MAPS Celebrates California Senate Passage of Psychedelic Reform Bill
maps.org
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If you care about this issue and want this landmark bill[1] passed, contact your State Assembly representative: [2][3][4]
Also, consider joining and supporting Decriminalize Nature.[5]
[1] - https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
[2] - https://www.assembly.ca.gov/
[3] - https://www.assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers?order=field_memb...
[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_Assembly_dist...
Second, if you want to contact your California assemblymembers office it pays to reach their staff. You can find that if you pay for http://www.GovBuddy.com and you can keep up to date with staff changes. I don’t know of any other way to find that.
What is the source of truth? (I typically lean towards the legislature, but often times their websites are not updated most accurately for bills in progress)
I grew up in rural Scotland, and in Autumn mushrooms were everywhere. Seriously, in any park, field of grass, or area given over to wilderness. We'd forage for only an hour or so, and come back laden with hundreds of them. I understood from friends down south that it was the same situation there.
I don't buy them or grow them either: afraid of getting arrested.
I suffer from debilitating depression, anxiety, burnout, social phobia, and suicidal ideation, and the many therapists I've gone to over the decades haven't helped.
I look forward to when psychedelic therapy, which has evidence of being much more effective than conventional therapy for some conditions (like treatment-resistant depression) is legal and I don't have to risk getting thrown in jail, being poisoned by buying mystery drugs, or getting my life ruined with a felony conviction in order to get the healing that I desperately need.
If psychedelics were legal all along maybe I could have gotten some effective treatment and maybe my life would not be as fucked up as it is right now.
AFAIK the only reason they are a controlled substance in the first place dates back to the War on "Drugs". "Drugs" of course being shorthand for anti-war protesters and blacks.
I experimented with all sorts of psychedelics in my 20s, grew mushrooms, tripped with friends, tripped alone, tripped in the woods, read the Doors of Perception, etc. I bought into the whole psychedelic culture and truly believed that they were making me “better” in some way. I actually felt a bit superior to other people who weren’t “experienced” like I was. But at the end of the day it didn’t really change my life or personality. I don’t regret having those experiences but the hype around psychedelics is totally overblown. Shrooms won’t magically fix you.
Maybe one glass of wine every year or two.
I've gone many, many years without smoking weed, and smoked a bit of it when it became effectively legal for medical purposes, but never became a regular user.
Curiously, it was a deeply emotional experience on cannabis edibles that made me seek and get therapy after intending to but not doing it for more than a decade.
Cannabis also helped with my creativity (hadn't made art in more than a decade as well until starting to smoke cannabis), and allowed me to cry after keeping my feelings in for many years as well.
I view cannabis as potentially very healing and sacred, but it has to be used with respect and intention to get the full benefit.
If you're habitually smoking it just to get fucked up and watch cartoons you're probably going to miss out and may suffer negative effects in the long run.
Not that there's anything wrong with having fun with it -- food can taste much better, music can sound better, sex while high is great -- but it's easy to slip in to dependency and abuse with it if that's all you ever do on it.
"at the end of the day it didn’t really change my life or personality. I don’t regret having those experiences but the hype around psychedelics is totally overblown. Shrooms won’t magically fix you"
But did you use psychedelics with intention and in a therapeutic context? Did you work on integrating the insights you got during the trips in to your ordinary life after the trip?
A lot of people are disappointed that psychedelics don't magically fix them, but that's because most of them expect the psychedelics to do all the work, while what psychedelics mostly do is just show you what you have to do yourself. If you yourself do nothing about what you've learned then nothing will get done.
One thing I want to add, though, is that psychedelics can also offer (usually temporary) relief from the darkness and despair of some mental illness like depression. During or in the afterglow of a psychedelic experience the world can appear fresh and new, one can appreciate beauty, find forgiveness for yourself and others, melt or open a heart that's been frozen for decades. It can (at least temporarily) turn darkness and despair in to light and hope.
As fleeting as such a life preserver might be to someone in the depths of depression, it might be enough for them to finally seek help or have the energy and hope to start doing the work to change their life around as they no longer see it as hopeless and themselves as doomed. It's not a panacea, and there are no guarantees that this will happen, but when it happens -- even for a brief time -- it's amazing.
