From a comment by /u/oredna in /r/Psychonaut yesterday[0]:
> Worth noting that the actual first is the Center for Psychedelic Studies at the University of Toronto[1]. We were recently featured in a National Post piece[2]. We've been in touch with the author to inform them that it's inaccurate to call ICL's the first given that we already exist.
> That said, this is great news! More psychedelic research, and we're hopefully all going to be collaborating and working together as we move forward.
Great news indeed. Scientific progress into psychedelics needs to be celebrated. We also need to celebrate specific individuals in the field, like Drs. Nichols (father and son both), for their continuing scientific contributions and persistence, often in the face of governmental and industrial opposition [1].
Judging from the success with clinical research into marijuana, if this is successful we can look forward to a future in which family members of the UK government can sell clinical psychedelics all over the world while still insisting at home that it has no medical benefit and is only used by criminals.
I've never accepted some behaviour to be criminal without a victim. Pedantic gov'tal meddling, waste of resources at best, a way to lock up lefty/hippy/non-whites at worst.
Passing laws that make victimless behaviour illegal should be criminal. Let's make that a constitutional law...
I think exactly the same yet legalizing everything victim-less can be a hard target to reach. There is, however, an easier concept: laws that are scientifically and logically unreasonable should be cancelled.
I keep suggesting that laws should have "acceptance tests" in the form of a stated intent in a form that must be possible to invalidate if the premises are wrong. You'd need a mechanism to challenge laws both on the basis that the intent is not met and on the basis that the stated intent is too unclear.
Great idea! I absolutely support this! But it still feels a way too radical for today society to accept. They just want to outlaw whatever they feel like they dislike and call this democracy.
But I've just came up with another compromise idea that can make sense for both progressive and conservative: committing victim-less crimes, doing whatever is outlawed yet doesn't actually harm anybody (like possessing or producing a schedule-1 substance for personal use) should never be considered a crime punishable with a prison sentence but can be considered an administrative infraction punishable with a reasonable (what a person can actually pay without becoming homeless or having to get a loan) fine.
> I've never accepted some behaviour to be criminal without a victim.
You don't have to. That's easy to 'solve' at least a few different ways, depending on how you prefer to look at it. (1) The victim is the same as the criminal. (2) The victims are those who have to pay for that guy's legal/medical/whatever bills later. (3) The victims are nearby/associated families who have to deal with the consequences.
One has to identify as victim. It's not up to someone else to decide if I was a victim at some point.
> (2) The victims are those who have to pay for that guy's legal/medical/whatever bills later.
So in case of medical insurances for all the public is the victim for every persons action is remotely risky.
> (3) The victims are nearby/associated families who have to deal with the consequences.
See 1. Let's say some family members take great offense from one member being gay. They feel victimized. Poor them. Because they are delusional. They are no victim. If they, e.g., excommunicate the gay, the gay person is a victim of a non-punishable offense in my opinion. Not the other way around.
> One has to identify as victim. It's not up to someone else to decide if I was a victim at some point.
Yes, and there certainly do exist people who identify as victims of others' drug use. Unfortunately they don't come knocking on our doors to inform us of this fact. Instead they settle for the sadly-suboptimal solution of electing representatives to represent their perspectives while they go about their own businesses. If you're genuinely suggesting such people are nonexistent, well, I'm not going to continue entertaining this further.
> So in case of medical insurances for all the public is the victim for every persons action is remotely risky.
I can't parse this sentence.
> See 1. [....]
See response to 1.
Also note that dealing with drug users (medical care or however else) costs people's money which is not exactly a subjective or delusional thing to concern oneself with.
All those apply to eating from McDonald's, as an example. Should we ban everything that has a negative health impact?
Later edit: Actually, banning is not a huge problem, the problem is incarceration for choosing to do something that hurts nobody, except maybe yourself.
This is not strawmanning, this is showing you that your definition of what constitutes a victim is completely wrong and very easy to twist and abuse. A fast-food hamburger, alcohol and skydiving all fit your three criteria, but locking people in a cage for any of them is something that no sane person would ever agree on.
You can try to educate people, regulate, disincentivize through various means, but you shouldn't jail someone for an activity that is only dangerous at the tail end.
What about MAPS, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies? They've been around for decades and have done great work. Aren't they the first?
Who knows, but MAPS is awesome and doing some amazing things. Also most likely doing a lot of heaving lifting when it comes to protocols and allowing for more room / research. Its all good news!
>Just a few years before Jobs' death, it was psychedelics that put Kottke back in touch with Jobs. Albert Hoffmann, who discovered LSD, was turning 100 and soliciting financial support for psychedelics research. Kottke was asked to connect Hoffmann with Jobs, which he did; but Kottke doesn't believe that the introduction resulted in any monetary contributions.
Fun fact: Aldous Huxley, author of, among others, the Door of Perception, was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the biologist who was the first dean of Royal School of Mines, which later became a part of the Imperial College.
