If you are interested in the topic, you can check the autobiography of the biggest manufacturer of LSD in history:
"The Rose Of Paracelsus" by William Leonard Pickard [1].
It is both poetic and fascinating. It's not an easy read but I recommend it.
There is the story in Dr. James Ketchum‘s memoir of a barrel containing 40lbs of LSD turning up in his offices. He worked on the Edgewood arsenal as part of the US military. This was enough LSD to make several hundred million people trip and worth nearly $1 billion at street value. Are you suggesting that Pickard manufactured more than that?
snypher · 33m ago
Easily. DEA alleged he made 2lbs every 5 weeks, from the late 80's to late 90's. They also seized 'up to' 80lbs.
MDMA is so fun. It's something I would love to do once a year or so for the rest of my life. Unfortunately it seems that people can't really grow up and do drugs responsibly. People either hard pivot away from drugs early on because they were abusing them, or they go down a path where drugs define them. The only way to keep getting good drugs that I know of is to keep in touch with friends on the latter path, but I don't really want to associate much with them.
Same with weed, it seems most people I know either quit smoking completely, or do nothing but smoke weed. I'm in my mid 30s.
Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
el_nahual · 6h ago
We exist! I took MDMA for the first time in my late 30s.
What a fun, and joyful substance.
I took it as an adult: while partying, with my wife, at festivals.
Responsibly (test it first!). Not too much. Just a couple times a year.
I love it and has made my life better. But I'm glad I waited to "do drugs" until I was older and my brain and personality were a bit more settled.
My favorite thing about MDMA is that, while the experiences you have while on it are of course an "altered state of mind," those experiences are still your experiences.
I did, in fact, experience seeing my wife dancing freely and openly under scintillating lights and thinking: "wow."
I did in fact experience seeing two of my best friends talking with each other in a quiet corner of the festival and realizing "I love these people. They are special."
And because those experiences are real, they unlock a "register" which is now available even when stone cold sober.
A few weeks ago I was totally sober, in the middle of the day, when I saw two friends of mine (brothers) walking together having a discussion. And in my "MDMA" register I thought: "how special brotherhood is."
I'm certain not everyone who takes MDMA has experiences this good. I've been in spectacular settings and my age has afforded me the luxury of taking it with a good mindset.
But it's pretty fucking cool.
Aurornis · 6h ago
> Responsibly (test it first!). Not too much. Just a couple times a year.
MDMA fans will argue this on the internet, but MDMA use (even without polydrug abuse) is associated with cognitive deficits in memory and learning. There’s a lot of experimental evidence showing it has damaging effects on neurons.
The damage done by a drug like this wouldn’t necessarily be obvious or even at the level to pass the threshold of significance in a scientific study after one or a couple doses. However, there isn’t much debate even among drug users that taking MDMA frequently produces some profoundly debilitating effects on long-term users.
I think everyone should be aware that it’s very likely that each MDMA dose is incurring some level of damage that is either long-term or potentially permanent. A couple sessions at moderate doses might not produce strictly significant effects but it’s amazing how quickly people go from “a couple times per year on special occasions” to having 20-30 exposures over a decade or two, which starts putting them beyond even the inclusion criteria for most light use studies that were performed.
EDIT: Also note that using DIY testing supplies on your pills is great practice and necessary in the age of fentanyl, but it’s not definitive. The only real way to test is to ship some of your pills off to one of the groups that tests for free and wait months for the results. Pills can contain multiple substances. There is a problem right now where one of the “research chemical” manufacturers has produced a large batch of a compound that is normally used for lesioning (damaging) serotonin neurons in lab studies. It has recreational effects, though, so it’s being sold as a drug. There’s concern that vendors will start mixing it into pressed pills to cut them with an active substance.
otherme123 · 2h ago
Meanwhile, taking a couple of beers daily for decades doesn't make anyone raise a brow, you can even find people that says it's good for your heart, according to some doubtful study from the 90's.
In some of those studies you might be referring (e.g. DOI: 10.2174/1874473711306010008) say that MDMA users score worse in memory, but better in depression and anxiety, and equal on cognitive or mood. Of course what makes the headlines is that MDMA is bad for memory, no mention to the positive effects. And of course, the narrative would be that if you take MDMA a couple of times per year, soon you won't even remember your own name.
Aurornis · 1h ago
> Meanwhile, taking a couple of beers daily for decades doesn't make anyone raise a brow
There are a lot of people bought into the idea that ~1 drink a day is beneficial due to the flawed studies like you pointed out.
But most people who keep up with things know better. My primary care doctor gives a reminder that drinking is not healthy despite what some old headlines claimed (even though I rarely drink).
Even the podcasters seem to have caught on, with many emphasizing that no amount of alcohol is beneficial and even 1 drink per night consumed consistently over time has damaging effects.
There is a lot of backlash when podcasters get too close to these subjects. I remember when Huberman touched on the topic of marijuana and Reddit was up in arms. Huberman isn’t great at scientific accuracy (to say the least) but he was directionally correct. Many people didn’t want to hear it, though.
People like to think their drug of choice is the safe one. They cherry pick a few studies that agree and choose to dismiss anything that doesn’t.
sireat · 1h ago
Sure alcohol is not healthy.
Unfortunately, neither is oxygen.
Now you will say that we need oxygen and can survive without alcohol. But then again, we do not have a Faustian bargain of choosing to abstain of all the fun things in life and living for 200 years.
The elephant in the room is that no matter how healthy a life style you live, we presently have no way to reverse a rapid decline in quality of life around 85-90 culminating in complete collapse ages 100-110.
You can have a great quality of life until mid 80s by leading a moderately healthy lifestyle provided you do not get cancer.
After that we are a loss on how to prolong our lives.
