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.
> 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!
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.
There was a whole fad of anti-marketing marketing for a while. Burt's Bees pushed that hard for a long time (and they are actually VERY corporate...there is a docu basically all about how the actual Burt got screwed in the whole deal)
Very corporate? Because they want to...make money, like companies are supposed to? Burt sold his rights to the product, including the usage of his name. As the documentary details, the fact that the company elected to basically keep him around out of good-will (is that how they screwed him?) doesn’t serve your point at all.
Making money is always just one of many motivations for company founders, company operators and company employees. Reducing the purpose of a company to a single motivation is unhealthy for all involved.
Perhaps you didn’t read my comment: Burt’s Bees, the company, kept Burt around even when they didn’t have to. The OP argued that it was about the single motivation of money, and I offered up the evidence that it clearly wasn’t all about money, considering they then employed and recognized Burt for his contribution to the product. You’re rebuttal is against the wrong person.
I liked when they were paper and easy to remove. It reads like a rant from an mentally unstable religious nut, and not of the religious brands I tend to like. Love the product but prefer to pass on the monotheism. But still, an all around good company.
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.
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.
Quite the opposite! At least the one I use regularly, tea tree & hemp oil, has a moisturizing quality and leaves my hair (if it's not shaved) and my beard feeling healthier. I also only wash hair/beard twice a week (any product is harmful to hair on a daily basis).
Water is okay depending on your water and your hair.
I keep my hair clean by keeping it tidy, and with routine maintenance. But daily cleaning with anything soapy cleans oils that naturally protect it.
I don’t want to presume sex or gender identity but this is pretty general knowledge among women and fem identified people. Many men and masculine identifying people wash especially their hair too much. If you’re the latter, I encourage you to talk to people you trust among the former about hair care.
I’ll also say, being male presenting, this applies to body hair too. I also used to shower once to twice daily. I always felt like I was keeping clean but just barely.
I actually have better scent and skin if I shower every three to four days.
It sounds ridiculous, but your body is a biome, not just inside. If you nuke it you’re just managing chemicals on meat.
I shower daily, but only use soap on my ass. Dandruff shampoo once a week or so on my hair and that’s it. The women in my life think I smell just fine. Most of us probably don’t need all the soap we use.
Does anyone know of any testimonials of this from people of Mediterranean descent? My hair gets very, noticeably, oily if I don't shampoo every single day. It's kind of gross.
I know many people who don't shampoo every day, but they're all of different European backgrounds: English, Irish, German, etc.
Do you only use shampoo, and what kind? You should really use a mild shampoo and then a high quality conditioner. My hair used to be incredibly oily all the time when I used shampoo or shampoo+conditioner combo, even if I showered every day. Now it takes around 3 days to get greasy and I shower every few days. My skin is much more balanced and healthier (less acne, more even sheen, no dryness issues). I also do the equivalent of conditioner for my body- I use cetaphil on any part that I notice routinely gets dry (the bottoms of my feet, elbows, face, knees, etc.) since I started doing all this, my elbows went from being dry and ashy and scaly to looking just like the rest of my skin. I do use deodorant every day and have a bidet, but I don’t have any scent issues as far as I’m aware (I do ask others to check me, and days where I don’t use deodorant, I can smell myself, so I don’t think it’s a false bias.)
So does mine, and my skin too. My ancestry is half Scots-Irish Borderer and a quarter each Austrian and Italian, of which the latter seems strongly expressed in my integument; for example, despite half my family being very fair, my skin has an olive undertone, and I tan easily and well.
More to the immediate point, I likewise have rather oily skin and hair, to the point where if I don't shower daily with ample soap and shampoo, I start leaving smears on anything I touch. I've tried the experiment of going without soap a few days, to see if the oiliness was in compensation, and it wasn't; it's just that I either wash daily or turn into a greaseball, and always have done.
