How would you respond to that?

[Unlimited]

How would you respond to the claim that psychedelics were used to open people's minds to make them easier to control?

I guess arguing with people why psychedelics are good isn't the best thing in the first place but what would you respond to that.

There are really people thinking that psychedelics got created to make us all sheeps.

[Hojo]

What does opening someones mind to make them easier to control mean?

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Unlimited said:

How would you respond to the claim that psychedelics were used to open people's minds to make them easier to control?

Lol

Psychedelics were outlawed in order to keep people's minds closed and easier to control.

You can't control openminded people. It's closedminded people who are easily controlled.

Edited March 4 by Leo Gura

[Davino]

 

Quote

Interview highlights

Book: Poisoner in Chief

By Stephen Kinzer, Head of the MK-ULTRA mind control project

1. On how the CIA brought LSD to America

As part of the search for drugs that would allow people to control the human mind, CIA scientists became aware of the existence of LSD, and this became an obsession for the early directors of MK-ULTRA. Actually, the MK-ULTRA director, Sidney Gottlieb, can now be seen as the man who brought LSD to America. He was the unwitting godfather of the entire LSD counterculture.

In the early 1950s, he arranged for the CIA to pay $240,000 to buy the world's entire supply of LSD. He brought this to the United States, and he began spreading it around to hospitals, clinics, prisons and other institutions, asking them, through bogus foundations, to carry out research projects and find out what LSD was, how people reacted to it and how it might be able to be used as a tool for mind control.

Now, the people who volunteered for these experiments and began taking LSD, in many cases, found it very pleasurable. They told their friends about it. Who were those people? Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, got his LSD in an experiment sponsored by the CIA by MK-ULTRA. So did Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, which went on to become a great purveyor of LSD culture. Allen Ginsberg, the poet who preached the value of the great personal adventure of using LSD, got his first LSD from Sidney Gottlieb, the MK-ULTRA director. Although, of course, he never knew that name.

So the CIA brought LSD to America unwittingly, and actually it's a tremendous irony that the drug that the CIA hoped would be its key to controlling humanity actually wound up fueling a generational rebellion that was dedicated to destroying everything that the CIA held dear and defended

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/09/758989641/the-cias-secret-quest-for-mind-control-torture-lsd-and-a-poisoner-in-chief

[Davino]

 

6 hours ago, Unlimited said:

There are really people thinking that psychedelics got created to make us all sheeps.

Such claims are born from ignorance and heresay. They haven't done any deep research on the topic nor they have any direct experience on it.

6 hours ago, Unlimited said:

How would you respond to the claim that psychedelics were used to open people's minds to make them easier to control?

I'll recommend them to read:

Drugs without the hot air: Making sense of legal and illegal drugs by David Nutt 

If they don't read it they weren't interested in truth to begin with. If they read it, all the moral and biased ideas about drugs will be seen as anti scientific. In an era where science is so worshiped is crazy to find that science itself is silenced when the results do not confirm our social compass of right and wrong. This was one of the crudest realization of science I had. Scientific truths don't matter when talking about drugs because they are wrong and bad.

Quote

About the book:

The dangers of illegal drugs are well known and rarely disputed, but how harmful are alcohol and tobacco by comparison?

The issue of what a drug is and how we should live with them affects us all: parents, teachers, users – anyone who has taken a painkiller or drunk a glass of wine. Written by renowned psychiatrist, Professor David Nutt, Drugs without the hot air casts a refreshingly honest light on drugs and answers crucial questions that are rarely ever disputed. What are we missing by banning medical research into magic mushrooms, LSD and cannabis? Can they be sources of valuable treatments? How can psychedelics treat depression?

Drugs without the hot air covers a wide range of topics, from addiction and whether addictive personalities exist to the role of cannabis in treating epilepsy, an overview on the opioid crisis, and an assessment of how harmful vaping is. This new expanded and revised second edition includes even more details on international policies, particularly in the US. David's research has won international support, reducing drug-related harm by introducing policies that are founded on scientific evidence. But there is still a lot to be done.

Accessibly written, this much-awaited second edition is an important book for everyone that brings us all up to date with the 'war of drugs'.

