Will other recreational drugs be medicalized anytime soon

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I’m lazy, so I’ll just quote myself from an earlier thread:

@Steken

LSD has been found to be physiologically harmless: Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris from the Centre For Neuropsychopharmacology at London’s Imperial College has reached the conclusion that it has “a very favourable physiological safety profile” - i.e., that it is “non-toxic.”

What’s more, it may even have some therapeutic potential. Earlier this year, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease “published results from the first study of LSD’s therapeutic potential in humans to appear in more than four decades.” (Full thing here - warning: PDF.) It sounds quite promising:

“The study was a success in the sense that we did not have any noteworthy adverse effects,” [Swiss psychiatrist Peter] Gasser says. “All participants reported a personal benefit from the treatment, and the effects were stable over time.”

And LSD may also help against cluster headaches, so that’s nice - not to mention make people enjoy themselves without hurting themselves or others, which is nice, too.

The research is ongoing, so perhaps it’s too early to tell either way. But two or five or ten years from now, I think a very good case could be made for LSD at least losing its classification as a “Schedule I” drug - or perhaps being legalised outright.

Also:

@Steken

Research has been made into the subject of using LSD to combat alcoholism (alas, .pdf behind paywall). Looks fairly promising, according to pop sci write-ups such as this one.

I don’t know about “any states making serious inroads on creating more medical opportunities,” but I suppose it’s possible, a few years down the line.