> But did you use psychedelics with intention and in a therapeutic context?
No, but I didn’t always use them in a party setting either. I generally hoped to gain something from the experience, like a new insight into myself or a new appreciation for nature. I was an avid reader of Erowid as well.
> Did you work on integrating the insights you got during the trips in to your ordinary life after the trip?
The “insights” that I had felt incredibly profound at the time, but they were pretty banal in retrospect. I remember on one particularly intense shroom trip I experienced ego death and lost all sense of self. I literally could not even comprehend the concept of selfhood; I felt like I was just pure energy. The great insight that I had on this trip was that everything I had ever read, whether it was in a book, a newspaper, or on the internet, was written by another human being. In that moment I felt a tremendous connection with and empathy for every other human being. It was a powerful experience, but the actual insight was kinda silly. Not much to integrate there.
As a funny side note, I had a friend that took a little too much acid one night and had some indescribable epiphany that he had to share with the rest of the world. He proceeded to post his Facebook username and password all over the internet, and asked people to login and add as many friends as possible. His great mission was to befriend every single person on the planet.
We never quite figured out what his epiphany was. It was probably something dumb.
Ok. I hear that.
It's true that there's no shortage of profound-in-the-moment, trivial-aftwards insights on psychedelics.
However, there are some things that one could do to have a more constructive experience.
One thing I've read about (though never tried myself yet) is to have some photographs of people that mean a lot to you to peruse during the trip.
Most of us imperfect, not-yet-enlightened human beings have unresolved issues regarding our own past or our relationships with others that we could work on, and psychedelics could help us gain insights, confront and deal with buried emotions, or provide closure in these areas.
Having an intention to focus on something specific that's unresolved might help.. especially with the aid of an experienced psychedelic therapist you like and trust.
Going in with just a vague "I want insight" intention might not be enough.
It's the really difficult parts of our lives and our minds where the real gold and gems are, and we have to be willing to dig deep and hard to get there. Psychedelics can be like jackhammers that help us reach these places that might otherwise be inaccessible to us.
The deluxe version would provide a remote trip-sitter (credentialed/vetted/monitored/etc). That could get a detailed personal survey (the checkin) and be scheduled/on demand (if possible and at a premium).
Not a pathway to riches but I think it would make the world a better place.
Those UK prices are pretty ridiculous, maybe you can find it used for cheap.
All the best.
In the US, mindbloom is an option https://www.mindbloom.com/
Edit: the studies of ketamine treatment for depression are quite positive. It’s not a classic psychedelic and I haven’t compared results with e.g. psilocybin but it could be worth looking into since it is legally sanctioned.
This is something that really needs to be understood and appreciated more -- especially among those who have little experience with psychedelics.
So many people are afraid of "bad trips", but those kinds of trips can be some of the most healing and instructive of all, if we can bear to face our own demons and try to learn something from the experience instead of just running away.
So go figure these people live in the present and ignore the repercussions for the future. On paper Joe Rogan is right in many things he says. To an untrained and inexperienced mind, you should definitely not take anything he says without understanding: he didn't start taking drugs till he had a solid career, he only did them with trusted friends, he did them when they wouldn't affect his job, he has a safe supply that he can get, on top of having a safe space to be when he does them.
Not exactly the same experience as someone who can lose a job over it or go to prison for possession.
In new clinical settings, "good trips" and "bad trips" are becoming antiquated terminology: "easy trips" and "difficult trips" are the new descriptors, and I think they're better. Your trip may be difficult, but that doesn't necessarily make it bad.
The sort of people of today search out and take mushrooms and psychedelics and don't violently run amok, but sit down quietly going whee are the sort of people who when offered crack or just when perfectly sober, will also go whee and not shoot anyone.
And the sort of people who when offered a pipe of crack today and then go on a shooting spree, are the sort of people who will rob a seven-11 on mushrooms or sober.
Its not just personal responsibility - 99% of the latter group are going to correspond with abusive childhoods, poverty, mental health issues and so on.
(So the difference between me and a Republican congressman is that I believe that if we solve all those issues, 99% of the latter group will also sit in a room and go whee.)
Personal Responsibility matters, but it matters about as much as willpower does in dieting - its a lot more likely to work if there are no fatty sugary foods around. The 1940s had healthier thinner people because we were all on a government enforced diet.
