Read a quick history lesson here.

Read about psychosis risk here.

Pass the doobie please.

Regardless of the century, physicians throughout the ages have known that real medicines carry risks. Any truly medicinal substance is able to give a little whack to one or more bodily processes. The goal is to whack the body back into normal functioning. That’s basically what medicine is all about – strategically whacking our physiology. But anything capable of whacking (which is to say any real medicine) is capable of harming at least a few of the many patients who would take it. This fact is so non-negotiable that we have a name for doctors who claim to have discovered effective medicines that don’t have any risks: we call them quacks.