“One of the best things for society” is a very very bold claim. For the uninformed like myself how would psychedelic therapy be THIS beneficial?
For comparison to topics-de-jour, in the US 0.3% of the population will get an abortion in a given year, 3.5% are gay/bi, 0.3% are trans, <0.03% die from gun violence (and over half are suicides potentially reduced by this treatment) each year, and about 1/40th of them are killed by law enforcement. Improvements in these areas will have a smaller effect size (ie. protecting gay marriage will not improve the lives of gay people as much as curing someone's depression will, gun control will not end all gun violence).
Big caveat here is that this treatment is relatively new, and depression treatments tend to be promising initially with results that fade in the long term. Additionally, the legalization of that treatment does not mean everyone who needs it will get it. On the other hand, depression is only one of the many issues that can be treated with psychadelics. We'll have to wait and see
Even if your friend just sits there for four hours while reading a book, it's comforting to know that someone you trust is there to say "yes" when you start asking "is this really happening?" That can make the difference between a wonderful experience and an alarming one.
It is much cheaper if you have cows nearby.
Contrast with: One session of psychedelic assisted therapy has been shown to offer months of relief from depression.
I’m not saying it’s a magic cure, just that we owe it to ourselves to continue to study psychedelic assisted therapy.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/psilocybin-mush...
"More than 80% of those who were given the psychedelic treatment had drastically reduced their drinking eight months after the study started, compared to just over 50% in the antihistamine control group, according to results published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. At the end of the trial, half of those who received psilocybin had quit drinking altogether, compared to about one-quarter of those who were given the antihistamine."This isn't a genpop study.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02872-9
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206443
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156539/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
My brother's schizophrenia started while I sat with him on the grass trying to comfort him after he had taken mushrooms.
This led to moment after moment of things that are difficult to for me to talk about. My family spent 3 Christmases at the state hospital to be with him. Thanks to the help he was able to get at the hospital and through continued care, he's now able to live with my parents.
Please be wise.
But if approached properly, single session with psychedelics may have beneficial effects of months or even years of psychotherapy. Week or two after such session you start noticing that some things simply stopped being problematic.
Would you rather have no meds for some conditions because we don't fully understand how existing ones work, or would you dissect living humans' brains for faster research?
If psychological and medical research on psychoactive substances is successfully resumed I believe we will see helpful and possibly ground breaking applications of these drugs. They're indisputably powerful compounds, the question is simply whether those effects can be harnessed by medicine and therapy to provide long lasting interventions.
This statement about what is "good for society" can't be evaluated by statistics or metrics. It has to be believed, taken on faith.
Oh, they'll cite studies about miraculous results with overcoming addiction and depression. Pardon me for being skeptical about the massive amount of junk science that has over promised, under delivered, or been outright unrepeatable.
This is no different than the "AI" algorithms that are quickly making their way into decision making in society. It's a black box that worked great in the lab, so let's ship it to everyone. Surely it will be good for us!
The Gods of the Copybook Headings will return as they always do.
Well-functioning societies have steered clear of intoxication. A
A Clear-headed, rational, and objective view of reality is the goal.
There’s nothing new about messing with your perception of reality.
Wise men steer clear of it. Wise men counsel against intoxication of any kind. Fools don’t ask why.
There is only perspective, which somehow relates to a thing we like to call "reality" but the relationship is tenuous at best and doesn't always directly correspond.
Understanding the role of perspective I believe can be valuable. Sometimes maybe a shakeup helps to understand perspective is just that, or otherwise produce a different way of looking at things.
I'd beg to differ. One can think up any number of metrics that would be inarguably good for society. Reduction in suicide would be a huge one. Reduced crime rate. Reduced addiction rate. Increase in lifespan. Increase in standard of living. Reduction of domestic violence. There are many more dimensions you could measure, establishing direct causation is the tricky part but it is certainly possible to establish if the state of society in general is improving.
Yes, a society with less suicide is a better thing. We can achieve that in many ways -- however, some ways come with significant or unpredictable side effects.
Not that being skeptical about this is bad, frankly its good, but probably best when it is specific and focused into criticism.