I don't mean any offense, but by squeezing crack in the same bag as psychedelics, your comment exhibits the exact misunderstanding that led to the latter's prohibition.
Good people on crack are more likely to do bad things over time. Bad people on mushrooms are much less likely to be worse than their usual selves (based on studies).
In my (again limited) understanding, saying "all these are bad for us long-term (to wildly varying degrees), but it seems likely that other factors (childhood, mental illness, social position, economic, family and social) all play as important if not more important roles.
Lets unban them if they have some medicinal purposes, but lets not pretend that having mushrooms and amphetamines marketed by the same socially-minded people pushing Marlboros for decades is going to make the world a better place, and please lets not think that if we strike a blow for freedom, its ok to stop worrying about all those other confounding issues. (But I concede its a lot easier to legislatively fix banned psychedelics than to fix childhood abuse, poverty and mental health. But that's why we pay government the big taxes, to take on the big jobs. )
They'd be better regulated than the fucking cartels. The problems with dose would come up quickly, and you could make it available in X mg shots in liquid form. Add some ugly taste, like alcohol has.
> to take on the big jobs
Yeah, absolutely! Also would you be interested in acquiring a really cheap and famous bridge? Or perhaps the Eiffel tower? /s
So currently it seems we pay taxes to keep the darkness at bay. Maybe. Maaaybe after half the world stops sucking fascism's dick we might finally get to spend resources to properly address those big ticket items.
Of all drugs, legal and illegal, the drug that is most associated with violence is alcohol.
Yet most people don't get in to a moral panic over alcohol anymore, as they used to during the original Prohibition of the 1920's.
We've learned from the original, failed prohibition of the '20s. We understand that when people abuse alcohol it is a medical issue, not something to throw people in jail for.
We need to learn the same lesson about all the other drugs, almost all of which are far less harmful than alcohol.
If you want to legalize crack, then responsible and compelling research should probably also do the same.
If you want to pin alcohol against crack when it comes to harmfulness, note that alcohol is also legal and thus more prevalent.
https://bibliography.maps.org/bibliography/default/resource/...
See graph on page 4. Heroin and crack are still illegal, yet already significantly harmful. Let's not assume that legalizing them would keep the standing the same.
The whole approach is wrong. Criminalise the behaviour, not the drugs and then people can work out which drugs they're compatible with.
Some people are great when drunk, some are violent arseholes. The same is true for other substances.
But there is evidence that psychedelics could prove useful in treating mental illnesses, so it could actually help those people rather than make them worse. (Of course, that’s probably best done in a clinical/therapeutic environment.)
These drugs are very powerful and can make permanent and potentially severe changes to your mind. I fear that the push for legalization might be interpreted by some as either encouragement to try them or a signal that they're not as serious as they are.
get off my lawn
I'm not convinced that having to have permission or advice from the medical community is the only legitimate way these substances should be used.
There are strong cases to be made for their religious or spiritual use, and for simple cognitive liberty -- the right of everyone to alter their consciousness how they see fit, for any reason they like, without needing to get permission from anyone.
On the religious/spiritual side, many of these substances are sacred to a lot of people who are otherwise healthy and who shouldn't need a doctor's permission to exercise their religion (in the widest sense of the term that is closer to "spirituality", not just in the narrow sense of being an organized religion similar to the Judeo-Christian faiths).
There are already religious exemptions for religious use of peyote and ayahuasca, and I see no reason why every other psychedelic couldn't get similar exemptions. It's possible psychedelic mushrooms will be the next substance so exempted, though I'm unaware of any serious efforts currently under way to do that.
"These drugs are very powerful and can make permanent and potentially severe changes to your mind."
This is absolutely true (though usually the changes are temporary -- most people fall back in to old habits before long, even if they've had a very powerful experience).
Everyone should definitely educate themselves as much as possible about any substance they take, and about how to do so as safely and constructively as possible (which is usually also the most enjoyable way to use them too).
However, we should also acknowledge that driving a car can also make permanent and potentially severe changes in your mind (though, unlike psychedelics, such if such changes happen they're almost always negative). Yet people drive all the time, knowing they could get in to an accident and suffer brain damage or death, which many do.
