Santa Cruz decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms

https://abcnews.go.com/US/santa-cruz-decriminalizes-psychedelic-mushrooms/story?id=68611065

by lelf • 6 years ago

373 166 6 years ago

abcnews.go.com

krohling5• 6 years ago

Super excited to see this. If you live in California please head on over to http://www.decrimca.org/ We're working to get state wide decriminalization on the ballot in November and we need signatures! If you buy a button ($5) they'll send you a petition sheet. There are also signature locations and volunteers in every county in the state.

6gvONxR4sf7o8• 6 years ago

Sorry for the cynicism. I'd love to donate to the cause, and want to make sure I'm not giving money to a scam or (less cynically) an inefficient effort. Anywhere I can see something to convince me this page and this group is legit and making real progress?

krohling5• 6 years ago

I can say it's definitely not a scam. I have personally been to multiple meetings with organizers in Oakland and San Francisco and witnessed that it is both well organized and well staffed. To my knowledge there are over 700 volunteers across the state in every county working on this initiative. Obviously, that doesn't mean it's going to be successful. I hope you're willing to risk $5 and purchase a button or sticker so you can send in your signed petition form :)

pmoriarty10• 6 years ago

This strategy is taking a page out of the very successful cannabis legalization movement. First there are decriminalizations at the local level. This makes decriminalization at the state level much more palatable for politicians, who see there's political will at the local level to make it happen. Once the first state decriminalizes it, others states will find it easier to follow suit.

Apart from voting, you can also donate and volunteer, but some of the best things you can do is educate yourself and others on the responsible use of psychedelics. If taking mushrooms or other psychedelics has helped you in some way, tell others about it. Seeing people who have their act together, who admit that mushrooms have helped them will open people's eyes to their benefits and make it less likely that they'll react with dismay or disgust at the suggestion that "drugs" be legalized because they equate use with abuse.

Stepping out of the psychedelic closet is not always easy, but it has to happen (as it did with admitting cannabis use) before there's widespread acceptance of psychedelics.

mirimir7• 6 years ago

PACs have been a key part of the cannabis legalization movement. So it's not just that you make decriminalization more palatable for politicians, you aim for politicians who find decriminalization more palatable.

However, contributions to PACs are public.

samvher• 6 years ago

I am all for decriminalization, but both with cannabis and mushrooms I feel worried about the amount of "it's actually good for you!" that comes with it. I have used both (legally, in the Netherlands). As a student I enjoyed cannabis quite a bit but when I used a lot less later I did come to feel like (looking back) the usage came with some depression symptoms. With mushrooms I feel in general that they were good experiences but I've heard enough stories (first and second hand) of people experiencing long-term effects from psychedelics that I don't think it should be encouraged (at most for specific people with a therapist or so).

Personal responsibility and liberty are great but these products should come with warnings and guidance.

tayo42• 6 years ago

SEC. 3. PURPOSE AND INTENT.
The purpose of this article is to decriminalize the personal possession, storage, use, cultivation, manufacturing, distribution in personal possession amounts without profit, transport, and consumption of psilocybin mushrooms and the chemical compounds contained in them for any person over the age of 18, or for any person younger than 18 with parental or guardian consent by amending California Health and Safety Codes HSC § 11 390 & 11391.

I'm confused, whats the difference between legalization and decriminalization then. This sounds like legalization to me? Decriminalizaton i thought was making it a low priority to law enforcement which some places already did?

6gvONxR4sf7o8• 6 years ago

From an article I found[0]:

As such, Topley, explained then, it is “very close to legalization, however, without psilocybin being rescheduled or descheduled at the federal level, it seems more appropriate to refer to it as decriminalization.”

[0] https://filtermag.org/decriminalize-california-signature-dri...

awb5• 6 years ago

Correct, decriminalizing doesn't mean that it's legal, just that the police won't use resources trying to stop it.

Legalizing at the city or county level would run into conflict with state & federal laws that prohibit it. This is a way of getting around that conflict.

ac29• 6 years ago

This allows "distribution in personal possession amounts without profit".

