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This is my thinking as well. Everytime I hear the "make all drugs legal now" people make their various fantastic arguments it reminds me of the kids I grew up with, who mostly did about the same amount of drugs as each other. Half of them recovered and the other half more or less became burn-outs. I don't think we remotely understand how LSD use affects us, especially non-neurotypicals and those with mental illness or sub-clininical issues. The latter group developed this hard to quantify attitude, like this dead look in their eyes that never really went away and is matched by just a real lack of creative thinking and motivation - both of which they had before drug use. I think drugs are much more dangerous than we think, even pot, for at least certain demographics; especially young people who are still developing. Yeah, 30+ year old guys don't have much to worry about, but there is rational and non-biased research showing this and I fully believe my friends have been victim of liberal drug attitudes. I believe Duke university found a 70% IQ drop for regular pot smokers compared to their peers by age 35 and other studies have found lowered executive function, increased risk of mental illness, and a messed up reward processing system. I'm certainly not advocating for the status quo, but if things like pot, shrooms, or MDMA or even LSD become legal, there needs to be strict age and dosage limitations. The idea that they're a "fix all" is dangerous and disingenuous to me. Maybe in a clinical and controlled setting there could be realistic positive outcomes, but certainly not in a recreational one. Meditation is safer but takes more effort than eating blotter paper. As a long time meditator, its raised my quality of life significantly. Sadly, when I try to sell this onto some of the people mentioned above I get nods of approval and then a "Let me get high first before I try it," comment which pretty much invalidates whatever benefits you can get. To them, drugs only make things better, in fact, life is kinda terrible sober. Not to mention, I've never had a 'bad trip' or paranoia or anything negative with meditation. Its incredible that we have this simple tool available to us at all times, but dismiss it because its weird or because people think they can take a shortcut to retraining their minds with drugs. Hint: you can't. Everything worthwhile takes some level of labor. Instant fixes don't really exist. Sometimes I wonder if baby boomer drug liberalism has cost us a few Einsteins and Newtons. Or what wonderful things John Lilly or Tim Leary, both men who I consider near-genius level, would have come up with if they didn't go down the burn-out path. Its a scary thought. The entire boomer drug experiment didn't pan out, did it? By the time Leary and Lilly were in their prime years, they became obsessive weirdos going on about trans-dimensional aliens and such and morphing into empty-suited but profitable celebrity caricatures. What a waste of two fine minds. |