Comment by kevinsync

I can't really speak for psychology as a field other than a spectator, but I find it to be quite subjective. What I really meant was related to cocaine and nitrous oxide -- two very different substances that both result in wild egos, wild ideas, hard-to-sustain invincibility and a host of other effects, unlike psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, DMT, etc) which are arguably closer to (and provide) positive psychological responses / breakthroughs / perspectives.

For a current-times look into nitrous, observe Kanye West. The rumor mill (plus believable evidence) suggests he is out of his MIND on large amounts of N2O frequently, and his erratic and grandiose behavior reinforces the idea. That's probably not ideal for American psychology if "the father" of it is similarly whacked lol.

For a historical look into cocaine, observe Sigmund Freud. There was a great book called Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography [0] by Dominic Streatfeild, the second-third of which covers Freud's discovery and promotion of cocaine as a cure-all.

TL;DR Freud was searching for a drug, any drug, that hadn't been claimed yet by a scientific promoter to then market as his own for fame and fortune, stumbled upon cocaine (hydrochloride, not freebase), started doing a lot of it, proselytizing it (it could cure your heroin addiction!) etc, before the whole thing kind of collapsed around him.

While arguably fun, it's a substance that is the polar opposite of "introspection" and drives a lot of behavior that honestly a person might seek a therapist or psychologist to resolve LOL, so for a psychologist to promote it early in his career who eventually progresses into more or less defining psychology as a field, well ... I just find it curious and would wonder what theories Freud would have put forth had he come to be in a time with psychedelics available instead. That's all!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine:_An_Unauthorized_Biogr...