If anyone is interested in commentary on this, this video with Anderson Cooper and Michael Pollan is great: https://www.facebook.com/AndersonCooperFullCircle/videos/den.... They talk about the psilocybin vote at the start of the video and at about 3.5 mins in.
You get a lot of history and also the experiences of a pretty normal person. A lot of information about psychedelics comes from people who take a lot of drugs. I am generally not interested in taking substances so I could relate to this book more than other material.
I would agree with this. He does a great job at describing things more like a "normal person" than a hardcore drug user/experimenter.
I actually disagree with Pollan on what he thinks drug laws should be. He generally supports decriminalization of some things like mushrooms, but then supports heavy state paternalism by keeping them restricted from any recreational use.
Still, a great read and I really appreciate his work.
In general with a lot of authors I prefer hearing their analysis and their experiences and tend to not care much for their solutions. Like you I tend to disagree with thoughts about restrictions but the writing about history and what he experienced is very good. Same could be said for Marx: His analysis of what capitalism is and where it leads is right on but then his solutions are a little questionable.
Yes, the obstacle to wider use is policy and regulation.
For those interested, some thoughts:
There are two types of users from a policy perspective. People with specific diagnoses/diseases, and "healthy" people.
For people with specific diagnoses and diseases, the most important work is FDA approval of MDMA and psilocybin. MAPS, COMPASS Pathways, and Usona are working on this and they require a bunch of money to get through to a successful FDA approval. Funding this research is a very high leverage way to enable policy change, because the FDA has a relatively clear process to approving a drug for medical use for patients with relevant medical diagnoses.
For "healthy people," there needs to be another route. Some people are working on ballot initiatives and legislation that will impact this (see Oregon, Denver, Oakland, Iowa) and that may be a high leverage route. But the path here is less clear. As you note in some cases, some types of research can be helpful for boosting political change, whereas others aren't going to be an efficient use of capital for that goal.
There are some people in this thread asking for advice on using psychedelics.
If you're in this thread and likely to use psychedelics, please do your research first.
My recommendation is to at least thoroughly read the following resources before beginning:
- https://tripsafe.org/how-to-take-shrooms/ (I started this website, it has quite a few users, and it's important that people who are likely to use psychedelics are aware of this info for everyone's benefit.)
- Then, next perhaps the book "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide"
If you're going to take a psychedelic please read through the safety guides on https://tripsafe.org/ first. And like the other commenter noted, read Fadiman's book.
> Rapid antidepressant effects of the psychedelic ayahuasca in treatment-resistant depression: a randomized placebo-controlled trial
> We observed significant antidepressant effects of ayahuasca when compared with placebo at all-time points. MADRS scores were significantly lower in the ayahuasca group compared with placebo at D1 and D2 (p = 0.04), and at D7 (p < 0.0001). Between-group effect sizes increased from D1 to D7 (D1: Cohen's d = 0.84; D2: Cohen's d = 0.84; D7: Cohen's d = 1.49). Response rates were high for both groups at D1 and D2, and significantly higher in the ayahuasca group at D7 (64% v. 27%; p = 0.04). Remission rate showed a trend toward significance at D7 (36% v. 7%, p = 0.054).
