Magic Mushrooms Are Decriminalized in DC as of Today

https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/03/15/magic-mushrooms-are-decriminalized-in-dc-as-of-today/

by batmaniam • 5 years ago

346 228 5 years ago

batmaniam• 5 years ago

I think this is great news, and I hope other states will follow. But it's a bit troublesome that it took a wealthy executive to get this anywhere politically, even after years of safe-use research and its prevalence as medical treatments:

David Bronner, the top executive at Dr. Bronner’s soap company, helped bankroll the campaign, which had to overcome pandemic restrictions to gather signatures and get on the ballot last fall.

dekhn4• 5 years ago

are you sure he's a wealthy executive? and if they are, the bronners totally deserve it. Dilute dilute OK!

Zhenya• 5 years ago

In case folks are wondering, it's not some german brand. Founder escaped holocaust by leaving as the nazi party rose to power -. Parents stayed behind and became victims of the third reichs death death machinery.

throwanem7• 5 years ago

Just to mention, they aren't kidding about the "dilute" part. I'm not saying how I know, but if you won't take their word for it, you'd be well advised to take mine.

ElijahLynn• 5 years ago

Yeah, can't believe it took this long, considering it's potential in treating PTSD.

e.g.

https://www.insider.com/army-vet-with-ptsd-magic-mushrooms-p...

https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/johns-hopkins-sci...

Alex3917• 5 years ago

Dr. Bronner’s only exists as a result of the Holocaust, so the connection isn’t exactly lost here.

hahajk• 5 years ago

David Bronner has a history of pro-drug activism, including planting hemp in the DEA headquarters.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/david-bronner-...

AdamJacobMuller• 5 years ago

David Bronner, the top executive at Dr. Bronner’s soap company

He might be a wealthy executive, but, you're going to have an extraordinarily hard time convincing me that he's anything but the exact opposite of the caricature of a "wealthy executive"

Dr. Bronner’s is an amazing company with an amazing product.

They also source some of their oil from a small fair trade olive producing cooperative in palestine[1] which I was fortunate enough to visit in 2019. The people there couldn't say enough about how Dr Bronners had saved their coop and the Palestinian olive industry. Amazing people all around and the smells of a olive oil factory producing fresh olive oil are burned into my brain now!

[1] https://www.drbronner.com/all-one-blog/2017/05/growing-hope-...

sharkweek2• 5 years ago

Bronner fan for life - they got me hooked when I found myself spending 15 minutes in the grocery store reading the entire label.

IF CAP CLOGS, POKE IT! OKAY!!

tomc19852• 5 years ago

A bunch of Dr. Bronners employees, if not management and ownereship, also active as part of the Southern California burner community. They show up at local festivals with sometimes the only public shower available -- its a huge, fully-nude group shower with a dance floor and a large, transparent plexiglass trailer, where they hose down like 100 people at a time from an overhead balcony. It's a lot of fun for anyone brave enough to bare it all!

It's funny -- they used to leave Dr. Bronners branding around (it was pretty subtle though) and were happy to let you try out their soaps, which is supposedly a faux pas in the burner crowd ... but they were so well-loved by the community that it was the only large camp that was allowed to get away with it. More recently the local burner festival banned any commercial expression, and they still showed up, completely revamped to remove any trace of Dr. Bronners, even if it was the same setup with the same soap.

TBH I am not the biggest fan of their soaps but I have an immense amount of respect for the company, as their presence and its contradictions really add to the overall vibe.

de6u99er• 5 years ago

I remember vaguely New Yeqrs eve 2000 in Amsterdam. I want to spare you the details.

What I actually wanted to say is, that MMs are not allowed for sale any more in Amsterdam.

Thinking again of Y2K, I would suggest to not allow them to be sold to drunk customers.

brokenmachine2• 5 years ago

Any English-language descriptions of the incident and reactions?

pdamoc• 5 years ago

Tim Ferriss is responsible for a large amount of studies on the effect of psilocybin on depression. I think he invested something like $2M in research.

nuker2• 5 years ago

I think this is great news

Should we add heroin there too? I mean, whats the red line? Or there should not be any? For medical uses it can be prescribed, by doctor.

andrewxdiamond2• 5 years ago

after years of safe-use research and its prevalence as medical treatments

heroprotagonist• 5 years ago

I think we definitely need a new approach to dealing with drugs and addiction.

We spend a ridiculous amount on incarceration, per inmate. Federally it's above $37k per year as of 2018 [1], and states averaged over $33k in 2015 [2].

That's excluding the cost of policing the drug war, lost taxation on illicit goods, state-funded medical and wage impact of addiction, or the lost consumer impact to the economy of those incarcerated or under addiction.

Ultimately drug addiction is a health and social issue. Treating it as a criminal issue has not significantly helped the problem. We can hamper black markets through legalization and regulation while reducing significant costs across a wide array of categories.

But I don't think we should simply legalize and be done with it, as that'd be dangerous. We need to shift the money we're already ineffectually spending. Put it into research, therapy, and the infrastructure surrounding regulation. Maybe mandated counseling to the addicted, once supply is more effectively monitored and controlled.

We need to focus on positive outcomes for individuals. Incarceration generally only pushes people into a spiral of continued negative outcomes.

[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/19/2019-24...

[2] https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...

mooneater• 5 years ago

“Unite the whole Human Race! For we’re All-One or None! … Exceptions eternally? Absolute None!” --Dr. Bronner's philosophy in his soap labels

sneak8• 5 years ago

Reminder: Possession of psilocybin or psilocybin-containing substances such as magic mushrooms remain a felony in all 50 US states, just like possession of marijuana.

They may not be enforcing it, but it's still a federal felony, and they are free to (as well as within their legal rights to) enforce it at any time, for any arbitrary reason.

If you choose to openly commit US federal felonies, you should be aware that it is entirely legal for the US to choose to enforce those laws against you on the basis of entirely unrelated reasons: race, political alignment, sexual orientation, gender identity, hair color, words on your t-shirt, protected expression, articles published, opinions expressed at a conference, investigative journalism, et c. They would be entirely within their rights to seek and obtain a search warrant for your property: your office, your residence, including all computers and data, as a result of your open violation of federal law. (They oftentimes after a search warrant keep all hardware that contains any data whatsoever for months or years, and even getting it back at all can entail a months-long, five figure legal battle that you'll have to pay for up front.)

The reasons the AUSA chose you to prosecute will not be relevant to the trial, which will concern itself only with whether or not you possessed a schedule 1 substance, which is (again) a felony that may carry jail time.

When you choose to ignore US federal controlled substance laws due to state or regional decriminalization efforts, you effectively waive your 1A, 2A, and 4A civil rights.

elil17• 5 years ago

That’s not quite true about medical cannabis (totally true about psilocybin and recreational though) - the Rohrabacher–Farr amendment (which has been upheld by courts) prevents the US from prosecuting medical cannabis users.

I also don’t really get what you mean by saying that you waive your 1a and 4a rights (2a of course is pretty clear cut, although I’d say you’re being denied your rights more than that you’ve waived them)

sneak8• 5 years ago

If you openly commit a federal felony that is widely unenforced, the state can choose to enforce it against you on the basis of the content of your protected expression, journalism, or religion, meaning that you don't actually have freedom of expression/press/religion in practice.