Legalization would imply that some entity or entities were legally allowed to sell at commercial scale to the general public at a profit.

Ididntdothis4• 6 years ago

"Decriminalizaton i thought was making it a low priority to law enforcement which some places already did?"

I think that's it. It means pretty much that they won't enforce laws anymore. I think in theory the feds could still nail you if they wanted to.

tempsy• 6 years ago

personally I'm not that excited by exerting a lot of effort in decriminalization vs legalization.

realistically how many people who are most susceptible to prison time for illegal drug possession in California are being jailed for...shrooms?

at this point saying it is decriminalized state wide is not much more impactful than just a symbolic move.

Ididntdothis4• 6 years ago

Why would they ask for my employer information in order to make a donation? My employment has nothing to do with this. Are we now owned by our employer who needs to know everything we do?

pixl97• 6 years ago

I'm thinking the opposite, making sure an employer is not demanding the employees donate, or giving money to the employees to donate by proxy.

currymj• 6 years ago

they have to make sure you don’t work for the government or government contractors whose employees are prohibited from making political donations.

p49k• 6 years ago

It’s the law. Technically only required when the cumulative amount of donations reaches $200, but impractical not to collect it for every donation as the org may get in a situation where they realized they collected that much from one person but now don’t have the info because they didn’t ask - given the penalties, cost/benefit sways heavily toward being safe and always asking over catering to the few pedantics who might not donate due to this.

refurb• 6 years ago

And for anyone thinking “it will never happen”, let me tell you back in the 1990’s I thought the exact same thing about cannabis legalization. Ridiculous, waste of time, a pipe dream.

And here we are.

mirimir7• 6 years ago

Also, it's not that far from religion, which is constitutionally protected. Far more so than for cannabis, anyway. As I vaguely recall, that's already the case for peyote and ayahuasca, at least in some jurisdictions.

whyenot2• 6 years ago

a pipe dream

Opium poppy (Papaver somniferous) is actually kind of an interesting case. At least in the US, it's OK to grow the plants, the flowers are showy and many seed catalogs sell the seeds. It's also OK to harvest the pods and consume the seeds (poppy seeds, have them on a bagel). But, if you scrape off and collect the latex on the outside of the pods, you are committing a felony.

climate_realist• 6 years ago

Unfortunately it took 30 years and countless more damaged lives to get here:(

rewritteninrust• 6 years ago

I'm 100% in support of legalization, but as someone who has never lived in a country with decriminalized psychedelics, I'm very interested to see how this is regulated. The potential for chaos seems much higher with mushrooms than cannabis.

minikites• 6 years ago

Alcohol is legal and causes tons of chaos. Do you really think magic mushrooms would be more harmful to society than alcohol already is?

XPKBandMaidCzun• 6 years ago

I just wished their was fairer representation online of impact on people's lives when drugs get brought up. I never done drugs. But still, I suffered thanks to people who chose drugs as a way cope - and it's soul sucking.

The problem with decriminalizing/legalizing recreational drugs is its interpreted as officials of the state validating drugs as a coping skill.

In almost all cases, getting high is maladaptive coping style.

My anecdote from being raised by substance abusers: Makes you think you're smart, maybe even makes you look competent to other people. Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances.

It's excruciating to have to endure loved ones who become dependent on substances. It saps the energy out of you to deal with. Their brain is rewired to get high - at the expense of their social connections, family, reputation, and so on.

Suffering and enduring a drug abuser is a silent pain. The incentive for users to get high and for rehab clinics to make money show why the conversation is so lopsided.

lowdose• 6 years ago

Problems with mushrooms?

kleer001• 6 years ago

A problem with complex categories and propaganda and probably personal experience lumped in there too.

rollo• 6 years ago

This article is about psilocybin mushrooms though, not whatever abusable substances you're talking about.

DanBC• 6 years ago

To support your point there's this bit of survey work.

https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldru...