Skydiving, scuba diving, parachuting, pretty much every physical sport has a risk of brain damage, injury, or death associated with it, yet most people play all but the riskiest of these without giving them much thought.
Despite occasional accidents and risks most people don't obsess over or try to ban participation in them. Instead we try to focus on ways to make them safer.
What they didn't realize is that few people want to put in the effort to grow their own plants. It's so much quicker and easier just to go to a store and buy them.
Another thing this reminds me of is ketamine, on which the patent expired long ago. So some profit-seeking corporation created esketamine, which is pretty much the same thing but patentable, and they got that approved for treatment of depression while cheap, generic ketamine still has to be used off-label (meaning that insurance companies won't cover that off-label treatment, while esketamine treatment for depression is covered).
Something similar is being attempted with psilocybin, where some company's thought up a more efficient way of producing it and patented that, and made (or tried to make) that the only approved way of getting psilocybin.
In both cases consumers aren't going to be making their own ketamine or psilocybin. They're going to have to rely on companies to sell it to them.
Sure, they could theoretically grow or pick mushrooms but growing mushrooms is time and effort intensive, so it'll probably only ever be a hobby among a minority of users, and picking mushrooms can be dangerous and is also time consuming. So realistically most users will just be buying those too.
My hope is that people will form cooperatives and non-profit organizations to provide these sacred and healing substances for people who need them, while making little or no profit but still keeping the process viable.
also, scalable profit needs repeat interactions and growth in consumption. Neither of these are healthy in regard to psychedelics. The outcome of that could just be a slightly funky prozac thats as watered down in its effects as predecessors.
Decriminalisation, e.g. freedom to self cultivate and in use in long term medical trials is the best option imo.
They're out there, just keep looking.
Unfortunately, capitalism eats everything, so it's probably going to happen whether we like it or not.
I just hope the people who really respect and understand the potential of these substances retain some control of what psychedelic use of the future looks like, instead of being controlled by clueless MBA's with dollar signs in their eyes.
> As for other Americans who want to use psychedelics in a more secular setting, it’s easy to imagine spa-like retreat centers popping up across the country. Indeed, a prototype already exists: Field Trip Health has opened a half dozen lavishly appointed clinics (with more on the way) offering ketamine-assisted therapy for depression, which is already legal, in anticipation of Food and Drug Administration approval of MDMA and psilocybin.
Here's their website: https://www.fieldtriphealth.com/. To my eyes it looks no different than the website of a well-funded mattress seller, or travel startup.
I am nervous about applying a capitalist model to legalized psychedelics, but I have no doubt that many companies will try to make money once these substances are legalized.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/09/opinion/sunday/drug-legal...
The people that argue for decriminalizing/legalizing all of these drugs are usually the same people that argue firearms should be banned based on a bunch of arguments that could easily be used to argue against drugs.
Ultimately, now that I have children, I can't imagine living in California. The decisions they make feel "progressive" but result in more harm and a decline in the quality of life for many people.
My fairly libertarian perspective is that it is the job of the parent and induvial to educate themselves and make choices about risky behavior that only impacts themselves. If you want to take up base jumping, seeing how many hamburgers you can eat a day, or simply kill yourself, YOU should decide what your priorities are.
Someone can make utilitarian arguments all day long about what laws would optimize the quality of life, but this ultimately places the needs of the society over the individual.
Please teach your children about the risks of drugs, and not rely on the government to control their actions instead.
People do stupid shit like that (and much worse) on alcohol all the time.
Yet most people are rarely as worried about alcohol availability as they are about the availability of psychedelics... why is that?
What does this mean, it was illegal to test our drugs in California?
Or does it mean that research facilities don't have to operate in fear at least from California authorities
Of course allowing testing could save a lot of lives too, but that's apparently never been the true motivation of the War on Drugs.
I guess maybe this is explicitly making them not useful as probable cause, and also making their use a defense or legal.
I'm hugely impressed by Rick's long term commitment and navigation of the political lanscape and like that he's more interested in how can we make the world a better place given the constraints we have approach makes him worth a lot more than the early wave noise makers like Leary and McKenna both of who kind of fostered the environment he grew in/threw.
The fact he foresaw things and acted on them accordingly at a relatively young age is amazing.
