Differences between psychedelics and drugs

From Trip: Psychedelics, Alienation, and Change, on p. 65-7:

Seven differences:

1. Drugs are, on average, more habit-forming than psychedelics, which can also, like almost anything, be habit-forming, but, unlike drugs, can also dissolve habits.
   
   

2. Drugs don't cause mystical experiences at safe doses; psychedelics do...
   
   

3. For me, drugs stopped feeling amazing after the first few times – and never felt profound – but psychedelics consistently feel both amazing and profound...
   
   

4. Drugs don't seem to guarantee relief from boredom. Psychedelics I would immediately rate 10 on a 1-10 scale for boredom relief, even for the easily bored, because they seem to catalyze the imagination through stimulation, like some drugs, but also at least two other ways, bringing in emotion and the unconscious.
   
   

5. ... one difference was that drugs affected my energy levels, mood, focus, and other attributes – calmness, patience – that I experienced noticeable fluctuations in while sober, for example depending on how much I'd slept. Psychedelics seemed to affect aspects of consciousness that normally changed only slightly, if at all.
   
   

6. Another difference seemed to be that drugs increased my current levels by taking from the future. When the future arrived, I felt the lack of what I'd already used. Psychedelics... didn't seem to take from the future.
   
   

7. ... I watched a 2015 talk by Kathleen Harrison in which she said psychedelics awakened compassion in her. I realized they did in me also, and that drugs did not... Peaking on large doses of Adderall alone in my room, I've never sobbed while thinking fondly and lovingly about my parents, as I have on cannabis and psilocybin.