Out of almost 10,000 last year magic mushroom consumers only 0.2% (n = 17, 13 men and 4 women) reported seeking emergency medical treatment. Magic mushrooms were the safest drugs to take in terms of needing to see emergency medical treatment according to GDS2017. There was no significant different in rates between male and females.
The rate is considerably lower than with LSD presumably because of intrinsic safety of magic mushrooms ( the greatest risk is picking the wrong type), the smaller dosing using units (a single mushroom v an LSD tab) and greater understanding of how many mushrooms may constitute atypical dose for a desired effect in your region. People who use psychedelics are generally very sensible and show some of the best preparation and adoption of harm reduction practices of any drug (see the Global Drug Survey highway https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/...

SirFatty• 6 years ago

I don't disagree with you on this, but I hope you are also including alcohol?

6gvONxR4sf7o8• 6 years ago

And potentially, just barely, coffee.

krohling5• 6 years ago

I respect that perspective as I believe it's an experience many have had with drugs. My anecdotal experience with psychedelics (psilocybin specifically) is that it is a qualitatively different substance. Non-toxic, non-addictive (experience actually discourages frequent usage), and genuinely healing. It has helped me personally and many I have spoken to with depression and a range of other mental illnesses. The key to efficacy with these substances is education and responsible use, neither of which will happen in the current environment of criminalization.

confuseddesi• 6 years ago

Couldn't this be handled instead by allowing doctors to prescribe these substances like they do other medication? Why decriminalize non-prescription possession instead?

jswag• 6 years ago

I think that largely depends on the class of drugs and their addictive potential. Generally psychedelics are viewed as having lower potential for addiction or abuse than other classes of drugs, such as opiates or even alcohol and, I think most importantly, steps such as decriminalization may help with broader arguments that would allow for more research in to the medicinal uses and effects of these drugs.

Psilocybin in particular shows great promise in helping people cope with addiction to other substances in rather productive ways. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201705/radical-n... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007659/

6gvONxR4sf7o8• 6 years ago

True as that may be, there's a spectrum. When I'm regularly really stressed, I find myself eating more desserts and junk food. It's a coping strategy. So is heroin. It's good that the government doesn't mandate that I don't use sugar to feel good, and frequently argued as good that the government does mandate that I don't use heroin to cope. The question is where each drug lands on this spectrum. We have collectively decided that you can drink alcohol, but that can be a horrible way to cope.

My experience with mushrooms puts it pretty close to the marijuana/alcohol end of the spectrum.

I'm sorry if mushrooms contributed to a difficult upbringing for you.

wutbrodo7• 6 years ago

Heroin probably isn't a great example, since kicking it is so much more excruciating than temporary increases in junk food or alcohol consumption. Weed is a much better example; I'm pretty strict about my diet, so during stressful times I notice myself leaning on weed in the way people do with junk food: unconsciously and moderately, rolling it back as soon as I notice it.

newnewpdro• 6 years ago

You're grossly lumping all drugs into one pile. Presumably you mean illegal drugs when you say "I never done drugs", because I'm certain you've done drugs like caffeine, probably alcohol too.

If that's how you define drugs, by those which are illegal at the time, then get ready to accept psilocybin as a non-drug in the future.

pmoriarty10• 6 years ago

Drug abuse is a real problem. But not all drug use is drug abuse. It's possible to use drugs constructively, to actually improve your life and that of others (because what you do, how you feel, and how you live your life impacts others).

Mushrooms and other psychedelics have great potentials to improve mental health, if used wisely. There have been studies that show psychedelics successfully being used to treat depression, PTSD, and addiction. This kind of use is the opposite of abuse.

It is possible to abuse psychedelics, but it is rare, and one can minimize the risk by educating oneself thoroughly about them and by using them with a clear, constructive intention, in a quiet and safe setting, with an experienced person you like and trust, and with confidence in the identity of the substance and that you're taking the proper dose. I'd strongly recommend reading James Fadiman's Psychedelic Explorer's Guide[1] for more detailed suggestions.

