I'm not aware of these drugs directly causing the death of anyone (excluding someone driving on the freeway after taking them). Do you have an example of a fatality?

As for the other unpleasant effects it's true these can happen temporarily. I know some people anecdotally believe negative effects can be permanent, but I'm not aware of any research supporting cause and effect.

Now weigh the risks above with the possible reward. Near death comfort (while important) is only one application. For example anxiety and OCD are life crippling for so many people, and research suggest psychedelics might offer one of the best treatments yet.

The potential benefits to society are so great, the research must continue. I also see no reason you could not help out with some empirical study.

I found a reference to LSD directly killing someone. They injected 320,000 ug intravenously!

https://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=220

To put that in perspective, the "typical" dosis according to wikipedia is ~200ug.

For comparison, if you drink 10L of water, 200 espresso shots, or 600ml of 40% alcohol in one setting, you are likely to die.

Let's assume a psychoactive vodka dose of 10ml and a typical dose of 100ug LSD:

Then the respective vodka dose would be 10ml x (320'000ug / 100ug) = 10ml x 3200 = 32000ml = 32 l

Obviously vodka would be deadly at an amount way below 32l.

(for the unfamiliar, a recreational dose is typically between 70 and 200ug. 200-400 is a heavy dose, and 400+ will leave you incoherent for many hours.)

I'd like to give this comment a more thorough treatment but I don't have the gumption right now. So I'll just say:

One of the side-effects of antidepressants is increased risk of suicide.

So I don't really see your point.

>So I don't really see your point

here it says that you have a significant chance to develop schizophrenia after a substance induced psychosis event (18,478 cases examined)

https://www.psychiatrist.com/JCP/article/Pages/2013/v74n01/v...

Results: Eight-year cumulative risk to receive a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis was 46% (95% CI, 35%–57%) for persons with a diagnosis of cannabis-induced psychosis and 30% (95% CI, 14%–46%) for those with an amphetamine-induced psychosis. Although alcohol-induced psychosis was the most common type of SIP, 8-year cumulative risk for subsequent schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis was only 5.0% (95% CI, 4.6%–5.5%).

let the downvotes start.

You have to get a "psychosis event" in the first place. Conditional probability, only a small subset of people taking "substances" ever have that problem. You leave out some vital information, without it the percentages and risks you mention are meaningless. As a (university researcher inner medicine) doctor I know used to say: There have been cases of severe side-effects from placebos... meaning just mentioning something can have bad effects is meaningless without more information.

  > let the downvotes start.

Should you get them it isn't about what you think it is about. It isn't even clear to me what your point is, if there is one. It's a carefully selected piece of information that just by itself doesn't say anything useful in the context of this discussion.

> only a small subset of people taking "substances" ever have that problem

still you can't say there is no problem at all.

Lets count: the population of Finland is 5.5 million; 18000 cases makes 1/3 percent of the general population - a significant number (not known if all cases have been considered by this study, lets assume they have - i would assume that half of the cases would not be reported at all, but lets skip that), lets assume that five percent of the population have taken drugs - then 1/15 users would get one.

>Should you get them it isn't about what you think it is about

No, there is such a thing as collective bias. lets not pretend that it doesn't exist.

  > still you can't say there is no problem at all.

Strawman. First, I indeed didn't say it, so what is the reason you bring it up, except to create a distraction?

Second, see what I already wrote. Also to your last sentence - you just yell "bias" before anything even happened. Then you add a lot of your own interpretation, without any evidence, to some selected numbers from a single study of a special country: Finland is not exactly the normal case in this context (for example: http://www.euronews.com/2015/07/02/finland-tops-european-cou...).

You have been downvoted (at least by me) because your argument is poorly constructed and poorly written, not because you disagree. In my experience this is usually the case on HN.

Conspiracy theories and suspecting the rest of the community is 'out to get you' or interested in 'silencing' you is sure incendiary but the truth is usually far more boring. Present a careful reasoned argument and people will appreciate it, even if they disagree. Saying "rarely drugs have bad side effects!!!" (without introducing context and comparing the safety of these drugs to OTC medication and currently legal drugs) is true but it isn't a real argument or piece of information, it's just FUD.

I only mean to support the idea that research of plant / fungus based substances shouldn't be zero.

Everyone getting off-chops on drugs all the time is clearly a bad idea. But evem most drug and alcohol users self-regulate, so there's that.

I think your using the figures here in a non-standard way.

The 18,000 cases were reported over a 16 year period (1987 - 2003).

You should annualise these data so we can talk of cases per year, otherwise you can just expand the reporting period to further suit your narrative.

I think you raise a valid concern. Inducement or exacerbation of schizophrenia symptoms is probably the most troubling and widely reported problem with these drugs. The famous case of Syd Barrett comes to mind. There are many such anecdotes, and I myself saw something similar first hand (the individual in question eventually got better, but it took a few months). However, considering the potential upside, to me this makes it even more important to do extensive research on all of it.

Oh, and a quick note-- the only 'psychedelic' drug mentioned in the study you cited is cannabis, which from everything I've read doesn't even begin to compare to the more powerful psychoactives. Funny enough, it is the one we have the strongest link to psychosis for, but this could only be because it's been so much more widely used and studied. It seems obvious that more study is needed, insofar as it can be done ethically.

Do you support the availability of the option to use chemotherapy against cancer? Yes? Then how can you possibly object to these drugs?

While I've heard of stories of people injuring themselves by jumping out of windows and so on, I've yet to hear a credible story about anyone dying from consumption of psychedelics, or indeed suffering seizures. Panic attacks for sure, they're quite unpleasant although in my experience pretty rare. All the statistical evidence suggests that psychedelics are quite safe compared to popular stimulants and depressives. I've had several bad trips, but I blame myself for those - smoking a ton of weed after you've also taken psychedelics is a good way to get disoriented.

There are many lesser-known psychedlics with scarily-low lethal doses. Bromo-dragonfly and some *-NBOMe compounds are a few that killed people recently. High doses of DOC can cause extreme vasoconstriction in extremeties, resulting in necrosis. https://psychonautwiki.org is a good site for investigating health risks.