This happened to Rover Ver; he did time in federal prison for criticizing excessively violent federal agents during a talk he gave at a conference. Other agents from that agency present at his conference talk were pissed off and found some unrelated legitimate violations of federal law to have him charged under. If you are openly committing federal felonies this won't even take them the 24h it took them in Roger's case.

Same with 4A: if they want to toss your house or rob you of all your computers and all of your backups, and you've openly admitted to possession of schedule 1 things, a search warrant on that basis alone is a foregone conclusion, as it is obvious you are breaking the law.

wavefunction• 5 years ago

Sounds very scary. fnord

eyelidlessness7• 5 years ago

Reminder: Possession of psilocybin or psilocybin-containing substances such as magic mushrooms remain a felony in all 50 US states, just like possession of marijuana.
They may not be enforcing it, but it's still a federal felony, and they are free to (as well as within their legal rights to) enforce it at any time, for any arbitrary reason.

I can't speak to enforcement of laws around psilocybin, but I can speak to federal enforcement of cannabis laws. I worked in the legal cannabis industry for several years. The claim that they are free to enforce it at any time is true, in the sense that any arcane law could be enforced because it's still law.

But it's not consistent with the federal government's posture since the first states legalized, even after Jeff Sessions led at least a vocal campaign to roll it back.

The reality is that the guiding legal principle that determines federal intervention in states' legal cannabis markets is the Cole Memo[1], and that all legal states operate comprehensive seed-to-sale tracking sufficiently satisfying that the federal government has either felt disinclined or disadvantaged to challenge it under the Interstate Commerce clause (which is how they can even ban drugs in the first place).

IANAL, but I'm very familiar with the specifics on the topic, and the comment above is full of misleading and downright bad legal advice.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cole_Memorandum

sneak8• 5 years ago

First off, my comment wasn't legal advice. Second, the federal government is not bound by the linked document, and indeed there are several cases (such as banking, firearms, et cetera) where it does not apply at all.

The basic core of my statement stands: the fact that they are not actually legally restrained by anything from prosecuting you under these federal laws is a risk that you should be aware of when you undertake breaking them. The fact that they have voluntarily subjected themselves, in some limited circumstances, to restraint is a) not binding upon them, and b) not relevant to that risk, as anyone who has filled out a Form 4473 (or tried to get a credit card terminal for a dispensary) can attest.

They can write all of the memos they want; malicious prosecution for pissing off the wrong people is still a thing, and has recent federal examples (weev, Roger Ver, et c).

int_19h2• 5 years ago

Don't assume that Cole Memorandum covers all relevant interactions, though. Aside from the more obvious federal laws that directly criminalize use of drugs, there are others that make other activities illegal when drugs are involved. It's not just the DEA that's on the bandwagon.

For example, when purchasing a firearm, one of the questions on the form that has to be filled is this:

"Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?

WARNING: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."

(That disclaimer was added long after the memorandum you mention, by the way.)

The ATF has since decided that a mere possession of a medical marijuana card constitutes prima facie evidence of being "unlawful user of".

rfrey• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why this is appearing light gray to me. Laws and mores change via active opposition, as they should; but those opposing should know and accept the risk they are taking.

frongpik• 5 years ago

Bro, relax. The law is mostly a social fiction. We live a short life that can end without notice for any reason, and I wouldn't waste these few tens of years on following silly rules invented by some mediocre people.

reasonabl_human• 5 years ago

Now this is a good perspective.

anonymouswacker• 5 years ago

Until you get busted for drug possession in, say, Texas, and have to go to jail and are at the whims of a conservative court. Just remember that there's risks to everything.

swiley• 5 years ago

Also it makes security clearances harder to get (although IME they freak out more over piracy than light drug use.)

sneak8• 5 years ago

This is probably a good thing. The more people that are disqualified from working for the US military-industrial complex, the smaller their talent pool becomes and the less effective they become over time.

hnrodey2• 5 years ago

Psychedelics are a different game. I’m still not sure if I’m for or against these movements.

Nonetheless, I think anyone who wants to vote on the issues around psychedelics should have to first go through a bad trip. There’s nothing I can write that can allow you to fully understand what it means to have a good trip, or a bad one.

I repeat, you’re playing a different game with this stuff.

edit: lol downvotes

edit2: The best advice I ever received about tripping is that "the trip always ends".

sneak8• 5 years ago

If we're not free to intentionally harm our own bodies, the only thing to which we plainly and unambiguously hold complete title, we cannot be said to be free to own or control anything in our lives.

This is a moral issue above all else: we are not the property of the state, and the state does not have any claim whatsoever to a property interest in our own bodies. They are ours to build and ours to destroy, full stop.

adventured• 5 years ago

That's an excellent summation of the root of all human rights: ownership over one's self.

denkmoon• 5 years ago

Should then people not be allowed to make their own decisions on this?

I mean, honestly, they can and do currently. The illegality of psychedelics never once stopped me from investigating and trying them. It just means I'd be screwed if I had an encounter with the law while holding them, and I had to buy them through shady means. Both things we'd all be better off without.

gremlinsinc• 5 years ago

Good or bad, does it warrant going to jail for 10 years for doing a drug in the privacy of your own home? Esp. if you do so responsibly with someone to "watch" you in case of an issue.

Though, I heard small doses are enough for some of the mental pickups - too small to cause even a mild trip. But I'm not a doctor/researcher on the subject.

I've never even had a drug, though I'm tempted to go out of state and try something cause my anxiety/depression is strangling me this year.

codr72• 5 years ago

You might get away with it for some time, but sooner or later all psychedelics will put you in an uncomfortable place where you have to deal with yourself, cannabis included.

I wouldn't recommend self medicating anxiety/depression though, not without a VERY experienced mentor. Most likely not dangerous in itself, but it could potentially turn up the volume for a while which might become unbearable.

anm89• 5 years ago

What does that have to do with whether we should incarcerate people in small metal cages for possession?

vmception2• 5 years ago

Which is why recreationally regulated is a more desirable outcome than decriminalized. At the bare minimum this stuff needs the whole supply chain to be stable for consumer protection. Decriminalized doesn't do that.

TaylorAlexander• 5 years ago

For real. It’s amazing what legalization has done for the marijuana market in California. I don’t use concentrates but it does seem reassuring that their production is highly regulated here. The packages you buy have all kinds of labels with testing information. It really feels like you know what you’re getting. Compared to unregulated purchases where a concentrate can be some brown or yellow goo and you don’t truly know what you’re getting.

I’m not normally in favor of state control and I’d like to see California relax some control here over time, but for a new product on the market it is kind of reassuring seeing the chain of testing and reporting that seems to be required here.

Moodles4• 5 years ago

I don't think you should be downvoted simply because people disagree with you. This isn't Reddit, guys.

However, I've done mushrooms quite a lot. I've had a couple bad trips where I've lost my sense of self, all memories, massive confusion. I've also had bad trips on alcohol. I think with mushrooms, there are rarely really bad trips, usually just challenging ones. I think the benefits outweigh the cons, but for sure we should study them.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...

f4302• 5 years ago

There have been some cases where someone who took Psilocybe/LSD go crazy and kill themselves but its super rare and not well understood as there are other ongoing issues.