(I'm also one of those people whose skin oil gradually dissolves ABS plastic with regular contact. Of the last ABS set I used, to the tune of ~10M keystrokes, before switching to PBT caps, the spacebar had enough material removed to put a distinct curve in its lower edge where my thumbs would strike. Too, I now belatedly wish I'd put a protector on the Wacom tablet that doubles as a touchpad for my work machine. Not sure if the plastic-melting thing is related, but it seems fairly uncommon and so worth mention in this context.)
I’m a mix (maternal grandfather was Lebanese/Greek, rest of my family various European) and also had fairly oily hair. It also didn’t get less oily overnight when I started washing less, it took maybe a few months and yeah it felt gross. For what it’s worth.
Not the same guy, but I'm in the same boat. If I wash my hair every day, it gets insanely dry. I just keep most of it out of the water on the days I don't wash it. Some if it still gets wet, that's ok.
Interesting! As I recall, that was the same one that motivated my advice above. Maybe something about the tea tree oil, I thought, but I was strongly disinclined to further experiment.
It’s entirely possible we just have very different skin/hair/body chemistry and react very differently to it! Let this be a disclaimer to anyone reading the thread above: it might affect you differently!
I used Dr. Bronner's as a shampoo for about ten years. No noticeable dry hair problems. It doesn't feel exactly the same as using a commercial shampoo with lots of softeners, etc.
I said I wasn't saying, but since you seem to really want to know, it made the skin turn bright red and then peel for most of a week. Like the last stage of a bad sunburn, only without the itching, which at least was something of a mercy. Even so, it put me off the stuff in a way that's lasted ever since.
Neither did I anywhere else, and you'd think I would have, around my face or ears at least.
If I'm to be entirely honest, it was a little horrifying, especially at first. That probably accounts for my having written off the entire product line, despite being reasonably confident that it was solely the tea tree oil in that one variety at fault. The regular kind never gave me any trouble, but I couldn't really look it in the face again after that, you know?
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.
I am unsure if this is the incident that they are referring to, however a teenager died in 2007 after jumping off a bridge while under influence[0]. As per the article, that was the catalyst for getting hallucinogenic mushrooms banned.
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.
“Safe use” being the important term. It refers to the lack of any lethal or physically damaging effects, as proven by numerous studies. No one has ever died from psilocybin.
Heroin is not at all safe, as you are aware. It is perfectly capable of killing.
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.
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.
How noble, selfless, righteous and pure, for the political party which has just taken power with the narrowest of margins to suddenly take interest in "correcting an injustice" in a manner that secures additional power! Puerto Rico statehood will certainly be next; then, perhaps we can demand justice for cities like, say, Austin, on the premise that their citizens' representation is diluted by sharing senators with the rest of Texas.
How selfish and ignoble is it to oppose DC rights merely because they might benefit a political party you oppose?
There is nothing suspicious about the timing. DC has been fighting for statehood in earnest since the 1800s. There was a huge push in the 60s culminating in the 23rd Amendment, which for the first time allowed DC residents to vote for President. This was considered a matter of fairness and was broadly supported by both parties.
The slippery slope argument about Austin is ridiculous.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I disagree that the alcohol comparison is not useful. I think many people in the US take lots of their social world as axiomatic and correct and natural. Two such "axioms" are the legality of alcohol and the illegality of "other drugs." The comparison with alcohol helps those who have not considered drug laws in good faith break out of their stupor and realize the "axioms" are created socially. The hope is that they will realize that the supposedly natural distinction between alcohol and other drugs is illusory.
> 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.
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
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.
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.
Point 1 is not all that disputable nor is it an assumption. The scientific studies on the matter tend to support alcohol being one of the worse drugs we know about, in terms of harm to the individual, addiction potential and harm to society. It is exceeded by heroin, cocaine and tobacco, but little else (maybe meth I guess).
Point 2 is not an interpretation - it's again a fact, most people (over half) in western societies like the US and UK drink alcohol, a proportion which rises if we just look at the adult population. I'm not making the argument that alcohol should be legal, I'm saying that most people already think that.
I agree here, if you want to be pedantic, that their consumption does not prove that, only implies it, but there is also likely a proportion of non-drinkers who think it should be legal. So again - I'm not making any claims about whether alcohol should be legal, I am making claims about the likely views of your interlocutor in a debate about legalisation.
