"Life is the never-ending psychedelic trip, maaaan"
On a serious note, this isn't what GP is referring to. Generally psychedelics in the work day are self-limiting. A microdose that is more of a mesodose makes for some interesting Zoom meetings. People learn the right dose to get a boost without excess distraction/warping. Fadiman's research [0] suggests the best dose is well below the threshold of "trip" effects. So there's no risk of never-ending daytrips, unless one desires that thing. So why limit access?
Aspects of American culture have a strong stigma against "fun", euphoria, and to an extent, any effect beyond "restoring normal". eg nootropics are popular in young, hip crowds like HN, but kinda sketch among many MDs, from "I don't think these are safe" to "why do you need that?" It's a "if it feels good, stop" sentiment that runs as an undercurrent through American history and you can see signs of it in Protestant work ethic, Prohibition (of alcohol and cannabis), and of course the war on drugs.
Keep in mind, LSD and MDMA were very hotly researched back in the day, but when subcultures started associating them with parties, that's when things started getting the kabash.
"But addiction bad" - this would be a fair argument if it weren't for the near lack of correlation between DEA schedule and addiction potential [1], as well as the rapid action to ban analog drugs without any consideration to addiction potential. This is the fate of most Shulgin compounds, many exhibiting the typical rapid tolerance of psychedelics.
That leaves the theraputic dose. These are typically administered in a guided setting, either in the clinical sense, or trip-sitters/sherpas, in the informal. This is the best mitigation against trips that leave lasting psychological harm (the term "bad trip" is very loaded, as it doesn't distinct "hard lesson trips" from "no this actually messed them up long term"). If the concern is really "harm trips", then the solution is logically harm-reduction, not prohibition.
On a serious note, this isn't what GP is referring to. Generally psychedelics in the work day are self-limiting. A microdose that is more of a mesodose makes for some interesting Zoom meetings. People learn the right dose to get a boost without excess distraction/warping. Fadiman's research [0] suggests the best dose is well below the threshold of "trip" effects. So there's no risk of never-ending daytrips, unless one desires that thing. So why limit access?
Aspects of American culture have a strong stigma against "fun", euphoria, and to an extent, any effect beyond "restoring normal". eg nootropics are popular in young, hip crowds like HN, but kinda sketch among many MDs, from "I don't think these are safe" to "why do you need that?" It's a "if it feels good, stop" sentiment that runs as an undercurrent through American history and you can see signs of it in Protestant work ethic, Prohibition (of alcohol and cannabis), and of course the war on drugs.
Keep in mind, LSD and MDMA were very hotly researched back in the day, but when subcultures started associating them with parties, that's when things started getting the kabash.
"But addiction bad" - this would be a fair argument if it weren't for the near lack of correlation between DEA schedule and addiction potential [1], as well as the rapid action to ban analog drugs without any consideration to addiction potential. This is the fate of most Shulgin compounds, many exhibiting the typical rapid tolerance of psychedelics.
That leaves the theraputic dose. These are typically administered in a guided setting, either in the clinical sense, or trip-sitters/sherpas, in the informal. This is the best mitigation against trips that leave lasting psychological harm (the term "bad trip" is very loaded, as it doesn't distinct "hard lesson trips" from "no this actually messed them up long term"). If the concern is really "harm trips", then the solution is logically harm-reduction, not prohibition.
Wew, that turned out longer than expected.
Edit: added more
[0] - https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/microdosing-guide-and-explain...
[1] pdf - http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.868...