My mentioning and citing material to do with recreational or medical use of controlled substances should obviously not be taken as an endorsement of recreational use of controlled substances. I am not qualified to make such endorsements, even if I were inclined to. Indeed, if you are turning to a mathematician for intelligence on on legal or pharmacological questions, you should probably inspect your life decisions to see if any other ones you have made recently are as terrible.
Eventually I’d like to speculate about medicalisation, and how drugs for diseases are socially accepted, drugs for things that aren’t diseases are denounced, and what a disease is, is negotiated based on… what? These all interact with the patent system in amusing ways.
Recreational drug usage and legality
Dr Karen Hitchcock had a nice turn of phrase, which I would like to transcribe from the podcast when I have time.
(Self 2020):
There are two key problems with books that attempt to be objective about illegal drugs. The first is that for the most part their authors won’t admit to having used such substances for fear their own objectivity may be compromised. The second follows fairly logically from the first: who, precisely, are such books aimed at? If they are targeted at readers who already have a consuming interest in drugs (pun intended), then they are very likely — by definition — to know rather more about the subject than the author; and if they are for people who only have a tangential interest in the subject, why should they want to read about it at all?
Psychedelics to treat mental illness
Psychedelics may free us from our Pavlovian Prisons. I am curious about the credentials of enthea an advocacy… group(?) for legalisation of psychedelics. They have a some feedback on Vinay Gupta’s Cutting Through Spiritual Colonialism. Adultification. Jacob Falkovich, The Great Annealing. Personality change on LSD or magic mushrooms Universal love, said the cactus person