Point 3 is simply stating that given point 1 is true (which it is, empirically, to the best of our current knowledge) and you are talking to someone in group 2 (which you probably are), then if they want to be self-consistent they ought to examine any negative views on legalisation.
This is an explanation of why an argument along the lines of "booze is legal" is often made and may be effective. NOT an attempt at a formal proof for why any particular drugs should be legal in isolation or a justification of alcohol's status. As such I'm afraid I find your response overly nit-picky.
A perfectly valid response to the argument is "But I don't necessarily agree that alcohol should be legal", which then widens the terms of the debate.
Sorry for sounding nit-picky, I didn't want to undermine your argument as I agree with you.
The only problem I find is that, even if 1) and 2) are true, and you are talking to someone in group 2), it doesn't entail that the person believes that "1) is true". They still may be perfectly self-consistent by rejecting 1).
Talking just from my experience (anecdotal evidence, I know) most people from the group 2) would reject 1). People don't know the scientific studies or do not trust them enough to be convinced.
That's fair enough, and I agree, people can be very reluctant on that front.
It goes against a lot of conditioning that drugs are just plain bad, and it appears to contradict their lived experience in which they don't think they've really had an issue with alcohol so it must be OK. Not like those other things where people get addicted and get into all sorts of trouble. It's just a beer. Never mind aunt Theresa who died falling down the stairs, drunk as a skunk, at the age of 40 because her cirrhotic liver just burst like an overripe melon when she hit the bottom step. Or your friend's mum who they're not on speaking terms with because she put her drinking habit ahead of feeding her kids when she was young. If anything that just adds to the conviction that drugs must be so much worse, because drugs are bad, and this is 'just' a beer.
Personally I have a complex relationship with alcohol. I brew at home but I'm not blind to the damage it's done to me (thankfully just some pretty bad hangovers and behaving like an arse from time to time, well, and the belly) or to others.
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.
By saying "we shouldn't damage the situation further," you're assuming that the harm of allowing the substance is worse than the harm of prohibiting it. With alcohol, we experimented and found that the harm of prohibiting it was worse than the harm of allowing it.
Therefore it's reasonable hypothesis that by outlawing a less harmful substance, we're causing more harm right now than we'd cause by allowing it. We don't know that for sure until we try the experiment, but it seems like a rational thing to try.
It kinda does, because the nature of the ban is not any different, and neither are the social consequences. Prohibition failed not because consuming alcohol is actually healthy, but because the social costs of maintaining a meaningful ban far exceeded any advantages from reduced consumption. The same, then, applies to any drug that is not any more harmful.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No need for another solvent; simply making a tea with hot water does the trick. Not boiling hot though, as it'll degrade the active components to some extent. Aim for 70 degrC before adding the ground material.
Alcohol (everclear) is a good long term storage medium for mushrooms. Tea (as suggested by another poster) works alright but loses some potency and doesn't store well.
One thing to be aware of is that you need a decent amount of everclear to perform the extraction, but once you've gotten everything out, you're going to want to reduce the alcohol by evaporating some of it so that you don't need to take several shots to get a good dose.
Also, boiling isn't a problem for mushrooms, psilocybin is heat tolerant to that level. Water, on the other hand, degrades psilocybin fairly quickly.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed with the other commenter - your dosage recommendations are highly specific, but we don't know your context or what you're taking.
I'm in Australia and 5g of dried mushrooms does not leave you pleasantly couchlocked, as you say. On 5g, you will have a massive, epic trip.
I have taken shrooms three times. My biggest dose was 3.5g. This was a transformative experience with ego dissolution and a thorough, extended series of interactions with my sub-consciousness and all of its complexity.
My context was dried, fresh cubensis of varied strains, and some years of enjoying them. Yes I'm talking insane doeses for some people, but that wasn't "high" doses for me; and i've never had "visuals" or many of the other effects that other get from psilocybin.
I think my biggest single does was about the equivalent of 4oz dried; great trip but the hangover was way too long.
