Drugs, generally

On my sixteenth birthday, I bought five grams of mushrooms, ate them in my bedroom, tuned my Walkman to Coast to Coast AM, flew out the window, and experienced ego death. A few months later, I took LSD sent in a Christmas card by friends on IRC. I got a tinfoil-wrapped bundle of AMT in the mail the next week and ate it on Wendy's chicken strips before going to see a hardcore show in a dingy hall. After my first year of university, I had taken ketamine, MDMA, a few exotic tryptamines, and a handful of other then-obscure research chemicals. Looking back, I was caught up in the romance of the scene. I wanted to have startling, enlightening experiences, but, partly down to that first experience, I was usually too anxious to push things to that level again. Romance and religion arrived to fill that particular void. Although there were a few experiments later on, including with harder drugs, and I did develop for stretches casual marijuana habits, the belief I had in the possibilities of the drug experience for enlightenment or recreated faded soon after graduation.

Many of my friends from that period, whether I knew them online or from school, had more commitment to the hobby. In my experience, the people that can get something from psychedelic drugs are those, whether because of temperament or upbringing, are willing to take risks. Many died young, which surprised me at the time, but makes more sense now. Most, it turned out, gave up on psychedelics for more immediately effective classes of sedatives, painkillers, and stimulants, which either killed them directly or eroded fatally their already minimal regard for their individual safety.

I share this personal experience not only because I hope it will be an entertaining preamble. I think it’s important to stake out some degree of authenticity in writing about these things.

This was on my mind as I read Benjamin Fong called Quick Fixes, which is about the world historical flow of drugs, licit and illicit, into the American marketplace. It’s a book that lacks teeth, without any authenticity to counteract its theoretical flimsiness.

Written by a progressive activist and socialist, published by Jacobin and Verso, it leans heavily on an explanation of illicit drug use as an outcome of the capitalist mode of production and the exploitation of workers. As a radical, he also gets some licks in the against the conservatives but also rival tendencies, attacking the left-wing fanatics of the 1960s for selling out, putting their kids on Prozac, and giving birth to the marketing of microdosing as an efficiency hack and the void of dissociatives as a cure for depression.

This is fine. It’s limited, however. The solution suggested by the author, which is the radical reform of the market economy through labor activism, is, whatever you think about the potential feasibility or outcomes of such a project, not particularly satisfying.

My own political take on drug enforcement is quite simple. I’m almost embarrassed to give it here, even writing anonymously, since it’s unfashionable (Benjamin Fong would certainly not approve) and makes demands for legal changes impossible in most jurisdictions in which this will be read… Like Fong, I do have grander schemes for social reform, but I will skip those. Compulsory rehabilitation is the only treatment for addicts. I don’t think any psychoactive compounds should be openly marketed. Underground peddlers of narcotics and psychiatrists should be sent for reeducation. The outlaw pursuit of psychedelic enlightenment, which will continue, as it does even in nations with the death penalty for selling stimulants and depressants, should be a fringe activity, fenced off from the masses by stiff laws and tight enforcement.

I wonder what you think about these things. The simplest question is: Why is everyone high? But also, are there any prohibitionists left? Should Biden or his successor be pressed to knock out the cartels and their patrons through direct military or stepped-up covert action? Is the post-LaRouche take on Red China correct? Why do they call it "drug poisoning" now? Why does nobody seem to care that the obituary section of the local paper has so many young men I went to high school with? Is ketamine a better cure than labor activism for depression? Have you ever glimpsed the face of God while on a dose of head shop salvia?

I also wonder if there are any more rigorous treatments of the subject that you can recommend.

I agree drugs should just not be done. They should be taboo, fringe, and underground apart from things with much heritage like tobacco and alcohol, which are merely disreputable if overdone. However, we do not have a polity, so I don't know that there is much point discussing legalities. On the margin, it would probably be good to ban them and push them back underground, but around here (sofiechan) we must be concerned primarily with our own actions and norms. I for one won't touch the stuff, and wouldn't let my family, with a mild exception for occasional wine. I would dissuade my friends, but you are all adults free to fuck yourselves up if you choose.

My own experiences with drugs are much milder than many of yours, but basically I did not find even weed to be compelling. In fact it was uncomfortable and disturbing. Many of the people I knew who were further into it are now just dead.

As for why everyone is high, I think there are a great many people the system has no need for and even would prefer that they die in a hole somewhere. It is very hard to survive against a society that is structurally indifferent or hostile to your existence. One must have your own viable counter-society. This is the value of some churches and even some political extremism; it is something that needs you and cares about you. We are not ready here to really discuss all this in full frankness, but there is a lot to be said on this front.