I've also been wary of LSD being possibly chemically unpure and the possibility of it causing schizophrenia according to an HN comment I read long time ago, so I've only done psilocybe mushrooms a handful of times.

Microdosing is popular but unfortunately its mostly a placebo effect, your body grows tolerance to psilocybe very rapidly. It can't be done weekly and even monthly use will not yield its maximum potential.

I haven't done it since summer last year but it seems to have gotten rid of my depression and I've tried just about every anti-depressant there is. Zoloft to my memory has been the absolute worst. While it can be beneficial in some cases, I found Psilocybin mushrooms to be the best for me.

Your mileage will vary. I suggest first reading/listening about its properties from people like Terrence McKenna first. He will suggest 5 grams or nothin but tbh its way too much for a beginner.

I would say start off with far less. I actually did like 2 or 3 grams and it was absolutely amazing.

Your setting is important and your mood too.

I guess the most important thing about Psilocybin is that it is very much mechanical and feminine. It appears that you can communicate with it.

For a transcendental experience 5 grams is needed. Ego death is very scary because it feels like death but after the comedown, it seems to have had a radical shift in my values and thinking. It's impact does seem to fade however but the values it instills appears to persist.

I don't think we need to fear this any longer. We are past the Puritannical age of immaturity and ignorance for the most part.

Also once you try it you may never want to do it again because of what it surfaces internally within you. Just a warning that it may make one open minded and consciously aware of itself.

Just remember in any part of the journey, its very very hard to kill yourself by eating a bunch of mushrooms and pooping it out the next day. Yeah it does feel like you poisoned yourself when you start tripping and your ego desperately claws at the edges of reality desperate to not let go of the facade.

I hope that more people will see reality for itself rather than what they've been subconsciously programmed to believe from early on. I wouldn't describe it as NZT-48 from Limitless movie but it's somewhat close. It feels more like the red pill from Matrix because your view of reality will never be the same again.

Disclaimer: I absolutely do not condone you taking substances which you are unfamiliar with.

hnrodey2• 5 years ago

Your setting is important

I would say that your setting is of paramount importance.

hn_throwaway219• 5 years ago

I guess the most important thing about Psilocybin is that it is very much mechanical and feminine. It appears that you can communicate with it.

I'm very curious as to what you mean by this.

LocalH2• 5 years ago

It can't be done weekly and even monthly use will not yield its maximum potential.

LSD has a longer tolerance curve than psilocybin. LSD takes about two weeks for tolerance to reset, with psilocybin it's closer to a week. And honestly, I can't really tell a difference with even LSD between one and two weeks between doses. My usual doses are low (50-75ug for LSD and 1-1.5g for mushrooms), for deeper trips I prefer DMT due to the shorter length of the experience from an external standpoint (time can dilate so much that 15-20 minutes can feel like an infinity).

Set and setting are far more powerful in terms of potential. Tolerance can be overcome as simply as consuming more of the substance (and an experienced psychonaut will have an idea of the tolerance curve in question). I wouldn't do that, since it seems wasteful to me, but one's intention going in can be the most important factor.

colecut• 5 years ago

I had been on dozens if not a hundred trips, and it wasn't until my son was born that I had bad trips. I have experienced what I perceived to be hell-like experiences three times in total now. The sense of gratitude that I feel when those trips end have more than made up for the bad experiences themselves, in my cases.

I have two friends that have experienced prolong psychiatric states, I'm talking several days to weeks of just being out of it, not making sense, not being able to really function as a normal human.. I feel lucky to have not dealt with that.

The good trips can be so amazing and even life changing that many want to discount the horror stories, but sadly many are true.

I think people should be able to make the decision for themselves legally as with any substance.

throwanem7• 5 years ago

All life is either risk or stagnation.

I've had a bad trip, or at least a trip that went bad for a while near the end. I was sitting under a gnarled old tree in a forest southwest of Baltimore, and over what seemed a very little time I became certain that the tree had formed several misshapen mouths out of its trunk with which it was very soon going to eat me alive. It sounds as absurd to me now as it does to you, but in the moment it was so real I could see it - in fact, I can still see it in memory now, most of twenty years hence - and, in the moment, it was very bad.

It stopped being that way when I understood that, while the fear was real and I couldn't simply make it stop, my reaction to it was totally within my control. Nothing else in my life to date had given me such a clear opportunity to recognize the difference between feeling the urge to panic, and actually panicking. I suppose that wouldn't have amounted to much on its own, except that I successfully chose not to panic, and instead of leaping to my feet and probably running off a cliff or something, I wiggled my butt more firmly into the space between two roots where I was sitting, and deliberately leaned back against the trunk of the tree. It made my skin crawl, but only for a little while. A few minutes later, I felt just fine again, if somewhat tired.

Every new kind of experience brings with it some degree of risk. It's for everyone to decide for themselves whether the potential risk outweighs the potential reward, or not. For me? I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

JumpCrisscross• 5 years ago

anyone who wants to vote on the issues around psychedelics should have to first go through a bad trip

I don’t do mushrooms. I don’t need my tax dollars being spent keeping people in their good trip and bad trip buckets. There are lots of things you can do to have a good or bad day. That, alone, shouldn’t make it illegal.

practicalpants• 5 years ago

Not sure why so downvoted. I recall a psychedelics advocate/former Vice reporter on the Joe Rogan podcast couple years back who warned how his good friend had a schizophrenic break after doing shrooms. Likely some medical pre-dispositions in place, but it's not a risk free activity.

I read Michael Pollan's How to Change your Mind, and concluded that it's a richer if not safer experience if you're older/figured out yourself, e.g. have more set grooves in your brain where psychedelics can help you realize new connections; and that it's probably actually pretty risky if you're young, confused, anxious, or don't have your basic coordinates yes.

jjj123• 5 years ago

I don’t think the OP is being downvoted for saying a bad trip can be a really awful experience. OP got downvoted because bad trips aren’t bad enough to put people in prison for possession over.

CuriouslyC3• 5 years ago

Relationships should be illegal because there are terrible relationships.

Jobs should be illegal because there are terrible jobs.

Food should be illegal because food poisoning exists.

People are going to do what they want to do, and by making things that are mostly harmless (and with the potential only to harm the person doing it) illegal, you are turning broad swathes of society into criminals. Pair this with racism, classism and selective enforcement and you have the unholy shitshow that is the war on drugs.

mgarfias2• 5 years ago

I still dunno where to get some here in Oregon.

f4302• 5 years ago

I see. In Vancouver it's literally just a click away all online. It's illegal but no enforcement is taken.

spaetzleesser2• 5 years ago

It's quite easy and a lot of fun to grow them yourself. I think growing yourself also gives you a better connection to the mushrooms.

pugworthy• 5 years ago

Kind of odd isn't it - I mean to have something so available but not.

mgarfias2• 5 years ago

I’m a recluse, I live in the country and hardly ever leave the house. It’d probably be different if I lived in pdx

Moodles4• 5 years ago

I’ve taken mushrooms quite a few times.

With a light dose, it’s just been mild, being silly and giggling at colors and nature. Pleasant, but just kind of a fun drug honestly.