Like the Prohibition of the 1920's, decades of the War on Drugs has utterly failed to make us safer. In fact, it makes us less safe because people have and will continue to use drugs, but because of the drug war they often are mistaken about the identity of the drugs they're using or the drug's dosage, leading to overdoses and other adverse effects. The War on Drugs also encourages and makes organized crime more profitable and leads to great violence, not to mention the effect of arrests, imprisonment, and killings by police on non-violent drug users and their families.

A tragedy and an outrage is the only way to describe the War on Drugs, and I have a very hard time understanding why anyone who's educated themselves on these issues would support it.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...

akiselev2• 6 years ago

It's important to note that when people talk about drug abuse and its impacts, they are usually referring to heroin and opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and other alkaloids, benzodiazepines, and so on. While some of those drugs are hallucinogenics, none of them are considered psychedelics, which is what the current decriminalization conversation is about.

Magic mushrooms, LSD, and cannabis are in a different universe psychiatrically, addictively, and experientially. It's like comparing viagra to chemotherapy: yeah, a blood thinner carries extra risks for certain subpopulations, but chemotherapy has visibly destructive side effects on the entire population.

mapcars3• 6 years ago

It's possible to use drugs constructively, to actually improve your life and that of others

Well, there is a whole lot of other things that can also improve your life. Why go for riskier and less understood ones? I think they should be allowed in some cases but I'm very pessimistic about readiness of society to mass usage.

zelly4• 6 years ago

Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances.

That's where you're mistaken. Psychedelics aren't for escaping reality. They're for facing it.

On heroin/meth/cannabis/alcohol, you take it and feel good, forgetting about stuff like going to work or feeding your baby.

On LSD/mushrooms, you are more likely to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room crying than you are to experience euphoria. Nobody takes that stuff for "fun".

toomanybeersies• 6 years ago

I completely disagree.

I've used psychedelics plenty of times as a form of escapism. I tend to stop worrying about reality when I'm 500 µg of LSD deep. I also use it frequently for fun, in fact I can't remember the last time I didn't use it for "fun".

RandomTisk• 6 years ago

Decades of Hollywood shows has conflated the two classes as part of the same party animal regimen. Timothy Leary didn't help either. All my (cursory) research suggests either there are parallel worlds that makes no sense to logical people in this one or much more likely, they can sometimes induce states of temporary schizophrenia. That's about the only cause for concern I think. If I voted in favor of legalization and then next year we had a lot of new Timothy Leary's walking around spewing nonsense, ruining the lives of everyone in their family because they're taking them every day or week, I'd be extremely regretful of voting in favor of it. What you see now in the community though is a reverence and fear and respect that they didn't have in the 70's, so that's a good sign.

eruditely• 6 years ago

I disagree with your statement as well, psychedelics have a variety of use cases and the entire experience is difficult to describe, for example take the following statements

"I like the wall breathing" "The wall is breathing"

it is difficult to qualify and categorize whether this is "Escapism" or "Facing reality" this statement and a variety of the subclass of total experiences of mushrooms and lsd at times is that often, it just doesn't make sense, but it can induce profound thought, at least we hope is profound =)

Much love.

joejerryronnie2• 6 years ago

I’ve only ever used LSD or mushrooms for fun. Crazy, intense, borderline scary, hilarious, unbelievable - each trip was typically a mixture of all of these but in the end, it was always fun.

Nursie4• 6 years ago

Lots of people drop acid for fun!

Yes, there are aspects of self-discovery etc, but it would never have gone as mainstream as it did without also being a very enjoyable thing to do with friends.

armandhammer• 6 years ago

LOL, what? You're clearly talking out of your ass if you think smoking a bowl will make you forget to feed a baby, or taking acid or shrooms will make you cry. Is this sarcasm?

Mediterraneo10• 6 years ago

Psychedelics aren't for escaping reality. They're for facing it.

Not always. Are people really facing reality when they take ayahuasca and come back claiming that the drug opened a portal to another dimension where they talked with beings there? The shaman providing the drug often encourages this interpretation of the experience, and if anyone suggests that the drug merely scrambles one's neuroreceptors for a time, users can respond very angrily.

