First I’d start from the framing of ‘if you should use those drugs, when should you start’. The research suggests that amphetamines and hallucinogens can be helpful for some people, sometimes. Taking the stuff as a healthy teen is not well supported, there are likely developmental consequences.
Some arguments that may be helpful:
-most illicit drugs on the market are mislabeled, most things marketed as LSD are not LSD, it is often one of the nbome compounds, which have a very different risk profile. ‘It’s similar’ arguments can be dismissed by analogy, H20 and h202 just have a single atom difference, plenty of things can cause hallucinations, including inhaling solvents (which are unambiguously harmful). Dancesafe is a good resource (it also shows that illicit ‘study drugs’ in many markets are basically just meth, because why wouldn’t a drug dealer do that?)
-This SSC (less wrong adjacent intellectual) on the profound personality shifts experienced by psychedelic experimenters should be read: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychedelicists-so-weird/ (asking ‘how would a large shift in openness to experience change your personality, would you still be interested in your present goals?’ might be a good idea after you both read it together)
-the hallucinogenic experience has been well characterized, researchers know what it does, you will not discover anything new or mysterious
-single session Ibogaine/LSD combined with lifestyle changes for alcohol addiction or negative patterns of thinking like depression has some good evidence in addicts who have failed other methods, but your son is a teen, he has not had time to develop those issues. Is there some pattern of thinking or behaving he feels trapped in, that he thinks drugs can get him out of? Maybe a change in environment, or a change in the people he surrounds himself with will be immediately beneficial.
-for academic performance enhancing drugs, I would liken them to steroids for athletes. Bodybuilder/powerlifter Dave Tate once said something to the effect of ’you can play the ace card once, if you needed roids to play varsity in high school, you won’t play in college. So if you need amphetamines to get through high school academics, you will need them in college and beyond, and if you can’t compete, or the side effects start to land, you’re screwed.
-psych drugs can have unpredictable and poorly understood effects, SSRI sexual dysfunction is no fun for the lucky winners (and adhd drugs can do this too).
-anaesthetics (propofol) are abused by medical students who can presumably access dang near any drug they want. For this class, tolerance builds quickly. If I am being rushed to the ER and the paramedic wants to anaesthetize me, I very much want it to work. Not be ‘hey it isn’t taking, drive fast and the anaesthesiologist will figure out what to do’.
-illicit drug synthesis isn’t easy, and because law enforcement hires chemists and pays them to think of all the ways people, particularly grad students, might try, there is a moderate to high probability of getting caught—there’s a reason synthetic drugs are smuggled into the US. LSD is particularly challenging, and there are a few stages in the process that require very strict disipline about your technique in order to stay safe.
Anectodal personal notes: a relative who was a psychiatric nurse for decades generally would ask her patients when they first tried pot. She found it easier to work with them if she treated them as though that age is the age when their emotional development ceased. I have found this heuristic useful in my own life, and parents have noticed it as well.
I plan to do a bunch of drugs when I hit the average life expectancy for my generation, with the expectation that I’ll die before the consequences catch up.
Thanks for this. I also pictured ‘5 people sitting behind you’.
One useful thing I’ve implemented in my own life is ‘if my productive time is more valuable than what it would take to hire someone to do a task, hire someone’.
For example, if you can make X per hour, and hiring a chef costs x-n per hour, hire the chef. They’ll be more efficient, you’ll eat better, and you’ll do less task switching.
Yes it’s true, there can be a lot of idleness and feelings of uselessness when you don’t have regular routine tasks to wake you up and get you moving...but as long as you don’t put addictions in the newly created time, it’s a good problem.