I would almost welcome if Larry Ellison would prove us wrong in 10-15 years at least there would be theoretical hope. We'll see about Peter Thiel as well, but I will not be alive to see his experiments.
mx7zysuj4xew · 25m ago
I don't know where you get your facts from but every issue you brought up has either been thoroughly debunked (cognitive deficits) or borders on sensationalism (fentanyl)
getpost · 1h ago
> everyone should be aware that it’s very likely that each MDMA dose is incurring some level of damage
I think this is overstating the risk in supervised clinical usage, depending on what you mean by "some level of damage." It's possible that a single alcoholic beverage may induce some level of damage, but that is irrelevant for most drinkers. A more realistic comparison might be the risk associated with surgical anesthesia, which is significant, but that doesn't mean surgery should be necessarily avoided. There are always risk/benefit tradeoffs, and the MAPS research has focused primarily on MDMA use after other therapies have failed.
The MAPS Investigator's Brochure[0] acknowledges that, while preclinical studies in animals have shown serotonergic neurotoxicity at high or repeated doses, there is as yet no consistent evidence of neurotoxicity in controlled clinical settings with limited dosing. The report characterizes high-, medium-, and low-level risks. No high-level risks were identified, and medium-level risks are mainly cardiovascular and psychological.
I would love to see some studies on this because everything I've seen is either rats that were exposed to truly insane doses (10X more than a human would take) or among long term, heavy users (weekly).
I don't necessarily doubt that there's some level of brain damage going on, but the extent is poorly understood and likely over exaggerated.
Aurornis · 1h ago
> because everything I've seen is either rats that were exposed to truly insane doses (10X more than a human would take) or among long term, heavy users (weekly).
These studies get emphasized by MDMA proponents because they find them easiest to argue against.
Many of the arguments are based on flawed logic, like taking rat mg/kg numbers and translating directly to human mg/kg numbers. This isn't how drugs are scaled to animal doses (see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4804402/ if you want to understand) so it leads to a lot of claims that studies are giving insane doses when they may not be.
Honestly this game isn't my favorite because someone always comes along to point out why various studies aren't 100% perfect in humans with a large sample size and then tries to suggest that therefore it should all be ignored. If they can't attack the study, they attack the motivations of the authors or insert claims like how the sample group may have been taking other drugs. If that fails, they try to claim that the drug users may have had those deficits to begin with, which led to the drug use. It goes on and on.
Here's one random study where abstinent users had decreased memory scores. The decrease scaled relative to how much of the drug they recalled using: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9855498/ (Opponents will point out one of the authors is hated in the drug community due to past controversy and therefore they won't trust the study)
It's honestly not hard to find studies like this, but what you won't find is big placebo-controlled gold standard trials with enough dosing to achieve statistical significance. That's because it's not ethical to do so, and therefore it won't happen.
serjester · 51m ago
I appreciate you dropping those.
In https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9855498/ the average dose was a staggering 440mg a month (multiple rolls a month) with a sample size of 24 people. This is definitely falls under "heavy" usage and even then it's hard to disambiguate correlation vs causation in such a small, underpowered study.
The average participant in your second study, https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/0269881106059486, had again taken an average of 800 lifetime doses. These are insane amounts and do not remotely reflect the average user.
Here's a meta study for example that found no long term impact among more realistic users - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3053129. I haven't looked into this in a long time, so I ran a deep research query, and for typical usage (<50 lifetime doses, months between sessions) there seems to be very little evidence of structural or functional harm.
Same, any existing study I've read follows abuse-level or Chronic usage. Would love to know affects of recreational usage.
I'd imagine such a study would be quite difficult because so many things could affect your results: sleep, diet, age, alcohol, covid, etc.
I know nothing about this but I feel like the technology exists to scan your brain before and after to see neuron damage. I just want to know if a single use causes permanent brain damage and to what extent.
neilv · 4h ago
> I think everyone should be aware that it’s very likely that each MDMA dose is incurring some level of damage that is either long-term or potentially permanent.
In school, I knew a very smart person who got into drugs, especially MDMA. They later got clean, but when they got brain imaging done for some reason, a doctor who looked at it said they could tell the patient had done a lot of MDMA. Reportedly, the damage was visible on the imaging, and it was characteristic.
I'm sorry that my friend had to learn the hard way, and I'm glad that I was always too scared of drugs to try any myself.
reillyse · 33m ago
Not to be rude but gunna have to call BS on this.
I don’t think MDMA usage shows up like this on brain scans, it’s not even like brain scans are that accurate and that nothing else could cause a scan to look bad.
This smacks of very anecdotal “this is your brain on drugs” energy.
mx7zysuj4xew · 23m ago
Sounds a lot like the "LSD orange" story that gets told over and over
Teever · 3h ago
What is your friend doing now?
valec · 3h ago
dosed reasonably (~125 mg with no redoses), ideally at lower ambient temperatures, and ideally with an SSRI at the end of perceptible effects to stop MDMA to keep circulating through the neuron and causing oxidative stress, you will quite literally see 0 axonal damage. maybe some neurotransmitter depletion, but this is only temporary.
PCA yes that is concerning but I would be extremely surprised if it ended up in the MDMA supply chain. MDMA is made cheaply at quantities several magnitudes higher than research chemicals. it's much more likely PCA will be sold as a cut for others RC's -- especially as a part of those dreadful cathinone soups labelled "3-mmc" these days
Aurornis · 1h ago
> you will quite literally see 0 axonal damage.
There is absolutely no scientific backing to support such an absolute claim.
The animal studies using SSRIs worked because they dosed the SSRIs before the MDMA. By occupying the serotonin transporter the MDMA is prevented from entering the neurons, which prevents the damage.
Taking an SSRI afterward might do something for the very tail end of the dose, but that's after most of the action and therefore most of the damage. You can't get all of the recreational effects, then block the transporter afterward and expect the same protection.
SSRIs are also potentially dangerous with MDMA due to the possibility of serotonin syndrome.
There have been numerous recipes floated around in drug circles for combating the neurotoxicity but they’re extrapolations and hypotheses, not firmly supported concepts.
el_nahual · 2h ago
What is the best resource for "safer" MDMA consumption? (Like, which SSRI to take and at what dosage).
