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Comment by chiefalchemist | Hacker News Reader

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

While I agree with everything else you said, this bit concerns me. I'm certainly in favor of using these tools to help anyone who needs help. But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms, but what are we going to collectively take to address the root problem(s)? And when?

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Oh I think people are unhappy because of an abusive political system designed to funnel all wealth to the top while everyone else works themselves to death. Collective action is absolutely the real solution, but psychedelics can help people locked in the mindset that things can’t change to consider a better world.

There are simple things, like the fact that we are isolated. This according to Noam Chomsky is an intentional and desirable outcome of a corporate mass media system that wants to keep us separated. And a nice psychedelic trip with friends is a great way to remember not just that you like being with your friends, but that the world that keeps you apart is genuinely inhumane, and we should start to look deeper at how to solve these issues.

Basically I think psychedelics can be a tool that leads to the collective action you have rightly pointed out is the ultimate solution.

The reverse seems much much more likely. The abusive political system pushes drug legalization as an opiate of the masses so they are more content to deal with the abusive political system. A weekend of legal drug use to make the pain go away and disrupt solidarity.

Opiates are quite a different animal. A weekend of psychedelics with your friends is not going to help you ignore anything.

re: opiate of the masses

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+opiate+of+the+masse...

In short, it's not to be read literally.

I'm aware, and in context with religion is an apt metaphor. But in context with psychedelics it's not.

They're not a numbing agents, they're catalysts for change, that's why they're applicable to therapy in ways that opiates are not.

Yes and no. At some low-level the brain doesn't differential between physical pain and mental / emotional pain. It's pain, and it needs to be reckoned with. Maybe psychedelics aren't painkillers in the opioid sense. However, they do provide pain relief, and yes perhaps an opportunity for healing.

The difference really isn't all that much.

I agree with the other commenter that this is not how psychedelics work. They do not "make the pain go away" like depressants. If they have any effect on solidarity it would be to strengthen it, not disrupt it.

This is interestingly a great example of the point being made in TFA. That we need a new category for psychedelics because they are not anything like opiates etc.

> These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms

My experience with psychedelic-assisted insight is not consistent with this. You have the right trip, identify some root-causes that you've been overlooking, and then sober-you has the rest of your life to do something with that new awareness.

They're not painkillers. If anything, they're the opposite. There are all of these rumors about LSD causing back pain because people who have been ignoring back pain trip and are suddenly aware of it again. Such an experience caused me to upgrade my chair and start practicing yoga, for instance.

> They're not painkillers

In the traditional sense (e.g., alcohol, Oxycodine, etc) no they are not. But they are mind altering, literally. And that alteration is an opportunity to break patterns, unhealthy patterns. Being in that other state of mind shows you another state of mind can exist. You experienced it. So you take that away with you and ideally build new healthier paths.

I totally agree. Isn't that quite different than what painkillers do?

Presumably your new path has something to do with a problem that you had. It's not helping you cope with having the problem, it's prodding you to solve the problem.

> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

Because that's the default.. People haven't evolved to be happy; we have evolved to barely survive to have kids and care for them so that a few become adults. Being happy is the exception, you should ask how anyone manages that.

I sort of agree with this. We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy. These <things|experiences> will bring pleasure but they don’t create meaningful happiness. As if pleasure and happiness are the same thing. But they are often conflated.

I can’t tell or teach people “how to be happy”. I’m not even sure that’s possible or if it’s something everyone can do or would really want to. But I do know that being hooked on a treadmill of pleasurable experiences isn’t it.

> We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy.

Seems like the entirely idea of happiness has been semiotically highjacked by marketing, morality, other things

When I mentally picture "happiness", all I really see is a bunch of behaviors that are frequently depicted as desirable in the aggregate by media and others

The Buddhists are a lot more sane about this than we are. Imo there's so much residue around the word "happiness", in order to achieve a sense of peace it's better to just throw it out and take each day at a time

Happiness is a state of mind, and is a (mental, emotional) place, and that place is easier to occupy if your life is setup to make it easier. A few good friends, a romantic partner, meaningful work, kids is sort of the usual and probably pretty safe recipe. It's possible to have these things and be miserable, and it's possible to have none of them and be blissfully happy.

Aristotle wrote a pretty solid book on the topic.

The default is resorting to drugs, alcohol, other destructive behaviour, and even suicide?

Maybe.

But this isn't a universal default. These escapes at this level isn't happening everywhere in every culture, is it?

Why are using drugs and alcohol automatically destructive behaviours? I imagine you know and work with many people who use drugs and/or alcohol and also have families, friends, hobbies, career trajectories and are overall reasonably happy, well-adjusted people. I mean, that describes virtually everyone I know! The problem cases certainly exist, but within my personal world, those people are the exceptions.

> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

How is this even supposed to be determined? It isn't like you can test for happiness like you test a pool for Ph levels. Assuming we can is optimistic

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