The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I’m much more realistic about the expectations of how this will work out. Both LSD and MDMA were used very successfully as therapeutic tools when used in a session with medical professionals. The drugs ‘escaped the lab’ because they were so effective and beneficial at what they do. In trials today people have said that sessions with these substances were one of the most meaningful experiences of their life, that the psychoactive session was more beneficial than years of traditional therapy.
Of course people will misuse drugs and use them for escapism but that doesn’t reduce the benefit for the people that use them responsibly. You can find people that misuse/abuse anything (e.g. cars, prescription drugs) but that isn’t a good argument that nobody should have access to those things.
There are an incredible number of psychedelics and entactogens that have been discovered (see PiHKAL and TiHKAL by Alexander Schulgan). Much of this had to with finding ways around the drug laws to make legal substances. Some are more powerful, some are weaker, some are less visual, duration of effects varies, etc. I think new drugs being discovered is a good thing because each drug may be useful in specialized situations.
Alcohol is not a fair comparison; the mechanism of action is different and it is not being used as a medical treatment.
"Escaping the lab" is the trouble, though. "they work if used responsibly" works for all the pain-killers that are being widely misused. Let's face it: most people won't want access to psychedelics to help with their personal therapeutic journey, they will want to get high and have fun. Just like everyone who uses/abuses drugs recreationally. And so we have the problem: how do we control access to these drugs?
Let anyone who wants them get them? Then what about the irresponsible users who will jump out windows thinking they can fly? We can be hard-headed and go "if you kill yourself or someone else because you are such a fuck-up you don't know how to get high responsibly, that's your problem" but I don't think society as a whole will be happy with that. Certainly not the families of those harmed by the druggies. 'Make it all legal' may be a good plan or not, but the after-effects have to be considered as well.
"If you fuck yourself up we will spend countless sums on helping you fuck yourself up, but heaven forfend we make rehab or counselling mandatory"? We're not seeing much benefit there.
"Everyone gets arrested" - I'm sort of on this side, and no I don't believe "poor Jamal had his life ruined because the cops caught him with a small amount of weed for his own use". But yeah, I'm willing to agree that this can be bad for small users and doesn't shift the large dealers or criminal gangs.
The problem with "make it all legal" is that we can't put the genie back in the bottle, and we can't undo harm that occurs when people do fuck around and find out.
I'd prefer to live in a society where people had the legal option to choose psychedelics over alcohol as their recreational drug of choice.
Psychedelics are far more physically safer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_dependence-small.png
Users are far less likely to harm themselves or others when under the influence as compared to alcohol: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210
Psychedelics can cause you to quit more harmful drugs such as alcohol: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.10200
Additionally, psychedelics can inspire users to invent things, become more connected with the world, or feel a greater sense of purpose. Many psychedelics are non-addictive and can cause people to realize that they no longer need any drugs in their life.
If people switch from alcohol/pain-killers/benzos to psychedelics as their recreational drug of choice I think the net result would be less crime due to the drug effects being so different.
If people commit crimes (other than use/possession/distribution) then they should be held accountable in the same way as someone who committed the same crime sober.
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