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Psychedelics As a Failed Experiment?

ParappaTheRapper

ParappaTheRapper

Ex-Bluelighter
Joined
Jan 19, 2012
Messages
2,390
Why do you think psychedelics as a thing failed as a medicine and catalyst for societal change?
 
Two reasons. They reached the general public before proper research could be completed. When this happened, the government was looking for a scapegoat for massive changes that were threatening the status quo. They have been demonized ever since. Change seems to be happening now, but I think we may be a generation away from anything sticking.
 
I actually do think that some of the awareness and values that were introduced in the 1970's were a result of psychedelic experiences and that some good still continues from those today. I also believe that what Big Pharma has done over the last 20 years (1 in 5 adult Americans on psychiatric drugs) is going to lead more and more people to seek an alternative. Actually 1 in 5 is a statistic from 2010; I'm sure it is much higher now.

The fact that the Pentagon turned to MAPS for information about their PTSD studies tells you a lot. The psychiatric drugs come with a very high price, literally and figuratively. At the Psychedelic Sciences Conference in 2013 one of the researchers predicted that low doses of LSD would be widely available and prescribed to Hospice Patients within 10 years. The need is there. What is available either isn't working well or not at all and people are desperate for alternatives. I know that there is a serious stigma still but I am very hopeful that this will change. My greatest fear is that Big Pharma will be in control of them once the stigma is no longer associated with their them.
 
I often wonder how psychedelics and MDMA would be manufactured and distributed if they ever were truly cleared for medical use.
 
Who says they failed? Psychedelics were part of a major social movement in the mid-20'th century. If the current trend towards Cannabis legalization ever extends to other psychedelic drugs, such a movement could happen again.

As far as medical applications, psychedelics simply haven't been given a proper chance. They were banned as part of an establishment reaction to the mid-20'th century social movement. Modern biomedical science has seen an explosion of huge advances since then (i.e. sequencing the human genome, among other things.), but prohibition has made it very difficult for psychedelics to be a part of that. If drugs like LSD and psilocin are ever legalized, then we'll see if they "fail" as medicines.
 
It's not a polarized thing that either failed or didn't fail, it's just a thing that is it's own thing and continues to have an impact on society/individuals/culture. These impacts can varyingly be interpreted as failures or successes or something else, but to call PDs a failed experiment is an oversimplification (or to call it a success for that matter).
 
i think it was the backlash against them more than the drugs themselves.
 
Psychedelics have had far more subtle and wide-ranging effects on humanity than one can easily quantify.
To call something a failure...first you have to define the parameters of its purpose to begin with.

As far as I'm concerned, 50-odd years is an insignificant amount of time in social and medical history. If the military and intelligence institutions of the west hasn't considered psychedelics a weapon first and foremost (leading to all kinds of horrendous incidents) we might have not lost half a century in proper research.
As for the social effects...they are still reverberating today.
Sure, some idealists might feel that a bunch of utopian ideals did not come about like magic - but a 'side effect' of using psychedelics can be deluded or distorted thinking.
Psychedelic drugs have been a huge catalyst for social change, even if "world peace" has not eventuated.
 
It's one thing to trip, but it's another to actually accept lessons from those trips, and not just seeing trippy colors.
 
Huh?? Change what? How? I'm intrigued. Apart from your loopy new age spiritualists (I met one recently who while tripping on 2cb and MXE complained about 4 dried peyote buttons not causing her to trip... and meet her spirit totem animal!) I explained the dose of mescaline HCl to be 200-400 mg's and a few dried button would contain nothing near that amount... Society has changed. We now have the subculture commonly known as "new age spiritualists" aka "hippies". :) With their infinite wisdom of misinformation (LSD is stored in one CSF and one can get "flashbacks" from said CSF stored LSD) and mythology. Some are really nice people but the "mystical" side of things can really irritate me at times. Oh well at least they gave us Greenpeace and Woodstock lol.

BTW what was the control group for this experiment? Who was gathering the research data? What was the placebo used and who received it? Intriguing indeed!

I'm really curious about the various ethnic groups who have and still do use psychedelics in their various religious/cultural practices and their inclusion in this study...

spacejunk said:
Psychedelics have had far more subtle and wide-ranging effects on humanity than one can easily quantify.
To call something a failure...first you have to define the parameters of its purpose to begin with.

As far as I'm concerned, 50-odd years is an insignificant amount of time in social and medical history. If the military and intelligence institutions of the west hasn't considered psychedelics a weapon first and foremost (leading to all kinds of horrendous incidents) we might have not lost half a century in proper research.
As for the social effects...they are still reverberating today.
Sure, some idealists might feel that a bunch of utopian ideals did not come about like magic - but a 'side effect' of using psychedelics can be deluded or distorted thinking.
Psychedelic drugs have been a huge catalyst for social change, even if "world peace" has not eventuated.
Click to expand...

