Study indicates mushrooms may be the safest recreational drug
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Next day (eg. soon) arrives at the conclusion that he's wasting his life working for an investment bank, quits his high-paying programmer job, invests most of his savings into bitcoin and starts working on a bitcoin-related application (I won't name it, because this is a private story), decides it's his mission in life. This was 4 years ago.
At today's exchange rate, his BTC are worth a couple of million and the app is currently in beta.
Now of course this is a good story, because a guy took mushrooms and is now a millionaire, but I suspect that the story could just as likely gone south (together with BTC's price) so then his actions could have been interpreted as quite reckless - giving up a good job and investing in 'speculative tech'.
Psychedelics are quite safe physically and even psychologically - however, the consequences of the decisions taken after a psychedelic 'enlightenment' experience should also be taken into account.
In other words, know that your life might change dramatically after a powerful trip - and that includes relationships, career, education choices and so on.
With that said, I still think the revelations themselves are worth it and the more people have them, the better the world will be as a whole.
Typical story:
"Took magic mushroom, realized futility of my life's direction.
Took life savings, bought 1600 bitcoins at $250/BTC.
Invested all BTC in more magic mushrooms.
Next step...contemplating writing an 'Ask HN' for advice, but unsure where I left my house."
It's possible that it has positive mental consequences with some regularity. My impression is that this might be true. Some reasons for this may be it's culture of use, perception of the drug, and most importantly its biological effects. Most psychedelics alter the serotonin receptor system(Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia), and are culturally, and more recently medically, associated with "higher consciousness" (Guardian).
At the risk of highly simplifying complex mental/neurological interactions, I think one of the things mushrooms provide is perspective as a result of examining everything from an altered mental state.
Having experimented with small to moderately high doses, my hypotheses as to what my personal version of the altered mental's state's characteristics are are:
*some effect on attention and mental effort that unify attention to an abstract focus and allow extended mental effort.
*maybe it makes every thought feel very profound.
*maybe it allows us to emotionally react to simulated outcomes which can make long term thinking more statistically accurate.
*introduces some new mental illusions.
*various effects on the whole perception black box. The same one that stitches, both eyeball inputs together, ignores your nose, and removes blurry eye images,etc.
*makes mental associations more observable
Hopefully people do studies. I'd volunteer for low-to-none toxicity drugs like mushrooms.
Citations:
(Kahneman): "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-a...
(Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug
(Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-...
there are certain contemplative disciplines that can lead to similar epiphanies of a psychedelic experience, but "taking the time to think long and hard" is not really one of the method's I'm familiar with. meditation is not "thinking long and hard".
I'm assuming that thinking hard about my life led to additional subconscious thinking which led to these realizations, just like any other eureka moment. It seems the wheels did churn out something behind the scenes, they just had to be prompted to do so.
The decision to ingest mushrooms isn't a matter of psychological need (as it sometimes is with alcohol or amphetamines), and it's very rarely made out of impulse in a social setting (e.g. ecstasy). It is typically a deliberate choice with the expectation of having a psychedelic experience - complete with the understanding that it might be a bad trip. You do as much prep work as you can beforehand to make sure it's comfortable.
Taking care and preparing for the high isn't really baked into the culture of other drugs in the same way.
I've definitely felt pressured into taking mushrooms. It's a very social thing to do. You need a "sitter" who stays sober which means it makes the most sense to do in groups.
I also have known many disturbed people who ingest mushrooms frequently to escape their lives.
Your mileage may vary! But this is exactly my point: when a group of you get together to take mushrooms, you recognize the need to have someone sober around to take care of everyone else and make sure they're safe.
For comparison, let's look at alcohol - you're very lucky if you can find someone willing to be the designated driver, let alone a group where emphasis is placed on keeping each other safe. There's even a level of taboo around slowing down those who are drinking too much.
It doesn't surprise me how many people are hospitalized for alcohol overdose or related accidents. The culture is very different.
Taking care of each other is steeped into the culture, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's why we see a far lower rate of hospitalization.
Some people find the presence of a dedicated mental-health-evaluator quite distressing and distracting re: deep introspection
This was a study on the perception of safety of drugs by unqualified users. The people who went to the ER because of cannabis would have gone for shrooms too, they just perceive it as more dangerous and don't take it.
Of course one could get into trouble by guzzling high-potency tea, but the same could be said for caffeinated tea or alcohol.
The metric here is "decided to go to the hospital". So the "basic rules" are not really controlled for. If folks who take shrooms know their potential, they might plan their trip better.
I suppose the critical inputs might be something like "sum of [actual toxic effects of drug times ease of overdose, effects of drug w/symptoms that match actual illness]". If the actual toxicity dominates the reported hospital visits, shrooms should win, right?
> “Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”
Edit: I've read studies that found psychological benefits from a single use of LSD, six months later. Anyone able to comment on whether or not this is true for mushrooms?
The entire point is to surrender and let go of control. So if you are a person who lives in a paradigm where emotions are things that need to be controlled, psychedelic are going to be a stern teacher for your ego.
I'd recommend folks starting with something like Holotropic Breathwork and learning to surrender to your felt experience without trying to manage or control it.
I understand that the risk of deadly contamination also exists with non-hallucinogenic store-bought mushrooms, however, there is a world of difference between trusting a regulated business with your potentially deadly food and trusting a criminal drug gang.
I wonder how much the purported "safety" of mushrooms are just because they are rarely used. This survey finds that meth and synthetic cannabis are the most dangerous drugs,and maybe that's more a result of the fact that they are just so widespread than actual danger.
Also, looking at medical treatment alone might be misleading without looking at severity of the condition. Contaminated mushrooms can easily result in death.
Also, I wonder if they even included contaminated mushrooms in the study of emergency room visits. The article uses the vague sentence:
>“Death from toxicity is almost unheard of with poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.”
This makes me wonder if the study choose not to consider emergency room visits as a result of contaminated mushrooms.
Sure uncontaminated mushrooms are relatively safe, but given how easily they can become contaminated and deadly, I would question their reputation as a "safe drug."
In general, magic mushrooms are either cultivated indoors by someone in a terrarium and keeping the environment just right. To even grow the mushrooms (which are fairly weak compared to most other fungi and bacteria) you actually need to start by sterilizing the substrate, usually by boiling, then you inoculate with a sterile needle the spores. Overall, this is pretty safe because pretty much any kind of contamination, the fungi won't fruit (you eat the fruiting bodies), so there's just not really any mushrooms to give you.
The other way is of course to go mushroom hunting. This is a lot more dangerous, because there are mushrooms that are poisonous that will straight up kill you. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes, especially if you don't know what you're looking for.
One last thing is your body already kind of knows they are a toxin. Many people feel ill or sick to their stomach after ingesting them, and some will throw up. In terms of drug safety, eating things is probably one of the safest, because your body is always ready to expel bad food. The least safe of course is probably straight injection, and smoking isn't too great for you either.
I won't say they're safe, but what really is in this world?
This is no more true of psilocybes than it is of shitakes.
I'm more into meditation these days tho.
PEDs not included in the study.