One of the major problems with "standard" psychotropic medications is that there's no standard information out there about what to expect while taking it. And by that I mean, meds such as antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, tranquilizers are intended to place the user into an altered mental state, but nobody will tell us what that AMS will be like, experientally.<p>They can easily tell us about side effects, especially physiological ones, and we can watch out for those side effects, but what about the primary effects? What about how we are supposed to feel, the advantages, why am I taking these meds in the first place? My doctors, for the past 30 years, have been wholly incapable of communicating these simple facts to me.<p>So it's interesting to me, when psychiatry branches into formerly-recreational drugs such as ketamine, LSD, peyote, etc, that there is already a large and substantial body of information about what that altered state of consciousness should be like. Artists have written songs, they've painted pictures, they've composed poetry, they've written novels about it.<p>So I think that's the only real advantage to psychedelics and such, in that there is actually more documentation on their primary effects, and so I wish all the best to clinicians as they grapple with trying to recreate Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park in a sterile, dreary, clinical setting.