With a moderate dose, you tend to be introspective and consider your own life and relationships in different ways. Feels like therapy to be honest. Hard work. Emotionally draining. There’s usually a lesson at the end. Overall it is good for me and makes me a better, more empathetic person.

With higher doses in a so-called bad trip, it’s sometimes been just extremely confusing and not at all fun, to the extent that I’d forget my own name or what I’ve taken and basically just all memories. It’s very frustrating to be in that state, constantly trying not to fly away but not able to ground yourself. It’s a little disturbing, but not horrific. I think the reason for this is that I am afraid to lose my ego, or die, and I would actually benefit from a slightly higher dose so I'm unable to resist.

With really high doses though, it’s been a truly beautiful, enlightening experience. I still think of it sometimes. It’s very difficult to really explain in words, but it feels like kind of extreme empathy with all life. Buddhists would call it going egoless. I just felt very at peace: we all live, we all die, and it’s all okay. I’m not particularly religious or spiritual at all but that experience really changed me. It feels like life is in all these different forms, and you just happen to be one particular variation of it, but you could easily be any other living thing, so you just feel love and empathy for all life. And you know it’s finite and you’re not afraid of death. I would still attempt to avoid death, but I was just at peace with it if it was inevitable. Also, when you come back to reality you’re utterly, utterly convinced that you’ve experienced something profound, possibly, despite all your rationality, there’s a message form god inside this mushroom. It's so strange coming back, because you have to repiece together your life: "I am... a human... I live in a city called San Francisco... I am an engineer...". It’s almost like the mushroom is laughing at you: “good luck going back to your normal life now.” You’re left with “wow? That was that?!” It’s annoying honestly, because I’m not religious at all and I know it sounds crazy to even say that out loud. Of course, that feeling does slowly fade away like a distance dream or memory.

I think in general mushrooms strip away your individual sense of self and zoom out your perspective, which is why with a small dose you consider your relationships and with a larger dose you can sometimes get scared because you lose your sense of self but you're still trying to cling on. But with an even larger dose (obviously it's not necessarily the dose, but it's a rough correlation) you blast through even further, and the distinction between you and everything else melts away, which is a truly profound spiritual experience. In all cases though, seeing fractals and cool stuff is very unimportant.

A great story it reminds me of is “The Egg” by Andy Weir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

spaetzleesser2• 5 years ago

I am pretty new to mushrooms. What would you call a "high" dose? So far I have tried, 2, 3 and 4g dried. I definitely could feel it physically and became emotionally very sensitive but I didn't feel anything spiritual.

Moodles4• 5 years ago

It varies on the individual, probably due to body mass and so on. Even then, it's not like a certain dose will guarantee a certain experience. I'm a ~72kg man and I'd say 3.5g is a normal dose and 4.5g is verging on high. The most I ever had was around 5g.

The two truly profound spiritual experiences I've had were actually 22g "High Hawaiian" magic truffles (not mushrooms, but similar), and around 5g cubensis magic mushrooms, though I did eyeball it so it may have been more or less.

sheepdestroyer• 5 years ago

Psilocybin content varies strongly from species to species. More problematically, it can also vary a lot in individual mushrooms in the same batch.

I would say that the best bet at consistency is to grind your whole batch to average the potency, then try a small dose to get a feel of your particular batch before proceeding.

h2odragon2• 5 years ago

Some people take things differently. Some folks are pleasantly couchlocked for an evening at 5g and re-evaluating life at 10g, and some are fine with 30+g and going hunting in the swamps on a full moon.

I'd suggest you try ~12g next; with knowledge it might be a bit too much but some comfort you know what itll be generally from the smaller doses. if thats not what you're after, then maybe steps at 18 and 24g.

Do pay attention to frequency warnings and such commonly cited; too much too often is a waste of good shroom. Also consider extracts, I personally found the larger doses hard on the stomach, even powdered, compressed, and rendered easy to swallow with honey. Vodka is a great solvent and can be evaporated back off.

saiya-jin2• 5 years ago

Generally the basic cubensis type, roughly 3g dried is considered a single dose, others are usually more potent. What I did (I think I've read it on erowid), was to mix dried shrooms with pure fresh lemon juice.

The result is properly disgusting (too sour and shrooms taste horribly and shrooms brought me almost to vomit), BUT - it makes the trips shorter (say 3 hours instead of more exhausting 6) and much more intense.

What OP describes with "really high doses", well, I went beyond with those 3g, not sure how much further. But there are few 'tricks' to make it happen. 1) be alone (so not good for those who are anxious and on first trip), so that nobody interferes with the experience and you can just go deeper and deeper if you want; 2) close your eyes, ideally laying on the couch/bed, having some relaxing soft music as a background (I had some shamanic sounds which were positively adding to the experience I believe). Visual sensory input and managing of the body is too strong for the brain to ignore, it will throttle the trip significantly.

After some time, losing gradually all my senses, losing any mental connection with all parts of the body, I ended up as a mist of atoms, egoless, just watching from distance, swirling in the music that was playing in the background although I didn't hear it directly (weird, I know, hard to describe). Imagine hot steam sauna, if you have light there you can see droplets swirling.

What was also impressive was coming down, since the process of re-discovery of my physical self, be it hand or breathing or eye muscles was more pronounced compared to losing it, one at a time. This part took easily 30-60 minutes if uninterrupted. And at the end the utter sense of peace with all universe. I am not spiritual/religious and this didn't change that, but I understood back then where religions come from and why they tell us more about ourselves rather than god itself (but that's my own conclusion). Profound, 1 in top 3 most intense experiences in life, repeatedly (didn't do it for last 10 years though, kind of took from it what I needed and could I guess).

Mind you, at any time, I could interrupt it and stand up, losing 90% of the current state. Maybe on higher dosages this wouldn't be possible so easily (but they say vitamin C or sugar terminates the trip pretty quickly, not sure never needed it).

Also, having issues, anxiety, going though harder parts of life ain't a good combination with any mind-altering drug, or any drug for that matter.

CuriouslyC3• 5 years ago

Try 8+ grams dry plus 250mg of harmala extract. You will commune with the goddess, then realize you are just another facet of her, and your reality is just play in a daydream of the infinite.

throwaway9391• 5 years ago

Posting with a throwaway because...well... shrooms are still illegal and I'm an upstanding dude in my society! I took em exactly two times, and to me that's enough for one lifetime. It's not like I didn't like it, it's just, well, it doesn't seem necessary now. Not sure if that makes sense. Both times I had pretty much the same kind of trip. Not good or bad, just strange and a huge, permanent perspective shift. I'm not a drug guy so I don't know if how much I took was a lot or not, but it was always in a decent setting with a trusted "babysitter" to prevent me from getting into trouble. That's pretty important when you're going to remove yourself from reality for about 12 hours.

