[civilian]

I agree. I got the message, and hung up the phone.

My friend is also have difficulty leaving the path. A couple of months ago my buddy & I got some urgent texts from him-- he had taken a really large dose of LSD and ended up spending the next 12 hours in a emergency room's psych ward.

I think that part of the reason that we have this B.S. propaganda around psychedelics (i.e. "They're the key to enlightenment!") is that it can be pretty hard to encourage people to try drugs. And while they aren't the key to enlightenment, they are just such a _different_ experience that it can be... interesting, or help personal growth, in some lesser but still substantial ways. But that's not a great soundbite.

Marketing is much harder than we give it credit for.

//edit although on further googling, I think the quote is from Alan Watts and it's about sober meditation after a trip.

> "Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen..."

[NotSammyHagar]

> it can be pretty hard to encourage people to try drugs

I think that in our society we have a problem with people taking too many drugs already. Deadly smoking of tobacco is decreasing but still too common (killed my mom). Booze and coffee are things people tolerate but use to adjust their mood. Pot seems to finally becoming accepted by law abiding society. But do we need to encourage more than this? As a parent of a teenager who is generally tolerant of such things, I'm suddenly feeling I want society to have less drugs ;-)

Seriously, would society be improved with more psychedelics?

[civilian]

I think you should read (or listen to) Sam Harris talk about psychedelics. (I really enjoy him, but my dad thinks that he's boring as shit. Either way, you can be reassured that he's not someone who jumps to conclusions-- he's a methodical person.) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/drugs-and-the-meaning...

The key paragraphs are:

> I have two daughters who will one day take drugs. Of course, I will do everything in my power to see that they choose their drugs wisely, but a life lived entirely without drugs is neither foreseeable nor, I think, desirable. I hope they someday enjoy a morning cup of tea or coffee as much as I do. If they drink alcohol as adults, as they probably will, I will encourage them to do it safely. If they choose to smoke marijuana, I will urge moderation.[2] Tobacco should be shunned, and I will do everything within the bounds of decent parenting to steer them away from it. Needless to say, if I knew that either of my daughters would eventually develop a fondness for methamphetamine or crack cocaine, I might never sleep again. But if they don’t try a psychedelic like psilocybin or LSD at least once in their adult lives, I will wonder whether they had missed one of the most important rites of passage a human being can experience.

> This is not to say that everyone should take psychedelics. As I will make clear below, these drugs pose certain dangers. Undoubtedly, some people cannot afford to give the anchor of sanity even the slightest tug. It has been many years since I took psychedelics myself, and my abstinence is born of a healthy respect for the risks involved. However, there was a period in my early twenties when I found psilocybin and LSD to be indispensable tools, and some of the most important hours of my life were spent under their influence. Without them, I might never have discovered that there was an inner landscape of mind worth exploring.

[collyw]

Psychedelics have far less harm on health than the legal drugs you listed.

[saiya-jin]

in place where such an evil thing as alcohol is legal and widely accepted, there is no good enough excuse to have psychedelics banned by state.

I am not saying everybody should do them, far from it, but people shouldn't be banned from access on their free will under threat of destroying the life by jail time - that's beyond ridiculous.