The point is that it's a tool, like a car or a chainsaw. It should be used responsibly, with supervision, safely, around people who know how to help you, etc. Without regulation/licensing, when it's driven underground, it goes to the black market and that's where things get terrible.

Psychedelics are not "good" or "bad". They simply modify one's brain chemistry in novel ways that have the potential to be useful. Whether the experiences one has under their influence are useful or not depends entirely on the individual, where they are in their life, and to a moderate degree, chance.

The same goes for gateway theory. Personal experience tells me that the concept of drug use leading to more drug use is valid with some people and not with others. Much like tripping, it is largely dependent on the individual and their life situation at the time. It is not at all black and white (is it ever?).

As usual, balance is key.

Heck, the commander of Germany's Air Force was a lifelong addict. Not that he's a good role model, but that should dispel the idea that opiates kill the ability to run a "successful" life (for some values of successful), in the same way that FB using PHP should dispel idea that you can't write a world class service in PHP.

Keep your eyes open in meetings with "successful" white collar people. If you look carefully, you should not have a hard time finding plenty with pinned pupils.

For example, do amphetamine and cocaine addicts get more work done in the long run? Are heavy psychedelic users more creative than average (examples like Francis Crick's discovery while on LSD seems to point that way, but the sample size is small)?

With that much selection bias you'll probably find exactly what you're looking for.

I can tell you from a lifetime of experience with addicts I've known that the answer to this is absolutely "Hell NO".

Please do not try this at home, and take my word for it.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s

He took speed everyday, and said it gave him great ideas. On a bet, he stopped taking them for a month, and said that month was a waste of time.

I suspect most successful speed users aren't going to talk about it like he did.

Prescribed attention deficit disorder medication non-withstanding, coke and meth addicts are just ticking time bombs.

I know a bunch of speed (meth) users who truly believe that are being super productive, but in the end all they have to show for it is scrubbed concrete, an empty bank account, and psychosis.

These are just my personal experiences as a 48yo who has been deeply involved with recreational drugs since age 13.

I tried shrooms roughly 10-15x in my life, gradually found a way to get most out of the experience (instead of 5-6 hours of mediocre intensity having 2-3 hours of pure joy). Never tried anything harder/different than this & pot, so there goes gateway thingie. I don't even know how to describe what I've been trough, but always purely positive extremely intensive experience. FOr me it's not social drug like pot. In fact, when trying to walk around in broad daylight, meeting people etc. the struggle to look normal was literally killing whole trip, since reality was much stronger info feed to my brain.

Since it's digested, after laying down in bed and closing eyes, I would describe the event as gradually losing all senses and connection with body. My self dissolving into something like a mist, breaking into atoms and just hovering. I am an atheist, but it was always very spiritual experience (to me it explains a bit why there are so many religions - we have it built in somehow). Coming back from trip was not instant, always like going down some massive mountain, step by step, discovering your senses and body again (you don't realize that you are "seeing" without anyhow utilizing your eyes, until you start getting them back. Same for rediscovery of hands for example).

Would I advise these to anybody? Nope. As article said, if one has some deep issues, this can unearth them. But so can excessive alcohol and other stuff (one of my ex' father had schyzophrenia attack triggered by excessive drinking, stayed with him whole life after that accident). Is this an issue of psychedelics? No, just us. They are just powerful tool, nothing more.

That being said, didn't have ones for couple of years, mostly because they are not easily accessible (collecting wild mushrooms can bring nasty poisoning if you mix them up for others, and I don't feel up for Tor orders :)). They are definitely not addictive, in fact after each experience being so hugely intense, I didn't feel the curiosity for quite some time. Also, trip being super intense, after it I always get terrible headache from my brain being literally owerworked.

I say everybody who is mentally OK (strong condition here) should try them once. I think mankind overall would look better, and be happier :)

It's a bit of a problem here that you cannot really know whether people are actually mentally okay, even if they seem so.

I would guess that, at the forefront of a field like mathematics where you need to hold a virtually superhuman amount of the field in your mind at once, and explore it for possible cross-connections in a very thorough and rigorous way, being neurotypical would feel like having ADHD, and being on speed would feel like being "functional."

That's going to be your first problem.

Oxymoron.

A drug may be a gateway, but you are the one walking through it. If you are using drugs irresponsibly it is your fault, not the drugs'.

I've come to learn, after intense inpatient treatment, that my "irresponsible" drug use almost surely developed from deep emotional scars inflicted on me in my very, very early childhood.

Over the past two years, since I've cleaned up, I've studied the neuroscience of addiction quite deeply, and there are some rather enlightening studies that pretty much prove, beyond most doubt, that addiction is a brain disorder and not a "will power" (whatever that really is) issue.

In other words, people with a certain type of "neural initialization", created in very early childhood, will almost certainly become addicts of some sort, while others without those disorders, won't (or are far less likely).

All I was really trying to say was this; giving mood-altering drugs to everyone might create problems and should continued to be studied carefully.

(Not that it applies here. Everything I've read and seen indicates the world would be far better off if access to opiates and psychedelics was legal, easy, and well understood/educated.)

Also, while I don't consider psychedelics "evil" at all, they do make a person more suggestible. If you're surrounded by a rotten culture and bombed-out people, you're going to suck in a lot of negative energy.

