Magic Mushrooms Are Decriminalized in DC as of Today
washingtonian.com
washingtonian.com
> 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.
Wait, really? I shower twice a day... is water fine? How do you keep your hair clean?
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 know many people who don't shampoo every day, but they're all of different European backgrounds: English, Irish, German, etc.
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.)
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?
e.g.
https://www.insider.com/army-vet-with-ptsd-magic-mushrooms-p...
https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/johns-hopkins-sci...
https://www.drbronner.com/about/ourselves/the-dr-bronners-st...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/02/29/david-bronner-...
He might be a wealthy executive, but, you're going to have an extraordinarily hard time convincing me that he's anything but the exact opposite of the caricature of a "wealthy executive"
Dr. Bronner’s is an amazing company with an amazing product.
They also source some of their oil from a small fair trade olive producing cooperative in palestine[1] which I was fortunate enough to visit in 2019. The people there couldn't say enough about how Dr Bronners had saved their coop and the Palestinian olive industry. Amazing people all around and the smells of a olive oil factory producing fresh olive oil are burned into my brain now!
[1] https://www.drbronner.com/all-one-blog/2017/05/growing-hope-...
IF CAP CLOGS, POKE IT! OKAY!!
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)
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.
What I actually wanted to say is, that MMs are not allowed for sale any more in Amsterdam.
Thinking again of Y2K, I would suggest to not allow them to be sold to drunk customers.
0: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dutch-mushroom-idUSTRE4AR...
Imagine the outrage if alcohol caused the death of a single person... Oh, wait.
In my high school someone literally did get drunk and die from jumping off a bridge. Astonishingly Australia didn't ban beer after that.
Should we add heroin there too? I mean, whats the red line? Or there should not be any? For medical uses it can be prescribed, by doctor.
Heroin is not at all safe, as you are aware. It is perfectly capable of killing.
We spend a ridiculous amount on incarceration, per inmate. Federally it's above $37k per year as of 2018 [1], and states averaged over $33k in 2015 [2].
That's excluding the cost of policing the drug war, lost taxation on illicit goods, state-funded medical and wage impact of addiction, or the lost consumer impact to the economy of those incarcerated or under addiction.
Ultimately drug addiction is a health and social issue. Treating it as a criminal issue has not significantly helped the problem. We can hamper black markets through legalization and regulation while reducing significant costs across a wide array of categories.
But I don't think we should simply legalize and be done with it, as that'd be dangerous. We need to shift the money we're already ineffectually spending. Put it into research, therapy, and the infrastructure surrounding regulation. Maybe mandated counseling to the addicted, once supply is more effectively monitored and controlled.
We need to focus on positive outcomes for individuals. Incarceration generally only pushes people into a spiral of continued negative outcomes.
[1] https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/19/2019-24...
[2] https://www.vera.org/publications/price-of-prisons-2015-stat...
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.
The state is named Maryland; it's called "retrocession." It already happened before, with the Virginia side of DC.
What? This is no good? Well, some people prefer the naked power-grab version, I suppose.
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.
Don't worry, we know what it's about <3
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.
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.
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.
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)
Yes it has side effects, but it is a last resort for treatment of severe depression that would otherwise ruin the patient's life.
Any grey market solutions will become more ubiquitous as standard health care costs continue to skyrocket. I would expect to see more of this.
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.
Alcohol cannot be illegal
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 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.
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.
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 might be that neither is the correct answer.
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.
- 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
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.
Canada legalized marijuana & not much changed
See also https://reason.com/2008/01/12/but-whatever-you-do-dont-legal
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.
> 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.
This dissipates the political power and attention of the individual, leaving the naked pursuit of profit unmolested.
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.
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.
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.
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.
With a light dose, it’s just been mild, being silly and giggling at colors and nature. Pleasant, but just kind of a fun drug honestly.
With a moderate dose, you tend to be introspective and consider your own life and relationships in different ways. Feels like therapy to be honest. Hard work. Emotionally draining. There’s usually a lesson at the end. Overall it is good for me and makes me a better, more empathetic person.