Thanks spacejunk you nailed it: side effect's can include: deluded or distorted thinking. Change has occurred, perhaps of a more subtle nature than what most expect or perceive.
 
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^I think the OP is referring to the period of legal psychedelic use during the late 50'/60's as an informal 'social experiment'. ;)

People may put too much faith in the ability of psychedelics to spontaneously enact change within an individual. This effect is hard to define because it may be non-existent. From there, it follows that widespread change initiated by psychedelics occurring across society in general is even more unlikely. All the stuff that was happening in the sixties only featured drug use as a small component; the rest was a result of World War II (baby boom leading to an increase in young middle class people) accompanied by sexual liberation, reliable birth control, civil rights and a global culture related to technological progression (cheap airflight, radio, television, electronic audio reproduction, etc.). In truth, the idea of a psychedelic society has not failed because it has barely been attempted.
 
Was there ever any suggestion that lots of people taking psychedelics could somehow wrongstep corporate capitalism?

Psychedelics have helped the people who got help from psychedelics. That was always going to be a very, very small minority of the population. The idea that everyone who takes psychedelics is going to enjoy them is silly. For the few who enjoy it, psychedelics have been the greatest thing in life.

Medicine wise prohibition stopped pretty much all research into them for 30 years.
 
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what makes you think they failed OP?

psychedelics arent meant for everyone. the leary-esque idea of everyone in america "turning on" and creating a utopia just isnt realistic. surely, there are more people that could benefit from a little trip here and there, but we have been reaping the benefits of psychedelics far before my generation even knew what they were.

francis crick discovered the double-helix DNA structure as a result of an LSD trip. kary mullis credits LSD for his nobel-prize winning PCR reaction technique. steve jobs says taking LSD was his second or third most important event in his life. look at how the california hippie scene crossed over to silicon valley and the microprocessing revolution. doc ellis pitched a no-hitter in 1970 as pitcher of the pittsburgh pirates. and dont forget all of the incredible music that has come as a direct result of psychedelic use.

i mean i kind of get what you are saying, but the door isnt shut yet. MAPS and other scientific advocacy groups have lobbied for the study of psychedelics, and now we have the most psychedelic studies happening since the early 1960s. this thing isnt over, it has just begun dude.
 
GreenMachine said:
francis crick discovered the double-helix DNA structure as a result of an LSD trip. kary mullis credits LSD for his nobel-prize winning PCR reaction technique. steve jobs says taking LSD was his second or third most important event in his life. look at how the california hippie scene crossed over to silicon valley and the microprocessing revolution. doc ellis pitched a no-hitter in 1970 as pitcher of the pittsburgh pirates. and dont forget all of the incredible music that has come as a direct result of psychedelic use.
Click to expand...
Top post :)
 
^I like his post too, but the pedant within me would like to point out the billion discoveries that occurred without the help of psychedelics. I'm not going to explicitly describe them all, but one reason for the failure of mainstream society to embrace psychedelia is that the claims that some users make about them are not reflected in actuality. Francis Crick didn't spontaneously discover the helical structure of DNA because he was tripping. He was already researching it and LSD may have given him the creative insight needed to visualise it more completely. Suffice to say, this vision probably wouldn't have dawned upon anyone not already exposed to these ideas- I'm not a scientist, I don't believe psychedelics will give me startling insights into science- I am an amateur musician, and LSD/psychedelics have certainly inspired many of my recordings. My point here isn't to denigrate the power of psychedelics, but to ensure that we don't succumb to the temptation to label psychedelics as magical. In fact, I think we should value psychedelics more given the actual real and objective gains they can provide. But lets not fool ourselves into considering them as something they are not.

I've always loved this quote of Albert Hoffman: " I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD. It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be.". So beautiful and so true :) <3
 
Who are the people, groups, established interests that want you to think psychedelics failed as a social experiment?

Who are the groups that want you to think they were important for two decades and then disappeared?

Who are the groups that want you to think they have had an importance in a few major changes in society and are still influencing people worldwide?

Those are the questions you'll have to ask yourself to see how they failed and how they succeeded.
 
GreenMachine said:
francis crick discovered the double-helix DNA structure as a result of an LSD trip.
Click to expand...

No he didn't. That's an urban myth.

steve jobs says taking LSD was his second or third most important event in his life.

But it didn't make him behave any differently to any other peice of shit capitalist did it - he was still paying slaves 10 pence a week to work in his factories. I always wonder if he said that to boost the brand like Richard Branson always claims to be a "hippie" or a "rebel" while robbing millions from the taxpayer on the railways.

and dont forget all of the incredible music that has come as a direct result of psychedelic use.

Was that because of the drugs or the people around in music at the time? Lennon was writing pretty good stuff before he ever took LSD.
 
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