Both trips had four distinct phases. Never tried to put them into words before, but hey tonight I feel creative. First phase was kind of a fun, flexible feeling. A little euphoric. I remember thinking that things like math and physics were tangible objects I could touch and interact with. I could close my eyes and travel to distant planets, then open them and be back on earth. Could still recognize the friends I was with and the house I was in, but understood things were really out of whack. Pretty neat. Wish it would have just stayed that way honestly. Second phase I pretty much detached from reality. The visual and audio hallucinations were most vivid during this time. Felt like I was outside of myself sometimes and other times totally encased inside with no concept of "outside". Trying to do any kind of deliberate interaction with the real world (like picking up a glass or turning on music) was impossible. Third phase was scary because the logical part of me realized that I was totally detached from reality, and that in the actual reality I could be doing anything right now. Running naked in the street. Pissing on myself. Who knows, because I have no way of knowing what was actually going on. Pretty scary to not even be able to trust a single one of your senses and know you can't trust them. Didn't like it. Fourth stage is kind of hard to put to words. All concept of space, time and sensory input was pretty much obliterated. Especially time was totally screwed up. At the time, I had no idea whether I spent 100 milliseconds or 100 years tripping. Time didn't even seem to consistently go in one direction. A lot of things that in real life I was feeling anxious or fearful of, or even happy about, kind of just melted away because my entire sense of self melted away. My real life was like a distant memory, one that I wasn't sure ever even happened. Maybe I was always in this state! I spent most of the night like this, not sleeping (because, what was sleep even?), and finally slowly transitioned from it into reality as morning came and the effects wore off.

Overall, the experiences were not social ha-ha silly high times had with friends, they were deeply introspective and personal, and for the vast majority of the time spent under the influence, I didn't even realize my friends were around.

I think I got everything out of these trips that I needed to, and see no need to go on one again.

Moodles4• 5 years ago

I just want to say, I know exactly how you felt. The confusion upon confusion. Is this everything? Forever? Panic. It's ok. A good trip is worth it. It all makes sense in the end. The "perspective shift" of which you speak is the perspective of everything, right?

Hard_Space• 5 years ago

Same for me - took them twice as a teenager. The first trip is as tangible to me now as a memory of an amazing journey or holiday. The second one was a kind of dud sequel. Never felt the need to return to them, but was glad to have experienced it.

Chris20483• 5 years ago

had similar with weed. Problem is, after the effect wore off I was left with some memory of the "existential dread" feeling for month afterward, took a while for the confidence and general sense of life satisfaction to return. Didn't find the experience worth the hit.

mujina932• 5 years ago

Yes. It's really a life-changing experience. One that I think everybody should have once in their life. I'm always amazed by the almost perfectly matching descriptions of such experiences from people living in different parts of the world. There really is something objective and true to what you described. I must say, having taken them multiple times in my life, and my mind being prone to surgically analyze every experience my brain has, I was able to "deconstruct" the experience quite a bit. I can tell you that I never had the god-like one-with-everything experience I had the very first time. I think there is a big factor of novelty to the experience that plays a big role (this is true for most things in life, I would say. When you experience something deeply new, you are naturally excited in addition to what the experience itself has to offer to you.). Another thing I noticed was that I realized I always was feeling physical pleasure during the "highs". Like a constant orgasm sensation that I could feel with all my body. And that is something I think a lot of people experience but don't actually realize, unless they force them to shift their focus from their spiritual breakthroughs onto on what they are physically feeling. I think that plays a big role in enhancing all the various beautiful sensations, thoughts, and almost religious realizations. In such a state of physical pleasure you would judge even a dog that pisses on your leg as something devine. I think there is much less "magic" to the experience once you realize these mechanisms. But, as I said, I still think everybody should take mushrooms at least once in their life (possibly in a nice, controlled setting. You don't want to waste it.). Other times I funneled all their "magic" into creativity, spending all the time of my trip doing my form of art, writing, and I was amazed at some genial things that came out. (Your art form could be different, for example one ex of mine, which is amazing at drawing, drew very cool things when she took mushrooms). I kind of "wasted" the experience in that I did not focus on me, or on enjoying the delight and the weirdness in any way, but I was hyperfocused on my writing, on describing every small bit of sensation that I was experiencing instead of living it and enjoying it. I won't make this post infinitely long. I'll just conclude saying that ultimately I stopped because they weren't giving me much. Like all people taking them, I agree that you get to feeling that you don't need to take them multiple times. They are a drug that basically communicates to you that you don't really need to take them ever again already the first time, given how big and life-changing the first experience is. If you do take them again, it's never on an addiction impulse, like (I guess) opioids would give you or like social media and notifications would give you.

shp0ngle2• 5 years ago

I don't really got great experience with mushrooms. Every time I took them, I just... have a hole in memory. I have no idea what I do or did, and suddenly it's 2 hours later and my head hurts. (And it got repeated multiple times when I tried them, so I stopped trying.)

So, it's not a bad experience, but not a great experience either.

LSD got similar feeling to me that you describe. Maybe more colorful and time warping, I don't know.

It's still drug induced state though. You don't see profound reality. You see what the drug is making you see. IMO, better to focus on the reality in front of you rather than something that is effectively a hallucination. Just my opinion though.

LocalH2• 5 years ago

Psychedelics are some of the most personal substances to exist. Your experience, while completely valid, is not everyone's experience. For me, while I haven't gone as deep as some with mushrooms, I find that I remember quite a bit about my mushroom experiences. The only time I've ever had such a "time hole" was when a broken finger was operated on and I was placed under anesthesia.

It may be a "drug induced state", but the power of that state can be amazing.

paraph1n• 5 years ago

It's still drug induced state though. You don't see profound reality. You see what the drug is making you see. IMO, better to focus on the reality in front of you rather than something that is effectively a hallucination. Just my opinion though.

This last paragraph you wrote demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the mind, chemistry, and reality.

The drug is a mere simple molecule. It does not contain any hallucinations or video recordings or instructions. It's a chemical that tweaks the parameters of your neurons, causing them to fire in patterns different from those they typically fire in. That's why it affects different people very differently: because the experience is created by the brain, not the drug. And although we might all take the same drug, we've all got different brains.

Anything you see/feel/hear/experience on the drug came from your own mind or its sensory input. It did not come from the drug. You may not have had those experiences without the drug, but the drug itself is not the origin of those experiences.

Your final comments about how it's "better" to "focus on reality" rather than a "hallucination" also screams that you are simply jealous of those who claim to have had profound experiences with these drugs. The people in this thread citing profound experiences are largely explaining how the drug actually helped them to better focus on reality. They aren't talking about how they spend day-in-day-out taking these drugs or thinking about them.

We're all hallucinating all the time. Our mind is constantly autonomously filling in the gaps left by our sensory system with "hallucinations". Certain drugs may cause your hallucinations to diverge farther from rational/empirical truth, but to be clear, most people aren't very rational/empirical to begin with.

marakv2• 5 years ago

Every change in America requires someone wealthy. If your poor or not white, your voice has no traction.

This is from an outsider, but after all those months of BLM protests, what changed?

dundercoder• 5 years ago

I would argue that functionally the US behaves more like a plutocracy, in which money matters an order of magnitude more than race or any other factor.

astrange4• 5 years ago

This was somewhat true 10 years ago (maybe even 5) but if you pay attention to things recently the moneyed interests have been 1. left-wing (because of Actblue and Bernie fans donating $25) 2. losing (Steyer, Bloomberg, every non-Trumpist Republican) or 3. both (Bernie, Amy McGrath). The guy who just won the presidency had the worst fundraising and spent the least.