Also, isn't mixing SSRIs and MDMA a huge no-no, given the potential for a serotonin storm/serotonin syndrome?
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
Likely all amphetamines are neurotoxic the same way MDMA is, but we still use them for many things, including adhd. As a wise man once said, the dose makes the poison.
And as we know alcohol is carcinogenic and there is no known safe dose, but people still drink.
qoez · 5h ago
Thank you for being the necessary but resposible buzzkill in conversations like this
mx7zysuj4xew · 21m ago
There's nothing necessary about it, if anything it just lowers the signal to noise ratio
owenversteeg · 1h ago
Something I see a lot these days, what with modern scientism and all, is that even a tiny amount of $x causes permanent damage. You hear it about everything, from sunlight exposure to alcohol to sleep deprivation to red meat consumption. Most of the studies, of course, are an amusing combination of poor study design, funding bias and/or p-hacking, but occasionally a well-designed independently funded study by honest people slips through. Typically these studies will show the effect size so small as to be negligible. For example the Nature study about alcohol consumption shrinking brains showed an effect size over a lifetime of drinking equivalent to a fraction of the brain shrinkage that occurs over a normal year. Statistically significant? Yes. Practically significant, and enough to outweigh any benefits? Ehh...
But the larger problem is that the slabs of thinking meat that we inhabit are the most complex system in the known universe, and it is usually impossible to understand the effects of a single chemical. I wrote about this here a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42326209
dingnuts · 6h ago
> it's amazing how quickly people go from “a couple times per year on special occasions” to having 20-30 exposures over a decade or two
a couple times a year is 20 exposures over a decade. were you trying to demonstrate an escalation? did you mean 20 over a year?
yobid20 · 5h ago
So I was a heavy user. Every weekend, up to 5 pills a night, for years through college and into early 20s. This was back in the late 90s early 2000s. Now I am in my 40s. Top rated software engineer by my peers, sharp as hell, getting even sharper every year as my knowledge still grows, described as a true 10x expert engineer because of how much I do and code circles around everyone else. I am not saying this to brag. My point is simply that if there were some sort of permanant damaged cognitive effects, it never affected me like that. I never had any negative side effects ever. Or perhaps there was and I could have been the next Einstein but damaged myself to be where I am now. Guess I'll never know. I havent done again since I was around 22 or 23. It just stopped being enjoyable to me and everyone else I knew had already moved on past the party phase of their lives.
Also, a weird coindidence, during the heaviest usage phases, those were also my highest grades during college.
Do I regret using it so much? Not really. That was probably the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. I have very good memories , some of the best I've ever experienced.
Often I think back I wish I could go back and do it again.
Being an adult and getting old simply just sucks.
HaZeust · 5h ago
Was about to call my old dealer; cheers
bheadmaster · 6h ago
> I did, in fact, experience seeing your wife dancing freely and openly under scintillating lights and thinking: "wow."
That's not cool, man. How would you feel if someone looked at your wife that way?
el_nahual · 6h ago
Thanks. Fixed it. Meant "my wife."
Etheryte · 5h ago
Naturally, the original version was a lot more funny though.
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
It makes me exceedingly happy if people think my partner is hot. Different strokes I guess
nkrisc · 6h ago
Fortunately in many states now you can just go to a local dispensary and buy weed. I usually get edibles because it's better than inhaling smoke. Now for me it sometimes replaces an evening beer, usually just 2.5mg or 5mg for a light buzz. You probably don't hear much from casual users because we're not talking about it because it doesn't define us, any more than a morning cup of coffee does.
Whether beer or weed, I'm usually having it after the kids are in bed and I'm just chilling before my bedtime.
As for other drugs, I don't bother simply because I'm not interested in getting involved in the illicit drug scene. I don't have time for that.
Gud · 52m ago
I am a responsible drug user. I think we’re not noticed much because if you are a reasonably well adjusted individual, you will be low key about it.
It’s called self reflection and not buying into the lifestyle.
Many drugs kind of suck and you have to be tactical in their use.
I do coke once perhaps every quarter. MDMA maybe once a year?
I avoid overdoing it because they both come with a terrible, unpleasant downer, especially if you do too much. I have access to great coke and great MDMA.
I smoke weed perhaps 10-15 times a year. I used to smoke it daily when I was suffering from severe depression. I credit cannabis with being alive.
I don’t want to end up with some weird ass world view, so I’ve avoided LSD and mushrooms. I did mescaline twice - highly recommend.
Alcohol and tobacco I’ve stopped. Terrible drugs overall.
So we do exist, us responsible drug users. I suspect the drug using population in general, due to the legality and taboo of their usage, will be of a less stable character compared to the general population. I suspect this plays a big part in your observation.
Aurornis · 6h ago
> Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
The majority of alcohol drinkers fit this description: Occasional, casual use in very moderate doses.
However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve been surprised at how many people I know grew to fit your description: They either diverge toward consuming a lot less of a drug or abstaining completely, or they get trapped into an escalation where they do it too much, too often, or at too high of a dose.
Even the people who I considered the most discipline and responsible users grew up to have a period of problematic use that they didn’t see coming.
I have a friend who worked in the rehab field for a while. He said if you took a look at their patients without knowing the context you’d never guess their common problem was drugs. People from all walks of life get trapped in abuse patterns.
Some go from stable use to an abuse spiral when triggered by a stressful event: A divorce, breakup, or difficult quarter at work. Some spiral when they enter a new friend group that pushes it and makes access easy. Others spiral out of control when they hit depression or even a period of boredom.
At this point in my life I even know one person who spiraled deeply out of control on classic psychedelics, which many on the internet will claim is impossible or “something else must be going on” because it goes against typical drug use wisdom. Yet it happened and it’s a problem.
