[ExI] 27 psychedelics??

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 11:13 PM Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
wrote:

> And I guess as a follow-up to that little paragraph I would ask WHY
> doctors DON'T try the psychoactive drugs they prescribe.  Awful side
> effects are usually rare, especially if you just try them once to see what
> they feel like.  And if you're that scared of the effects, how could you
> feel comfortable prescribing them so freely?  For someone who cares about
> intelligence, science, and information, you think it would be a no-brainer
> to gain that wealth of new information by taking the drug--information you
> literally cannot possibly obtain elsewhere, since it is essentially pure
> qualia.
>

### Anecdotes don't make medicine. Me getting jittery or weirded out on
some stuff doesn't advance knowledge. Placebo controlled studies with
well-defined endpoints and correct statistics is how real medicine
succeeds. Most other stuff is just hearsay.
------------------------------


> To come back to the color example, imagine you had a pill that let
> greyscale-seers see color for the first time, and yet you had no idea what
> color looked like.  You're telling me you wouldn't take the drug just to be
> more knowledgeable?  Why?  Fear?  Decades of brainwashing education?  Pure
> stubbornness?  I just don't understand.  It's not that scary or difficult
> to try a mild dose of a drug.
>

### People differ. As I said, I can read for hours. As a child I could
spend 6 hours straight doing chemical calculation testing from a handbook
just for fun, not for school. I could spend three hours a day every day for
a couple of years, learning exactly forty new English or German words every
day, and then return the next day to check retention and re-learn what I
didn't get the first time. Or spend days reading the encyclopedia, all 13
books of it, it took up a whole shelf in my father's bookcase. But most
people couldn't do it. What's the use of me taking 5 mg Adderall and being
able to read for 8 hours straight, just to prove the point, or something?
What matters is published research and well-founded standards of practice,
which I follow.

Up To Date is my best friend.
-----------------------

>
> It's sad because I would say you could pick a random, middlingly
> intelligent amphetamine user off the street and they would have just as
> much to offer in counseling someone on the use of amphetamine as a doctor
> who prescribes it.
>

### How much is that user taking? 500 mg? How is that relevant to me
prescribing 5 mg? Don't swallow the whole bottle of pills in one session,
yes, that's good advice which I can give without additional consultations.

Rafal
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