Good narcotics, or bad?

[sanctus]

There are two points I have to add:
1) Maybe health problems are no associated with an LSD trip, but there is the risk to have a horror-trip...my father used to work with handicapped people, a woman was there because she threw herself out of a window during a trip...If you ask me this is already enough to make it a dangerous drug, but there is more: the risk of not getting down anymore.

2) Altough I'm in favor of legalization of marjiuana, I think it is by far more dangerous than alcool and this for the following reason: it can cause you to get schizophrenic, usually it is the case if you would have had anyway a high chance to become schizophrenic before you die, but smoking a lot can accelerate it, like you get it before you turn 20. I know well two persons to who that happened.
The consequences of alcohol are less strong, if you become an alcoholoc all the consequences you have if you manage to stop is that you have to resist to any single drop of alcohol for the rest of your life, nothing compared to schizophrenia.

[orbsycli]

#1

Set and setting, folks. NEVER ingest a psychedelic when you're in a hotel room way high up. That's just asking for it.
(from my observations, psychedelic people like to play in nature. they like to smile, and laugh, and talk about crazy theories. I've never ever seen anyone flip out and want to jump out of a window...)

And also, the effects from LSD wear off after 24 hours MAXIMUM, no matter how much the dose.
Although, I do wonder what would happen if someone ate an entire crystal of pure LSD. Aproximately 10,000 hits? That wouldn't be lethal, but I'd imagine your brain would just freeze like an overloaded PC.

you can use Thorazine to stop the "trip"


The only danger are the people themselves!!



#2 Marijuana does not directly cause someone to become schizo.
Usually, the person is already mildy schizo, and their interaction with drugs just spins them off into their own crazy world.

Know your body and your mind and your entheogens. They aren't for everybody.

[orbsycli]

Also, I know we aren't supposed to be discussing drugs on the forum, but when a thread comes along like this I HAVE to jump in.

I believe everybody needs to know the truth about these powerful, sacred keys that are found around the Earth.

I am not advocating their use, I am stating my observations as well as providing True information, rather than the propoganda that is imprinted in most peoples' brains.

Truth, that's all. This area of research happens to be my niche.

[orbsycli]

Originally Posted by wiki

In U.S.legal context, narcotic refers to opium, opium derivatives, and their semi-synthetic or fully synthetic substitutes "as well as cocaine and coca leaves," which although classified as "narcotics" in the U.S. Controlled Substances Act (CSA), are chemically not narcotics. Contrary to popular belief, marijuana is not a narcotic.

So heroin and cocaine are narcotics.
Title of the thread: Good narcotics, or bad?

My answer is Bad.

Marijuana is a depressent (muscle relaxer)

psilocybin, mescaline, lsd are psychedelics

DMT is a psychedelic and a tryptamine

methamphetamines are ALL bad.
Many names and catagories for many pills...

Alcohol is a....What is alcohol?

Cocaine is also a stimulant.
Nicotine is too,
and caffeine.

MDMA just recently found a new home in the "Empatheogen" or Empathogen (one of the two) catagory.

[Ganoderma]

#1. I agree with that, physically perhaps there is little risk. but as with any mind altering chemical (alcohol included) there is risk of psychological damage/alteration.

#2. i disagree. in a purely physical sense i find alcohol to be a far far more dangerous drug. we just need to look at hospital logs and death records to prove that. on a psychological note i also think alcohol is more dangerous. look at its effects and look at marijuana’s effects. everyone is different but in general the drinker is the fighter and the stoner is the sleeper. alcohol is a serious depressant and many many people will get very depressed, agitated, emotional or flat out irrational. this can happen with anything, but i don't think it even comes close when comparing weed and booze.

Originally Posted by sanctus

There are two points I have to add:
1) Maybe health problems are no associated with an LSD trip, but there is the risk to have a horror-trip...my father used to work with handicapped people, a woman was there because she threw herself out of a window during a trip...If you ask me this is already enough to make it a dangerous drug, but there is more: the risk of not getting down anymore.

