about things I can't show sufficient evidence for, although I'm sure I will trip up with my kids, but I'll have to try to be cognizant of myself and acknowledge when I am assuming things.

Dismissing someone else's assertions because they lack evidence or proper logic is not being egotistical.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#122

Post by pmoriarty » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

toomanybeersies wrote: post #117

pmoriarty wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you won't find a higher meaning, you'll just think you did, it's an illusion" So how do you distinguish the illusion from the real thing, as far as higher meaning goes?

You're not really talking to Jesus.

I don't see how you could be certain you're not. Maybe you are.

In any case, different people have different things revealed to them on psychedelics, and interpret those things in different ways. Some of them might be true, some not. Also, some of their interpretations of those things could be accurate or not. I'm really not sure how you could tell and ahead of time pronounce them all to be illusory or false.

Let's say that someone took psychedelics and realized that love was the most important thing for them in their life, or that they need not fear death. Are these things necessarily false or illusory just because the realizations were made under the influence of psychedelic drugs? Maybe they are false, but maybe not.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#123

Post by AngryData » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:18 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #19

abhiminator wrote: post #5

I'm totally on-board with opposition to the pointless 'War on Drugs,' but what I'm not cool with is when pundits and other public figures on the other side of the spectrum PUSH for its wide-adoption and integration into everyday lifestyle akin to alcohol -- like the article's author is doing here -- which I feel is equally detrimental because there have been many well documented cases of people succumbing to the spel…

There's a rather worrying trend of psychedelics being "sold" as a safe panacea. If you believe the cheerleaders, psychedelics are powerful enough to rapidly cure mental illness and facilitate profoundly positive personality changes, but have only trivial side-effects. That doesn't seem particularly plausible to me - there aren't many medicines that are both very potent and very safe. The stereotype of the burned-out…

We have done studies on psychedelics and mental health disorders, especially schizophrenia. Most of them say they don't cause mental illness but can allow the symptoms to express themselves, or atleast be noticeable, a bit earlier. Part of the problem is many mental illnesses don't show heavy symptoms until people's early 20s, the same time period when someone is likely to try a psychedelic drug for the first time. So someone is schizophrenic, doesn't know it, tries acid or shrooms in college which allows the symptoms to express themselves to noticeable levels for the first time, now they think acid caused their schizophrenia. But in reality they were likely only a year or a stressful event away from the same thing happening. And once you notice the symptoms for the first time, it becomes easier to identify those symptoms later even if in the past they would have been small enough to easily ignore.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#124

Post by Noos » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:20 PM UTC

You should say yes to history instead. I can think of another drug that was also lionized among the intelligentsia of their time, both for its medicinal uses and its spiritual or creative benefits. That drug was opium.

"But I took it—and in an hour—oh, heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! That my pains had vanished was now a trifle in my eyes: this negative effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those positive effects which had opened before me—in the abyss of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was a panacea, a [Greek text] for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach."

-Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, John De Quincey.

It sounds eerily a lot like the current push for psychedlica, and it originally started with upperclass knowledge workers then, too. But as the dangers of the drug became widely known, and it filtered downwards, it became regarded as a horror, and prohibition came not because the government was a killjoy and wanted to ruin people's recreational fun, but because the human toll was high and as it filtered down the criminal element took control.

The addict or user always glorifies the damn thing in the honeymoon phase, its after when the effects become known and widespread do we get the pushback. It's always the answer to everything that ails you till it isn't.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#125

Post by empath75 » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

fjsolwmv wrote: post #118

empath75 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw, I’ve done mdma a hundred times and lsd and mushrooms a few dozen times, haven’t don’t either in over a decade, and don’t drink, and I’m a perfectly well adjusted software engineer with a wife and two kids and a house in the suburbs. And I attribute the fact that I am a well adjusted person today to having done psychedelics in my 20s, because I was an absolute disaster as a human being coming out of high school…

How do you know the psychedelics are what fixed you?

Because my experience matches the results decribed in all the studies that report similar results.

It’s not like it’s possible to have a placebo effect here. I was an isolated depressed, angry young man at 24 who had never had a relationship and all of my interpersonal relationships were completely toxic and was afraid of being touched, working at a minimum wage job.

Within three years of using ecstasy, I had hundreds of friends, learned how to DJ, was promoting parties, networked my way into a well paying it job, had a long term relationship, and eventually was djing for crowds of 1000+ people.

I’m not sure how I’d have gotten from a to b without using mdma and acid. I still had some work to do to integrate all of that and learn how to do it while sober but man, just being able to experience happiness and love and having open conversations with people amd talk about my feelings and just being hugged by strangers was so instantaneously life changing for me it was almost miraculous.