What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...

Democratic donors are more left-wing than voters:

https://twitter.com/dbroockman/status/1254924463952388097

lai-yin• 5 years ago

America is worse off after months of BLM protests. So you could argue that being broke, woke, and violent can make a difference.

api• 5 years ago

Racism is real in America, but money is far more powerful. A rich person of color is more "white" than the white poor.

Our political system with its for-profit lobbying industry is basically legalized systematized bribery. Search for lobbying firms and you can probably get a price quote on what it costs to influence legislature.

dang• 5 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26470874.

Covzire2• 5 years ago

Personally I don't believe any naturally occurring plant, animal or fungi should be on schedule 1.

OscarCunningham• 5 years ago

The description 'natural' is debatable, since things can be bred to increase their potency.

elwell• 5 years ago

Does ricin count as natural?

freshpots2• 5 years ago

Ricin is not a plant. It is a chemical produced by the Castor Bean plant which is widely grown in gardens.

Covzire2• 5 years ago

Note I didn't say "should be completely unscheduled". Schedule 1 is extremely strict to the point of making medical research virtually impossible. We've known there are major medical benefits to many substances on schedule 1 for decades now, yet the government definition still declares them the opposite, which at the very least is a lie.

_0qft3• 5 years ago

I would only take them for therapeutic purposes. I'm already on anti depressants. I'm really not convinced mushrooms would genuinely help.

Psychiatrists are really not fan of those things, they are considered neurotoxic.

It's weird how often people talk about those drugs. They are still studying them to treat some specific things like PTSD, alcoholism... Yet here, people seem to believe it can treat other things as well.

I'm sorry but I would rather let professionals do their work. If you're into recreative drugs, fine, but don't advocate for drugs under a scientific premise and pretend it's a cure for other things. That's not how science works.

arunc2• 5 years ago

Since you mentioned anti-depressants, I would recommend listening to this podcast by Dr. Caroline Leaf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zX4DeCV31YY

Hope this helps someone.

pixel_tracing• 5 years ago

This is extremely inappropriate, some people need the medication or else will end up making bad life decisions resulting in dire consequences for them.

_0qft3• 5 years ago

She is not a physician, she had phd in psychology or other soft sciences. I have no trouble with this, but this sounds like another one of those life coachs. Ew.

KuiN• 5 years ago

Wow, so I can drop the regimen of drugs my psychiatry team have developed over the course of a decade that made me able to function despite my extremely complex mental health needs. All I have to do is train myself to think thoughts that alter the gravitational field in my brain which will change my brain's immune system and I'll no longer be affected by fake disease? I'm sure some of her many books will help me.

Actively harmful psuedo-science crap. I'm astonished to see this being peddled on Hacker News. You should be disgusted with yourself.

puchatek• 5 years ago

Neurotoxic? I would like to see a source for that claim. Psychedelics are certainly not to be underestimated but from what I have heard the actual physical harm they can do is negligible compared to e.g. what alcohol does to your body. If you never drink because of that then maybe abstaining from mushrooms is appropriate. Otherwise I'd say it's taking some minuscule effect and blowing it out of proportion.

codebolt3• 5 years ago

As someone who personally struggled with drug-induced psychosis for several years (and met many others with similar struggles), I kindly ask that you stop generalising from personal anecdote when giving advice about mental health and psychedelic drug use to others.

_0qft3• 5 years ago

A psychiatrist told me about neurotoxicity. I will trust a doctor 100 times before I trust anything online.

Otherwise I'd say it's taking some minuscule effect and blowing it out of proportion.

I don't see how psylocybin would help people with a bit of depression or other problems. I don't want to take a drug just to have some fun. I need more than that.

And no, I don't drink. Alcohol is a depressants, so I don't need that.

dr_dshiv2• 5 years ago

"let professionals do their work"

Man, you need to do some reading on the drug war. The research has been banned for so long for all the wrong reasons. The professionals aren't allowed to just do their work.

Also, beating people over the head about "That's not how science works" is what Karl Popper called Scientism. It's actually an antiscientific position, despite best intents.

pullmn• 5 years ago

Psychiatry is extremely committed to other forms of medication, which are in general not particularly effective, and also extremely dangerous in various ways.

Of course there are some exaggerated claims by proponents of psychedelics. But if you look at the history of psychiatric medicine over the last 70 years or so, it is basically disastrous.

Another difference is that whereas practitioners of both psychedelic drug therapy and talking therapies such as psychoanalysis have always also been patients of their own disciplines, there is no requirement for psychiatrists to have any experience of taking psychiatric medication. In fact it would generally be frowned upon.

cyberlab4• 5 years ago

Psychiatrists are really not fan of those things

They're usually seen as psychotomimetic[0], in that they mimic madness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotomimetic

mbesto2• 5 years ago

They are still studying them to treat some specific things like PTSD, alcoholism...

They are still only studying them to treat health issues because we had a relapse of ~30 years of non-existent research into them.

Yet here, people seem to believe it can treat other things as well.

That's because the professionals are finding that they treat other things as well:

https://imgur.com/frIFOcJ

ceceron7• 5 years ago

I won't pretend to be an expert in the matter and, therefore, I won't share any opinion whether magic mushrooms should be legal or not.

What bothers me is the way people argue about such problems.

The common argument goes like this:

---

1) alcohol is as bad (worse than?) as X

2) alcohol is legal

therefore per analogiam:

3) X should be legal.

---

I'm fine with this reasoning, but one could also reverse the argument:

---

1') X is bad as alcohol

2') X is illegal

therefore per analogiam:

3') alcohol should be illegal.

---

Both stances are consistent and depend on other views. I believe the discussion should rather focus on the role of the law in the public life. Maybe "everything should be legal", but with some age clauses / agreement of a medical doctor? Maybe the law should be replaced with other measures?

What really saddens me though is when people advertise recreational use of possibly dangerous substances. It applies to all kinds of recreational drugs. There always will be person claiming that X solves problems/takes your conscience to next level/cure COVID/whatever. In case somebody attacks their stance, saying there is no valid research on the topic (but rather other way around), they will tell you of a conspiracy in the research community/government funding/whatever. Even if there is such a conspiracy, it doesn't validate the argument.

Please don't advice people to take drugs (or drink alcohol BTW), even if they work for you.

JacobSuperslav• 5 years ago

not advising just sharing my opinion that it's super refreshing to get out of reality using LSD/shrooms once every 2-3 months. Been doing this for years and noticing much less side effects than with alcohol/cigarettes. everybody is different though.

o_p• 5 years ago

Ah but you forgot the key premise:

Alcohol cannot be illegal

maccard• 5 years ago

The problem with the reverse argument is that that cat is out of the bag now. We've tried banning alcohol in the west, and it's not gone down too well in the past.

anoonmoose• 5 years ago

Yup, the #1 reason alcohol is legal in the US is because we tried making it illegal and that just made things worse.

Nursie3• 5 years ago

1) Alcohol is actually worse than X for almost all X

2) Most people don't think alcohol is bad enough to be illegal

3) Therefore logically those same people should agree that X shouldn't be punishable with criminal sanctions, as its use is no worse than things we already tolerate.