With higher doses in a so-called bad trip, it’s sometimes been just extremely confusing and not at all fun, to the extent that I’d forget my own name or what I’ve taken and basically just all memories. It’s very frustrating to be in that state, constantly trying not to fly away but not able to ground yourself. It’s a little disturbing, but not horrific. I think the reason for this is that I am afraid to lose my ego, or die, and I would actually benefit from a slightly higher dose so I'm unable to resist.
With really high doses though, it’s been a truly beautiful, enlightening experience. I still think of it sometimes. It’s very difficult to really explain in words, but it feels like kind of extreme empathy with all life. Buddhists would call it going egoless. I just felt very at peace: we all live, we all die, and it’s all okay. I’m not particularly religious or spiritual at all but that experience really changed me. It feels like life is in all these different forms, and you just happen to be one particular variation of it, but you could easily be any other living thing, so you just feel love and empathy for all life. And you know it’s finite and you’re not afraid of death. I would still attempt to avoid death, but I was just at peace with it if it was inevitable. Also, when you come back to reality you’re utterly, utterly convinced that you’ve experienced something profound, possibly, despite all your rationality, there’s a message form god inside this mushroom. It's so strange coming back, because you have to repiece together your life: "I am... a human... I live in a city called San Francisco... I am an engineer...". It’s almost like the mushroom is laughing at you: “good luck going back to your normal life now.” You’re left with “wow? That was that?!” It’s annoying honestly, because I’m not religious at all and I know it sounds crazy to even say that out loud. Of course, that feeling does slowly fade away like a distance dream or memory.
I think in general mushrooms strip away your individual sense of self and zoom out your perspective, which is why with a small dose you consider your relationships and with a larger dose you can sometimes get scared because you lose your sense of self but you're still trying to cling on. But with an even larger dose (obviously it's not necessarily the dose, but it's a rough correlation) you blast through even further, and the distinction between you and everything else melts away, which is a truly profound spiritual experience. In all cases though, seeing fractals and cool stuff is very unimportant.
A great story it reminds me of is “The Egg” by Andy Weir: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think my biggest single does was about the equivalent of 4oz dried; great trip but the hangover was way too long.
https://www.erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_dose.shtml
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.
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.
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 may be a "drug induced state", but the power of that state can be amazing.
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.
[0] https://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/how-tragedy-led-...
If we're keeping this to balcony incidents, I had to be pulled from being half way over a 16th floor balcony a decade ago after making some drunk rant I hardly remember
Let's also ban chess on account of Urii Eliseev
Maybe we should just ban balconies
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.
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.
> 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).
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/82-003-x/2020002/article...
Usage in 2020 was up to around 20% overall:
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medica...
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.
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.
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)
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.
They're going to legalize it anyway: https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1356340421652312066
> 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.
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).
To clarify, this is part of the US Constitution (Supremacy Clause).
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artVI_C2_1_1_...
?! I'm not sure what you mean by that, but that's exactly what it looked like, every word of it. I guess you know that.
You seem to think it was advice; what was the advice? What thing did I tell someone to do or not do?
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.
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.
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".
This is from an outsider, but after all those months of BLM protests, what changed?
What actually happens in the US is that rural and elderly middle-class voters control everything, and they mostly want entertaining culture war and no policy changes.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/david-shor-cancel-cu...
Democratic donors are more left-wing than voters:
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 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.
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.
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.
Hope this helps someone.
Actively harmful psuedo-science crap. I'm astonished to see this being peddled on Hacker News. You should be disgusted with yourself.
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.
Legalising something doesn't make the cost disappear. You still have to police DUI, only now with more substance profiles to learn.
You could say the same about the war on drugs.
> 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.
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.
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.
They're usually seen as psychotomimetic[0], in that they mimic madness.
They are still only studying them to treat health issues because we had a relapse of ~30 years of non-existent research into them.
> Yet here, people seem to believe it can treat other things as well.
That's because the professionals are finding that they treat other things as well:
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".
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
However, I've done mushrooms quite a lot. I've had a couple bad trips where I've lost my sense of self, all memories, massive confusion. I've also had bad trips on alcohol. I think with mushrooms, there are rarely really bad trips, usually just challenging ones. I think the benefits outweigh the cons, but for sure we should study them.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...
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.
I would say that your setting is of paramount importance.
I'm very curious as to what you mean by this.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.