Re: My favorite line from the DOJ's latest draft bill

[Steve Mynott]

On Wednesday, Feb 12, 2003, at 15:22 Europe/London, Harmon Seaver wrote:

On Tue, Feb 11, 2003 at 11:32:24PM +0000, Steve Mynott wrote:
 (much snipped)

It's just the same as some people claiming particular alcoholic drinks
are better or worse than others.

   That's hardly a good analogy.

Why not? Alcohol is a drug like any other and its users attribute particular effects to particular forms of alcohol based on their own subjective experience with little or no objective agreement.

A friend was once sick on gin and still believes gin makes you sick whereas other forms of alcohol won't, yet many people drink gin without ill effects. There are probably people who believe the same thing about vodka or whiskey.

In double blind tests, where neither the doctor nor the subject knows
which drug is which, people can't distinguish major psychedelic drugs
anyway. The only clear distinction is the duration of drug effect
which does vary.

This is usually denied by users of these drugs despite numerous studies
supporting this since the late 1960s.

I can't imagine how they could ever do any sort of serious test, let alone a
"double blind test" -- the length of experience would be a dead giveaway.

It's one of the few defining characteristics of psychedelic drugs that the perception of time is generally impaired by the intoxication, although some people like Kesey have screwed up the doctor's results by cheating and using their heartbeart to judge time :-)

Besides which anyone with any real experience would easily recognize the
essential flavor, if you will, of the particular psychedelic, and the quite
different and distictive voice of the Other. Or lack, thereof, for instance in
LSD. They are simply far too different -- on LSD, people are up, eyes open,
grooving on sights and sounds, talking to people, but on strong doses of
psilocybin and ayahuasca you'll most likely be snuggled under a warm quilt with
your eyes shut in a dark room. And preferably alone. Totally different
experiences -- the voice of the Other with psilocybin and ayahuasca are very,
very different from each other as well.

Another defining characteristic is the extreme variability of effects. Any one of the psychedelic drugs (at least of the main family such as LSD, psilocybin and mescaline) tends to have very different effects on different occasions. How can you say LSD on one day is different to psilocybin on another when LSD on one day is even different to LSD on another day?

People generalise from their own experience but this is just subjective and they never agree on what different effects these drugs are supposed to have, although there often seems to be an irrational preference for "natural" drugs as if all natural substances are safe which they aren't. Also there is a self fulfilling aspect to this since if people expect drug X to have effect Y it does due to the "set and setting" aspect.

But when they are objectively asked to identify the drug after taking it in lab trials they are shown to fail. For example, LSD can't be distinguished from mescaline or psilocybin despite most drug users believing the drugs are very different.

Hollister, Leo E. and Sjoberg, Bernard M. 1964

"Clinical syndromes and biochemical alterations following mescaline, lysergic acid diethylamide, psilocybin, and a combination of the three psychomimetic drugs."

Comprehensive Psychiatry 5: 170-178

There are also interesting studies from the 1960s (sorry no references handy) suggesting the rate of psychosis amongst LSD users (using a sample set of about 1000) is no different from the general non-LSD using population.

--
Steve Mynott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>