The New York Times and hallucinogens -- right out of junior high

I saw this New York Times story on Sunday, but didn't comment on it as I was in a rush to get out the door for my annual appointment to collect a New York City parking ticket (yes, you gotta feed the meter on Sunday, and -- word to the wise -- don't try to save a quarter or two, saying, "we'll only be 20 minutes). But I was struck by the snarky tone and the complete inanity of the report, and reminded that Times reporters are unable to report on the potential of cannabinoids, hallucinogens, or opiates without giggling, getting red faced, and acting like characters in "Reefer Madness."

So I am glad that Mark Kleiman has read the story, as well as the Post/AP story that beat the Times and gets it exactly right.

The experiences the experimenters are hoping to facilitate resemble moments of mystical insight more than they do drunken binges. One standard "endpoint" of such studies is reduced use of sedatives and pain-killers, leading to a more conscious dying.

Whether this will turn out to work or not I don't know; that's why they call it "research." And the reporter is clearly right about one thing: if using the hallucinogens to address the fear of death is a good idea, there's no reason to wait until people are actually dying to start the process. After all, none of us is getting out of here alive.

But the reporter, who doesn't seem to have bothered to talk with anyone working on the current studies or anyone who worked on the previous studies, or to read any of the voluminous literature, seems to have worked from the principle that a sneer always makes a good story. Or perhaps he simply doesn't grasp the possibility that a chemical, used under the right conditions and with the right intentions, might facilitate something closely resembling a major religious experience, though that possibility is illustrated by traditions from the Eleusinian Brotherhood to the Native American Church.

Whatever the explanation, his trivializing, moralizing, condescending tone in talking about something of which, on the evidence of the story, he appears to be entirely ignorant is really pretty contemptible. Presumably the copy editor who wrote the silly-clever headlines didn't know any better.