6gvONxR4sf7o8• 6 years ago

On LSD/mushrooms, you are more likely to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room crying than you are to experience euphoria. Nobody takes that stuff for "fun".

Consider that your social circle maybe just doesn't overlap the many people who do take this stuff for fun. As with alcohol, you just have to be careful. You wouldn't say 'On alcohol, you are more likely to curl up over the toilet crying and throwing up, or fighting a bouncer than you are to experience euphoria. Nobody drinks that stuff for "fun."'

ur-whale• 6 years ago

There's not very much in your diatribe that considers the individual freedom aspect of the problem.

ph4• 6 years ago

It's ironic that you ask for a "fairer representation", and then go on to deliver an inaccurate, "reefer madness"-esque, culturally and personally conditioned caricature of psilocybin.

thelittleone2• 6 years ago

I used to work 80 hrs a week. Get drunk with colleagues 3 or 4 nights a week and took recreational drugs. Even though my team was crushing it, this Life wasn’t for me, I was miserable inside. I lost my marriage, kids moved to another country with the mother.

Fast forward a few years I take LSD first time. This experience compels me to clean up my diet. Over the next 24 months I completely stop drinking and recreational drugs and have a healthy diet.

Inspired, I go to Peru to study Plant medicines with a Shipibo Maestro Shaman. And now after years of training I serve this medicine to people walking my old life in the cities. I can’t consider it work because it’s my passion, it’s a self perpetuating energy loop. I’m so happy that I just don’t want to escape anything.

Without having tried recreational drugs I doubt I would have tried LSD. Without LSD I would not have ended up with in the Amazon. Money is no longer a concern, it’s a by product of my passion.

evjim• 6 years ago

The fact that doing a drug once compelled you to move countries and become a distributor for drugs does not convince me that it is a good idea.

tsukurimashou• 6 years ago

You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs".

Well I can tell you what you described doesn't apply to psychedelics, things like "Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances."

There might be a very few people addicted to LSD / shrooms, but I've never seen it myself, I tried both multiple times and never felt a sense of addiction. I want to do it again, but it is very different from cannabis, with cannabis I feel very much the addiction.

wutbrodo7• 6 years ago

You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs".

This likely isn't even true, unless OP has never touched caffeine or alcohol, the most widely used drugs in the world. There's no reasonable definition of drugs that doesn't include those two, beyond the one meant to trick simple-minded pattern-matchers from thinking critically about either their alcohol use or their potential use of other drugs.

alasdair_• 6 years ago

I used to live in London at a time when the fact that mushrooms were technically legal seemed to suddenly come to light. Oxford street was full of places selling them, as were various markets. There was lots of branding and marketing that appeared as if from nowhere.

Honestly the kind of overnight switch from not being visible anywhere, to seeming to be on every street corner reminds me of being in SF when Lime and the other scooter startups blanketed the city seemingly overnight.

earthwrldshaman• 6 years ago

"Psychedelic capital of the world decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms"

elevenoh3• 6 years ago

There's certainly some ambient magic in the air in SC.

KhoomeiK4• 6 years ago

One of the volunteers at Decrim Santa Cruz here. AMA!

krohling5• 6 years ago

Decrim SF here! Thanks for your support :)

KhoomeiK4• 6 years ago

Thanks and good luck!

TallGuyShort2• 6 years ago

What are your thoughts on the layered nature of our government and how such efforts could do better with the many layers? Take marijuana for instance. I think it should be decriminalized, and in many states we talk about it like it is, but in reality it depends on which law enforcement officer catches you. Where I live you'll be arrested by the sheriff (county), but not the police (town), depending on which officer catches you and if they like you or not, and not state patrol. And you won't be prosecuted by the feds, but the businesses you bought it from, which pay local and state taxes, can't use federally insured banks because it's still illegal even though it's not enforced. But state law might forbid the bank from making a hiring decision on someone's marijuana usage. In some ways it feels like we've made progress, but I'm still afraid to use it myself. How do we deal with this mess of rule-of-law moving forward?

