[telchar]

What's your evidence that those people are worse off having taken the psychedelics? You can't know the counterfactual isn't that those people who respond poorly to the drug would have had a similar mental break without it. Until the drug is studied rigorously all we have to go on are conflicting anecdotes. That said in the face of a lack of reliable information caution is warranted.

[tomerv]

Even if that person would not have taken LSD and would have had a psychotic episode 5 years later due to the underlying issue, that's still 5 years of good health lost because of LSD.

[erikpukinskis]

Or it’s 5 years less of post-treatment life.

We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?

[cgag]

It seems pretty delusional to just say these people would have spontaneously lost their minds even if they didn't do extremely powerful mind altering drugs.

[TomMarius]

It seems pretty delusional to make conclusions when you don't even know if they really took LSD or something sold as LSD, but actually dangerous, and are missing basically all other important data other than "they took something and then became crazy", while the then in the sentence means "after that", as in time, not "because of that".

[erikpukinskis]

It’s literally guaranteed that some of them would have.

[mikec3010]

So if someone takes any medication and strokes out, has an MI, or stops breathing, we can't blame the drug because maybe that was going to happen anyway?

[firethief]

Usually, yes. That's why we haven't banned Tylenol.