The Myth of Drug-Induced Addiction

The other thing about shamans is that - they usually take the plants to cure diseases, so they are likely to have negative experiences in the sense that they are communicating with entities that only exist to make other entities sick! Humans can live without being parasites.....a parasite cannot, neither can any type of pathogen including viruses. So yeah, it'll be very draining on the cheeriness of your soul to have to deal with that kind of consciousness that only exists to make illnesses in other, otherwise healthy, lifeforms.

Set and Setting means your own psyche and the place you take the drug in - it wasn't from Shulgin, it's from the Bardo Thodol as interpreted by the Harvard Psychedelic team.

eg, if you're not doing the trip for a good specific reason then you do run way more risk of it going bummer, especially the more aware and intelligent you are as a person. Ironically the stupider you are, the less you realise what's wrong with the world - hence it's often possible for stupid people to escape the bad effects and take drugs in ridiculously insane settings such as nightclubs and other social events in artificial surrounds.
However knowing that can mean you can overcome it, and so to speak let the spirits allow you to use the drug recreationally. It all depends; setting and set also refers to the mood of the times - ie where the planets are and what the universe is doing weatherwise.

And if you don't think that matters & get all your astrology know-how from reading the papers only, then just compare it to electron clouds shifting, or a molecular chain being replaced or moved - of course it makes a difference where giant massive planets are and what the solar weather is!

How does genetic affinity have to do with artificial lab conditions that don't happen in real life? The problem with any experiments done in artificial settings is that they ignore all the known implications of what the Wave Equation shows: it's the observer effect that has the outcome effect. It's the experimenters mindset and how many avenues out of the situation they provide that determines what the, in this case, rats are able to do option-wise. So it doesn't ever prove much except to say the likes of: if you put these creatures in these settings, and give them these options, then they will most likely do this: [insert data here] over x amount of times tried during time duration y.
Sadly, physica and biology often forked off from one another a long time ago.

And even people without much education can tell you: yes life sucks and taking drugs makes it more bearable. Maybe many of them do have a lot of options - but if they can't see them, then they're not any use.

set and setting is ridiculously over-used in the drug community as some magic key to positive drug experiences. Historically, shamans accepted that a bad experience could often be more valuable than a good one. The idea that we can force our experiences to be positive is a contemporary manifestation of our ego-centric culture.

Shulgin said something like, "entheogens are just a catalyst for things already present in your own psyche." I don't think he intended for this to be interpreted as "the drug doesn't matter if you have set and setting." If you genuinely believe this, let me know when your holotropic breath work equals an LSD experience.

"Set and setting" has been repeated so many times by every college mushroom-head I've ever met it means about as much as "just say no."

This reminds me of Strassman's comment that, within the triad of drug, set, and setting, the most expendable factor is the drug.

It seems like one could concoct a similar argument saying, virus don't cause illness, genetic susceptibility and location determine illness.

Certainly genetic affinity and context are factors, however it seems to me that intensity and duration of effects, and especially severity of withdrawal effects, also play a role here. I'm not entirely sure what the rat sugar research proves. Cocaine is often administered to rats along with a sugar solution, because if not, the rats often don't go for it, hating bitter solutions. Maybe if they IV it this would be different, but a lot of the "reward" of sugar comes from the taste. Besides, rats lead boring ass lives.

The longer I spend doing rat research, the less comfortable I feel with human correlation.

I've heard bits of a talk from these experiments and it seems pretty clear that addiction is caused by genetic affinity for a substance and easy availability of substance. For instance, you can get rats addicted to sugar just as easily as you can get them addicted to cocaine or heroin. You give rats nothing to do but take heroin you get junkie rats. You give rats a four-way decision between food, play, heroin, and sugar, they are just as likely to pick food or play over heroin or sugar. Introduce the option to visit a mate in heat and that choice becomes even more difficult to predict. The more options they have the more the choice depends on the whims of their mood. It's all genetic affinity and context.