2) Altough I'm in favor of legalization of marjiuana, I think it is by far more dangerous than alcool and this for the following reason: it can cause you to get schizophrenic, usually it is the case if you would have had anyway a high chance to become schizophrenic before you die, but smoking a lot can accelerate it, like you get it before you turn 20. I know well two persons to who that happened.
The consequences of alcohol are less strong, if you become an alcoholoc all the consequences you have if you manage to stop is that you have to resist to any single drop of alcohol for the rest of your life, nothing compared to schizophrenia.

as for driving...well that is just common sense. you shouldn't drive if your tired, never mind if the road is changing colours and talking to you.

I also agree that the graph is a little misleading as MDMA can be pretty damaging. I think this report is more looking at physical damage associated with recreational use. not so much psychological damage.

No one can deny that many many many people die from tobacco and alcohol. in fact you don’t need a whole lot of alcohol to become poisoned, perhaps fatally. why do we get sick when we drink too much? its toxic and our body says no. that article says that roughly 20 shots of 40% alcohol, in a few minutes, is considered to be a fatal dose. perhaps its a lot, perhaps not. I too am glad that america has a drug, unfortunately i find that drug to stimulate violent/irrational behavior more than certain others. I think as far as a social narcotic, alcohol is very poor. As far as a healthy narcotic, alcohol is a poor choice. physically, psychologically and socially it kills many people every day.

i am not against alcohol, buyer beware like said. I am against such a dangerous drug being sold by governments and have safer drugs (in my pinion safer) controlled often with stiff penalties.

as far as physically dangerous i have yet to see a report of mushrooms, weed, or lsd killing someone by itself. certainly stupid behavior will kill people, but i haven't seen proof of the drug doing so.

Edit: a note on mushrooms. As far as i know there are no deaths due to psilocybe mushrooms. that said a lot of people mis-identify mushrooms and die from ingesting a very toxic mushroom. These mushrooms are illegal in many countries. Ironically a legal hallucinogenic mushroom, fly agaric (amanita muscaria), is responsible for deaths. Amanitas are famous for being fatally toxic and even if prepared right can prove very..."uncomfortable". Just thought i would add a note that the legal hallucinogenic mushroom sends many people to the hospital (or grave) while the illegal ones rarely if ever do so.

[Ganoderma]

orbsycli: In a way i agree with you. Time and setting. That said people need a baby sitter like a drunk needs a DD. In a social sense i personally think many people are too unprepared/stupid/unstable whatever to act properly. frankly some plants are too powerful to allow people to act properly, daturas, salvia, dmt etc come to mind. dangerous or not physically, some may be a serious concern to society (ie some crazy football player going whacko on datura). perhaps controlling such chemicals is worth it? but that is a touchy subject. on one hand, its nice to be free to simply grow a beautiful plant and enjoy its nature. on the other hand i dont want some loony killing my family cause he took too much after his divorce...

Or perhaps things like controlling but not criminalizing is a way to go. like several places in the USA with salvia. Its like alcohol you must be "18" or whatever years to buy it.

Understanding the plant is rather simple in comparison to understanding society. True, Shamans in south america perhaps can handle administrating brugsmania, where as a teenage living on the street in LA who sees a murder a month type of situation may not be mature enough and ready for such an experience. In addition certain drugs also take considerable time/energy to make. DMT for example will take many years (taking into account growing the various plants, unless you got toad hunting I guess) and frankly Mr I wanna get high won’t care enough. So in general people who are into those drugs are generally more educated a they spend much time growing and researching the steps needed to make it. Others such as meth/coke/heroin/weed/mdma etc are available on every street it seems and need a closer look at, especially their actuall safety.

How does one define the line? It's nice to be free and grow what you will, and some seem rather clear cut (ie marijuanas safety is rather good, whereas meth and heroin are rather dangerous) but how does one define all the in betweens such as in that table.