The recreational drug use lifestyle is, for most people, pretty awful. Again, I think that the chemicals themselves (if we're talking about psilocybin and LSD) are probably a minor factor. But to get in access, you have to deal with despicable people (such as dealers) and make a bunch of shitty friends who are in access, and there's definitely a lot of the crappy, cliquey behavior associated with American high schools. Oh, and since you're dealing with an scumbag black market, you're not always getting the chemicals that you think you are. And even if you're only interested in exploratory, "spiritual" drug use, you're still surrounded by crass, hedonistic, bombed-out people who also use cocaine (which is an asshole/empty-hedonist drug if there ever was one) and opiates (which can wreck your health and turn you into a lethargic zombie). Most of these people also have undiagnosed mental illnesses (not minor yuppie shit, but severe, unmedicated bipolar and schizophrenia that they are actively making worse) that they are too lazy to take care of [0].

[0] Please don't think I'm a Republican for calling these people "lazy". I'm talking about upper-middle- and upper-class hipsters living on parental funds who've had everything handed to them.

This is, I'd argue, a case where the illegality of these drugs makes them a lot worse in their totality (and that's one reason why I'm really glad to see these compounds being studied for potential beneficial effects, even if I'll probably never again use them). Because LSD is illegal and stigmatized, you have to deal with the dregs of humanity to get it. Now, while LSD and psilocybin may not be long-term harmful under ideal conditions (the jury is still out about that, but evidence suggest that they can do a great deal of good) they are pretty awful when used in the wrong setting... and they are almost never available in the right setting. People who run marathons and write novels and program open-source libraries rarely use LSD, not because they're "above it" (I also know some absolutely wonderful people who've used LSD) but because they're just generally not in access.

Furthermore, these drugs seem to scale poorly. The more often you use them, the less benefit they seem to deliver. I think that it's probably healthy for a normal person to have a psychedelic experience on occasion. It can set a person on a different course, and we all need that on occasion. Dropping acid every weekend is probably not a good idea. When drugs become one's life, or one's lens through which everything good or bad is viewed (note: someone who relates all intense experiences to drugs probably should fucking stop using them)... it gets very unhealthy. At this point, the person has frank psychological problems, has probably lost jobs and friends and relationships, and is exactly the sort of person who will be drawn into the use of drugs that are physically harmful (like coke and heroin).

I hope this helps to explain the pattern. Of course, there's a lot tied into it, and a lot of it's cultural. But some people undergo a subtle shift from self-improvement and learning to "experience chasing", and the chasing turns into escapism, and LSD and psilocybin are rather poor drugs for escape (they intensify life, rather than drowning it out) while alcohol, heroin, and cocaine are good for that. I know many who were irresponsible "psychonauts" in their 20s and turned into boozing alcoholics in their 40s.

All that said, this is just one slice of experience and observation (and a negative one). There are plenty of people I know who use these drugs on occasion and haven't gone wrong or boiled their brains. It's not for me, but I think it's necessarily bad. Legalizing and de-stigmatizing psychedelics would do a great deal of good, in my opinion, for everyone by removing them from toxic cultures.

There are still reasons one might end up associating with the drug culture; if one wants to share and discuss their experiences, the easiest way to find psychonaut friends is through the local drug trade.

The other major benefit of online drug trade is that many middlemen are cut out of the equation. With less underground transportation and distribution, there is less violence. Many vendors produce the drugs they sell themselves. A highly reputed psilocybin vendor, TripsWithScience (believably claims to) grow psychedlic mushrooms in his home, using spores he originally collected himself, then extracts psilocybin, packages it up and mails it to the recipient.

No middlemen means no violence. I don't believe I'll live to see the categorical legalization of drugs, but for now I'm happy with this.

I don't feel this way about shrooms, or about shroom dealers, because mushrooms are so comparatively common. There is less ipso facto sketchiness about the kind of person who's selling shrooms. (Although there is certainly some sketchiness there; don't get me wrong.)

Someone once told me, regarding psychedelics: Once you've gotten "the message", it's time to hang up the phone. I think it's good advice.

Therefore, I must downvote you for the straw man.

I have one of those too, and I can see where my life could have been easier had I not stubbornly clung to my own principles and instead accepted authority; but drugs had nothing to do with that in my case. I'm not sure that I understand how drugs could have done it in yours.

These drugs seem to be karmic accelerators, and they seem to intensify time by factors of 100 to 1000+, which means you can get months or years worth of experience in a few hours. If you're on a path "upward" (ignore the subjectivity of spirituality and growth for now) the drugs will push you along, you'll learn a lot, and have a beautiful experience. If you're headed for, or at risk of, crisis or a disaster, they can bring it forward with a lot of force... and it might be better, for many people, to have more time to deal with such a thing.

Monitored use with a skilled therapist is probably fine for most people (and I wouldn't be surprised if psychedelics were much more safe than what's currently being used for high-grade mental illnesses, because many of those drugs-- legal and regularly deployed in mental institutions-- are nasty) but the recreational/hedonistic use pattern you see in our society (which, for the most part, is materialistic, thrill-obsessed, short-tempered and crass... and using LSD or psilocybin doesn't change that aspect of a person unless he has the right intentions) seems to have minimal expectancy and a lot of variance.