Originally Posted by Bill8

Nice find.

Making psychedelics illegal and pushing them into the black market guarantees that they will be used by immature people - that's the nature of the black market, it promotes abuse and ignorant casual use by kids.

Psychedelics are dangerous, absolutely, because they are powerful, and the ordinary immature human mind is weakly constructed and fragile - especially in our society, which produces weak minds by the industrial boatload.

If you are afraid of them, don't take them, because they will amplify your fear. Whatever you are, they will amplify, for a short period. If you are dumb they will amplify your dumbness, if smart, they will amplify your intelligence - then the chemical is gone from your bloodstream, and you return to your baseline.

You may remember some of what you saw, but that memory will fade. You can learn to remember more of it, but most people won't want to do so.

There's a large body of commentary that suggests that psychedelics do make smart people smarter - or at least that they feel themselves to be smarter - and a lot of creatives mention psychedelics as important parts of their journey. Kari Mullis, for example, someone I've been reading about lately.

Do they actually have the potential to make people smarter, or more creative? Nobody has measured it, as far as I know. Eventually someone will.

You can't counteract fear or frightened people - there's little point in trying. They are right in that their kind really should avoid such things. And it's important to counteract the effect of the black market - and to spread the awareness that if you are going to use psychedelics, to do so carefully.