alt Hacker NewsPsilocybin is one of those things we don't even know the full effects of because the government had a hysterical fit and completely banned it because people who took it were more likely to oppose the Vietnam War.
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What’s exciting though is that this administration recently signed an executive order directing the agency to speed up the development and approval process for psychedelics.
>>the government had a hysterical fit and completely banned it because people who took it were more likely to oppose the Vietnam War.
If you are to believe the Brave New World (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World) worldview of Huxley (who topically was on loads of LSD himself), you'd think the government would want to flood the public with psychedelics -- low to zero toxicity, allows people to zone out, not addictive, allows people to focus inwards rather than focus on civic mismanagement.
Any ideas on why the US government is so opposed Psychedelics? Clearly the government is for Bread and circus. In fact, the establishment left and right want desperately for us to believe everything is indeed fine regardless of the facts our eyes see (e.g. Annie Lowrey on https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/05/americans-depresse...)
Psilocybin is harder to get research approvals for than many things, but it’s not “completely banned”. There are studies every year being completed with psilocybin, many of which get posted here on HN.
There is a growing tension between the extraordinary pop culture claims of psilocybin curing everything (now extending to Alzheimer’s due to this 1 low-quality report from Brazil) and the actual studied effects, though. A lot of the published outcomes are surprisingly low quality, like this case report or all of the studies that neglect to include a control group. Mental health studies without a control group are basically useless because even a control group that doesn’t receive a placebo (that is, people you simply monitor and interact with) will get better.
Just look at this comment section: People raising suspicions about the obvious problems in the study are being downvoted. The top voted comments are citing a Joe Rogan podcast with a guy hyping his startup. People really, really want to believe this is a magic cure and the usual guardrails of suspicion for extraordinary claims are seemingly suspended for this one topic.
Was that causation though? I have to imagine the kind of people who are open to psychedelics also generally oppose war.
On the other hand I heard a single dose does permanently increase your trait openness by a standard deviation, which is nuts. So maybe there is causation there too.