Not OP, but I've met people that seemed to sort of lost their agency and ambition, because their psychedelic insight was that the universe will sort everything out on its own. Though maybe the causality is the other way round here - they were not ambitious in the first place and psychedelic insight helped rationalise that.
Also disclaimer: I'm not trying to discourage or encourage people from psychedelics. Personally I believe they should not be criminalised, but people should be cautious using them.
Just a personal note, I experienced the complete opposite. I knew I wanted to do great things and accomplish things of importance, but depression was like a black cloud holding me back from doing so. Psychedelics took away that cloud and also infused a deep level of meaning into my everyday life.
I went from depressed and basically dropping off the edge of the world to traveling across the world and starting a startup with new friends in a different continent, which was just now recently acquired.
What might interest you is all the psychedelics I did were technically legal. Shoutout to 4-AcO-DMT and 4-HO-DMT.
Fwiw 4-HO-DMT is psilocin (it and psilocybin are both in mushrooms in varying amounts; and psilocybin metabolizes into it in the body). It probably wasn't legal. 4-AcO-DMT is a bit more of a grey area (probably covered by the analogues act; allegedly also metabolizes to psilocin in the body too).
> What might interest you is all the psychedelics I did were technically legal. Shoutout to 4-AcO-DMT and 4-HO-DMT.
They are both illegal where I live (Poland). The government maintains a huge list of forbidden substances (link only in polish: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wykaz_%C5%9Brodk%C3%B3w_odurza...). This is in response to a big designer drugs crisis that started over decade ago. Which most likely than not was caused by tightening of the drug laws happened around two decades ago. It's a bad situation that will take another decade to improve, I suppose.
>but rather that they have different priorities than you and that you're narrowminded and judgemental.
Having been loosely affiliated with the Goa/Psytrance scene, I too, have met some individuals who seemed to have "fried" their brains.
If those "different priorities", how you call it, also include being almost dysfunctional and therefore dependent on constant external support, paranoid and frequently incoherent then, yes, it made me judgmental too.
And this isn't even speaking of phenomena like Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD)[1].
The thing is, it's not at all clear this was caused by psychedelics, so much as psychedelics and the lifestyle that goes with it shape the sort of dysfunction we observe.
If they had been in the midwestern USA would they also be dysfunctional but taking prescription painkillers? Mental health problems are common, and confirmation bias is real.
There is also the danger of reverse causation — and this may apply to cannabis. The epidemiology there suggests psychosis may cause people to take cannabis at higher rates, rather than the reverse.
Finally... I've also often wondered what partying so hard would do without the drugs. I've experienced festivals both with and without recreational drugs and it often feels like the sleep deprivation and over-stimulation have as large an effect on my subsequent mood as the drugs did.
>so much as psychedelics and the lifestyle that goes with it shape the sort of dysfunction we observe.
I wondered about this myself.
I think it is hard to pinpoint exactly since festival-goers often also consume a mix of different substances (the infamous "candy flipping") including alcohol instead of just straight mushrooms or LSD.
Funnily enough, I just came across a study of ecstasy use in Mormon kids who didn’t take alcohol or other drugs... not sure if they were staying up all night raving but my prior is not. Apparently they didn’t suffer the same cognitive deficits found in other ecstasy users.
Not OP, but there can be a few things they're alluring to.
Some disassociatives are often put into the "psychedelic," and they can cause addiction. Ketamine begin an example. People begin chasing the previous high, which often means higher doses and more money.
Some more ignorant people put MDMA (and family) of drugs into this category as well. These drugs are highly neurotoxic, and require a lot of "prep" to take to reduce their neurotoxicity (it's arguable to what degree this prep helps). Moreover frequent user of this can in some people (ie people succeptible to depression) cause a long-term disbalance in their serotonin system (some people take weeks to recover from even one usage).
People who have some mental "precondition" (eg such as psychosis, etc) can have some extremely severe response and permanent "side effects" (for a lackeof better expressions) from psychedelics, and never recover.
An extremely small percentage of people have what's called Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD). Some people find it fun, some don't mind it, while some can't function because of it.
Quality of substance you acquire can also vary. On the black market things are often mislabelled or cut with other substances that are easier/cheaper to produce. One notable examples is NBOMe being sold as LSD. NBOMe is more dangerous for a few reasons that I won't be getting into in this post. Always test your stuff with test kits, or if you're not comfortable with that, sense a small bit of your batch to a testing lab (there's a few anonymous/free ones in Europe).
Lastly, there's always ignorance or
risk of being too "casual" about taking psychedelic due to familiarity with them. This leads to accidental drug combinations (eg some antidepressants + some psychedelics) don't combined well. Aimee just diminished the other, but people reported more severe symptoms. People also combine things recreationally without researching things properly, which can be a bad combo. Speaking of antidepressants and psychedelics: a notable thing to mention is that Lithium salts and LSD have been reported to lead to terors, seizures, and maybe even death (as reported on erowid).
I'm not trying to discourage or encourage people from psychedelics. In my personal experience, they can be wonderful and provide healing experiences. However, we need to always be careful when using them, because they have such a profound effect on our minds, and we still understand so little about the mind itself. With that in mind (no pun intended), treat them with respect they deserve!
Off-topic: writing long form text on a phone is such a chore. I can't edit the typos anymore, but just to clarify: "Aimee" was meant to be "mostly they". There's also a few words dropped here and there, but it doesn't impact readability as much.
Any psychadelics (and I think cannabis as well, but much more rarely) can cause a psychotic break, which can’t always be recovered from. It seems to be more prevalent if there is a family history of psychosis.
Even with cannabis, states have no FDA that is prepared to do studies and I just wish a basic level of known side effects were listed from the actual FDA which they do for studied and much more harmful drugs, because they were studied
When you add all the other scheduled drugs that have no state level recreational framework, then you no studies and you also have a compounded supply chain problem where nobody knows what they’re actually consuming
There are molecule combinations out there which can cause instant parkinson’s disease
nobody can give a real case about “the friend of friend” who went crazy because of the illegality and imagined or real liability
and its not fair to say “this drug is perfectly safe stop fearmongering, oh wait you should have known about your family history of schizophrenia never mind then lol too late, but everyone else dont listen to that person” this isn’t directed at you, just a collection of things said in the psychadelic community pretty reliably
>nobody can give a real case about “the friend of friend” who went crazy
This is a very good point. I'm not going to suggest that the commonly cited anecdotes are all wrong or misguided, but a lot of well meaning people throw around anecdotes but just like a discussion about flat earthers, everyone knows about them but virtually nobody seems to actually know any personally.
In 2016 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) cited 37,461 people died due to automobile accidents. Those are easily traceable numbers because they create a tremendous amount of paperwork and news articles.
But with psychedelics there is a very odd disconnect between the perception of their danger and the extreme lack of actual medical/scientific evidence that actually gets cited.
Not exactly what you're referring to, but after a 15 year-or-so break from cannabis (I used a lot in my youth, starting around 12YO), I've found that I can't use it any more - it gives me the most horrible anxiety! I persisted, but was close to panic attacks, and gave up on it.
It's actually pretty annoying, as I have a health condition that it might help with, and furthermore I used to really enjoy recreational use.
There are some studies on PubMed around this. I remember hearing about one that the DoD did involving soldiers who used cannabis and mental illnesses. I wasn't able to find that, but here's a similar one.
Also disclaimer: I'm not trying to discourage or encourage people from psychedelics. Personally I believe they should not be criminalised, but people should be cautious using them.