In reading about the history of pharmacology this morning, I discovered that it never occurred to the leaders in that field that the scientific method might not apply to certain subjects. Yet how can you apply the scientific method to the study of a psychedelic whose benefits depend on one's attitude toward those substances, as the indigenous might put it, or on the "set and setting," as American psychonauts might say? The scientific method tells us to limit the variables that we wish to study to a few important ones. But how does the researcher choose what's important when it comes to human behavior? Who died and made them God that they could make that call in the first place? Meanwhile, a litany of philosophical concerns arise when we start talking about using blinding in such cases. The researcher's attempt to avoid the placebo effect is highly problematic. Indeed, blinding is unethical in the case of the study of psychedelics, where the results of use are so obviously a joint production of both the user and the drug itself. To use blinding is to encourage "bad trips," since it forces study participants to encounter psychedelic effects without the requisite psychological and/or spiritual preparation. Nor will researchers see the expected predictable correlations between dose and response when studying psychedelics, since a small dose may facilitate a profound response while a large dose may result in nothing -- all thanks to the fact that the user, for some reason that may be clear or mysterious, is not particularly susceptible to the drug's beneficial effects at the specific time of use.Materia Medica (Wikipedia) 6, The Origins of Pharmacology in the 16th Century 7, The Early Development of Psychopharmacology in America 8, A Historical Overview of Pharmacology 9, History of Pharmacy in the United States (Wikipedia) 10, History of Pharmacology: From Herbal Traditions to Modern Science 11, The Pharmaceutical Sciences in America, 1852-1902 12
The real value of Erowid is as a research tool for a profession that does not even exist yet: the profession of what I call the pharmacologically savvy empath: a compassionate life counselor with a wide knowledge of how drugs can (and have) been used by actual people.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY."
If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply.
It's the prohibition, stupid!!!
There is more hope in dope than there is in the psychiatric pill mill.
Any self-respecting mycologist should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms.
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
"Those gentlemen who adopt the anti-opium doctrine... are only comparable to the monomaniac, who, sane upon every subject but one, is thoroughly daft upon that." --William Brereton
NIDA is just a propaganda arm of the U.S. government -- and will remain so until it recognizes the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs -- as well as the glaringly obvious downsides of prohibition. We need a National Institute on Drug Use, not a National Institute on Drug Abuse.
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
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