Have you heard of the concept of selection bias? If someone would do a meditative retreat combined with the influence of psilocybin, receive the benefits from that, and never feel the need to use psilocybin again you will not find them on shroomery.org. The only people you will find there are people with a sustained interest in doing psychedelic drugs. That's a bit of a circular argument then.
There is no reason to believe that such a community of people is representative of the general population or the effects that psychedelics would have on them when combined with meditation and the guidance of one or more therapists.
You don't have to be patronizing. Selection bias is besides the point. My writing a common risk is to warn people from going towards the extreme of becoming psychedelic enthusiasts (abusers would be more apt). Your "general population" who are given psychedelics and meditation runs the risk of falling into that extreme (it is opening pandora's box), and their therapist isn't going to be there to babysit them all the time, this much is evident from prescription drug abuse.
I'm not an expert on drugs, but comparing psychedelics to any kind of prescription seems... I dunno, like not a very good comparison.
Are there any psychedelics that are openly prescribed the way other "prescription drugs" are? I mean just saying "Abuse of prescription drugs" is such an ambiguous thing. If you're referring to opioids, etc that have an extreme physically addictive effect, that's not at all like how psychedelics work.
Prescription drugs were being compared in context of being dispensed under guidance of a licensed professional. The licensed professional isn't always going to be around to make sure the patient doesn't start down the path of substance abuse, and such abuse potentials are not limited to drugs that are by and by chemically addictive.
What do you base your views on? Reading reports on a forum? You're point seems valid enough, but I get the feeling there's a lot of nuance your comments are paving over. For one, any research I ever did on them seem to indicate they're very "anti-party" and those taking them did so for very specific self-improvement reasons.
> My writing a common risk is to warn people from going towards the extreme of becoming psychedelic enthusiasts (abusers would be more apt).
That is a very different claim than:
> Combining psychedelics with meditation opens the very real risk of conditioning one's meditation practice to require psychedelics to have any efficacy.
It's hard to abuse psilocybin bc there is a limitation to the frequency that a dose will be effective. If you take it two days in a row, there will be little to no effect on the second day. The longer you wait, the more effect it can have - leading even enthusiasts to wait.
I'd just like to add, back when I was a bit younger (perhaps 23 years old or so), I used to take magic mushrooms with my friends once every four months or so. It was not something I (and I imagine my friends) took lightly. I made sure there weren't any big things happening that weekend, no stress, etc... In that way it wasn't even very feasible to take these shrooms more often, often things like work would get in the way.
In total I might have taken magic mushrooms maybe 10 times. Now I don't really feel the need to anymore, but I think it could be interesting to try some time in the future with my girlfriend.
Most of my friends don't use psychedelics in any way anymore. Perhaps in part because many friends are starting families now and it's hard to find the time when having a girlfriend and/or children, etc...
In addition to rapid tolerance buildup (which in a dopaminergic drug would be a danger of rapid progression to overdose), in my experience psilocybin and other psychedelic tryptamines have an inherent moderating effect in many people. I don't really feel like having psychedelic experiences often; it's just not a useful state of being most of the time, and it's not so neurochemically rewarding and physically comfortable that it's highly likely for addiction to develop. It's far less likely to become addicted to psilocybin than THC, alcohol, or caffeine.
I do agree that always combining meditation with any substance could lead to a dependence on that substance to experience the deepest meditative states. However, used once in a while (which is the most I really want psychedelics anyway), I can agree with the findings in this paper, the experience sticks with you and can be remembered.
pazimzadeh's analogy is spot on.
> Right. If you're trying to metaphorically reach the peak of a mountain, psychedelics are like a helicopter that lets you fly around, find the path and even reach the top.
> It's possible that you'll grow to rely on the helicopter to climb the mountain, but hopefully what you take away from it is that there is in fact a path (or accept that there's not - and you might has well climb a different mountain).
There is no reason to believe that such a community of people is representative of the general population or the effects that psychedelics would have on them when combined with meditation and the guidance of one or more therapists.