"Hurt people hurt people and healed people heal people."

"Hurt people hurt people and healed people heal people."

All things considered, has this comment thread made LessWrong more or less valuable to you? (ETA: This is excluding Luke's original post, and relative to what you would have expected the site to be like if the comment thread had not taken place, not relative to what it would be like if the comment thread disappeared now.)

Less. A bunch of bickering about ethics with almost no actual practical content describing the world. Basically it is embarrassing to be associated with.

Here's an unorganized list of interesting things I've learned about drugs over the years.

• Anti-drug people cried wolf way past the point where you should stop listening to them.

• Even the worst drugs that legitimately screw people up do so because those people are taking them in ridiculously stupid ways. These drugs can often be useful tools to have when used responsibly.

• Addiction, as far as I can tell, can be prevented just by using a little forethought, precommitments, and outside view: "This drug might be too fun, so I wont do it again for at least a month, no matter what. Longer if it turns out to be more temping than predicted", and "Is this the kind of thing that addicts do before becoming addicted? (and that non addicts don't)"

• Some foods do produce strong enough mental changes to notice (if you're paying attention). Butter and MCT oil both improve my brain function. The effect is different from the 'racetam family. For example, when playing guitar, my fingers aren't sped up, but they do play new songs as if I'm more familiar with them.

• GHB is in all ways a better version of alcohol. Therapeutic index, long term toxicity, clear headedness, shorter duration of action, no hangover, higher sleep quality, possibly even less addictive, and causes numerically fewer date rapes (:P). It's a shame that this hasn't replaced alcohol. EDIT: Might not be so non toxic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid#Neurotoxicity

• Marijuana makes SWIM feel mentally impaired and makes it harder to put sentences together, but has also led to his fastest arithmetic time since Alexei came out with his lifetracking app. The average of times was not improved, however.

• It is possible to sleep on modafinil, but even if you stay up late on it, you can wake up at a normal time the next day and feel good. Modafinil makes all of SWIM feel energetic except for facial muscles.

• Threshold doses of mushrooms taken before bedtime seem to make SWIM wake up in an exceptionally good mood and feeling exceptionally well rested, regardless of whether the mushrooms helped him get to sleep earlier or if they kept him up very late by making him be productive.

• My hand wavy model for psychedelics is that they change your thinking in ways that make it easier to move through thought/belief/identity space than normal, but with no strong bias in any direction. Most people (especially in therapeutic environments) tend to find positive paths, but it's possible to walk down the wrong path too. Learn to navigate.

• My other hand wavy psychedelics model (for describing the experiences themselves, rather than the effect of them) is that they turn up the signal from many different parts of your brain. For example, it cranks up the volume for pattern matching algorithms and interest/curiosity- sometimes to the point of noticing patterns that you've never noticed before, and sometimes to the point of seeing patterns that don't exist at all. It also tends to make you see things as if its the first time seeing them. For example, despite knowing for his whole life that ageing is bad, 50ug of LSD made SWIM see old people 'for the first time' and get a deeper appreciation for "Aging SUCKS, and the world is insane for ignoring it!". Mechanisms like this can make it easier to take ideas seriously (which makes it easier to make lasting changes ^^^).

• Psychedelics are much less scary and less dangerous than most people assume. Starting with low doses and proper set and setting, people rarely freak out, and the main damage it causes when it happens is to turn people away from psychedelics. There is next to no physiological danger.

• Psychedelics aren't a whole new level more intense than marijuana. SWIM has had his two most intense and scary experiences after taking one hit of marijuana even though he has taken a fairly high dose of LSD and has taken low dose psychedelics more times than he can list. His only close friend to have had a scary experience had it on marijuana and wasn't scared on LSD.

I've been wanting to ask this here for a while: is there any (active or dead) discussion thread or article or something on the (rational :D) use of psychoactive substances? I've been very cautiously experimenting myself, and this is the only online community that I respect and whose goals seem to be inline with my own. There seem to be several exceedingly good reasons to partake, while all of the negative ones can be significantly mitigated with knowledge and precaution.

I'm a chaotic good, compsci undergrad doing research. Psychoactives haven't increased my research or programming productivity (yet); though the xkcd comic suggesting that alcohol may do so (http://xkcd.com/323/) seems to be true. It is very hard to ride that peak though.

I can make a small anecdotal contribution. Nothing in my life has had as profound an impact on my conscientiousness (i.e. fighting akrasia) as some of my more intensely positive drug induced experiences. This effect is typically profound for several days afterwards, and noticable for weeks. This is significant, for me at least, because akrasia seems to be much more limiting than my creativity or intelligence.

I feel that the approach taken here is rather lacking.

Firstly, any attempt to understand drug use in humans is going to be greatly hindered if one has not had a decent amount of experience with the drug(or similar drugs) in question.

Secondly, this article doesn't seem to significantly differentiate between the effects, reasons and motivations for use and harms encountered of different kinds of drug use. There is obviously a huge difference between the art and drug use of Alex Grey or Simon Posford ( ayahuasca, DMT, various other extremely powerful tryptamines) and, say, a talented punk rocker who enjoys alcohol and cannabis primarily.

Drugs are a very, very deep subject and I don't think it's possible, at least with our current understanding of the brain, to productively speculate on creativity and drug use without 1) first hand knowledge of drugs and artistic creation 2) knowledge of academic literature regarding creative states, artistic talent, etc.

In the book The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide the 9th chapter extensively discusses the enhancement of creative capacities in people on LSD. The chapter contains an explanation of methodology, tabular data, and subjective user reports. The subjects were 26 professional men, including 16 engineers and a few mathematicians.

Edit: I found an appropriate article, an essay by the renowned visionary artist Alex Grey where he discusses entheogens(psychedelic compounds used in a particular way) and creativity. I suspect this article has more insight on drugs and the creative process than the contents of this LW discussion.

Article: http://alexgrey.com/media/writing/essays/the-creative-process-and-entheogens/

So to inform you, at first I was offended but I think this was a cached thought. I'd say I probably have a bit of white knight syndrome and a lack of assertiveness. Another was the sexual dynamic, she keyed in on my exact sexual fantasy. Also, she was my first, which had a lot to do with it and what makes that book sound really interesting.

EDIT: I guess I should mention this fantasy is highly unethical, and perhaps partly immoral. So I really don't expect to ever find anyone else to fill it. Anyone who would fill it would probably have side-interests I'd want to avoid. If anyone wants to know in private, I can talk about it.

Please don't be offended, this is not my intention at all, rather I intend to offer what I believe are valid suggestions.

Obviously, you like and love many things about her, yet you two were ultimately incompatible. In my experience partners often compliment each other in both good and bad ways. I suggest therapy because, to be perfectly honest, it's quite likely you have about as many problems as her(just different ones) if you were with her long enough to get engaged.

I also suggest an excellent book called The Erotic Mind. You (presumably) have a high degree of sexual compatibility with her, yet now you have broken up and it's highly likely that your sexual dynamic contained unhealthy elements, was probably turbulent at times, etc. This book has helped me tremendously in figuring out my sexuality, learning to love my sexuality, not feeling inhibited or ashamed of my fantasies, and it gave me a lot of insight into the dynamics of my relationships.

This is actively harmful advice.