I thought it was relatively balanced. "It happened to work for me this time but it could have gone horribly wrong." That's the truth of psychedelics as a theraputic tool.
It is true that the text comes with disclaimers, but I read them more like the result of a 25 year career in corporate, rather than a genuinely balanced view on the matter.
Respectfully… you are commenting far outside of your domain if you read OP’s description of their experience as substance abuse.
I say this as someone who used to abuse substances and, naively, took mushrooms in pursuit of that. What I got instead was intensely introspective and therapeutic and led directly and immediately to lasting sobriety.
There is nuance to the world. Healing does not always flow directly from the hands of a doctor, just as justice is not always meted out by a judge.
They're being used as a crutch to fast-track achieve the illusion of a goal.
That is textbook abuse, because you're deluding yourself into believing that you're achieving something, when in reality, the only thing you do achieve is addiction. Or so the worst-case outcome anyway.
Abuse of course sounds like you're hurting someone else, but in this case, you're just hurting yourself. But you do that quite hard.
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Ego death is hard, but achievable without cheating like that. And - not to be snarky - when laid off, you have a lot of time for the introspection to pull that off without such crutches.
The author decided otherwise - and it's their right to do that - but it's still textbook substance abuse, which is objectively bad.
Hence my comment to correct that.
It shall be read as directed as the reader getting wrong ideas. Not at the guy clearly struggling and just finding something that works for them.
If you take a look at the rest of the comment section, you will see why this is ethically necessary.
FWIW, it's not the author's fault that this ended up in this place, but it still ended up in this place, and with that, it is harmful, because HN does not comprehend the idea of context.
Doing magic mushrooms is one of the most important things I ever did, way back in my twenties. Literally changed my perspective on life. It opened my eyes.
Or, in the words of Steve Jobs: “Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life.”
They don't glorify drugs, the image of stoners over there is at least as bad as in other European countries. The narco trouble is mostly because the country is a huge logistics hub.
Would've been even nicer without glorifying substance abuse, but, well.