I would like the idea of proving an idea on a small scale to make it easier to sell at larger scales. But honestly, being one of the first places that legalized it, we got a large influx of "undesirables" from other places that hadn't legalized it, causing problems we wouldn't have had if we weren't one of the first states to legalize it.

KhoomeiK4• 6 years ago

I think the decentralized/layered structure of American government is great, because as you said, it allows smaller polities to test out new ideas before growing to a larger scale. I haven't heard of that phenomenon where people migrate to a new city in pursuit of the substance, and that could definitely be a valid issue.

What makes them "undesirable" though? Are they not contributing to the local economy or something else? I don't think it's a problem intrinsically linked to substance decriminalization, and might even be a benefit of decentralized government. Delaware's lax incorporation laws, for instance, encourage people to do business there, which benefits the state.

wturner• 6 years ago

Looker just sold to Google for 2 billion and there is still an army of tent cities around town due to people falling through the economic cracks coupled with a city wide meth and heroin epidemic. How-do-we-fix-this ?

Okay, enough trolling. I sent you a real email. Bye

some-guy• 6 years ago

Congrats, I'm very excited to see how this affects the greater movement.

As a former Santa Cruz resident of ~4 years at UCSC, do you think this will affect enforcement at the local level? Living there between 2010-2014, there didn't seem to be much drug enforcement by the police at all, at least not for possession.

KhoomeiK4• 6 years ago

Yeah, I don't think it'll change anyone's day to day life very significantly as enforcement is pretty lax already. It's more important in the sense that it's a step in the direction of legalization, which I think will have genuine society-changing effects. There will likely be a boom in psychedelic treatments for mental and physical health when they're legalized on a state level, and that can't happen till everyone's comfortable with them being decriminalized.

imagetic• 6 years ago

As a journalist/Santa Cruz resident for 8 years, you would REALLY have to do something wrong to get in trouble here for drug related crimes.

salgernon• 6 years ago

UC Santa Cruz is home to the Greatful Dead archive[1] and more recently for Hunter S. Thompson[2]. And they do, like, engineering too, man.

[1] https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/gratefuldeadarchive [2] https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/11/hunter-thompson-collection.htm...

asdff4• 6 years ago

ucsc is the only college I know that will let you live as an unrestricted hippy in an RV on a lot on campus, or just in a tent off in the woods.

Balgair• 6 years ago

Go Slugs!

The astrophysics PhD program is very good. Top 40 worldwide physics and earth sciences undergrad programs too.

The forest hippies are mostly harmless, though they will try to expand your mind and sneak into the dorm showers from time to time.

Is the totem pole still by the cat graveyard? What a great view up there of SC on Friday nights as the smoke, err, fog rolled in about the drum circles.

chabes• 6 years ago

Also the image on the cover of the mushroom field guide All The Rain Promises And More was taken at UCSC. Heady place

dekhn• 6 years ago

I'm a UCSC grad. It was great for undergrad, I had a lot of great classes and professors (much more interaction with profs than a place like UC Berkeley) and it definitely help. my career long term because I did undergrad thesis with a well-known computer scientist. The campus is completely beautiful- at the time I attended, there was a large area of secondary redwood growth that students had turned into an area called "Elfland" that really was magical.

bproven• 6 years ago

Cool! Denver legalized it May 2019 as well...

itqwertz• 6 years ago

afk brb... heading to Santa Cruz for ... research purposes.

01100011• 6 years ago

Great. Would also be great if we could just get the spores legalized at the state level. California, Georgia and Idaho prohibit possession of the spores of magic mushrooms. In CA this is especially ridiculous, given that the mushrooms have lived here longer than the state has existed.

In many other states, you can walk into any head shop and buy a mushroom kit containing spores. Not in CA. It makes no sense.

m463• 6 years ago

I always wonder what unintended consequences measures like this will have. (I am not opposed to it)

I remember a long time ago Montana fought the 55 mph (and later higher ones) imposed by federal pressure. Their laws favored "reasonable and prudent" over absolute limits. (How wonderful to choose personal responsibility)

Then out-of-state drivers from car clubs started driving to Montana and doing high-speed drives across the state.

