This was published yesterday in Nature Reviews - Neuroscience no less, and it's spearheaded by David Nutt. Some of you, particularly UK nexians, might know him after his several successful attempts at busting the balls of home secretaries and ministers from his position in the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, often stating the opposite of what he was expected to say.

I'm leaving attached the whole paper for the Nexus, and some quotes as an appetizer. You might find no revelations, but a very solid piece published in a significant resource.



The article includes a nice table featuring Phytocannabinoids, Ketamine, LSD, MDMA, Mephedrone and Psilocybin versus Therapeutic Uses, Potential Therapeutic Uses and Neuroscience Research Interests. A few article quotes:

I think the problem is much deeper, even the writer is putting his foot in it:

******** THE RECREATIONAL USE *********

This is immediate red flat, Oh no, children are getting poisoned. And then the secon red flag is:

******** Low dose ***********

these are the two "must include" in a "scientific" research.

Yet the recreational use, and the coming out of age is as important as is the therapeutic use. The recreational use of alcohol we all know, and it is not bringing any good to anybody. And the coming out of age is almost always with alcohol.

Terrible start I would say, and also it is a reality that our contemporary society has no interest in exploring and guiding. Somehow we should be perfect at any age and in any situation, it is only until we get in problem we get to "therapy" and when that became too expansive for the government the quality of therapy started to slip, lower and lower until getting to be called "counseling" down to "coaching"....

Quality of our personal life and growth is a topic that is of no interest to politicians and governments, they want us to be still preoccupied with our basic existential needs: food, shelter, medical care. The rest is the entertainment for the rich, or adventurous journey we stumble on it by chance, with a long curve of the learning process.

I've always had the impression they (the system) want obeying robots rather than healthy people. The robots must be just alive enough to work but not healthy enough to realize what's going on. Thus a level of sickness must be maintained for that. Banning eye openers suit that cause, allowing alcohol too. I hope no one's after my HP_DMT for this.
Such publications shine light on the underlying agenda's

perhaps the society is saying - these drugs are illegal because they are that damn good , so you better be prepared to take some risks if you want to dabble with this elixirs

Thanks for the article vosdel, it was a brilliant read!


Arguable to say the least. Dubious and biased is more like it. Statements like that falls in the same bin with all the others that with a single streak try to glorify psychedelics and demonize alcohol. If you want to really claim that psychedelics are eye openers for the society you will have to at least present some data of

1. what percentage of the population is "eye-opened"
2. what percentage of the population is has used (illegal) psychedelics.
3. what is the extend of overlap between these two subsets.

Of course, without a measure of "eye-openness" that is impossible and a very good reason to refraining from statements like the quotation.

If someone feels compelled to claim the opposite of my "impression" (that means my little view and experience in my little life time), go ahead. I would like to see hard data that proves alcohol to be the better personal developer in 'entheogenics'.

I understand your aversion against glorifying psychedelics, or conspiracy oriented smelling statements. I'll do no such things further in this forum.

Man , were gonna do it! Just a few years ago,I never would have expected this outbreak of rationality that appears to have affected some people in positions of power, at least here in the states and the UK.
Freaking cool.

Nonsense, and honestly totally absurd.

You guy's sitting around waiting for reality to be defined for you in a scientific publication are laughable.

I'm gonna just flat out say it myself:

Psychedelics are vastly superior eye openers than alcohol. To claim the opposite is to spout off just for the sake of arguing. Even if it takes 2000 more years for someone to publish the study you need to believe this it will still have been true for thousands of years prior to this conversation.

Some truths are self evident to people who have seen enough data points in their lives. People who have a long term history of using psychedelics are by and large people interested in self development in some capacity or another. Most average people walk away from psychedelics after their youth never try them again. So the odds of actual damage to the body is extremely small.

