If you have full faith in the medical and legal system then yes, this absolutely true. The fact that we have an epidemic of legally prescribed opioids while effective treatments of PTSD (in clinical settings) such as MDMA remain broadly illegal is all the evidence you need to know that you shouldn't put your full faith in our system.
While promising I still don't trust people to self medicate with these things.
You end up in BS anecdote land where people with issues self diagnose themselves, take uncontrolled drugs with dubious quality, and self report effects. It's all in all unreliable when not monitored by a neutral medical professional.
Given the post-war history of banning psychiatric medications the moment they appear to be effective (because they happen to feel good), the opposite heuristic is if anything more useful.
Shouldn't be like that, but it is.
At least sanity is starting to return to the world: MDMA for PTSD and ketamine for depression are starting to become valid treatments, to the great benefit of those fortunate enough to be able to find and afford to take them inside the system.
But it's the same ketamine. A clinic gives you an IV infusion in a dark room with some nice music; the difference between that and taking a line on your own, in a dark room with some nice music, is less decisive than people who haven't tried it seem to think.
Lots of people take psychedelic drugs, or other drugs such as cannabis and MDMA, and would claim that they are much much more successful at improving mental health than psychiatric medication.
This includes people who have to get hold of them illegally.
A lot of street drugs have never even had a chance to "run the gauntlet" so it's really not necessarily fair to rule them out. Which isn't to say that they _are_ effective, but we can't really rule them out just for being "street drugs".