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Originally Posted by Jel
no, they're unaware of reality, which is very different than being content. I personally know around 12 long term lsd users off the top of my head who are - how can I put this delicately - I can't actually, so: they're basically mongs. Zero awareness of how useless they are, completely sure they are 100% sane, when all you need to do is talk to them for anything upwards of about 3 minutes to see they act like retarded kids. You're sane buddies will relate to what I'm saying, while you'll swear blind you're of a higher intelligence than most people on this board, if not the planet.
Have a great day anyway, carrying this conversation on would be like trying to reason with a 9 year old  |
well, show me ONE study/trial that shows mind-expanding drugs are bad for mental health (provided the experimentee has no latent disorder or predisposition) ... ???
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So-called psychedelic drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and peyote are not linked to mental health problems
Psychedelics have been used by mankind for millenia. Common reasons for using psychedelics include mystical experiences, curiosity and introspection. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), psychedelics have similar structures to natural neurotransmitters, the chemical messengers in the brain and temporarily interfere with the neurotransmitter action, which then leads to emotional swings and hallucinogenic "trips" that go on for hours. It is yet unknown how exactly psychedelics work, but is is known what they don't do. It is known they do not cause (physical) damage to the brain or other organs or birth defects or genetic damage or induce withdrawal symptoms, addiction or compulsive use.
And now a new research study out of Norway, which was published in the Aug. 19 issue of PLoS One, shows that psychedelic drugs such as LSD, magic mushrooms and peyote are not linked to mental health problems. Unexpected results because it was previously speculated that psychedelics might lead to mental health problems - those speculations were actually based on a small number of case reports and did not take into account the widespread use of psychedelics or rate of mental health problems in the general population, study co-author Teri Krebs said. Study author Pal-Orjan Johansen, a neuro-scientist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim in Norway, said in a statement, that "After adjusting for other risk factors, lifetime or past year use of psilocybin, LSD, mescaline or peyote were not associated with a higher rate of receiving mental health treatment or encountering mental health problems."
For this new study, researchers the analyzed data of a drug use survey conducted between 2001 and 2004.
130,000 randomly chosen American respondents who took a drug use survey between 2001 and 2004, including 22,000 who had used a psychedelic drug at least once were asked about any mental health symptoms including psychological distress, anxiety disorders, psychosis and mood disorders and treatments that took place in the year prior to being surveyed. The results were nothing less but astonishing, because they only found links to mental health benefits. They did not find any association between the drugs and this range of mental health problems, but that users who had taken psilocybin, mescaline or LSD actually had lower rates of major psychological distress and were also less likely to receive outpatient mental health treatment, such as from a therapist or to take psychiatric prescription medications. They found no relation between lifetime use of psychedelics and any undesirable past year mental health conditions, including serious psychological distress, mental health treatment (either inpatient or outpatient or feeling the need of medication) or symptoms of panic disorder, major depressive episodes, mania, social phobia, agoraphobia, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD or non-affective psychosis.
Johansen and his co-researchers also mentioned that studies of people who used psychedelics hundreds of times in religious ceremonies provided no evidence of either mental health or social problems and that recent studies have failed to reveal any evidence of lasting harmful effects from psychedelics as well.
But, this is not the first study with such surprising results.
Previous studies also showed that psychedelics may have protective benefits for mental health. Two studies released in Jan. 2012 showed that psilocybin-takers have a reduced risk for depression and a study in March 2012 showed that LSD may help serious alcoholics stay sober. Many of the experimentee reported they had gained a greater self-acceptance, openness and self-confidence and new appreciation for their problem and new motivation to address and battle it.
Dr. Mark Bolstridge, a researcher at the Center for Neuropsychopharmacology of the Imperial College of London in the U.K. who personally worked in mental health and trained in psychiatry said that he has not yet seen any individual suffering from significant mental health problems as a result of using psychedelics.
While these studies look more than encouraging these studies do not guarantee that people taking these drugs won't face mental health problems if they have a (latent) predisposition or condition. The question is how frequent and under what circumstances it happens.
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soooo ... what?