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Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

A cure for alcoholism that works fifty percent of the time is ground breaking. How could doctors not be impressed? The success rate for AA itself is about 2%. What has a better rate of success than 50%?

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As a country, we are just BARELY getting to the point where people are willing to be public in their support of marijuana legalization. We have a long way to go before entheogens are legalized federally. But I think if there is any way to achieve that, it would be through doctors attesting to their efficacy in treating various illnesses. It's the same thing we went through with marijuana -- show the people there ARE medical uses, that the world is not ending because of it, and then they accept a wider use.

I think it would make sense to start by legalizing mushrooms. The fact that they are very prevalent in nature will make it easier for people to accept them. They're also very safe, probably less addictive than marijuana (do you know anyone who takes mushrooms daily?), and there are already a number of studies showing therapeutic benefits.

I could find no credible source with a precise success rate for AA, but all my reading suggested much higher than 2%. This Scientific American article[1]explains why it’s hard to measure and suggests the success rate is probably somewhere between 20 and 60%.

1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-alcoholics-a...

I wonder if there was any influence or interference by the alcohol industry - there are certainly enough examples of tobacco, sugar, and other industries that we could assume there was shenanigans.

> The medical community of the early 1960s wasn’t impressed either, and citing various procedural issues with the study, it was largely ignored at the time.

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