‘Not much evidence’ for long-term problems over the past 50 years, Norwegian researchers conclude.
The late acid guru Dr Timothy Leary would doubtless have claimed to have known it all along, but after conducting an exhaustive study on tens of thousands of Americans, a team of Norwegian scientists has concluded that LSD may actually be good for you. Researchers Pal-Orjan Johansen and Teri Krebs from Norway’s University of Science and Technology in Trondheim examined American drug-use surveys carried out between 2001 and 2004 on over 130,000 US citizens, of which 22,000 had used a psychedelic drug such as LSD at least once in their lives. The results may not amount to an appeal to “turn on, tune in and drop out”, but they appear to overturn the opinion long-held in parts of the medical establishment that LSD and other “mind-enhancing” drugs automatically result in debilitating flashbacks, uncontrollable paranoia attacks and a desire to leap off buildings.
In the science journal PLOS One, Mr Johansen and Mrs Krebs wrote: “There were no significant associations between lifetime use of any psychedelics, or use of LSD in the past year, and an increased rate of mental health problems. Rather, in several cases psychedelic use was associated with a lower rate of mental health problems.”
In an interview with Norway’s English-language news website, The Local, Mr Johansen said that expert studies which attempt to discover whether psychedelic drugs such as LSD, mescaline and the “magic mushroom” drug psilocybin are harmful had not demonstrated that they caused chronic health problems. “Everything has some risk; psychedelics can elicit temporary feelings of anxiety and confusion, but accidents leading to serious injury are extremely rare,” Mrs Krebs told the website. “Over the past 50 years, tens of millions of people have used psychedelics and there is just not much evidence of long-term problems,” she added.The scientists claimed the notion that LSD and other psychedelic substances damaged mental health stemmed from a small number of case reports on patients who were already suffering from some form of mental illness. They added that both psychedelic drug use and the onset of mental illness tended to occur in late adolescence, which in the past had led researchers to wrongly attribute mental problems to LSD. “Both mental illness and psychedelic drug use are prevalent in the population, which likely leads to many chance associations,” Mr Johansen said.
So... I am extremely perplexed by the outcome of mathematics here.