War on drugs has been here for so long, and we have been hearing these things for a long time now, but now people have started to say that these drugs can save more human lives. It’s kind of like saying fire can save you from heat, right?
But what is the truth here? There’s a lot of news and preconceived ideas about psychedelics these days, not all of which are exactly scientific. So, let’s clear a few things up. Psychedelics are a big group of drugs. You’ve probably heard other names for a bunch of them like ecstasy, acid, molly, and magic mushrooms. There are many more names for this kind of drugs, but let’s stick with their scientific names. All of these drugs act on the same serotonin receptor in the brain called the 2A receptor, and they’re sometimes called classic psychedelics. Then there are MDMA and ketamine. They’re generally classified under the umbrella of psychedelics, but they each work a little bit differently in the brain. The word “psychedelic” actually comes from a combination of Greek words that loosely translate to “mind manifesting.” When people take these drugs, they often see vivid colors or shapes moving. A lot of times people feel intense emotions or grapple with intense emotions that they’re already feeling.
But they are kind of different than other drugs. That’s because they kind of alter your point of view and change your personality. “These drugs, compared to others, have a profound effect on one’s perception of reality, including one’s perception of oneself…” That’s why a lot of people say it’s something that can change you for good and some say it can take you to hell.
The history of psychedelics is long and rich. Over 3,000 years ago, people were using psilocybin mushrooms in religious rituals. Peyote, which is a cactus containing mescaline, was used in rituals by Maya and Aztec people, and it’s still part of some modern-day religious ceremonies. Fast forward to the 1900s, psychedelics were legal and available in the United States. In those days, a company that made LSD would just send it out to doctors to try it with their patients.
But because these drugs were already not hard to get, they kind of escaped the lab, and people got their hands on this with not much trouble at all. Then we enter the 1960s. Spiritual enlightenment… Summer of Love… hippies…. Of course, not everyone’s experience was peace and love. As more and more people got their hands on these drugs, negative headlines began to appear. Understandably, public opinion of psychedelics began to shift from hippies to widespread fear and distrust. Then came a set of policy changes collectively called “The War on Drugs.”
“America’s public enemy number one…” “Drugs are menacing our society, they’re killing our children…” “The conclusion that these drugs were so dangerous that you couldn’t do human research with them was not at all supported. It was very clearly a socio-political phenomenon where these drugs were just so associated with the counter-culture that they became really forbidden even for researchers…”
The research that did get done during this time seemed to support the government-backed narrative that psychedelics were extremely dangerous, cementing public opinion in support of the War on Drugs. But we now know that not all of the research done during this time was true.
In one really big study, researchers at Johns Hopkins spent 1.3 million dollars to investigate the effects of ecstasy on monkey’s brains. When the results came out, the media publicized a shocking result: that just one night of using ecstasy could result in permanent brain damage. Here’s just one quote: “Using ecstasy is like playing Russian roulette with your brain function.” Terrifying. The study was published in the extremely famous and reputable Science journal in 2002. And it included the data point that 20% of the animals tested on died. “It just didn’t make common sense, like how do you get 20% of your animals dying and you claim this was a single recreational oral dose of this drug that millions and millions of people have taken?”
It didn’t make sense because it wasn’t true. A year later, those same researchers retracted their own study because they figured out that they had accidentally injected the monkeys with meth instead of ecstasy. But the damage was already done… not just to the monkeys… but also to our understanding of psychedelics as a whole. This is still how people are talking about psychedelics even after so long.
We have learned a lot about psychedelics in the last decade. And we’re in this interesting moment where new research has caused a lot of hype around these drugs… “Psychedelic mushrooms -” “Magic mushrooms -” “- are helpful to patients suffering from -” “depression” “PTSD” “Anxiety” “and forms of addiction…”
In one recent study in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, one high dose of psilocybin relieved anxiety and depression in cancer patients for six months. In another in Nature, two-thirds of patients treated with MDMA no longer experienced PTSD. If psychedelics are actually this effective, then we need to take this more seriously than ever. This can be the next big thing of medical breakthrough.