I think ultimately he'll have a larger lasting impact on the world than either of them, (but is also enabled by them) but possibly be less remembered?
It also just highlights the problems with the capitalist approach to individual and global health. I think capitalism is just coming to terms with its problems as a result of profit motive rather than value or health motive.
If you play out the scenarios: Do you want to live in a world where a few rich people have happy lives because the masses have unhappy lives (focus on profit over outcome) OR do you want to live in a world where focus on outcome over profit results in happy lives, but the people in power making the decisions don't get particularly rich?
The best possibile lifestyle is in scenario 1, the best average lifestyle is in scenario 2.
Help, help, I feel like I'm in a prisoners dilemma experiment.
or just: MAPS Celebrates California Senate Passage of Psychedelic Reform Bill
but not: Maps Celebrates California Senate Passage of Psychedelic Reform Bill
Usually I notice when it does this to my submissions and manually fix it, but this time I just submitted it and forgot to proofread the title afterwards.
I wish HN just had a hands-off policy to titles and submissions, but they've never listened to me.
Just want to point out that if even Liberal Bastion California could only pass this with a 57% majority, it likely doesn't stand much chance of being passed anywhere else.
Not right away, but never say never.
Having lived through the nightmare prohibition of the 80's and 90's, I am constantly amazed that cannabis is effectively legal (not just for medical purposes but recreationally) in so many places around the US today. I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime.
Now psychedelics are on their way to being legalized in some places, and Oregon has decriminalized all drugs.
MDMA therapy is very close to being available on a prescription basis (if it isn't already), and that alone has the potential to signal a sea-change in the way the US and the rest of the world sees currently illegal drugs -- especially psychedelics.
Psilocybin is next, and once the mainstream culture starts seeing seriously broken people start functioning again after undergoing psychedelic therapy when the traditional medical establishment has so often failed them, they're going to start changing their minds about these substances, just as they have about cannabis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY6UTnS6Z-A
And he's a "moderate".
People are bad at predicting the future.
Look at what happened with cannabis legalization. Not so long ago it was demonized and considered to be a gateway drug (still is in some places, but a lot of people -- especially younger people and sick people who cannabis has helped -- have seen through that propaganda by now).
Then there's the business side of the equation. A lot of formerly anti-drug idealogues jumped on the cannabis money train once it started to get legal in some states. Many of the politicians who are against legalization are also very self-serving opportunists, who may well switch sides once they see there's a profit to be made.
Veterans and other people with PTSD and other mental conditions might be able to sway some of these people as well. Once they see that these substances actually have great healing potential and aren't the demon drugs they've been lied to about by the War on Drugs fanatics they might have a change of heart.
It's an important point.
The US rapidly legalized gay marriage at the federal level once serious momentum had begun. That's despite only modestly above half of the nation strongly supporting it at the time (according to polls anyway). There has been no war over it, no great social rebellion, no states attempting to leave the union, no mass acts of anti-gay terrorism over it, no religious revolt. Trump had zero political interest in attempting to turn it back, there was nothing to gain from that because there isn't much support for rolling it back. Not much happened at all overall, there have been very few negative events related to it culturally. Only a few years prior to that legalization, the liberal President was still publicly against gay marriage on the campaign trail.
Obama changed his position to supporting gay marriage in 2012, shortly after Biden did. Gay marriage was then legalized in 2015. It was nearly unthinkable that that was going to happen as recently as the 2004-2008 political timeframe. In ten years it went from only half of Democrats supporting gay marriage (2005 per Gallup), to being legalized nationally.
It's always worth considering how many people answer as they do on polls because they're afraid to be openly out of majority alignment, yet they may support a position quietly or otherwise not oppose it (meaning they'd never actually pose any cultural resistance to change). That's exactly what the case was with marijuana legalization; serious opposition to legalization was never as great as it was portrayed to be. And that may also end up being the case with psychedelics, perhaps with more regulations (I'd expect the public to be more leery than with marijuana).
My wife and I tried mushrooms (well, the non-fruiting-body things they had) in Amsterdam and I didn't notice much. She, on the other hand, stopped her OCD ticking for maybe 9 months afterward. It was so life-changing for her that I've been planning a trip to Amsterdam just so she can take another dose.
Obviously I have friends who grow too, but you don't need that.