I guess the last thing I want to add as you know is many psychedelics are not addictive. In fact their trip is often so intense it may take days just to get used to reality again. Between that and physical tolerance it is not likely to become a burden on society as say tobacco and alcohol already are. I don’t like paying taxes for people to get a new liver/lung when they drank/smoked for 30 years. As cold as that sounds.

Hopefully we are not breaking any forum rules with this. Not encouraging usage, just discussing effects on people/society.

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by orbsycli

methamphetamines are ALL bad.

I disagree.

For a minority of patients suffering from severe narcolepsy, methamphetamine is the only effective treatment drug. Severe narcolepsy can be very dangerous, because its sufferers can suddenly lose consciousness and be killed in accidents. The use of pharmaceutical-grade methamphetamine under the guidance of a physician is a life saver.

For this reason, Methamphetamine is on schedule II of the US CSA, as a drug with a high potential for abuse, but having an accepted medical use.

Alcohol is a....What is alcohol?

Simply put, alcohol is a central nervous depressant, so it would be fair to term it a narcotic, or “sleep drug”, though it is not termed this under US law. Unlike many psychoactive drugs, alcohol is not directly taken up by specific neuroreceptors, but increases the action of endogenous (“occurring within”) neurochemicals, primarily dopamine and various opioids. One might reasonable call alcohol “indirect morphine”.

Surprising for a drug that has been so long known and studied, the precise pharmochemistry of alcohol is not well-understood, but it is believed to act primarily by facilitating the function of a major neuroinhibitor, GABA (source: Alcohol: Neurobiology and Pharmacology)

MDMA just recently found a new home in the "Empatheogen" or Empathogen (one of the two) catagory.

Though empathogen (“causes empathy”) is an apt descriptive category from MDMA and similar drugs, it’s a symptomatic, not pharmacological one. MDMA is a phenethylamine, making it a chemical cousin to drugs such as ephedrine, mescaline, and the important endogenous neurotransmitter dopamine

Originally Posted by Ganoderma

#1. I agree with that, physically perhaps there is little risk [in using LSD]. but as with any mind altering chemical (alcohol included) there is risk of psychological damage/alteration.

Although diagnoses of long-lasting “drug induced psychosis” are accepted by some in the medical community, and widely accepted when resulting from excessive use of amphetamines, whether such a risk should be associated with LSD is a source of long-standing controversy. Emperical studies are complicated by the difficulty of determining if an experimental subject has not already or was not going to exhibit clinical psychosis without the use of LSD, and the legal status of LSD, which has largely halted credible research into it since 1970.

”This wikipedia article” has a short but accurate discussion of this controversy, with some citations and links.

Pharmacologically, the effect of LSD is fairly well understood, and appears to offer no risk of long-term mental illness. I’m unaware of any data supporting the claim of moderate or infrequent consumption of alcohol causing long-term mental illness.

[orbsycli]

thanks craig, you are absolutely right.

[Ganoderma]

some people consider addiction a mental illness. I know what your saying, perhaps people may have become mentally ill without the drug, but it seems a large percent of drinkers are depressed/anxious in varying degrees. When i get drunk i generally feel down emotionally, but in small amounts (1-2 beers say) it makes me feel more talkative/sociable etc.

I think that is a very hard one to pin, as we will never know if a person was going to have mental illness without taking the drug.

although some drugs seem to have been "proven". Wade davis wrote a book about daturas being used to make zombis. before dismissing it they were talking about the plant causing death like symptoms and later on, years later, being found again. my point here was it made them completely messed up mentally, completely. these have been used throughout africa/americas for similar types of reasons. other nightshades like mandrake/henbane were used in europe. these as far as i have read have been proven to cause mental illness.

[orbsycli]

So you're saying Daturas cause long term mental illnesses, or short-term?

People who ingest too much datura-like plant lose all sense of self and appear to be possessed.

What about long term, though?