These drugs clearly have risks. I know a case who took LSD and amputated his genitals during the trip (heard this first hand from the urologist who reattached said genitals). Sure, many or even most people will be fine, but some clearly won’t. Sure, he has a mental illness and took too much and was alone, but that’s exactly the issue. Do you have any suggestions how to make these drugs broadly safe without giving in to the supposedly unreasonable demands of the ‘normies’?
From a reply I made later to a self-professed normie: I'm excited by what you describe [successful therapy] and glad for it, but my sadness is that I could still be arrested by possessing mushrooms I picked for myself in a forest. I've been confronted by the authorities over this issue and believe me it is not a pleasant or healing experience.
A list off the top of my head mentally ill people should avoid: hand guns, rifles, poison, rope strong enough to hang oneself with, enough narcotics to go to sleep forever, dynamite, poison gas, large quantities of alcohol, religious cults, LSD...
Maybe I have a different perspective working in healthcare. People with mental illness tend to self-medicate with whatever is available, so you can’t lump dynamite and rope together with psychoactive drugs as the degree of actual harm is a different order of magnitude. As always, with any libertarian approach to regulation, it’s vulnerable people who suffer (mentally ill, poor, children) for the ideals of others. I find this is rarely a good deal in the final analysis.
I have a couple of psychiatric diagnoses so I am not unaware of the concerns of the mentally ill. People like me know to be very cautious with medicine, prescribed or otherwise. It should have a say in whether I should be locked up or what substances I feel I can safely use.
I think there's a problem that we can agree on and that is early detection and treatment of mental illness in teens before they get their hands on an AR-15 or LSD. As a culture, America is very neglectful in this regard.
I’m not sure what other options there are. Illegal: people go to jail. Legal: people who shouldn’t take these drugs will have access. I’m certainly open to suggestions though.
I'm in favour of drug decriminalisation. And I had good experiences with LSD; but for many years, my attitude was that LSD specifically should remain illegal, because for people who are prone to schizophrenia-like illnesses, even if they've never before shown symptoms, LSD can provoke an extreme episode.
I suspect that psychedelics maybe appeal particularly to people who are psychiatrically marginal. In my youth I tripped a lot, and a surprising proportion of the people I knew turned out to be schizophrenic or bipolar. But maybe it's just that I found the company of people who were psychiatrically marginal engaging...
How many thousands of cases of alcohol-related injury are there in ERs every day? If we're pointing fingers at drugs where the consequences include self-inflicted physical harm, there's a much more relevant drug that society has firmly decided is fine to legalize, and your single anecdote doesn't change that.
