Psychedelic Drugs Less Harmful Than Alcohol, New Study Suggests

By Ed Jones at Modern Readers.

"A pioneering study has reached the conclusion that psychedelic drugs may not in fact have a detrimental impact on a person’s mental health after all. A team set out to investigate the conclusion reached by a prior study carried out at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, which suggested that the recreational use of psychedelic drugs could open a person to increase risk of anxiety, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

This, however, may not be the case at all.

For the latest study, a team carried out a survey involving over 130,000 people chosen at random and with a generally good overall state of mental health. The project was carried out by neuroscientist Teri Krebs and clinical psychologist Pål-Ørjan Johansen, who incorporated 19,000 individuals with a history of psychedelic drug use.

When the results were collated and analyzed, the data suggested that magic mushrooms, LSD and other psychedelics were not in fact linked with a higher likelihood of the respective individual developing problems with their mental health.

“Over 30 million US adults have tried psychedelics and there just is not much evidence of health problems,” wrote Pål-Ørjan Johansen, the study’s co-author.

“Drug experts consistently rank LSD and psilocybin mushrooms as much less harmful to the individual user and to society compared to alcohol and other controlled substances,” added Teri Krebs."