Side note: Much has been written about MDMA safety in recent years but the neuroscience people I know state in no uncertain terms that they will never touch that specific drug due to neurotoxicity.
flanbiscuit · 5h ago
I agree. It was my favorite. Used to do it a lot in my 20s. I'm in my late 40s now. Haven't done it in years but I would love to do it once a year and just dance my ass off at an event or festival.
I personally don't like weed. I am not a fan of smoking/vaping anything (the act of smoking itself) and I've tried edibles/gummies of varying mg and types and just never found a high I enjoyed on it.
I enjoyed LSD when I was young but would probably find it too much now. Mushrooms are great though, but also haven't done that in years. Would also do that once or twice a year.
treetalker · 6h ago
In the USA and many other places, one is not allowed to do what one likes with one's own mind. (For those who haven't gotten the memo.) Whether that's right or wrong, potential legal consequences alter the in vacuo definition/calculus of "responsible use".
If one decides that legal consequences are no matter, and if one disregards the consequences of any effects on others, then another option is to find or grow one's own. Indeed, in some but not all jurisdictions, magic-mushroom spores (for microscopy purposes only, of course) are perfectly legal to possess and even mail. For non-plants and non-fungi, the analog, I suppose, would be to thoroughly master practical chemistry and synthesize whatever one wants for oneself in a home laboratory.
None of this is legal advice, of course. Don't break the law. And carefully examine and consider past, present, and future life choices.
P.S.: I see many other comments mentioning that weed or other drugs are "legal" in certain states. Don't be duped: many of the substances they refer to are still illegal federally. Federal law is distinct from state law. The federal government's policy (if any) of not enforcing certain laws does not mean it can't or it won't. Again, none of this is legal advice.
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
I expect any attempt to enforce marijuana laws by the federal government would be extremely unpopular.
plemer · 6h ago
How would you know if your coworker, neighbor, or anyone else was a responsible drug user unless they told you? We’re harder to spot, but I know plenty.
jraby3 · 4h ago
I take it once a year with a community of about 150 like minded friends at my house in Vermont. It's amazing.
Find your tribe. It does exist.
germinalphrase · 3h ago
I’m impressed you host 150 people once a year. That has to be a lot of work.
thruway516 · 57m ago
and they are friends and like minded. Even more impressive when you consider that is close to half the population of Vermont
latchkey · 37m ago
Chillits has been doing it yearly, for 26 years, with about 300 people. Meritocracy based volunteer organization. It is a lot of work, but when a community of like-minded people comes together around a single event, it is quite powerful.
rickandmorty99 · 6h ago
Some drug info teams at festivals told me I'm the most responsible drug user there is when I told them that I take MDMA at most once per year but preferably less.
Also the test lab I come into were excited to see me when I came in to test DMT.
But I prefer to do it in private with a close friend, or two. I've done it twice at festivals (MDMA). In both cases, while it was fun, it was also quite chaotic at times.
I know this sounds terrible, but the most responsible, purely casual drug users that I know are mostly parents, assuming 30+.
tayo42 · 6h ago
Parents of older kids maybe?
I have no interest right now dealing with the next day effects of drugs lol
A long stretch of sleep is my mdma right now
awithrow · 7h ago
Come to Denver, while there are plenty of folks that fall into both of the categories you lament, there are plenty of occasional adult users too. I suspect its a combination of both the legal status of both weed and natural medicines as well as the music scene. I have many friends who enjoy the occasional trip and you would never know from a casual conversation.
throwup238 · 6h ago
> The only way to keep getting good drugs that I know of is to keep in touch with friends on the latter path, but I don't really want to associate much with them.
It’s a lot easier to get drugs without connections than it used to be. A couple hundred bucks of Monero, the tor browser, and a DanceSafe testing kit with fentanyl strips is all you need.
> Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
Quietly getting high and not broadcasting their drug use. There are a lot more than you think. I was recently surprised to find out that one of my childhood friend’s parents, who I had considered to be the most straight laced and/or puritanical family in the community, regularly drink magic mushroom tea that the church sound guy buys for them off the dark web. Once you include prescription medication, the number of people high on something on any given day approaches 100%. People be trippin balls, yo.
Aurornis · 6h ago
> Once you include prescription medication, the number of people high on something on any given day approaches 100%
100% of people are not on prescription drugs. Most prescription drugs do not have euphoric or “high” producing effects.
Even among drugs with recreational effects, people who take them as directed at therapeutic doses will not be “high” when using them regularly. The person who has taken the same dose of Adderall daily for ADHD for a decade isn’t buzzing and getting things done like someone taking their first 10 doses they borrowed from a friend. The chronic pain patient on a stable dose of a opioid is certainly not feeling a buzz, just temporary relief from their pain. The recreational effects are short lived.
We need to stop this false equivalence between people taking medication and people being “high”.
quesera · 1h ago
> We need to stop this false equivalence between people taking medication and people being “high”.
Fair. But we should do the same for the false non-equivalence between alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and "drugs"!
At which point, GP's 100% comment is a reasonable approximation of truth. :)
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
Caffeine and alcohol are both pretty popular, and I would guess the majority of adults take one or the other or both. I'm willing to be educated if someone has numbers.
throwup238 · 6h ago
Great point, I didn’t mean to make that equivalence and that last line was made in jest.
In my defense, I haven’t had my coffee with Bailey’s yet (cough :).
cjbgkagh · 6h ago
I think one of the causes of addiction is dopamine dysregulation where the normal feels bad and drugs help fix that, at least temporarily. I wonder if instead of using strong drugs such people would be better off skipping the addiction part and go direct to a rehab where they use a weaker drug like modafinil. I think the dopamine dysregulation caused by strong drugs is already likely pre-existing in those who are seeking the drugs in an effort to fill the hole. Those same people are more likely to become addicted and have more difficulty quitting.