>>601
To expand on that last point, the reason everyone is dying on drugs is that they are supposed to die on drugs, according to more or less everyone but their mothers.

Growing up in the SF Bay Area, drug use was always a huge stapple of what was cool, with many Boomer/Gen X-age adults also largely supportive of experimental teenage drug use. For whatever reason, I developed some kind of strange psychological effects from smoking weed in the form of Depersonalization and Derealization that would last for years after getting high. That pretty much ended my use of all drugs, which lost me many friends in my youth, and with my own father smoking more weed in my youth than I did. My childhood best friend became absolutely obsessed with weed after his mother began growing weed en masse in her garage, which afforded him (and I, by extension) effectively an unlimited supply of the stuff. He was an extremely smart and charismatic kid, but years after we went our separate ways, he underwent painfully evident decreases in mental capacity and is now a zombie roaming the Bay Area. I have had other friends with similar issues, one of which used to work for the US government on taking down the illegal drug trade crossing the US-Mexican border. He later committed suicide while high.

I think a large part of the issue, especially on the West Coast of North America, is the result of the hippie movement, which has made the SF Bay Area especially an entrenched cultural hotspot for this kind of activity.

It is interesting that California goes through waves of pilgrimage, first for gold, then for film, then for the hippie movement, and then for tech. All of this history is the reason why the region is such a creative place, but being creative also has its downsides. Those who innovate new technologies and new ways of seeing the world are also probably more likely to become possessed by demons or engineer the end of society.

Unfortunately, like many elements of Californian culture, many of these tendencies have spread to the rest of the US, and are on their way across the Western world. Its difficult to say what will happen in the Bay Area, but I think its possible that the drug use is met with a negative reaction, which will perhaps play out in the form of the hippie-descendent culture being met by a more powerful anti-drug tech-adjacents.

I also say this because, while creativity and tech are highly correlated, I am actually not sure how many drugs the tech crowd is doing, and I suspect that my story may not be isolated, with Gen Z is doing less drugs than their fathers on average.

Generally I agree with the OP's solution. Most of it should be banned. Perhaps some leeway should be had for some traditional psychedelics, including some shrooms. Peyote, which was used by Native American cultures for spiritual experiences, maybe has some value. I kind of doubt that the zombies are taking these kinds of things and are instead just addicted to synthetics like fentanyl.

I'm loathe to admit to any illegal behavior even on a pseudonymous forum such as sofiechan, but long, long ago in the before time, I fancied myself quite the psychonaut. I think in our milieu, I probably hold the record for sheer breadth of experiences. One friend died. A few lost their minds entirely. Several became totally worthless drug addicts. I had a few 'close calls' myself. I think I was lucky in the sense that I was able to use substances without becoming addicted, I was able to use substances without losing my mind, and I was able to use substances without doing irreparable harm to my body.

On the bright side, I had one life-changing and positive experience in my late teens. For many years, I believed a single experienced marked a turning point in my life from being a depressive introvert to being an upbeat extrovert. The skeptic would say, "you burned out some pretty important receptors." Hard to say who is correct.

Getting married, having kids, finding religion, I put all that stuff behind me many years ago. I will tell my kids not to use drugs, and unlike my own parents, I won't hypocritically at the same time continue to do drugs.

For society at large, I look at drugs as part of the same complex of social ills as pornography, video games, divorce, social media, etc. I think "access" matters, but probably less than tradcons think. I think the causality mostly flows from kids who are fucked up to drug usage rather than the reverse. I don't think drugs are uniquely bad, even if they are more deadly than pornography.

My own observations of drug addicts and their recovery suggests that "Compulsory rehabilitation" is a total and complete failure. Everyone I've known who wanted to clean up, went to rehab with that mindset was able to get clean. Everyone I've known who was sent to rehab against their will, used rehab as a way to find better hookups, and left rehab and immediately went back to their drug of choice.

I do think that Southeast Asian-style punishment for Fentanyl traffickers would be an improvement over the status quo, but it's a bit of a LARP. We no longer live in a society, all punishment is simply who/whom, so the idea of a second War on Drugs is doomed to fail before it begins.

Question: for people whose depression is profound enough to be life-altering (not me), is it worth exploring Ketamine, Psilocybin, or MDMA (with adult supervision of course), or is that a can of worms that is just too dangerous to mess with.

Although I've never taken SSRIs, my bias is that one or two applications of something like the aforementioned drugs would be less dangerous than chronic consumption of SSRIs.

In my own case, there was clear and obvious reason for (temporary) depression, when the reason for the depression went away, so did the depression. There are other folks whose depression seems from the outside more "organic" i.e. a reaction to trauma, dysfunctional mental processes, or other more difficult to fix problems.