I.E. The argument presupposes that alcohol should be legal because most people think it should be. This is often used as a form of argument because it hangs off ideas people already have about the world and asks them to think logically/consistently. "If I can have a beer and not ruin my life, and objectively X is less bad than beer, maybe my opinions on X can adjust".

If you want to talk about alcohol being a pretty evil substance, I'm not going to argue.

I think this is something that's often lost in the debate too - you don't have to wholeheartedly approve of the use of something to want to see it legalised, just acknowledge that applying criminal charges to use is both unjust and deeply unhelpful to society and individuals.

ceceron7• 5 years ago

ad 1) that is a disputable assumption, but sure

ad 2) as you've said - it's interpreted as "alcohol should be legal". Such interpretation is arguable, but still it makes sense under some views on ethics.

ad 3) this doesn't follow logically from 1) and 2). You have to add new assumption: "2.5) There exist people who believe both in 1) and 2)". Going from "something is true" -> "there are people who believe" is also an invalid reasoning, similarly to the previous: "most people believe" -> "should"

Obviously, you're right in the last paragraph, the polarization makes the debate a bit pointless. The middle ground is quite vast, in fact.

letier• 5 years ago

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_dilemma

It might be that neither is the correct answer.

ginko• 5 years ago

The problem with banning alcohol is that anyone can make it with basic household ingredients.

DennisP2• 5 years ago

The problem with banning mushrooms is that anyone can pick them off the ground.

lewispollard• 5 years ago

Maybe "everything should be legal", but with some age clauses / agreement of a medical doctor? Maybe the law should be replaced with other measures?

People often overlook that "legal" doesn't necessarily mean, for example, you can just open a shop and start selling magic mushrooms. "Legal" covers all of your above options. Alcohol is legal, but it's heavily licensed, taxed and restricted. In some countries (Scandinavian in particular), you can only buy booze from government kiosks. Similarly, DXM cough syrup is legal, but you'll find it difficult to "legally" walk into a pharmacy and buy enough for you and a friend to get high. Many prescription drugs are legal, but yeah, you need a medical doctor to approve your use of them.

The fact that certain substances are illegal and classified as dangerous and/or useless for medical purposes is another ramification regardless of your ability to go purchase X drug or item. There are "legal" substances that are dangerous (but not fun) that are widely studied, bought and used - for example, cyanide. Saying "magic mushrooms are illegal and you can't study them with science" because they're fun is, by comparison, kind of mad.

Anyway, I'm sure none of you needed pharmacies, prescriptions or off-license booze shops explaining to you, but there's nuance to the legal status of a substance beyond "it's banned" vs "you can go buy it in a shop right now" that some people can miss when you bring up the topic.

ceceron7• 5 years ago

Sure, you're perfectly right, this is a different point polarizing the discussions. There is a lot of misunderstandings around modalities (should/has to; is possible/is necessary) in common arguments:

- substance is legal = there is a free access to the substance

- you have right to protest = you can go around the city and do anything, as long you make a point

- there is freedom of speech = you can speak anything you want without consequences

adrianN2• 5 years ago

Making alcohol illegal has been tried and is generally thought to be a rather bad idea (except for Al Capone).

ceceron7• 5 years ago

It is a valid point, that should be taken into consideration in the discussions on the topic, but it doesn't validate the original argument.

The proponent of the "reversed argument" may argue, that, even if we can't ban alcohol (a real shame in their opinion), we shouldn't damage the situation any further with another evil substance. Later we may find that the new substance becomes "unbannable" as alcohol.

aklemm• 5 years ago

Yes, exactly this, and then one can extrapolate that it’s management should be focused public health and not law enforcement.

mucholove• 5 years ago

Great sentence!!!

I believe the discussion should rather focus on the role of the law in the public life

This is exactly my concern. This flies over most people’s head.

During the Barret confirmation process I became very interested in the Supreme Court and was surprised to find that I much preffered Justice Scalia’s approach to the the law. To the point where I came to respect a decision I previously thought abhorrent: Citizens United.

Citizens United was the right decision in light of how the legislature wrote the law. The law should have approached that topic in a constitutional manner.

The people really need to get their act together and actually see what Congress is doing. Don’t let the media do the “work” for you. Its not that the news is fake—its that they dont give you the news. To the point of not publishing the texts produced by the governement. The texts are public and can be understood. Unfortunately they are obfuscated by the media which wont list it as a source.

pnut• 5 years ago

Every power centre in America will happily point the finger somewhere else while the entire system repeatedly fights the same battles, one generation after the next.

This dissipates the political power and attention of the individual, leaving the naked pursuit of profit unmolested.

betterunix2• 5 years ago

The point of that line of reasoning is not that drugs should all be legal; rather, it is that the current laws are not based on health (and the assumption is that it should be). Drugs that pose some of the most serious health risks, alcohol and tobacco, are legal and can be purchased without consulting a doctor, even by people who are killing themselves with their habit. Drugs that pose less of a health risk like marijuana or psychedelic mushrooms are completely banned. Moreover, illegal drugs, like illegal alcohol, have unknown doses and may have unknown impurities, or may even be a different drug than what the seller claimed.

Anyone who knows the history of the war on drugs knows that public health is a cover story. The first drug laws in the USA were bans on cocaine and heroin, and the arguments presented to Congress and the general public were overtly racist. It was said that cocaine turned black men into murderous demons who could not be stopped even after being shot in the heart. Heroin, besides being made by a German company, was also said to be popular among Asian immigrants who were bringing their awful habits here. Then marijuana was banned, because, according to the testimony given to Congress, it fueled jazz music and caused white women to want to have sex with black men, and Mexicans were using it to corrupt the white youth. Drug enforcement has always disproportionately targeted black people.

ceceron7• 5 years ago

Sure. It makes sense, law should be protecting public health - it is a fair assumption. Now, there is a disagreement on the methods, whether making drugs more accessible would have a positive impact on the public health. A common basic argument just going per analogiam with alcohol doesn't have any sense in this context. It's a bit like a child's argument: "other children can binge youtube, why can't I, mommy?". Other arguments, like the lack of quality control in the illegal market, are different - they can't be reversed in such a childish manner and should be taken seriously.

PS Your point of view is very US-centric, I assure you the arguments against drugs in country I live might have been invalid, but definitely not racist.

erispoe• 5 years ago

The danger (both to the consumer and to others) of magic mushrooms is extremely low, much much lower than alcohol.

dreen• 5 years ago

I'm in favour of removing restrictions. Cigarettes are not illegal but their usage has been declining very sharply, especially after a country banned smoking in bars. Many people certainly quit but I think its that a lot less people get into them in the first place, despite the fact they never lost their cool factor. The people made a conscious choice, and no banning of anything was necessary.

SyzygistSix2• 5 years ago

Cigarettes definitely did lose their cool factor.

mettamage• 5 years ago

From a purely idealistic point of view, I'd think the following -- note: the world isn't idealistic but too complicated for me to understand. The first argument is a pro free market argument, the second argument is a pro regulated market argument.

So pure right wing capitalists should probably tend to be pro drugs and pro weapons and pro selling everything (maybe a bit more extreme right, I'm bad with political terms). Left wing socialists should be pro regulation and scrutinize weapons and drugs and how it should be sold.

