Just listened to this podcast:
http://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/podcasts/how-lsd-works/
How Stuff Works is an excellent podcast on just about anything and everything. They pick a topic, do tons of research, and present a fairly unbiased assessment of their findings. I found this to be pretty interesting since it so contrary to what I was raised to believe regarding LSD. The show provides a significant amount of information for the benefits of LSD. My only concern with the podcast is that it appears to be slightly in favor of providing the positive side of LSD. It seems like the podcast was made to argue the social norm of “drugs are bad.” Though LSD likely has way more benefits than we are taught to believe, surely there are some downsides. It appears as though there are numerous benefits of various hallucinogenic drugs. However, the major caveat here is that the benefits generally arise from micro dosing (or small doses), and done under proper surroundings, with support from a shaman, or very close friends in a controlled environment, or even under medical/therapeutic supervision.
Either way, I certainly thought it was interesting. Always good to shake up life-long beliefs. “Drugs are bad” is so engrained in me that it is hard for me to open up to the idea of trying something like this. What if something you felt and always believed in so strongly is not true?
If we all had the ability to be open and objectively/honestly accept/study the contrary side of our opinions, ignorance/violence/hatred would decrease dramatically.
Tim Ferriss also has a few great podcasts on this topic as well:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/03/21/james-fadiman/
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/09/14/are-psychedelic-drugs-the-next-medical-breakthrough/