 

Quote

About the author:

David John Nutt is an English neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs that affect the brain and conditions such as addiction, anxiety, and sleep. He is the chairman of Drug Science, a non-profit which he founded in 2010 to provide independent, evidence-based information on drugs. Until 2009, he was a professor at the University of Bristol heading their Psychopharmacology Unit. Since then he has been the Edmond J Safra chair in Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London and director of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit in the Division of Brain Sciences there. Nutt was a member of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, and was President of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.

 

[Davino]

Here is some of the scientific results you will find on the book. It is a very serious book that won the Transmission Prize for the Communication of Ideas 2014 on Popular Medicine, British Medical Association awards. Making it both scientifically accurate and easy to read.

When I read this I couldn't believe my eyes. Check the whole book to get the big picture.

 

Edited March 4 by Davino

[Soul Flight]

@Unlimited Sounds like disinformation. A psyop. Sounds like someone co-opting the main argument. Never argue with a fool. You will get sucked into their argument and they have you right where they want you.

I would respond by smiling and silently moving on.

[DefinitelyNotARobot]

If they made it easier to control the minds of people, then why were they banned? Are those people saying that the government is full of good, loving and kind people who're above mass manipulation? Who are those people anyway, I've never seen someone say such a thing.

Anyways, yes, psychedelics could theoretically be used to brain wash individuals on the smaller scale. A cult leader could use them as a way to access deeper parts of the mind and implant ideas into the person as such. However, you won't be able to upscale such an operation, it only works on an interpersonal, intimate level (and only on people with certain types of vulnerabilities). On a broader level, the open-mindedness produced by psychedelics will rather lead to questioning and more skepticism towards the status quo. 

People can drown in water. I think we should respect the fact that water can do that and not just jump off a ship in the middle of a stormy ocean, but we shouldn't turn that respect into paranoia either. Water is more important in creating life than it is in taking it. Similarly, the open-mindedness produced by psychedelics certainly comes with dangers, but more often than not, they will get a person to expand their minds beyond their current level rather than to close them into a preexisting mental frame work.

I think it's hilarious to criticize psychedelics on this front. There are so many good and genuine critiques you can make of psychedelics, but someone sat down and said "I'm going to find the least problematic issue and run with that". Imagine someone went on a "war against water" and made their main point that you can kill someone by shoving a high pressure water hose into their ass and blasting their internal organs. That would be a weird hill to die on.

Edited March 4 by DefinitelyNotARobot

[James123]

16 hours ago, Unlimited said:

There are really people thinking that psychedelics got created to make us all sheeps.

Psychedelics are the best experiences ever. 

16 hours ago, Unlimited said:

How would you respond to the claim that psychedelics were used to open people's minds to make them easier to control?

If someone tell you this, it is not even worth to talk to that person. Say yes, you are right. And walk away, don't even look behind. If this person your close ones, give them a psychedelic to try

[Unlimited]

Thanks for the input everyone, very good insights!

[Carl-Richard]

Psychedelics weren't created with any particular human purpose in mind (they were created by nature). Still, I think they can definitely be used to control people's minds, in principle. Psychedelics deconstruct your mind, but after deconstruction, there is a reconstruction, and that is when you're particularly vulnerable to control. However, control by some malicious actor is not generally what you should worry about. Rather, it's being suggestible to new perspectives that prey on your lower impulses or fears, and you'll be controlled by them, just like the people who promote it (e.g. vaccine paranoia, conspiracy theories, negative supernatural energies/entities). I'm not saying this has to happen when you take psychedelics, but it can happen and I've seen it happen (it has also happened to me). It's also true like Leo said that you become less susceptible to some forms of control, but again, when you deconstruct something, there is a potential for something to go wrong during the reconstruction.

Edited March 9 by Carl-Richard

[Rigel]

Who claims that? I’ve never heard anyone say that.

But if I ever met one I would respond in the same manner I would a flat earther handing out flyers at the exit of the subway. “Ok cool, bye” or just ignore.

It’s not like a person saying this would be interested in having a serious discussion anyways lol. Just a waste of time.

Edited March 9 by Rigel