It really depends on the species. For most mushrooms I wouldn't go beyond 5g. Suggesting 12 or even 24g to me sounds like suggesting to drink 12 or 24 bottles of wine at the same time (if I think of the type of mushrooms I often took. For truffles maybe that's ok).
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I don't think making drugs illegal has really made their availability difficult, but I went to a highschool where drugs were pretty readily available if that's what someone was looking for. So to me it looks like tax income & supply chain regulation being left on the table
Living in Canada legalizing Cannabis has indeed introduced more people to using it. I think you underestimate the stigma attached to using illicit substances, and the barrier this places on regular folk.
> By 2019, more than 5.1 million people nationally, or 16.8% of Canadians aged 15 or older, reported using cannabis in the three months before surveying (Table 1). This was higher than the 14.9% (4.5 million) reporting use, on average, in 2018 (before legalization).
What should be illegal (or at least require treatment) is the behavior after taking drugs. Being drunk in your own home alone is one thing; getting behind the wheel of a car and driving is different. People have always wanted to hammer their brain in some way since people existed; legislation can't change that. If you can't be responsible taking it and (potentially) hurt others then you have to pay the price. Taxing the sale of drugs would bring in quite a bit of money as well. Even treating pot the same as cigarettes/alcohol (which are way more dangerous) would likely cause a lot less experimentation with more dangerous stuff.
Personally I have no interest in messing up my brain taking anything, I rarely drink more than a single beer and even that is rare, much less anything else.
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.
Alcohol has played a role in plenty of similar accidents. Here's one I just read about yesterday, in which the writer William Burroughs shot his partner, Joan Vollmer, in the head (!) as part of a William Tell reenactment: https://www.openculture.com/2018/07/joan-vollmer-wife-willia...
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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).
Fair. Just a bad legal take. Which other people might interpret as advice.
> Second, the federal government is not bound by the linked document
Like this. This is not true. You might believe it, you might be acting in good faith, but it’s false. I know there are exceptions, but the DOJ and the federal law enforcement apparatus in general is bound by its own policy, and most (not all) prosecutors take that seriously. They take it so seriously that the linked memo remained in effect even through highly politicized ousting of career officials to install loyal lackeys.
Are there exceptions? Absolutely. Are they abusive? Often, when they occur. Are they neutral “might happen to rando people who just got permission to have a little trip and aren’t upsetting anyone who might want to prosecute them maliciously”? Very probably not.
It does a disservice to people who are targeted by prosecutorial abuse to frame it this way. And it does a disservice to the people who are far more likely to be targeted by states than the federal government to muddy those waters.
Your entire comment seems to be advising people about the law and their rights or lack of them. Then you ask repeatedly "What did I advise anyone to do?" as if nothing counts as "legal advice" but "advising someone to do something". IANAL but to me, and it seems others, when you get legal advice it often takes the form of information about the law, your rights or lack of them. Not just advising someone to do something. I'm not sure why this is hard to understand. Maybe you are using a very narrow technical definition of "legal advice"..uh, like a lawyer might, I suppose.
p.s. [checks who you are] ohh it's You! hehe. I read your article about non-rube email! (And some of your other writing) I thought it was impressive, but seemed super-complex, too much for...non-experts like me. Have you thought about setting that system up for people, as a business? I guess so.
Would that not be a front and over exertion of states rights? The state said the federal government is overreaching. If they ignore them, would that not lead to the state to fight against the federal government in court?
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".
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)
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.
You don't need to smoke weed to commit a federal crime - you commit three federal crimes just walking down the street. It's impossible to not be constantly committing them. So, really, I wouldn't worry about it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
to be fair issues/petitioned amendments are very much money pays. It's pretty expensive to get signatures to get on ballot. Lots of states have rules like getting _% in each local HD or whatever.
And then the money spent on persuasion.
Uber recently in CA comes to mind.
Kind of beautiful in its blunt honesty; a legal method for corporations having a good chance of changing the law specifically how they want without having to deal with those pesky lawmakers.
