drugs that assist with mental illness work on brain chemistry, just as hallucinogens do.

Although I think your intended point is valid, I have a couple of quibbles with the way that statement is phrased.

For one, it's too general; food acts on brain chemistry, too. And many other drugs prescribed for purposes other than dealing with mental disorders can have side effects on brain chemistry.

Secondly, there is a body of evidence in the medical literature indicating that many "hallucinogens" have powerful therapeutic uses for some types of "mental illness", especially if used for a focused therapeutic purpose in conducive circumstances by people educated in their effects (including the risks) and surrounded by a functioning support community.

However, I'm taking the general heading of "mental illness" to include a wide array of recognized dysfunctions, like depression, OCD, anxiety disorders, and substance addictions- NOT schizophrenia. I haven't heard of any indication that any of the standard classes of psychedelic drugs help people with that cognitive/perceptual malfunction, and there's plenty of evidence that they can hurt in such cases.

That said, I've had a lot of conversations with schizophrenics over the years, due to various contracts held by the cab company I worked for. This is strictly my observation, but my impression is that most schizophrenics had little or no experience in illegal drug scenes- apparently due to a combination of being isolated and shunned by adolescent peer groups of any type, and/or being turned off- or, perhaps, triggered- by the negative results of what little experimentation that did. Homeless schizophrenics- a truly tragic combination- often self-medicate with alcohol. They also often have huge tobacco habits. But illegal street drugs, very seldom. They're simply too vulnerable to being victimized by predators to comport themselves in a realm that risky, much less transact business there.

But schizophrenia or no schizophrenia, the stigma of criminality is inherently mentally stressful for illegal drug users- even for teenagers, who as juveniles are provided a leniency for several years, until they reach adult legal status (reverse from the case with alcohol.) Really, I think the only people even halfway mentally comfortable with being labelled "criminals" are those who embrace a wider spectrum of criminality than simply ingesting forbidden chemicals- more unambiguous criminal conduct, like theft or a penchant for violent behavior. Traditional sorts of crime, like those.

It's unfortunate that in my observation, most of those in American society who begin their experimentation with cannabis and stronger psychedelics do so within the framework of a very problematic "support community"- a peer group of callow adolescents, stigmatized and alienated, not only unsupervised by elders but in the position of actively hiding their behaviors, with little or no education beyond a mixture of scare tactics, street folklore, and (at best) a cursory informal survey of the popular literature on the illegalized substances. That is not a recipe for mental health, no matter what the behavior. It's certainly no way to maximize any of the possible benefits of psychedelic drug use.

It seems to me that the stigmatized adolescent drug underground probably even has a deleterious effect on responsible psychedelic support communities, such as the one represented by the Native American Church ( which has been chartered as a Christian Church for around 100 years, primarily by graduates of the Carlisle Indian School who had earned college degrees.)

There is no way that the "values" of the criminal drug marketplace and cliques of exiled and self-isolated adolescent peer groups can possibly work as anything but unhealthy competition to the positive, pro-social values and abstemious lifestyle fostered by the Native American Church community. And it must be a tremendous added burden to educate the youth of those communities on the difference between peyote use within the context of the NAC, and the use of "dope" as defined in the wider popular culture of America.

from postnoodz:

...Several years ago I was prescribed Ambien, and I was told to take 1 before bed. I did this, and ended up sitting in the bathroom, where I was convinced the bathmat and cleaning products were discussing me. I then scribbled pages and pages of who knows what in a journal...

from Colin Powell:

"Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed: "So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?"

Colin Powell: "Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that. They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."

-- Nov. 5, 2003 interview with former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell"

http://www.naturalnews.com/019413.html

Ambien- the drug craze that ate Official Washington. Not that it's supplanted booze or anything...it would really take some doing to accomplish that.

"How do you sleep?" John Lennon