I take Modafinil at half the normal dose of 100mg and have been on that same dose steadily for years with little sign of building a tolerance or an addiction.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 · 7h ago
I wonder if this is the difference between functional user, who is clearly overdoing it, but is on the 'latter path' and 'casual adult drug user' that checks in once a year for novelty value. I personally do not have big enough social circle to draw any real conclusions here.
maxerickson · 7h ago
Isn't this the golden age for casual weed users, with the many states that have legalized recreational use?
treetalker · 6h ago
Decriminalized? As I noted in my other comment, it's still illegal federally, and the state and federal governments are separate sovereigns that can and do independently create and enforce laws (subject to various federal constitutional limitations).
quesera · 1h ago
Fine, no argument.
But there are cannabis dispensaries, collecting state sales and cannabis taxes, in (almost literally) every other strip mall commercial district in many US states. They might be more common than liquor stores, honestly.
That fits no practical definition of "illegal" in an ordinary person's daily life.
maxerickson · 3h ago
Meh, living in Michigan, it's clearly a free for all.
amanaplanacanal · 2h ago
Same in Oregon. Nobody cares.
nicbou · 6h ago
They are pretty common in Berlin. Some people are fine with a responsible amount every once in a while.
hbsbsbsndk · 6h ago
Weed doesn't hit for me, but it's so easy to buy good mushrooms near me. It's like a nice weekend vacation to just walk around my neighborhood (or better, go to a cottage and trip in nature).
dyauspitr · 6h ago
I’m in the quit drugs completely camp but I have to say that it wasn’t because of drug abuse or addiction. Leading up to the birth of my daughter I just decided it didn’t fit in with a family lifestyle.
quesera · 1h ago
I know people who have "taken 20 years off" from their favorite recreational chemicals, explicitly to raise children and get them packed off to college. :)
photochemsyn · 4h ago
It's probably consumer-oriented social programming that's responsible - the ideology of 'more is better' is pretty baked-in these days. The entire business model of the recreational drug industry - both legal and illegal - is built around the heavy user, regardless of whether the substance is alcohol or amphetamine.
The amusing thing from the chemist's point of view is that the legal substances sold cheaply over-the-counter - ibuprofen, aspirin, etc. - or even the prescription antibiotics, which are not much more expensive - are not easier or harder to synthesize than the illegal drugs, from LSD to MDMA. Incidentally, a large proportion of what's clandestinely sold as MDMA is just some amphetamine derivative like Adderall, possibly blended with small amounts of fentanyl to create the 'happy glow' effect.
Literally the only reason there's a lot of money in the illegal drug business is that the drugs are illegal. This in turn generates associated profits in the private prison industry, as illegal industries are unregulated and typically use violence to enforce contractual agreements, instead of the courts.
Just legalize and educate - excessive drug and alcohol use destroys your mind and your body in exchange for fleeting pleasures, it's never a good idea.
s1artibartfast · 5h ago
>Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
They are around you all the time, but they don't advertise because it isn't a personality defining hobby for them.
Regarding weed, I feel like it is still more common than not. Working professional that will have a gummy or toke in a social setting or after putting the kids down.
morkalork · 7h ago
I would be the once a year occasional user in my 30s but I have no idea where to get it anymore after moving to a city in my 20s. I have no interest in going to nightclubs and chatting kids a decade younger than me to get ripped off. And same for cannabis, I completely stopped smoking but it's not because I can't find any - it's legal here - I just don't care. It's not fun anymore.
abxyz · 6h ago
Finally, someone on HN I can relate to. My wife and I love luxury dining experiences, so we eat at McDonalds 364 nights a year and go to the highest rated Michelin 3-star restaurant on the 365th night.
fuzzfactor · 4h ago
Nothing to be ashamed about just because you can afford it more so than so many other devout fans of food service.
skybrian · 3h ago
And don't cook or do anything else? That's pretty extreme.
spicyusername · 6h ago
can't really grow up and do drugs responsibly
This is a very naive, almost willfully ignorant, understanding of how addiction and drug abuse works.
It's more like a genetic lottery. If you didn't get the right set, there is no such thing as responsible use, only abstinence or destruction.
The challenge for society is how to grapple with this genetic inequity.
Zero tolerance would probably be best for everyone, at the expense of the entertainment of some. It would also be impossible to legally enforce and seems to result in abusive policing and organized crime.
Laissez-faire would fix the above problems, at the expense of those genetically predisposed to addiction, which is a significant percentage of society, and which has been shown to have horrible social side effects in terms of crime, mental health, child abuse, and mortality.
It's a hard problem.
rickandmorty99 · 6h ago
I'm not sure. My parents are heavy drug abusers. All my grandparents were alcoholics.
The only thing I'm mildly addicted to is coffee and I roll once every 2 years on mollie.
A few differences:
1. I've been pushed hard to do education. I did and became way more science-minded than anyone in my family.
2. I've seen the effects of drug abuse on my parents/grand parents. I was anti-drugs until 21.
3. I opened up experimenting when I was 27. All my parents/grand parents got hooked between the ages of 13 and 16.
kgwxd · 6h ago
Sounds more like you've just bought into some over simplification of genetic effects on addictive behavior. It's definitely not all or nothing for everyone.
WalterGR · 6h ago
What's MDMA's addiction risk profile and therapeutic use potential vs. other "party drugs" such as - say - cocaine?
jpalawaga · 5h ago
Molly addiction risk: low. Once your brains serotonin is depleted, the drug stops working, and the hangover isn’t really something to be avoided.
Cocaine addiction risk: moderate. Similar to alcohol. Most people won’t end up otherwise a bonafide addiction but some will. Its use is inherently addictive, most people do not have just “one” bump and then go home.
Molly therapeutic use: still under research, but extremely promising in helping to resolve ptsd and other similar issues. Potentially other uses, too.
Cocaine: used as an anesthetic. It can also be used to reverse the effects of some other drugs in emergency situations (I.e. canceling out a downer, or other situations where you need a burst of energy)
It is both poetic and fascinating. It's not an easy read but I recommend it.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28930020-the-rose-of-par...