My stance: regulate it. Make sure people can take it, but have a healthcare worker supervise it. And definitely open it up for research, it doesn't make any sense that some drugs are illegal to research. All kinds of dangerous things can be scrutinized under research, yet when it's drugs then somehow it's not possible? It doesn't make sense.

Note: where I'm from socialism means an amazing welfare state like a Scandinavian country.

Note 2: I'm bad with political labels, if I happened to have offended you, I'm sorry.

mbesto2• 5 years ago

What really saddens me though is when people advertise recreational use of possibly dangerous substances.

Anything done recreationally that puts someone in harm saddens me. I don't tell friends to go skiing down a black diamond unless they are comfortable down a bunny hill first. The same goes for drugs, especially those that have legitimate health benefits and enjoyment/entertainment purposes.

My advice is: do your research, understand dosing, and have a support network of people around you that are more experienced. That goes for any drug - including alcohol.

octocop• 5 years ago

Psychedelics should be ingested by people who search for it. It should not be possible to take it accidentally.

renewiltord• 5 years ago

We do forget that medicine is a 20th century science. Even for most of the 1900s, doctors were performing wholly unscientific and unethical things.

They still barely know anything. Medical science with proper epistemology is young, perhaps younger than the advent of modern computer science.

So there's lots of stuff that's just grandfathered. And because very little modern medicine has the ambition to try real novelty, we never retest the grandfathered taboos.

RugnirViking• 5 years ago

debateably, doctors still perform unscientific and unethic things to this day. See: electroshock therapy (basically our new form of lobotomy). Deliberately causing brain damage to "fix" mental illness, with almost certain loss of memory, and ability to form new memories.

Or the creeping use of of chiropractors for things other than back pain, despite evidence of it's potential for harm.

Or mandatory insertion of IUDs in china to control the birth rate. I am sure other therapies too, in time will be found to be extremely poor, especially in psychology and psychotherapy, where trials are extremely complicated , and common medicines have awful issues and <50% effecacy (see: antidepressants having permanent side effects even after cessation of treatment)

Metacelsus• 5 years ago

As I understand it, electroshock therapy is never performed without consent and has special restrictions to make absolutely sure of this. Patients are anesthetized during the procedure to avoid pain.

Yes it has side effects, but it is a last resort for treatment of severe depression that would otherwise ruin the patient's life.

DataGata• 5 years ago

I don't see why you're lumping in IUDs with electroshock therapy and chiropractors? Sure, the CCP is awful and has awful policies, but IUDs are strong indicators of a healthy healthcare system elsewhere.

joquarky• 5 years ago

Or the creeping use of of chiropractors for things other than back pain, despite evidence of it's potential for harm.

Any grey market solutions will become more ubiquitous as standard health care costs continue to skyrocket. I would expect to see more of this.

gnzoidberg• 5 years ago

Soo... where do I get some?

cyberlab4• 5 years ago

Magic Mushrooms were legal in Ireland[0] for a brief stint, then someone jumped over a balcony and died from the fall after taking them, presumably after experiencing a really bad trip. It could happen again in DC. Someone just gets the set and setting wrong and decides they can't take the mental turmoil and ends their life.

[0] https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/how-tragedy-led-...

__s3• 5 years ago

While we're at it can we ban alcohol on account of one person having gotten into a deadly car accident under the influence?

If we're keeping this to balcony incidents, I had to be pulled from being half way over a 16th floor balcony a decade ago after making some drunk rant I hardly remember

Let's also ban chess on account of Urii Eliseev

Maybe we should just ban balconies

CapmCrackaWaka• 5 years ago

Alcohol is a bad example to compare vices too. It is definitely a very dangerous substance, nobody argues that, but it is so ingrained in many countries cultures that outlawing it would be political suicide. In fact, it was already attempted in America, we saw how that went.

Prohibition didn't fail because alcohol is actually a 'safe' substance, it failed because it is addictive and people wanted it back. Allowing other substances to gain this status should be done with _extreme_ consideration.

Disclaimer: I think psychedelic's do have valid medicinal uses, but I have also had a very bad mushroom trip before, I know what they can do to your brain. My personality was forever changed.

monkeynotes2• 5 years ago

I am sure there have been murders from drinking alcohol but I doubt anyone has slayed their own father whom they love dearly whilst drunk. This story is just so sad, breaks my heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGVsJUW3WfY

I advocate supervised medical mushroom usage, but I really could never support home recreational use. I've taken a bunch of LSD and mushrooms in my youth and they have had lasting negative effects on me so I am speaking from experience too.

TheCoelacanth• 5 years ago

Just wait until you hear about how many people die from taking entirely legal alcohol or from driving entirely legal cars.

cyberlab4• 5 years ago

Yes but blanket legalization of mushrooms means mishaps would occur at the same rate of alcohol related mishaps, when the shroom drug picks up steam and everyone and their aunt tries it, and continues to use it - mass casualties would occur if the drug became as popular as alcohol. And the shroom related mishaps would be much more weird and nuanced than alcohol-related deaths, in that the shroom-user typically wants to commit suicide instead of being subjected to a (DUI) head-on car collision, and the former (suicide) is a lot more harder to process by relatives of the dead person. At least with alcohol you are numbed, let's give alcohol at least one positive review.

eli4• 5 years ago

I support the move but the headline is kind of misleading. The ballot initiative was limited to directing the police chief to make these crimes the "lowest priority" but they are still just as illegal as before and carry the same penalties. I'm not even sure this directive is binding. As the mayor (who did not particularly support the measure) pointed out, it's not like this was a high priority to begin with.

A proper decriminalization or perhaps even legalization would have passed, but DC citizens lack the same rights over their own local laws that any other American living in a state would enjoy. DC deserves statehood.

fennecfoxen2• 5 years ago

DC deserves statehood.

The state is named Maryland; it's called "retrocession." It already happened before, with the Virginia side of DC.

What? This is no good? Well, some people prefer the naked power-grab version, I suppose.

eli4• 5 years ago

Well, among other problems with that idea: neither DC nor Maryland wants it and there is no mechanism to force Maryland to alter its borders against its will.

It is not a power grab to give the citizens of DC the same rights as other Americans, it is correcting an injustice. If your concern is about DC then having too much power, I'd encourage you to look at the actual plan which preserves a core federal district that includes Congress and the Mall.

mensetmanusman2• 5 years ago

The DC area, in and around Maryland, dominates the US wealthiest districts rankings, I wonder what giving them more power will do...

eli4• 5 years ago

The "DC area" that is already in Maryland... will be unaffected. The "DC area" residents who reside in DC proper will have Congressional representation and the freedom to spend their own local tax dollars as they please.

Is there something about wealth that is disqualifying from full participation in American democracy? Do we apply that standard elsewhere? Like any other city, there are both rich and very poor neighborhoods. Something like 1 in 5 DC residents lives in poverty.

bamboozled• 5 years ago

Why on earth were mushrooms ever made illegal in the first place?

gverrilla• 5 years ago

Who lobbied for this? Churches? I heard there's a lot of booming psychedelic churches on US.

Fjolsvith• 5 years ago

DC is so screwed.

https://theamericanstatesassembly.net/notice

Magic Mushrooms Are Decriminalized in DC as of Today

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