There are three types of hallucinogens: psychedelics, dissociatives, and deliriants. Ketamine is a dissociative used to induce and maintain general anesthesia (even in pediatrics). Ketamine is widely abused. Ketamine’s cousin, PCP (aka angel dust), is also an NMDA antagonist.
Drugs exist, can have medical purposes, and are used recreationally when accompanied by curious effects. Ketamine is an example. So is morphine. So is dextroamphetamine. The list goes on, and a lot of the drugs are psychoactive.
It’s old hat: people develop addiction to drugs and behaviors that are legal and illicit. Some drugs feed and burn-out the nucleus acumbens faster and more effectively than others. Some drugs have a greater social cost. Why are some drugs legal and others not? It’s a combination of the abovementioned questions and more issues (e.g.. social norms, social histories, etc., etc.) that are beyond this over-simplified post.
The studies are being funded, even here at UCLA (See the second to last paragraph.). What will the research tell us about psilocybin – a partial agonist of 5-HT2A and –HT1A (serotonin) receptors – and its potential use in psychiatric conditions; who knows. Let’s remember, though, that in Leary’s day, functional imagining did not exist, high-throughput sequencing did not exist, evidence-based medicine was not a la mode.
Get over taboos, and let the evidence speak for itself.
