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'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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.