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Comment by RandomTisk | Hacker News Reader

Decades of Hollywood shows has conflated the two classes as part of the same party animal regimen. Timothy Leary didn't help either. All my (cursory) research suggests either there are parallel worlds that makes no sense to logical people in this one or much more likely, they can sometimes induce states of temporary schizophrenia. That's about the only cause for concern I think. If I voted in favor of legalization and then next year we had a lot of new Timothy Leary's walking around spewing nonsense, ruining the lives of everyone in their family because they're taking them every day or week, I'd be extremely regretful of voting in favor of it. What you see now in the community though is a reverence and fear and respect that they didn't have in the 70's, so that's a good sign.

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Timothy Leary gets a lot of flack, but the fact is that he was greatly responsible for spreading the word about benefits of psychedelics and getting people interested in them. There's a good chance that some of the people at the FDA and DEA now who are approving the current studies in to the effects of psychedelics (studies which were forbidden for decades before them) might have had their own psychedelic experiences due to the popularization of psychedelics by Timothy Leary and company.

Also, we have to remember that there were all sorts of negative sensationalistic news coverage in that day, like the suicide of Art Linkletter's daughter, which he blamed on LSD, and then there was Charles Manson, who used LSD in truly evil ways. Then there was Ken Kesey and his Acid Tests, which, if anything, were far more irresponsible than anything Leary ever did, and yet Kesey hardly ever gets the blame for that, and all the blame is heaped upon Leary instead.

Something else to consider is that LSD use was strongly tied to the counter-culture and the anti-War movement, both of which were anathema to many in power in the US. I don't think that all of that association can be laid at Leary's feet. The fact is that young people at the time were interested in these substances and they probably would have flocked to them even had Leary never existed. The time was ripe for it.

> Something else to consider is that LSD use was strongly tied to the counter-culture and the anti-War movement, both of which were anathema to many in power in the US

One of my favorite quotes from How To Change Your Mind goes like this: "There is so much authority that comes out of the primary mystical experience that it can be threatening to existing hierarchical structures."

One of the effects of psychedelics (LSD in particular) is extreme suggestibility. This was the reason the CIA was so interested in LSD in the early days. Basically, whatever setting one happens to be in when they do LSD can potentially become the basis of the rest of their lives. It makes you imprint easily. There was this phenomenon of so-called acid casualties: People did LSD in places like hippie communes or music festivals (the only places to acquire them) and 20 years later they are chaining their dreadlocks to a tree holding a sign that says Save The Whales. I think a healthy level of fear and reverence for the drug could go a long way. It certainly isn't harmless. When they made that antiquated propaganda about cannabis ("Reefer Madness"), the drug they thought they were talking about is LSD.

LSD was initially studied by psychiatrists as a way to temporarily simulate schizophrenia. Psychiatrists took it themselves to get a better perspective on what their patients were going through. There are stories of this effect not being temporary in some people.

I doubt this time we will see Timothy Learys. I would liken the Timothy Leary era to the 1999 dotcom bubble. It was something new that people didn't know what to do with. Both sides exaggerated. Majority opinion overcorrected. Now we can look at things realistically. We have the advantage of research and decades of people using it. It won't make you enter nirvana. But it also doesn't belong in the same category as drugs that make you break into people's cars.

"I doubt this time we will see Timothy Learys"

We almost did see another Timothy Leary. I think Terrence McKenna was almost a Leary, with his advocacy of using mushrooms in "heroic doses". That's really asking for trouble, especially when you know a lot of uninformed users will do so with some of the worst sets and settings.

Psychedelics have a tendency to induce messianic fervor among some people with oversize egos (like Leary, Al Hubbard, and Charles Manson). I think it's very likely there'll be others like them once psychedelics become more popular.

The mainstream media, which bears a large share of responsibility for ushering in the moral panic which led to the Drug War, hasn't gotten any less sensationalistic since those times either. If anything, it's gotten much worse. So the potential for the psychedelic renaissance to get nipped in the bud is in some ways worse now. We're just lucky (or unlucky) that there isn't a massive anti-war movement and countercultural revolution at the moment, but that could change as psychedelic use becomes more widespread.

This is why it's critically important that the rest of us educate people on responsible ways of using psychedelics, and on their risks as well as benefits.

Someone needs to keep their feet on the ground while others are flying away in to the sky.

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