[ExI] 27 psychedelics??

[Will Steinberg]

Spike--do you conflate junkies with users of any drugs?  The people on the
street usually aren't the same people using small doses of psychedelics for
learning and introspection.  The fact that you see all drug users (besides
caffeine and booze users, I guess) under one umbrella shows me that your
opinion is more just about upbringing and bias.  I would also argue that
you are probably not as self-aware as you think.  It's ok, nobody really
is.  But you should understand, for example, that I often look at your
writings and it seems like you are operating on bias a lot of the time,
parroting basic right-wing-tv talking points (which I may or may not
vaguely agree with, but lack nuance nonetheless,) in general acting as a
caricature some of the time.  Which we all do--it's tough not to fall
victim to overuse of heuristics. Psychedelics simply help us take a step
back and look at ourselves.  I don't really understand why you'd think
coffee is ok but amphetamines or psychedelics aren't, besides bias.  My
younger brother avoided caffeine for years for the same reasons you claim
to be avoiding other drugs.

Nuala and Rafal--of course it wouldn't be tenable to take everything,
particularly stuff like you mentioned that needs a month to build up.  But
the experience is free, safe, and quick for many drugs.  I just don't
understand why someone who understands that getting information from
textbooks is good would also not conclude that getting information from
drug experiences themselves is good.

So basically I am just asking, why not?  Because you don't "need" it?  Need
is subjective.  It certainly would improve your understanding.  And if you
elect not to do an easy, free, quick thing that would improve understanding
of your job, that just seems like fear or ignorance to me.

I vaguely agree that pharmaceuticals are often useful but I think they are
far overused in western medicine.  Much of what is accomplished with drugs
could be accomplished with counseling, education, physical/mental therapy,
yoga, meditation, etc, all of which have plenty of legitimate backing in
scientific literature.

Rafal, you say I don't know enough, but I have taken both amphetamine as
well as ziprasidone.  So I would say in the field of knowing what those
drugs feel like, I absolutely, constructively know more than you on that
front, because I simply have access to knowledge that you don't have.  And
all I'm saying is that it would be easy for you to fix this, try them, and
then your knowledge would be superior to mine.

I also think worship of certain types of scientific study is an error in
modern medicine.  Heck, we even write papers on "anecdotes", they're called
case studies.  The fact is that as rigorous as a study is, if it doesn't
ask a certain question, or look at a certain variable, the knowledge gained
on that axis is a big fat zero.  And I am saying that without knowing how
these drugs feel, there are variables you can't have knowledge of, and thus
can't study.  Often I read papers on drugs and find myself amazed that the
questions they are asking are so incorrect with relation to the experience
itself, particularly with psychedelics.  For this reason, Spike's chess
experiment is silly, but I would have a hard time explaining why to someone
who hasn't taken psychedelics, just like I would have a hard time
explaining certain statistical errors to someone who didn't understand
probability distributions and hypothesis testing.

Anyway I suppose we disagree in the sense that you seem to think taking
amphetamine, ziprasidone, &c. one time each, to gain information, is
somehow not worth it--a safety thing, I guess?  Which strikes me as
hypocritical in some way if you'd happily prescribe repeated doses of those
to someone.  Why not just try them?

On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 10:27 AM William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Calling me a scaremonger is also calling me stupid.  Who would ever think
> to do that to the people in this group?  Someone very stupid.  If you think
> that anyone in this group would respond to it then you are calling them
> stupid.  Not everyone knows about amphetamine psychoses and I just thought
> I'd tell them.  That's all.  You owe all of us an apology though of course
> we will not get it.  We know what you are.    bill w
>
> On Mon, Mar 28, 2022 at 2:01 AM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 27, 2022 at 8:54 AM William Flynn Wallace <
>> foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Rafal, I object to the title of scaremongerer.  In fact I think it
>>> insults this group, though even very highly educated people may not know
>>> just how bad overuse can be.  I very obviously know of amphetamines' uses
>>> in ADHD and so on by qualified physicians.  If I advised people not to get
>>> obese because of the threat of high blood pressure and diabetes, would I be
>>> scaremongering?  Hardly.  Clearly there are people who take uppers who are
>>> not aware of the dangers (not our group, likely).
>>>
>>
>>
>> ### What did you write? "An amphetamine psychosis is among the very
>> worst:   *lack of concentration, delusions of persecution, increased
>> motor activity, disorganization of thoughts, lack of insight, anxiety,
>> suspicion and auditory hallucinations - don't mess with amphetamines unless
>> you know when to stop and can."*
>>
>> What did I write? "True but irrelevant scaremongering".
>>
>> Yeah, I think my characterization was correct. As I said, it is true that
>> massive overuse of amphetamines is bad for you but this is not relevant for
>> people using amphetamines under a physician's supervision, and yes, this
>> kind of scaremongering has scared many patients and parents away from using
>> amphetamines. There is a huge amount of hysteria aimed against "drugging
>> our children", making them "zombies" when in fact amphetamines are highly
>> beneficial for a lot of people. I once prescribed 5 mg of Adderall per day
>> to a 30-something year old woman who came to my clinic with complaints of
>> "not being able to do things, being distracted and stressed out". I
>> diagnosed her with adult ADD and she was reluctant to try, with all the
>> horror stories she heard about the drug but a month later she returned for
>> follow-up and said "It changed my life" (for the better, of course). The
>> risk of abuse and dose escalation is very low when amphetamine is taken
>> under a physician's supervision and the benefits are very well documented,
>> so talking about "amphetamine psychosis" except in the context of illegal
>> abuse just shouldn't happen.
>>
>> Also, people who abuse meth do know the dangers. They know what happens
>> to their friends who overdo it, they heard stories, but they don't care. On
>> the other hand, a lot of people who could benefit from medical amphetamine
>> but are not immersed in the drug culture don't know enough about its safety
>> profile and they think they would put themselves in great danger if they
>> started using it, all because of scare stories in the media.
>>
>> Rafal
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