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So I wanted to post late (partially because of break and needing to re-collect my thoughts about the discussion, but partially for the more productive reason of hearing what you all had to say) and provide a little bit of a summary and my response to the above. First, I want to thank you all again for such insightful comments and provocative questions both in our class session and on the boards-- Liz, Elliot, and I really appreciate all your thoughts.

There a couple of topics which we seem to keep coming back to, one of which is this concept of recreational use and legalization. It seems that the general concensus here is that there should be research done using these drugs-- most of us justified this by stating that the possible benefits outweigh the currently understood consequences. I think both Stephanie and Jenna brought up the interesting point at the beginning of the talk about what happens for these patients (talking in a medical context alone for a second) are outside their controlled therapeutic environment. Most studies only look at the effects of these drugs with such controls in place (there is no study where a patient talks it out and trips in a safe place in one condition as compared to just handing someone drugs and saying go for it), so I think it is a very necessary thing to be worried about. We don't know if it might be the COMBINATION of the setting and drug which allow for benefits-- in fact all the drug literature do state that setting/atmosphere are the most likely predictors of the "goodness" of the trip/experience. But then the issue becomes how we go about controlling this, especially if we move outside of the medical context and talk about legalizing recreational use.

In terms of this, Emily A. brought up the idea that many of these studies say that patients would not use/abuse outside of the study (to clarify though: most patients state that they would use again, because of the positive effects, but that the drugs were illegal-- which is worrisome-- and that they liked the environment -- which is good.) Therefore, I still feel that overuse could be a problem, though hopefully if bad trips is what we are working against you would think that anyone who had one would not use recreationally, sort of a self-selecting anti-abuse mechanism. However, if bad trips are not that prevalent then you could see over-use/abuse... but if there aren't bad trips then what is the exact problem?

which brings us to the other topic that seemed to keep coming up in discussion: neurodiversity and drug-use. I really like the way Jenna put it when she said that it would be a "personal choice as to your state of mind." This really makes these drugs exactly like we would consider alcohol-- you can use if you so wish. I also like Kara's point about the "natural" state of things; when she brought up that perhaps drugs are simply allowing us to use our brains in a completely natural, if different, way. I like this idea because if you think about it (and especially as many of these compounds are natural, and those that aren't mimic what we consider to be natural effects) there are a lot of things we do everyday that change our brain chemistry... all of which we have a choice about. what we eat changes our body/brain chemistry. what we do-- i mean adrenaline pumping activities (be it working out or constant stress) have been shown to have significant effects on our brain chemistry. in fact, to put it into what is seemingly a ridiculous example, couldn't we say we should call stress somewhat of an illegal "drug" because it has been proven to have serious negative effects on longterm function? now i realize that homework and job stress are not likely to become schedule I anytime soon, but it makes the interesting point that our everyday actions are a choice. it is only cultural imposition of this negative stereotype that brings up such negative intuition, as Ian put it, about drugs.

now im not saying we should completely legalize all drugs here and now... because I think we do need more information about their safety and actual mechanism of action. It seems to me that these drugs allow our brains to heal themselves (as we talked about with CBT), and alex t put it nicely when he said they allow for "disinhibition and therefore self-reflection." But before i put them on the market I want to make sure we aren't mimicking something with drugs that we dont fully understand...

thanks again for all the interesting ideas!