Contrast that with alcohol.
Most people who use alcohol will continue to use it over the course of their lives.
Many Many of these people will become either binge drinkers or moderate to heavy drinkers.
Alcohol "MAY" have some benefits in 1 glass of wine a day, but beyond that it is increasingly bad for the body.

People who consume alcohol are more likely to have weiht problems, diebetes, and a host of cognitive functions that will show up progressively as they use the drug into older age.


Flat out. Psychedelics are to be classified as eye openers (though not for everyone), and alcohol is to be seen as something fun to use in moderation, a great social lubricant, but not something that you are EVER going to learn a deep life lesson with....unless of course it almost kills you or a friend or something tragic like that.

BTW I drink alcohol on occasion myself and I used to abuse the hell out of it when I was younger. Not demonizing the drug, but let's be honest here. One is a toxin and the other is a potential eye opener for the person willing to use them in a proper set and setting and who is interested in self exploration.


Night and day and I don't care if I ever see the study.

Well said joedirt!

And thanks for the link Vodsel. Its so nice to see more and more positive things on psychedelics being posted

As for the alcohol thing-really? Its even a ?? Alcohol is so crap, it and meth are the two things I've never gone over board with.
From my own personal experiences of having psychs "open my eyes", which literally saved my , I'll have to say, before I see any data, that for ME, they work.
I'm working on a chapter in my right now, discussing the difficulty on seeing up a psychedelic survey, or any study of consciousness.
Consciousness, by definition, is subjective.
Tests can be designed around the efficacy of psych-alks, but blinds are hard to put in place.

The fact that there is a discussion going on abotu whether or not psychedelics are eye opening, with alcohol comming into the discussion as a comparison is freaking rediculous.

Pretty much all of the clinical studies going on with psilocybin, LSD and MDMA would lead me to assume that it is just not my opinion that these things are eye opening, but something validated by these clinical studies over a wider spectrum of people.

Joedirt, this is not a discussion about whether alcohol is more or less eye-opening compared to psychedelics. I do not think I even cued to such a thing in my post. No need for further comparisons therefore. Alcohol comes to the discussion with statements that go along the line "psychedelics make you a thinking person and that's why they are illegal, but alcohol stupefies you so that's why the government's want it legal", which is quite dubious in my mind. When discussing the legality of psychedelics almost always alcohol will get a slap by someone via proxy and that really serves no reason.

Now, whether psycedelics use by the general population are eye-opening (and this affects their legal status), well to say so you'd need some more rigorous argument, not just feelings. Sure psychedelics can be eye-opening to most, can also lead to delusions. And finally this discussion has nothing to do with rants about scientific definitions of reality my man...

Thank you all for this interesting debate (I´m sure it won´t turn too personal here)



I think the opposite actually. I believe that comparing (illegal) psychedelics and their positive/negative effects with (legal) alcohol with its posivive/negative effects serves a very important reason.

There is a chance that such comparision, repeated over and over again, will lead the general public to really think about it, talk about it and generally agree that there is something wrong with this "war on drugs" compared to 3 million deaths associated with the use of alcohol every year.

Comparing alcohol and psychedelics serves exactly this function: to bring in a rational/legal argument. We don´t need to use the concept of "eye opening", but some other more accessible concept such as "life improvement" or whatever they have been using in their recent psychedelic research studies...

perhaps the government is afraid that the death toll will rise with legalisation of every known substance ,

its a fact that alcohol can be drank in moderation , yet most people will not drink it like a dietery supplement , most abuse it , like everything else , cheese , sugar , fried foods , television , we have a tendency to abuse things to the limit

i don't really think its valid to compare alcohol or psychadelics or any other for any rational argument , as rational argument is not the job of the government , the government has job to do , be it rational or irrational that does not matter when it comes to people doing there jobs

certain positions in the government no doubt influence many things , yet the influence is secondary to the function of that position

From a legal standpoint, I don't think it should matter whether or not these drugs are "eye-opening". What is more important is whether or not they are more dangerous than things like alcohol or driving an automobile. It should be much easier to show that these drugs are safe than to show that they are useful (the latter being a strange criteria for legality).

