| I think there's a Hegelian-esque pendulum to it. Discretionary uses of mind-altering drugs, especially those that have been prominent in youth culture, pop culture and party culture face massive resistance. Look how long cannabis is taking to reach legalization. Look at the barriers to medical scientists who want to study psychedelics. In that sort of environment, it's near inevitable that the remaining "torch bearers" lean to the true-believer/fanatic end of the spectrum. The mild-mannered actors just won't put up with that sort of resistance. So, reserved scientists and practitioners who avoid hyperbole are under-represented. Ultimately everything boils down to use. The details of therapeutic use, spiritual use and such. On the therapeutic end, I think there's room to be hopeful. It's just a good fit for a "talk therapy" approach that the discipline values already, and that many of the "one-a-day" prescriptions are not. On the spiritual end, most living traditions are highly culturally mitigated. If/When it comes to the modern, apartment-dweller world, there aren't any social institutions that can fill that role (well, churches, religions, but that's unlikely to happen at scale). In tandem with the earlier point (the true believer advocates promoting psychodelics despite resistence), this probably adds up to a lot of quackery. This is more worrying, or at least it points in the direction of purely "recreational" use. |