Maybe that was why Montana enacted actual limits and fines later on.

koboll• 6 years ago

Unlike "high-speed drives", magic mushrooms don't typically endanger anyone.

The worst that's likely to happen is a slight uptick in emergency room visits when people experience frightening but physically harmless bad trips.

Baeocystin• 6 years ago

Maybe that was why Montana enacted actual limits and fines later on.

No one in Montana cared. 'reasonable and prudent' was struck down due to a simple court case where a defendant appealed his reckless driving conviction because he thought the law was too vague.

https://law.justia.com/cases/montana/supreme-court/1998/b182...

The Montana Supreme Court agreed with his assessment, and as a result, a numeric speed limit was instituted.

elevenoh3• 6 years ago

Love this.

Where's next?

quirkafleeg3• 6 years ago

To quote Gene Hunt from Life on Mars: "Drugs eh, what's the point? They make you talk funny, they make you walk funny, they make you see things that aren't there. My nan got all that for free when she had a stroke."

In all seriousness, I think people who use drugs like this have something missing in their life. Instead of getting hopped up on mushrooms, why not look at your life and work out what you are using mushrooms as a subsitute for.

AndrewDucker• 6 years ago

They can be very useful: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/magic-mushrooms-ls...

And they can be fun. And an interesting experience.

javajosh• 6 years ago

Okay, lets say you're right. What does that imply about all the other things people do? Why are you watching movies - what is that a substitute for? Why are you exercising so much - what do you have to hide from yourself?

Given that you could (and should) ask these questions legitimately, why focus on recreational psychadelics? I think the answer is that you've internalized a particular cultural story about drugs, and you probably have Nancy Reagan to thank for that.

Being against mushrooms seems particularly odd, since every human being on the planet involuntarily falls unconscious and hallucinates for hours every single night, including you. In the hierarchy of damaging escapist behavior, it's pretty low I think (far lower certainly than say, Facebook or Twitter usage).

rofo19• 6 years ago

I know a lot of drug users and they all do it to kill their pain. No exceptions.

And they all progress towards harder drugs. They either progress or stop doing drugs. Nobody started doing drugs directly shooting heroin.

Comparing psychedelics to sleep is just laughable.

rofo19• 6 years ago

It's mind-boggling to me how things are changing. In my surroundings, I am a tiny minority that never does drugs, smokes or drinks alcohol. Nearly 100% of people do that and if you don't do that, you are the weird one. Same thing goes for eating crap food. I eat clean (got 8 pack etc.) and that's another thing that changed.

I can't claim that I know the exact reasons why people insist on this, but to me it looks like deeply unhappy people trying to find quick happiness in drugs or alcohol. But I have yet to meet a single person that is truly happy (and isn't faking it on Instagram posting "life is good!111" pictures) that is fat/out of shape or does drugs. Not a single one. When I was younger, I just couldn't tell, until I started getting closer to people and see how unhappy they really are. You can't see that on the surface.

Something does not add up.

But I am certain that drugs is not the answer.

pmoriarty10• 6 years ago

Watch these:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc-SOGZPPpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJgWKl_vss0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRn_HD7nH8g

Synaesthesia• 6 years ago

It’s true WRT to most drugs eg coffee, alcohol, marijuana etc. But a mushroom experience is something really special which can help you love yourself and accept yourself more, plus you do t really want to do it frequently.

ptah• 6 years ago

"Entheogenic plants offer many in our community a way out of the addictive pharmaceuticals known as opioids. People came forward at last night’s meeting telling of the beneficial effects of how these plants changed their lives."

that's an interesting take. could the opioid epidemic be tied directly to psychedelic prohibition?

radiorental• 6 years ago

I think the opioid epidemic is pretty much tied to the over prescription of opioids and the abusive practices of opioid manufacturers.

Psychedelics have been banned long before the epidemic started, additionally, countries that also have a ban in place do not also have epidemics.

Santa Cruz decriminalizes psychedelic mushrooms

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