Of course citizens can do it too! We got decriminalized mushrooms here in denver because of it!
The CA proposition system is bad, but I think it's because it makes us vote for things we don't understand. All kinds of interest groups regularly get on there, not just the plutocratic/corporate ones, but it's usually to do bad things.
The worst one is Prop 13 but everyone really did benefit at the time - of course it ruined the state for anyone who hadn't been born or moved there yet.
And the reason there's a really confusing prop about dialysis every election is that a labor union is putting them all on the ballot literally to troll the dialysis companies they're trying to unionize. Nobody actually wants them.
It does seem to work when representatives would be too embarrassed to vote for something, so that's why states are using it to legalize drugs.
The language has to be approved by a committee so it's supposed to be 'fair' and clear.
But I know campaigns poll it before they submit. The first sentence is really important. Especially in Colorado at least before we're tilting blue it was impossible to pass tax increases (we have TABOR which generally in most cases throws new tax measures to the citizens) so they always focused on for instance shall _ fund education by increasing __ by .1% etc
That's how we passed MJ legalization! I worked on that campaign did digital ads. We focused on medical stories, showing a young girl (I think seizures). And Denver just decriminalized mushrooms. Very exciting.
But the opposite can be true unfortunately. Even in CA prop 8 is a sad example of group think discrimination. A danger of majoritarian Democracy.
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.
Whiteness is far, far from the amount of reflected sunlight. It's about the curl of your hair, the shape of your face, the accent, and a host of other clues.
There's no sharp line. It's however people choose to define you. If they identify you as non-white, you get treated as non-white. Which means automatic negative judgments that wouldn't apply if they identified you as white.
That doesn't mean whiteness by itself gets you into every corridor of power. But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all. It's a permanent set of bricks in your briefcase, on top of all the other ones that affect everybody.
That's not whiteness, but culture fit. To get into important clubs in say China, one needs to look like them, speak like them, have common background. Same here.
The problem with blacks in America is that they don't want to change. Many in fact do the opposite, they fight the whites' culture, e.g. studying too much in school is "acting white". Some even try to bend the majority, I mean these attempts to shame whites, tell them to be "less white".
> But non-whiteness excludes you from a lot of places, or gets you treated with suspicion when you're allowed to be there at all.
Could you tell us about some of these places? I keep hearing there are such places but I never really get any concrete examples. Certainly no large business, nor any government entity, still qualifies for this. I want to know what White-exclusive operations there are that are still holding out.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Your psychosis has most probably nothing to do with neurotoxicity of magic mushrooms, unless you took the 'other' mushrooms which are poisonous like Amanita muscaria. Also you didn't mention which substance(s) you drugged yourself to get there, how pure and strong they were (something legality helps greatly with).
Overall, all pros and cons taken, there is no contest - legalization is the only correct thing to, especially given how past war on drugs panned out. Nobody advocates its the miracle cure, nobody says you should overdose on them 7x a week, or that you should even take them for that matter. Just like nobody advocates to drink themselves to death just because as an adult you can go and buy 10 liters of vodka or absinthe at once.
There is no protection against stupidity, just a hope for cure in form of education and knowledge.
You're correct that I didn't just drug myself with mushrooms, but they certainly didn't help. Marijuana was the main cause. And I likely would have stopped myself sooner if it wasn't for ignorant people telling me I couldn't and wouldn't get seriously ill from taking these substances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This is extremely inappropriate, some people need the medication or else will end up making bad life decisions resulting in dire consequences for them.
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah I'm sure dispensary licensing, county-level prohibitions, as well as growers licensing is all sorts of messed up. Every state seems to be caught in some kind of greedy protectionist cronyism in that regard, and this won't be fixed unless the federal government legalizes.
States are also not equipped to have an FDA level of review to create studies.
But outside of the west-coast, a lot of states seem to have less-blanked recreational legalization, like they legalize some molecular compounds while prohibiting others and certain strains.
Would definitely like to see standardization and just simply treating this stuff as any drug that comes with normal disclaimers and lists of side effects. I just hate all the anecdotes right now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
> 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.