[lurquer]

There’s something to that as well.

To be clear, within a given category, the addictive substance will prevail: there are clove cigarettes and there are tobacco cigarettes, and I’d contend tobacco sells more than cloves simply due to the addictive properties of nicotine. (Keep in mind that whatever mild euphoria caused by nicotine affects only new smokers... after several months of smoking, there are no euphoric effects: you smoke to get rid of the craving.)

As to your point, I’ll go one step further... while it’s an interesting article and all, the embarrassingly obvious alternative that was sort of glossed over is that, frankly, psychedelics aren’t very fun. The reason they didn’t spread, perhaps, is because not many people like them. Could be as simple as that. Why hasn’t escargot spread across the globe like beef has? Why Tuna but not calamari? No deep reason... it’s just that the majority of people don’t like snails or squids or — in this case — zoning out and watching walls melt.

More concisely, psychedelics are in a different category from alcohol and nicotine.

It’s apples and oranges. Or, more accurately, barley and mushrooms.