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I kind of think we separately need some better mechanism for dealing with addiction, abuse, and self-destruction, regardless of the context. Unfortunately, I don't yet have anything specific to propose.



I agree. I don't have a specific plan, either, but I have intuitions. The key things we need to address are people's natural spiritual and medical curiosity. In another thread, someone pointed out some hackers hack to scratch an itch, not just for fun. I believe the same can be said for needlepoint, carpentry and heroin.

We could make space in society for people to explore the parallel worlds. Maybe a week per year research period. Many users I know of all types of drugs take them just to tolerate their jobs. We could somehow make work more tolerable.

We could make everyday life more fulfilling and have less stigma attached to exploring alternate states of mind. We need to find a way to fit or shoehorn this stuff into our lives because we can't eradicate it. Perhaps this is the skill of the shamanic ritual and modern day music festivals... to put boundaries of time and space around the exploration of this alternate states of mind. We need to protect and shepherd people into safe places while they're experimenting and keep them away from responsible areas like driving and machinery while they're temporarily intoxicated. We need to keep them productive even if they're using.




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