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tavavexlast Saturday at 4:18 PM1 replyview on HN

Out of curiosity, which drugs do you consider to be the exception to the "almost all drugs are terrible" line?


Replies

jtrnlast Saturday at 10:35 PM

It's really hard to answer without imposing values. For instance, I value productivity, progress, knowledge, the survival of humanity, and such things. In that sense, most substances referred to as "drugs" have a bad track record (heroin, cannabis, amphetamines, ethanol). I'm not sure if I think the world would suffer with regard to any of my values if all of them magically disappeared.

Then again, I think it's important that my views are never imposed on anybody. So it's perfectly fine to be a pure hedonist and use everything under the sun.

The dose makes the poison, though. So I think that limited use of alcohol, cannabis, shrooms, and LSD might be useful to gain new perspectives, serve as a social lubricant, or even provide some form of temporary relief.

The drug isn't really the problem; it's the pattern of use. So maybe I should have said that "most drugs are mostly used in a terrible way, to such an extent that they become terrible by default."

If I were to try anything, psilocybin would be high up the list of stuff I would like to try. Just to see what effect it would have on me. I suspect little (every life-changing, perspective-changing experience people yab on about never changed anything for me once they actually happened to me, and I am 100% immune to hypnosis and personality change when drunk), but it would be interesting to see.