I had heard of his story in pop culture references (the van with enough acid to dose a major city) before, but did not know as much about him till I saw your comment and perused his Wikipedia page. This passage was particularly interesting to me:
> Pickard was the first American researcher to predict an epidemic of fentanyl and carfentanyl. At Harvard, he was appointed as a research associate in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, where he was a drug policy fellow in the ad hoc Harvard Initiative on Drugs and Addictions, under the Program in Mind, Brain and Behavior.[6] In a presentation at the Harvard Faculty Club in 1996, Pickard proposed that fentanyl and carfentanyl use would become epidemic, and suggested specific policies for preventing wide-spread abuse. Pickard's prediction was 20 years in advance of the 2018 opioid crisis.[6]
> In federal court on March 12-13, 2003, Pickard testified in detail on this prediction, based upon his research among more than 200 addicts in Boston and Moscow and his study of rare fentanyl use. Original overheads from the Harvard Faculty Club presentation were seized by DEA in a Boston locker in November, 2000, and retained by the agency until trial in 2003, where they were entered as defense exhibits. This testimony, as a public record, was more than 15 years before the actual epidemic occurred.[7]
Given that the man is currently imprisoned because he manufactured substances that the government deemed the harmful to specify because of their potential for abuse, it's hard not to conclude that either he is a hypocrite or the people who imprisoned him are.
...and although many people (myself included) use cannabis in a habitual way, I don't think it's "extremely" habit forming. If cannabis represents the extreme in this metric, then it is a very flat extreme since it also has to include sugar, crack cocaine, nicotine, etc, users of which obviously develop much more dire habits much more quickly.
I don't know that either of these are habit forming so much as that people realize their benefit and choose to use them in some sort of routine.
everyone has their experiences, personally i know a few people whos smoking habits have been detrimental to themselves.
i think theres this mantra of "its not addictive - legalise it!" when there are other qualities of these substances that may cause issues, however it's very hard to place weed on a scale of consumption benefit compared to other substances.
For me, smoking a lot of weed deprecates my memory significantly, something which i value quite highly, things like sugar and nicotine to not do this.
dire effects of these habits are also hard to quantify - i value mental health over physical health... i'd rather be addicted to cigs than be addicted [sic] to weed!
Not in the same manner of alcoholism or stimulant/opioid addiction.
Especially the psychedelic drugs. They punish harshly for trying to "trip" multiple times in a row. You'd have to take an absurd amount to abuse it in the same manner as the classical "hard" drugs. It's incredibly easy to restrain oneself to a 1xweek usage. It's like a incredibly cheap Friday night trip to the movies in that context.
t. Someone who's tripped hundreds of times with no ill symptoms
PS: Sunrises are so godamn beautiful on the comedown. If only one could bequeath the beauty of such moments as a shareable gift.
> in addition to millions of dollars in United States currency, Pickard also handled millions in Dutch guilders and Canadian bank notes. He preferred to deal in ƒ1000 notes or Canadian $1000 notes (discontinued since 2000 in Canada) because it meant less bulk cash to have on hand. He required his distributors to convert all lower currencies into $50 or $100 notes at the least so as not to cause problems.
It's one thing to make LSD for yourself, but he was selling millions of dollars worth of it.
They have conducted some of these studies some years ago. One of the was a study on the effects of LSD [0][1] on the brain, and I if I recall correctly they were also looking for test subjects for shrooms around the same time.
It will be nice when the religious old generation with their ideology die off. The repressive outcomes restricting a better timeline from proceeding earlier is so sad to witness. Speaking as an LGBT person who has witnessed suicide among peers and when this treatment likely could help the tolls of abuse in correlation to antiquated beliefs. Thanks to the dying god.
You must realize it's a false equivalence: oppression in the name of a more just society is much more worthwhile than oppression in the name of magical imaginary friends. For example, our society oppressing serial killers (for the mission statement of keeping people safe) is much more worthwhile than serial killers oppressing our society (for the mission statement of indulging urges, delusions, etc.) to any reasonable person.
And, of course, I think you have to be very divorced from reality to think that social justice is, has been, or will be as oppressive a force as religion is, has been, or will be to begin with.
> oppression in the name of a more just society is much more worthwhile than oppression in the name of magical imaginary friends...
The thought behind this statement has been used historically to do some pretty bad stuff that resulted in a lot of pain and suffering...be careful that you don't build up a power structure that "works" now when you and people who think like you are in power but can be used to utterly rob the people of their freedom and liberty...its very sad to see this happening again
I've heard some Christians claim it counts as "witchcraft" (KJV translation of φαρμακεία (pharmakeia), which is specifically referring to drug use, and the origin of the English word "pharmacy"). Considering also the use of the word "entheogen" (meaning a substance that manifests a god within you) by some users of psychedelics, and historical pagan use of psychedelics, this seems reasonable.
Sure there is. Churches would love to have a monopoly on providing religious experiences. Any profound experience not associated with church practice is a direct threat to church hegemony.
> Worth noting that the actual first is the Center for Psychedelic Studies at the University of Toronto[1]. We were recently featured in a National Post piece[2]. We've been in touch with the author to inform them that it's inaccurate to call ICL's the first given that we already exist.
> That said, this is great news! More psychedelic research, and we're hopefully all going to be collaborating and working together as we move forward.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychonaut/comments/bhkak8/imperial...
[1] http://cps.radlab.zone/
[2] https://nationalpost.com/health/health-and-wellness/is-micro...