LSD: Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, or Dumbo's feather?

[Alex-db]

Aren't the dosages arbitrary? Surely 1 line/month of coke is far far less harmful than 4 pints of beer every night?

[soon2bepro]

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Aren't the dosages arbitrary? Surely 1 line/month of coke is far far less harmful than 4 pints of beer every night?

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Yeah, and that's probably why they rated tobacco to be more harmful than cannabis. I guess they just used average statistical samples, so yes it's only objective from that point of view.

[tame_deuces]

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Aren't the dosages arbitrary? Surely 1 line/month of coke is far far less harmful than 4 pints of beer every night?

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Yeah, and that's probably why they rated tobacco to be more harmful than cannabis. I guess they just used average statistical samples, so yes it's only objective from that point of view.

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I just had visions of a pothead smoking 20 a day.

[img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[soon2bepro]

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I just had visions of a pothead smoking 20 a day.

[img]/images/graemlins/crazy.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

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Lol.

Seriously though, most potheads I know only smoke 1-5 times a day, and they only take a few puffs each time. Besides, the average marihuana user smokes far less often than that.

[CORed]

I think putting Heroin so high on the "physical harm" scale is way off the mark, unless they are considering overdose potential. My understanding is that opiate addiction isn't all that bad for health. That's why maintenance is a treatment option as well as detoxification.

[tame_deuces]

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I think putting Heroin so high on the "physical harm" scale is way off the mark, unless they are considering overdose potential. My understanding is that opiate addiction isn't all that bad for health. That's why maintenance is a treatment option as well as detoxification.

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I read some scientific claims from my home country that the majority of heroin addicts have jobs, so heroin addiction certainly doesn't stop you from being potentially productive citizen.

What is probably worse is (well as far as I am lead to understand) that in the end it will make you very, very sick if you don't take it, and you won't really get a buzz from taking it anymore either. So basically you shoot up just to avoid being violently sick - doesn't sound like a cozy drug to me.

From my brief stint in private security I've also pretty certain that hard heroin addiction is probably as 'low as you get' in a modern society. Not as they're bad people or anything like that, but the lives the ones worst off lead - man that [censored] is just horrible.

[kevin017]

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If you were under that impression, then you don't understand the effects of these drugs well enough to evaluate the chart.

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ok i'll bite. acutely MDMA causes hypertension and hyperthermia, as well as renal problems, cardiac problems, and seizures. It has dangerous interactions with maoi's, ssri's, viagra, and other stimulants, and is very frequently combined with these and other drugs that would make it more dangerous, like alcohol and cigarettes. Over time, MDMA causes serotonin receptor death and can cause cognitive defects such as memory loss and depression. It can also lead to paranoid psychosis.

Let's compare this to say LSD, which is shown as more dangerous on that chart. In the short term LSD will slightly increase your blood pressure and heart rate, dilate your pupils, and affect your body temperature slightly. None of these things are harmful in the case of LSD. The most harmful short term affect of LSD is having a bad trip, which is purely a subjective and psychological experience with no physical harm, or perhaps doing something out of poor judgement. LSD has no known long term negative effects. The only potential problem with LSD is it can bring out latent phychotic problems, but many drugs particularly hallucinogens can do this, and it is not caused by the drug but is disturbance of an underlying problem. LSD can also cause flashbacks, but these are not harmful in any way, unless again because you have a bad trip. LSD is also not frequently combined with other drugs which might exacerbate its affects, and has a 2-3 times higher LD 50 than MDMA relative to a tyical dose. In practice the difference is probably much greater due to the frequent combination of MDMA with other drugs that increase its harmful acute affects.



So, that's why I was a little bit confused as to why MDMA was rated as less harmful than LSD. i guess i'm just ignorant of the topic.

[Taraz]

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I think putting Heroin so high on the "physical harm" scale is way off the mark, unless they are considering overdose potential. My understanding is that opiate addiction isn't all that bad for health. That's why maintenance is a treatment option as well as detoxification.

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I remember from reading this study a while ago that the health effects from an overdose were counted substantially on the "physical harm" scale.

[madnak]

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So, that's why I was a little bit confused as to why MDMA was rated as less harmful than LSD. i guess i'm just ignorant of the topic.

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Sorry dude, my bad. You're right it should be to the right of LSD. However, it should be to the left of alcohol and tobacco, and if it were moved to the right much then it wouldn't be. I wasn't even paying attention to LSD when looking at the scale. The worst thing about the chart is the position of alcohol, which is the most harmful drug in the world.

[Taraz]

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If you were under that impression, then you don't understand the effects of these drugs well enough to evaluate the chart.

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ok i'll bite. acutely MDMA causes hypertension and hyperthermia, as well as renal problems, cardiac problems, and seizures. It has dangerous interactions with maoi's, ssri's, viagra, and other stimulants, and is very frequently combined with these and other drugs that would make it more dangerous, like alcohol and cigarettes. Over time, MDMA causes serotonin receptor death and can cause cognitive defects such as memory loss and depression. It can also lead to paranoid psychosis.

Let's compare this to say LSD, which is shown as more dangerous on that chart. In the short term LSD will slightly increase your blood pressure and heart rate, dilate your pupils, and affect your body temperature slightly. None of these things are harmful in the case of LSD. The most harmful short term affect of LSD is having a bad trip, which is purely a subjective and psychological experience with no physical harm, or perhaps doing something out of poor judgement. LSD has no known long term negative effects. The only potential problem with LSD is it can bring out latent phychotic problems, but many drugs particularly hallucinogens can do this, and it is not caused by the drug but is disturbance of an underlying problem. LSD can also cause flashbacks, but these are not harmful in any way, unless again because you have a bad trip. LSD is also not frequently combined with other drugs which might exacerbate its affects, and has a 2-3 times higher LD 50 than MDMA relative to a tyical dose. In practice the difference is probably much greater due to the frequent combination of MDMA with other drugs that increase its harmful acute affects.



So, that's why I was a little bit confused as to why MDMA was rated as less harmful than LSD. i guess i'm just ignorant of the topic.

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I'm fairly certain they didn't take drug interactions into account when rating the different drugs. Also, a lot of what we thought was harmful about MDMA was from a study that used a mislabeled sample of methamphetamine.