Most people that I know who oppose psychedelics do so because their religion forbids such drug use. I think that acceptance of such drug use is coming about on its own as religions are either going extinct or adapting to the values of modern society.

That is dubious, granted, but a denial looks quite as dubious too. Because meanwhile it, the alcohol based society, is (really coincidentally?) serviceable to the power-circles, and that makes up for enough potential to not hold back or squelch the possibility of steering/ agenda.

It is good that both positions get some spotlight here, it can't go much further than this I guess.

Good relating points are brought up along, thanks.

Nice unexpected debate, thanks all.

I think the importance of those supposedly mischievous intentions of the governments when it comes to the ban of certain psycho-actives and the endorsement of others is a little overstated.

It's somewhat similar to what occurs with conspiracy theories. Or with some interpretations of the theory of evolution. We tend to read change in terms of one intent or purpose, and while it's true that attributing intent to human behavior can make sense, since we humans are linear creatures, social patterns look more like the result of an emergent process than result of specific purpose. I mean there's much more to blame than just some governmental strategy. It appears to be quite more complex than that.

Of course many governments have a lot to be blamed for, but if we are to understand this well we kind of need to wear the holistic glasses.

Alcohol is, and has been, legal or illegal around the world mostly, and originally, for moral reasons. But for a certain moral to become a social behavior it needs to fit, to serve a purpose. Which of course, is not necessarily a fair purpose in the eyes of everyone; it just fits. It becomes stable, until it becomes unstable and then it changes again. In many countries of the world, alcohol ban is now stable.

American prohibition started as a moral movement, and the repealing of prohibition was a rational reaction once the ban of alcohol proved to be damaging - and proved to disagree with the needs of american society in that moment. Otherwise, this rationality would never have stuck. So it's more the whole system than a few fingers pushing buttons.

One big difference between the US prohibition and the ban of psychedelics has been the blatant disinformation, often in disguise of pseudo-scientific babble, many times flat out propaganda. In this case, lying was completely necessary. And this proves there's someone acting behind... but if you think about one pioneer media campaign against a drug, the case of William Randolph Hearst against marijuana, it seemed to be largely moved by money interests, besides any moral reasons. Anslinger and Hearst were in the same boat, they used weapons that people was not ready to defend against yet, and they won playing dirty if you want - but they won nonetheless.

Governments are surely guilty of banning psychedelics, but it's also natural for them to be banned as dangerous competition in a corporate world, and it makes sense that they are banned in a society that does not have the right mentality to use them well.

I don't think alcohol is imposed by anyone - turns out it fits. Unlike psychedelics. But that is subject to change as soon as people become less vulnerable to old tricks and can go full rational. Then, either the people with different morals/interests strikes back with new tricks, or they will eventually have to submit. And I don't think they have many tricks left in the sleeve.

Just a few thoughts.

can you expand this? I am sure I didn't get as you intended.

Sure... my english can get pretty thick after 2AM, let me rephrase.

- Governments are of course to blame for the ban of psychs, and
- Also, in a world ruled de facto by corporations, including pharma among others, makes sense that psychs are banned since they compete directly with corporate interest
- Plus our society is not really ready for them, so we can expect them at least to be frowned upon

Of course I did not want to imply they should be rightfully banned as they are, I just meant that the ban makes sense considering the current state of events. Not only any supposed government strategies, but how the whole of our society works also disagrees with having them as accepted tools.

Spot on Hixi. This is the impression I always got from David Nutt, that he knows extensively how to approach such issues by being highly familiar with regulatory board politics. He knows that claiming usefulness or healing concepts will get him nowhere (got sacked from the government for stating that high doses of ethanol were much more harmful than a single dose of LSD). So he chooses to approach this issue slowly and in a way that appeals to uninformed and conservatory units. No reason to rush things, this is clearly the way to go, at least in the UK.