Personally, I'd rather have a proper doctor prescribe me said medicine than take it myself.
Personally, I'd rather have a proper doctor prescribe me said medicine than take it myself.
Furthermore, I've had mixed experiences with health professionals. It took me 10 years across multiple clinics and states to get diagnosed with gout that I've had since at least my late teens. Laughed out of multiple doctor's offices because I'm a "healthy young male" even though each day and night was filled with excruciating pain and drastically reduced mobility. "Full test panels" that specifically did not test my uric acid, because no healthy young male has gout.
No mention of gout ever to me, of course. I had to self diagnose as the disease progressed due to lack of treatment. Got my diagnosis confirmed by a physician's assistant, because both doctors at that clinic were on vacation at the same time for like the third time that quarter. He ordered a uric acid test, and was surprised that I'd never been offered one.
Both doctors had literally laughed me out of the office over the previous months. But I was persistent and it turns out the physician's assistant there was both more thorough and more knowledgeable than either doctor, helping me finally begin a path to treatment. I was damn near about to kill myself from a decade of extraordinary pain. From my discussions with older, typical gout sufferers, my case is extraordinarily bad and most of them only experience mild pain.
It's equally as silly to place 100% trust in doctors as it is to place 0% trust in them.
The medical community is concerned with physical health, mental health, ect.
The Psychedelic community is more like a religion; it is "vast" and there is a lot of "shared knowledge" if you go looking. The thing is, western medicine's purpose really isn't to do the kind of thing that psychedelics are for.
It's probably better not to conflate the two communities, because they use drugs for very different purposes.
A different way to say it: Don't confuse the pharmacy and the liquor store.
Compounding the issue is the eye-rolling hypocrisy that in the so-called "Land of the Free", a healthcare system controlled by the gatekeepers of big pharma and for-profit companies gets a blind pass... but putting certain plants (that you can grow yourself) into your own body is considered a serious felony...?
There's at least a sliver of daylight here that mean YMMV (which I'm sure you and I would agree on) - but if you lack the freedom to choose anyways, then it doesn't matter. And the people who decide for you are clearly part of a system that is compromised by regulatory capture, political polarization, and the insatiable greed of American healthcare.
It took me years to be diagnosed with PTSD, a problem I knew I had. Because I am not a vet, I had to go through every other diagnosis first -- schizo, bipolar, borderline -- each with a new set of pills to take. Some of the shrinks who diagnosed me wouldn't do anything but open my file, make some remarks, and fill out a prescription, with nary any eye contact.
Finally got a very expensive doctor who wasn't under the thumb of insurance companies. Her first question, upon hearing my issues, was "how is your sleep?" "I don't, really" was my reply. Screened me for PTSD and I clocked 76/80 pts. She set me up with the proper therapy, and within a year, I was screening at 30/80 pts. All it took was asking me one question that wasn't loaded towards the doctors favorite diagnosis & prescription.
If you don't know what's wrong with you, then a doctor is absolutely the way to go. But if you already have a diagnosis, you can go spend time researching it, the doctor isn't going to do that.