Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results
I took a ton of acid (blotter) in the late 70's and early 80's as a teen, and then again in the late 90's (window pane and liquid eyedrops), and I just have to say, I, personally, have mixed feelings about this sort of thing being heralded as some sort of metaphysical panacea.<p>As I mentioned in a previous post, I became addicted to opiates in the mid 2000's and lived as a zombified-but-somehow-functional heroin addict for about 4 years.<p>There is no doubt, in my personal case, that acid and mushrooms (that I often hand-picked in cow pastures after rainstorms here in central Florida) gateway-ed me into harder, destructive "escapes", and for that reason, I cannot fully endorse this sort of thing.<p>I've had amazing trips where I literally felt as one with the group of friends I was chilling with and created deep, transcendent bonds, and I've had a select few shit ones where I felt totally alienated from every living soul (but not nature, interestingly) on earth.<p>They did expand my consciousness, but looking back, I see now that it introduced into my psyche a fairly deep distrust of authority and convention which, under sober scrutiny, perhaps did little to help me always successfully nagivate my life.<p>Treating the very sick and/or terminally ill with psychedelics makes great sense to me; anything to ease those pains, but my own experience makes me want to throw at least a dart of caution into the mix when it comes to making a blanket statement about the benefits of LSD and such.