Any thoughts?

I'm surprised by the number of people in my wider social circle that have decided since it was an option to try ketamine (esketamine, if that's a distinction that need be made). A few have experimented with more life-altering substances, like DMT. It seems like a drastic decision to me, especially since none of these people, to the extent that I could know their general mental state, struck me as catastrophically depressed or anxious.

My own suspicion, looking at the demographic and the personality of those I know that have resorted to psychedelics or dissociatives, is that they are trying to solve something that they think is contributing to their malaise and unhappiness (I separate this from what I consider clinical depression), an unfilled spiritual hole, some superficial dissatisfaction with how they view themselves, a sense of having missed out on a crucial experience...

With ketamine, from what I have been told, they are enjoying the dissociative experience, rather than the tickling of opioid receptors that is probably responsible for antidepressant effects. That dissociative experience can lead to introspection, though, and, even compared to potent cannabis, it's mild and not as disorienting as it sounds, at least at the doses it's given for experimental therapy.

Setting those people and my anecdotes aside, it does seem to alleviate temporarily the life-altering depression you're talking about.

Psychedelics are another story, and I wouldn't recommend even threshold doses under the safest set and setting to anyone that has concerns about their mental health. They're even better at curing the generalized malaise I was talking about, though, in my experience, and spurring healthier behaviors and useful introspection and creativity.

Short answer on non-life-altering depression and ketamine or psychedelics is: Ketamine might be fun, but I couldn't recommend getting involved in the scene, and, noting that they're far riskier, basically the same for psychedelics.

I went to a college with very cheap opioids. Someone's mother had a lot of prescriptions she didn't need, and sent him to campus with a way to make some tuition money. I tried them twice. The strongest thing I felt on them is that I'd wasted a few dollars: my life wasn't miserable enough for me to get anything out of them.

Two of my friends were junkies. One came from a strict suburban family, read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in his freshman year of college, and decided he wanted to do that; ten years later, he moved back in with his parents and they made him get clean. I don't talk to him anymore but I see him commenting on tech aggregators sometimes. The other lives in (without loss of generality) Iowa and is too blind to drive.

There are a lot of people with miserable lives. I'm not surprised opioids are popular. There's so little enrichment, so little worthwhile work to be done, so few healthy communities for people to find places in, to find respect and the esteem of their peers. We have no shortage of causes for generalized malaise. They're unlikely to be biochemical in origin, so they're unlikely to be curable with biochemistry.

A few years ago I developed chronic wrist pain and realized I had to think about ergonomics. I tried a few things, replacing keyboards and mice and so on; I won't bore anyone with the details, but in time I found something that worked. In the interim, I still had to get through the day, and cut through the pain enough to work on the ergonomics, so I took painkillers and wore a wrist brace.

I think of these malaises the same way. There's some underlying ergonomic problem - more likely several, all connected, with no silver bullet for all and no quick nostrum for any - but there are painkillers, braces, and solutions. If you only take painkillers, the underlying problem will get worse until the painkillers don't work anymore; if they have side effects, like physical addiction, you have a new problem on top of everything else. If you only wear a brace, the problem will come back after you take it off. What works for one person won't work for another, and might even make their problems worse. And you still have to get through the day, and keep yourself able to work toward solutions.

Some drugs, like opioids, are tempting but will almost certainly make existing problems worse and create new ones. Others, like MDMA (used rarely with the right set and setting), I've seen people benefit from, although I still wouldn't recommend them and I certainly wouldn't want them sold OTC in gas stations. (We should sell coca tea though. Caffeine is a nasty drug that makes people angry and antisocial, and I think it explains some things about the world that almost everyone is addicted to it, but with the demands of the modern economy - there's a reason liberalism and capitalism developed in the coffee shops - it can't be removed, only replaced. Unfortunately we'll have to wait for the paraxanthine synthesis people instead.)

As for recreational use, Robert Anton Wilson said that drugs are tools and only a fool would play with hammers - and who would want to be even more of a libertine than a Playboy hippie?

>>999
Nice trips. For me, I take a hard line on drugs of all kinds. I don't believe they are ever a good idea. Drugs basically just temporarily destroy part of your physiological or psychological balance. If you're depressed, there is some physiological or circumstantial reason for that that you need to solve, not lose the ability to feel. Yes for some people depression is chronic or recurring and not linked to any particular thing. That's because their life or work or food is messed up in some way in general.

Many things are safer than SSRIs, but I think the safest course is to start listening to your depression and even doing what it says (eg "i really need to quit my job. I really need to take a break and sleep. I need a change in weather")