That said— I did mdma waaaay too much and don’t recommend doing it as much as I did. I think I got everything valuable I was going to get out of it the first 4 or 5 times. Everything after than that was just partying.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#126

Post by dennisgorelik » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

throwaway98371 wrote: post #63

jdietrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a rather worrying trend of psychedelics being "sold" as a safe panacea. If you believe the cheerleaders, psychedelics are powerful enough to rapidly cure mental illness and facilitate profoundly positive personality changes, but have only trivial side-effects. That doesn't seem particularly plausible to me - there aren't many medicines that are both very potent and very safe. The stereotype of the burned-out…

I grew up in a really conservative, deeply religious (Protestant Christian) family. My parents loved me and did their best to raise me according to their beliefs, but their beliefs were both absurdly strict and also ridiculously unsupportable by the scientific evidence that, as a book- and science-obsessed teenager, I was absorbing at a rapid pace. Given that I was quickly disbelieving everything I had been raised to…

> I could have gotten there without the acid trip

... by simply asking your parents to list their reasons of why they are against your LSD "self-education".

You did not have to open your mind with LSD in order to understand your parents at age 15.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#127

Post by tpm » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:41 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #120

tpm wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would that truth come from? Psychedelics are just chemicals, they don't come with some sort of divine truth, they just reconfigure you brain for a few hours. As a result, you may see the content of your brain, and the world around you, in a different light. You may find some 'truths' this way, but there is no guarantee.

"Where would that truth come from? Psychedelics are just chemicals" Are they just chemicals, though? Some people think they are themselves divine. One example of this can be seen in the attitude of worship of some Native American societies towards peyote or psychedelic mushrooms. Some people think they allow communication with the spirit world, or with their ancestors, or with gods. Even if they are "just chemicals"…

> One example of this can be seen in the attitude of worship of some Native American societies towards peyote or psychedelic mushrooms.

Yes, rituals. When something is important, powerful, dangerous, but it's not wise to ban it, a society creates a ritual around that, to signal importance and danger. Western societies have rituals too. Not much to do with the truth.

> Even if they are "just chemicals" that doesn't necessarily mean that they can't show you truth.

That may be, but in this case it does mean exactly that. There is Charles Manson or the odd baby-killing ayahuasca cult brainwashing its disciples with psychedelics and propaganda to prove this.

> That itself does not diminish the possibility of finding truth in it or through it.

Or maybe it does... :) But that's pretty far from the original point I was trying to make.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#128

Post by AngryData » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #17

abhiminator wrote: post #5

I'm totally on-board with opposition to the pointless 'War on Drugs,' but what I'm not cool with is when pundits and other public figures on the other side of the spectrum PUSH for its wide-adoption and integration into everyday lifestyle akin to alcohol -- like the article's author is doing here -- which I feel is equally detrimental because there have been many well documented cases of people succumbing to the spel…

Weed can be harmful in an insidious way. I think it should be legal, but not promoted. Hopefully, legalization will be accompanied by prevention campaigns.

Legalization by itself has been shown to reduce the usage and prevalence among the youth. Many kids seek it out because it is forbidden and people lie about what it is and its effects. Once somebodies 80 year old grandpa can openly smoke it it no long becomes this forbidden fruit that is 'cool' to try out, it becomes grandpas funny smelling medicine mixed with the negative image of smokers. Not as many kids feel the need to emulate their arthritis riddled grandpa as they did the 'cool kid' who was previously the only person they knew that toked.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#129

Post by darpa_escapee » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 8:09 PM UTC

dqv wrote: post #65

jdietrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a rather worrying trend of psychedelics being "sold" as a safe panacea. If you believe the cheerleaders, psychedelics are powerful enough to rapidly cure mental illness and facilitate profoundly positive personality changes, but have only trivial side-effects. That doesn't seem particularly plausible to me - there aren't many medicines that are both very potent and very safe. The stereotype of the burned-out…

> HPPD is almost certainly a real disorder. I just looked that up and have assumed it was normal for most of my life. Sometime around when I was 3-5 years old, I was laying in bed, looking up up at the wall and noticed this visual noise. I wondered about it and resolved that "that's just how it is." I would also close my eyes and let that fuzz "set in" and see beautiful fire works and replay music in my head. Maybe j…

> I just looked that up and have assumed it was normal for most of my life.

Everyone gets this. Visual artifacts are a fact of human vision.

If effects like walls breathing, significant visual snow, people's faces shifting/morphing and a skewed perception of proportions are interfering with your daily life, that's more than what we commonly experience. Abusing psychedelics (especially certain ones) can bring about this type of experience after they've left your system.

Re: Why We Should Say Yes to Drugs

#130

Post by JackCh » Sun, Jul 01, 2018, 8:33 PM UTC

golergka wrote: post #60

JackCh wrote: post #3

Weed was cool until The Man started wanting me to smoke it.

That says a lot about your concept of "cool".

I made a straightforward statement concerning my perception of what is 'cool', of course that statement says something about my concept of 'cool'! What you really wanted to do here was to criticize my concept of cool, but instead finding the stones to do that you left a very passive borderline tautological statement.

You wanted to criticize me, but chose to respond with a passive non-statement instead. That says a lot about your approach to communication! [Is this doing it right? I'm trying to speak your dialect.]