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.