hedwards: It's a tough thing to do. The theory under which the LSD was used back then has long since been set aside as being hokum, so at least as far as using it for psychotherapy, there's no reason to investigate.
Now, I suppose there could be some other medical use for it, but definitely not for psychology. Repressed memories don't exist and a great deal of harm has been done to patients over the years on that basis. Thankfully, the profession recognizes that repressed memories can't be retrieve and are focused on real memories.
GhostQlyph: Oh, that was hogwash. The study I mentioned above about schizophrenia and other rare mental illnesses is a lot different -- it's actual chemical action. I believe a group of Netherlands researchers were the ones to do it, in I think it was '08. I'll see if I can pull the paper on it for you, if you're interested.
My only real issue with most psychotropic medications is that they're at best addressing a symptom of the underlying cause. And for the time being that's far better than nothing, but going into the future there's going to need to be a lot of work done to determine the underlying cause and address that.
Ultimately, for people who just have minor issues, the drugs are probably not worth the risk, but for people with more severe problems, even with those side effects, the medications are life savers.
The thing that always baffled me was how my pot smoking friends could judge me for taking medications when they were pumping themselves full of that crap. Seems hypocritical to say the least.
jjsimp: All I know about the drug issue, it doesn't matter how many laws you make to criminalize it, there are people that will want to escape from their shitty lives and get high. There are ways to protect the part of the public that wants to abstain form drugs and their effects on society. Such as, creating a red light district or even a drug hotel/spa. You have to check in to a hotel/crack house to get high, but you have to check out sober to keep the rest of society safe from you. You are not going to keep people from using, you might as well make society a little safer.
My apologies for innocently derailing this thread, SOPA has become one of those subjects I am sick of hearing about. It's going to get pushed through no matter how many times it has to pass through congress. The only thing stopping it these last few times has been the amount of bribes...er donations has been a little light. Once our politicians have the correct amount of change in their bank accounts, this will be rubber stamped like all the other anti-consumer bills that have been passed. No amount of bellyaching from us geeks and society that is paying attention will matter to the grand scheme of things. We are very few, as opposed to the many apathetic voters.
Wouldn't it make more sense then to just clean up society? Escapism is the worst reason to do drugs. Look at the people with serious drug problems and it's a pretty good bet that they're running from something.
