<story><title>Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results (2015)</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Also: &lt;i&gt;He is also the director of the substance-abuse division at Bellevue, and he told me that he had known little about psychedelics [..] until a colleague happened to mention that, in the nineteen-sixties, LSD had been used successfully to treat alcoholics. Ross did some research and was astounded at what he found.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you get to be director of a drug abuse program at one of the nation&amp;#x27;s top hospitals while being so ignorant about the field you supervise?! I&amp;#x27;m not saying he should have been a fan of psychedelics all along, but he should at least have had some awareness of their history and how they came to be controlled substances.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>qwartor</author><text>There are two parts to the characterization at play here:&lt;p&gt;1. Psychedelics are not &amp;quot;abused&amp;quot; in the same way that other substances are. Furthermore, when psychedelics do get abused, the adverse effects are expressed differently, and patients are not routed through the same treatment channels that addictive substances see. Since psychedelics aren&amp;#x27;t addictive, users usually don&amp;#x27;t need ongoing maintenance to prevent relapses. Instead, victims of psychedelic side effects usually suffer from catastrophic burnouts after the mother of all bad trips, or persistent neurological symptoms creep in after a period of experimentation, and remain possibly for life. Once that happens people quit cold turkey, and cope with their flashbacks however they must.&lt;p&gt;2. Being a director of anything isn&amp;#x27;t a huge deal. It&amp;#x27;s not much of an auspicious title. Like manager or vice president, after you meet a thousand of them, big deal. Meanwhile, as for doctors, you&amp;#x27;d be shocked at how sheltered some doctors are. Many of the doctors I&amp;#x27;ve met only became doctors because their parents forced them into it, and they spent their youth locked in their bedrooms getting good grades, and those geeky scholarly habits stick with them into middle age. It wouldn&amp;#x27;t surprise me to meet a doctor who is a total outsider to the patient population their supposedly expected to treat through book learnin&amp;#x27;...</text></comment>
<story><title>Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results (2015)</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/trip-treatment</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>anigbrowl</author><text>Also: &lt;i&gt;He is also the director of the substance-abuse division at Bellevue, and he told me that he had known little about psychedelics [..] until a colleague happened to mention that, in the nineteen-sixties, LSD had been used successfully to treat alcoholics. Ross did some research and was astounded at what he found.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;How do you get to be director of a drug abuse program at one of the nation&amp;#x27;s top hospitals while being so ignorant about the field you supervise?! I&amp;#x27;m not saying he should have been a fan of psychedelics all along, but he should at least have had some awareness of their history and how they came to be controlled substances.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheSpiceIsLife</author><text>One would have thought such a role would require at least some formal study of the relevant subjects, which should expose you to the history of such things.&lt;p&gt;I like to imagine these people actually taking LSD. While watching Bill Hicks. What a blast they&amp;#x27;d have.</text></comment>