Same with weed, it seems most people I know either quit smoking completely, or do nothing but smoke weed. I'm in my mid 30s.
Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
What a fun, and joyful substance.
I took it as an adult: while partying, with my wife, at festivals.
Responsibly (test it first!). Not too much. Just a couple times a year.
I love it and has made my life better. But I'm glad I waited to "do drugs" until I was older and my brain and personality were a bit more settled.
My favorite thing about MDMA is that, while the experiences you have while on it are of course an "altered state of mind," those experiences are still your experiences.
I did, in fact, experience seeing my wife dancing freely and openly under scintillating lights and thinking: "wow."
I did in fact experience seeing two of my best friends talking with each other in a quiet corner of the festival and realizing "I love these people. They are special."
And because those experiences are real, they unlock a "register" which is now available even when stone cold sober.
A few weeks ago I was totally sober, in the middle of the day, when I saw two friends of mine (brothers) walking together having a discussion. And in my "MDMA" register I thought: "how special brotherhood is."
I'm certain not everyone who takes MDMA has experiences this good. I've been in spectacular settings and my age has afforded me the luxury of taking it with a good mindset.
But it's pretty fucking cool.
MDMA fans will argue this on the internet, but MDMA use (even without polydrug abuse) is associated with cognitive deficits in memory and learning. There’s a lot of experimental evidence showing it has damaging effects on neurons.
The damage done by a drug like this wouldn’t necessarily be obvious or even at the level to pass the threshold of significance in a scientific study after one or a couple doses. However, there isn’t much debate even among drug users that taking MDMA frequently produces some profoundly debilitating effects on long-term users.
I think everyone should be aware that it’s very likely that each MDMA dose is incurring some level of damage that is either long-term or potentially permanent. A couple sessions at moderate doses might not produce strictly significant effects but it’s amazing how quickly people go from “a couple times per year on special occasions” to having 20-30 exposures over a decade or two, which starts putting them beyond even the inclusion criteria for most light use studies that were performed.
EDIT: Also note that using DIY testing supplies on your pills is great practice and necessary in the age of fentanyl, but it’s not definitive. The only real way to test is to ship some of your pills off to one of the groups that tests for free and wait months for the results. Pills can contain multiple substances. There is a problem right now where one of the “research chemical” manufacturers has produced a large batch of a compound that is normally used for lesioning (damaging) serotonin neurons in lab studies. It has recreational effects, though, so it’s being sold as a drug. There’s concern that vendors will start mixing it into pressed pills to cut them with an active substance.
In some of those studies you might be referring (e.g. DOI: 10.2174/1874473711306010008) say that MDMA users score worse in memory, but better in depression and anxiety, and equal on cognitive or mood. Of course what makes the headlines is that MDMA is bad for memory, no mention to the positive effects. And of course, the narrative would be that if you take MDMA a couple of times per year, soon you won't even remember your own name.
There are a lot of people bought into the idea that ~1 drink a day is beneficial due to the flawed studies like you pointed out.
But most people who keep up with things know better. My primary care doctor gives a reminder that drinking is not healthy despite what some old headlines claimed (even though I rarely drink).
Even the podcasters seem to have caught on, with many emphasizing that no amount of alcohol is beneficial and even 1 drink per night consumed consistently over time has damaging effects.
There is a lot of backlash when podcasters get too close to these subjects. I remember when Huberman touched on the topic of marijuana and Reddit was up in arms. Huberman isn’t great at scientific accuracy (to say the least) but he was directionally correct. Many people didn’t want to hear it, though.
People like to think their drug of choice is the safe one. They cherry pick a few studies that agree and choose to dismiss anything that doesn’t.
Unfortunately, neither is oxygen.
Now you will say that we need oxygen and can survive without alcohol. But then again, we do not have a Faustian bargain of choosing to abstain of all the fun things in life and living for 200 years.
The elephant in the room is that no matter how healthy a life style you live, we presently have no way to reverse a rapid decline in quality of life around 85-90 culminating in complete collapse ages 100-110.
And those are absolute best case scenarios!
My illusion of being in control of your destiny was shuttered when Jack LaLanne - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_LaLanne died at 95.
You can have a great quality of life until mid 80s by leading a moderately healthy lifestyle provided you do not get cancer.
After that we are a loss on how to prolong our lives.
I would almost welcome if Larry Ellison would prove us wrong in 10-15 years at least there would be theoretical hope. We'll see about Peter Thiel as well, but I will not be alive to see his experiments.
I think this is overstating the risk in supervised clinical usage, depending on what you mean by "some level of damage." It's possible that a single alcoholic beverage may induce some level of damage, but that is irrelevant for most drinkers. A more realistic comparison might be the risk associated with surgical anesthesia, which is significant, but that doesn't mean surgery should be necessarily avoided. There are always risk/benefit tradeoffs, and the MAPS research has focused primarily on MDMA use after other therapies have failed.
The MAPS Investigator's Brochure[0] acknowledges that, while preclinical studies in animals have shown serotonergic neurotoxicity at high or repeated doses, there is as yet no consistent evidence of neurotoxicity in controlled clinical settings with limited dosing. The report characterizes high-, medium-, and low-level risks. No high-level risks were identified, and medium-level risks are mainly cardiovascular and psychological.
[0] https://maps.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/MDMA-IB-15th-Edi...
I don't necessarily doubt that there's some level of brain damage going on, but the extent is poorly understood and likely over exaggerated.
These studies get emphasized by MDMA proponents because they find them easiest to argue against.
Many of the arguments are based on flawed logic, like taking rat mg/kg numbers and translating directly to human mg/kg numbers. This isn't how drugs are scaled to animal doses (see https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4804402/ if you want to understand) so it leads to a lot of claims that studies are giving insane doses when they may not be.
Honestly this game isn't my favorite because someone always comes along to point out why various studies aren't 100% perfect in humans with a large sample size and then tries to suggest that therefore it should all be ignored. If they can't attack the study, they attack the motivations of the authors or insert claims like how the sample group may have been taking other drugs. If that fails, they try to claim that the drug users may have had those deficits to begin with, which led to the drug use. It goes on and on.
