Yeah, that came off as a bit harsh.

There is quite a bit of data, I believe, that psychedelics *do* "magically" heal depression. As far as flogging that idea, well, that's reprehensible, but I'm sure we'll be seeing more of it.

However, Eric's beautifully written article blurs the line between personal anecdote and a generalized warning that people are most likely to apply to themselves.

This goes from the title straight through.

So I suspect the number of people with depression (or without) who would benefit from psychedelics—but might be scared off by the article—is much larger than the number of people who would be likely to have an adverse reaction, and benefit from a warning. From my point of view, that makes the overall impact of the article negative for the majority of people that read it.

It's certainly a valid point to make that people with a long-term history of depression who are taking multiple SSRIs and SNRIs should proceed cautiously.

I would have preferred that the article restricted itself to that.

As for "victim blaming" I don't see it. Eric appears to take responsibility for his actions and what resulted, as well as what he recognizes in retrospect were key misconceptions or mistakes. Clearly, that was a very upsetting experience, to put it mildly. But I don't think we can assign victimhood here, with its implied presence of a victimizer (the mushroom).

The admissions of responsibility don't jibe with the implication that the mushrooms were somehow at fault. It was that incongruence to which I felt compelled to respond.

Sometimes really terrible things happen and it's not anyone's fault. In those cases, it's probably best not to apply the victim/victimizer frame.