Will legalising psychedelics be abused?

[Gerhard]

I have seen so many people abuse psychedelics, either to trip out to weird music, get smashes at festivals... Or many people get totally delusional and detached from reality due to the lack of years of self development and sober meditation.

I've been thinking a lot recently if psychedelics are legalised and sold like alcohol, will 99% of people abuse it?

Should psychedelic use be controlled, and limited to people who show an interest in spirituality and perhaps get some sort of licence or do a course first?

I have only met a handful of people in real life using psychedelics for self improvement, the other 200 use it for totally hedonistic goals

[Willie]

yup

[Grateful Dead]

99% of people already "abuse" psychedelics. And that's mainly because they don't know what they are doing. I think it will get better due to legalization since there will be better Information available and more people talk about it.

18 hours ago, Gerhard said:

Should psychedelic use be controlled, and limited to people who show an interest in spirituality and perhaps get some sort of licence or do a course first?

I don't think they should be limited for spiritual use, it's totally oke to use them for fun or whatever your intent is. But yeah there should be some sort of license or course which covers the basics imo. Well at least for the ridiculous powerful psychedelics like 5-MeO-DMT, NN-DMT etc..
It could even be just some sort of online course and the rest you learn by doing them.

[TrustTheProcess]

Yes, of course, they will be abused without regulation. 

I think that the same way you need training and a license to drive a car, you should be required to get training and a license before you can be responsible to take psychedelics. 

[Rilles]

The beautiful thing about psychedelics is that when you abuse them or use them in the wrong set and setting they kick your ass, they literally show you that youre being disrespectful to them. Hence why people who pop a tab at a club most likely have a horrible time. 

[aurum]

@Gerhard

Anything can and will be abused, especially at a large enough scale like a whole country.

There certainly should be some regulations at first. Age is probably the biggest. Once we're all super enlightened maybe those regulations can be relaxed.

[Carl-Richard]

Yes, but it's not a reason for keeping it illegal.

[Leo Gura]

Everything is abused by ignorant people. The problem is the ignorance.

[DocWatts]

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the places where psychedelics have been legalized in the States so far are for psychedelic assisted therapy in a clinical setting (as opposed to being able to being able to walk into a place to purchase them on your own).

[Forestluv]

In terms of abuse, psychedelics have a relatively low abuse profile relative to other substances. They don't work through the dopamine reward pathway, they have a very long tolerance period, they have a long onset of action and trips can be unpleasurable. Taken together, there is very low addiction risk. I think the bigger concern is noobies getting in over their head. Overdosing on alcohol takes work. It takes work to drink a 5th of vodka and not vomit during the process. Yet psychedelics are easy to overdose. It's easy for a newbie to take eat 4 tabs of LSD. Or a newbie might take one tab and after 40min think "I'm not feeling anything. I might as well take three more". This sounds absurd to those with experience, yet a considerable percentage of ignorant noobies would make these mistakes and get in way over their - having traumatic trips, publicly freaking out, people calling paramedics etc. That type of thing gives psychedelics a bad name. There is still very little education, even with the younger generation. I recently taught about the spiritual and therapeutic value of psychedelics to college freshman. Most of the students had never been exposed to the value of psychedelics. There only impression of psychedelics was it's for hippies, bad trips, people freaking out, jumping out of windows, ending up in insane asylums etc. That is residue from the Nixonian propaganda from the 1970s that we need to scrub away. We are past the Reefer Madness mindset for marijuana, yet it still remains for psychedelics. 

36 minutes ago, DocWatts said:

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but the places where psychedelics have been legalized in the States so far are for psychedelic assisted therapy in a clinical setting (as opposed to being able to being able to walk into a place to purchase them on your own).

To my knowledge, psychedelics have been decriminalized in a handful of cities, yet have only been formally legalized in the context of psychedelic therapy in the state of Oregon (via the recent election).

Going from decriminalizing to legalization is a big step - especially with businesses selling psychedelics. In the long run, I think it's best to legalize it, so it can be regulated. A transitional move might be to have psychedelics decriminalized and legally available via prescription for a few years as society acclimates and becomes educated. Similar to how marijuana was first legally available as medical marijuana via prescription. 

[Lyubov]

This already happens with the unfortunate circumstances of ignorance. If anything it being legal will allow for a system to be built so some kid knows not to take 7grams of mushrooms or some person doesn’t die at some unsanctioned retreat.