Here's one random study where abstinent users had decreased memory scores. The decrease scaled relative to how much of the drug they recalled using: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9855498/ (Opponents will point out one of the authors is hated in the drug community due to past controversy and therefore they won't trust the study)
Here's another one where ex-users showed verbal memory deficits, among other things: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16510479/
It's honestly not hard to find studies like this, but what you won't find is big placebo-controlled gold standard trials with enough dosing to achieve statistical significance. That's because it's not ethical to do so, and therefore it won't happen.
In https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9855498/ the average dose was a staggering 440mg a month (multiple rolls a month) with a sample size of 24 people. This is definitely falls under "heavy" usage and even then it's hard to disambiguate correlation vs causation in such a small, underpowered study.
The average participant in your second study, https://sci-hub.ru/10.1177/0269881106059486, had again taken an average of 800 lifetime doses. These are insane amounts and do not remotely reflect the average user.
Here's a meta study for example that found no long term impact among more realistic users - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3053129. I haven't looked into this in a long time, so I ran a deep research query, and for typical usage (<50 lifetime doses, months between sessions) there seems to be very little evidence of structural or functional harm.
[1] https://chatgpt.com/s/dr_6817cd9ce85081918c7d55fa9a28c654
I'd imagine such a study would be quite difficult because so many things could affect your results: sleep, diet, age, alcohol, covid, etc.
I know nothing about this but I feel like the technology exists to scan your brain before and after to see neuron damage. I just want to know if a single use causes permanent brain damage and to what extent.
In school, I knew a very smart person who got into drugs, especially MDMA. They later got clean, but when they got brain imaging done for some reason, a doctor who looked at it said they could tell the patient had done a lot of MDMA. Reportedly, the damage was visible on the imaging, and it was characteristic.
I'm sorry that my friend had to learn the hard way, and I'm glad that I was always too scared of drugs to try any myself.
I don’t think MDMA usage shows up like this on brain scans, it’s not even like brain scans are that accurate and that nothing else could cause a scan to look bad.
This smacks of very anecdotal “this is your brain on drugs” energy.
PCA yes that is concerning but I would be extremely surprised if it ended up in the MDMA supply chain. MDMA is made cheaply at quantities several magnitudes higher than research chemicals. it's much more likely PCA will be sold as a cut for others RC's -- especially as a part of those dreadful cathinone soups labelled "3-mmc" these days
There is absolutely no scientific backing to support such an absolute claim.
The animal studies using SSRIs worked because they dosed the SSRIs before the MDMA. By occupying the serotonin transporter the MDMA is prevented from entering the neurons, which prevents the damage.
Taking an SSRI afterward might do something for the very tail end of the dose, but that's after most of the action and therefore most of the damage. You can't get all of the recreational effects, then block the transporter afterward and expect the same protection.
SSRIs are also potentially dangerous with MDMA due to the possibility of serotonin syndrome.
There have been numerous recipes floated around in drug circles for combating the neurotoxicity but they’re extrapolations and hypotheses, not firmly supported concepts.
Also, isn't mixing SSRIs and MDMA a huge no-no, given the potential for a serotonin storm/serotonin syndrome?
And as we know alcohol is carcinogenic and there is no known safe dose, but people still drink.
But the larger problem is that the slabs of thinking meat that we inhabit are the most complex system in the known universe, and it is usually impossible to understand the effects of a single chemical. I wrote about this here a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42326209
a couple times a year is 20 exposures over a decade. were you trying to demonstrate an escalation? did you mean 20 over a year?
Also, a weird coindidence, during the heaviest usage phases, those were also my highest grades during college.
Do I regret using it so much? Not really. That was probably the happiest I've ever been in my entire life. I have very good memories , some of the best I've ever experienced. Often I think back I wish I could go back and do it again. Being an adult and getting old simply just sucks.
That's not cool, man. How would you feel if someone looked at your wife that way?
Whether beer or weed, I'm usually having it after the kids are in bed and I'm just chilling before my bedtime.
As for other drugs, I don't bother simply because I'm not interested in getting involved in the illicit drug scene. I don't have time for that.
It’s called self reflection and not buying into the lifestyle.
Many drugs kind of suck and you have to be tactical in their use.
I do coke once perhaps every quarter. MDMA maybe once a year? I avoid overdoing it because they both come with a terrible, unpleasant downer, especially if you do too much. I have access to great coke and great MDMA.
I smoke weed perhaps 10-15 times a year. I used to smoke it daily when I was suffering from severe depression. I credit cannabis with being alive.
I don’t want to end up with some weird ass world view, so I’ve avoided LSD and mushrooms. I did mescaline twice - highly recommend.
Alcohol and tobacco I’ve stopped. Terrible drugs overall.
So we do exist, us responsible drug users. I suspect the drug using population in general, due to the legality and taboo of their usage, will be of a less stable character compared to the general population. I suspect this plays a big part in your observation.
The majority of alcohol drinkers fit this description: Occasional, casual use in very moderate doses.
However, as I’ve gotten older I’ve been surprised at how many people I know grew to fit your description: They either diverge toward consuming a lot less of a drug or abstaining completely, or they get trapped into an escalation where they do it too much, too often, or at too high of a dose.
Even the people who I considered the most discipline and responsible users grew up to have a period of problematic use that they didn’t see coming.
I have a friend who worked in the rehab field for a while. He said if you took a look at their patients without knowing the context you’d never guess their common problem was drugs. People from all walks of life get trapped in abuse patterns.
Some go from stable use to an abuse spiral when triggered by a stressful event: A divorce, breakup, or difficult quarter at work. Some spiral when they enter a new friend group that pushes it and makes access easy. Others spiral out of control when they hit depression or even a period of boredom.
At this point in my life I even know one person who spiraled deeply out of control on classic psychedelics, which many on the internet will claim is impossible or “something else must be going on” because it goes against typical drug use wisdom. Yet it happened and it’s a problem.
Side note: Much has been written about MDMA safety in recent years but the neuroscience people I know state in no uncertain terms that they will never touch that specific drug due to neurotoxicity.
I personally don't like weed. I am not a fan of smoking/vaping anything (the act of smoking itself) and I've tried edibles/gummies of varying mg and types and just never found a high I enjoyed on it.
I enjoyed LSD when I was young but would probably find it too much now. Mushrooms are great though, but also haven't done that in years. Would also do that once or twice a year.
If one decides that legal consequences are no matter, and if one disregards the consequences of any effects on others, then another option is to find or grow one's own. Indeed, in some but not all jurisdictions, magic-mushroom spores (for microscopy purposes only, of course) are perfectly legal to possess and even mail. For non-plants and non-fungi, the analog, I suppose, would be to thoroughly master practical chemistry and synthesize whatever one wants for oneself in a home laboratory.
None of this is legal advice, of course. Don't break the law. And carefully examine and consider past, present, and future life choices.
P.S.: I see many other comments mentioning that weed or other drugs are "legal" in certain states. Don't be duped: many of the substances they refer to are still illegal federally. Federal law is distinct from state law. The federal government's policy (if any) of not enforcing certain laws does not mean it can't or it won't. Again, none of this is legal advice.
Find your tribe. It does exist.
Also the test lab I come into were excited to see me when I came in to test DMT.
But I prefer to do it in private with a close friend, or two. I've done it twice at festivals (MDMA). In both cases, while it was fun, it was also quite chaotic at times.
Countries where you can test your substances [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_checking
I have no interest right now dealing with the next day effects of drugs lol
A long stretch of sleep is my mdma right now
It’s a lot easier to get drugs without connections than it used to be. A couple hundred bucks of Monero, the tor browser, and a DanceSafe testing kit with fentanyl strips is all you need.
> Where the responsible casual adult drug users at???
Quietly getting high and not broadcasting their drug use. There are a lot more than you think. I was recently surprised to find out that one of my childhood friend’s parents, who I had considered to be the most straight laced and/or puritanical family in the community, regularly drink magic mushroom tea that the church sound guy buys for them off the dark web. Once you include prescription medication, the number of people high on something on any given day approaches 100%. People be trippin balls, yo.
100% of people are not on prescription drugs. Most prescription drugs do not have euphoric or “high” producing effects.
Even among drugs with recreational effects, people who take them as directed at therapeutic doses will not be “high” when using them regularly. The person who has taken the same dose of Adderall daily for ADHD for a decade isn’t buzzing and getting things done like someone taking their first 10 doses they borrowed from a friend. The chronic pain patient on a stable dose of a opioid is certainly not feeling a buzz, just temporary relief from their pain. The recreational effects are short lived.
We need to stop this false equivalence between people taking medication and people being “high”.
Fair. But we should do the same for the false non-equivalence between alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, and "drugs"!
At which point, GP's 100% comment is a reasonable approximation of truth. :)
In my defense, I haven’t had my coffee with Bailey’s yet (cough :).
I take Modafinil at half the normal dose of 100mg and have been on that same dose steadily for years with little sign of building a tolerance or an addiction.
But there are cannabis dispensaries, collecting state sales and cannabis taxes, in (almost literally) every other strip mall commercial district in many US states. They might be more common than liquor stores, honestly.
That fits no practical definition of "illegal" in an ordinary person's daily life.
The amusing thing from the chemist's point of view is that the legal substances sold cheaply over-the-counter - ibuprofen, aspirin, etc. - or even the prescription antibiotics, which are not much more expensive - are not easier or harder to synthesize than the illegal drugs, from LSD to MDMA. Incidentally, a large proportion of what's clandestinely sold as MDMA is just some amphetamine derivative like Adderall, possibly blended with small amounts of fentanyl to create the 'happy glow' effect.
Literally the only reason there's a lot of money in the illegal drug business is that the drugs are illegal. This in turn generates associated profits in the private prison industry, as illegal industries are unregulated and typically use violence to enforce contractual agreements, instead of the courts.
Just legalize and educate - excessive drug and alcohol use destroys your mind and your body in exchange for fleeting pleasures, it's never a good idea.
They are around you all the time, but they don't advertise because it isn't a personality defining hobby for them.
Regarding weed, I feel like it is still more common than not. Working professional that will have a gummy or toke in a social setting or after putting the kids down.
It's more like a genetic lottery. If you didn't get the right set, there is no such thing as responsible use, only abstinence or destruction.
The challenge for society is how to grapple with this genetic inequity.
Zero tolerance would probably be best for everyone, at the expense of the entertainment of some. It would also be impossible to legally enforce and seems to result in abusive policing and organized crime.
Laissez-faire would fix the above problems, at the expense of those genetically predisposed to addiction, which is a significant percentage of society, and which has been shown to have horrible social side effects in terms of crime, mental health, child abuse, and mortality.
It's a hard problem.
The only thing I'm mildly addicted to is coffee and I roll once every 2 years on mollie.
A few differences:
1. I've been pushed hard to do education. I did and became way more science-minded than anyone in my family.
2. I've seen the effects of drug abuse on my parents/grand parents. I was anti-drugs until 21.
3. I opened up experimenting when I was 27. All my parents/grand parents got hooked between the ages of 13 and 16.
Cocaine addiction risk: moderate. Similar to alcohol. Most people won’t end up otherwise a bonafide addiction but some will. Its use is inherently addictive, most people do not have just “one” bump and then go home.
Molly therapeutic use: still under research, but extremely promising in helping to resolve ptsd and other similar issues. Potentially other uses, too.
Cocaine: used as an anesthetic. It can also be used to reverse the effects of some other drugs in emergency situations (I.e. canceling out a downer, or other situations where you need a burst of energy)