Legal use of hallucinogenic mushrooms begins in Oregon
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
For those that haven't done mushrooms, there's different types of mushrooms. They all have different effects, some stronger than others. Tripsafe.org has some really good information on mushrooms and LSD with respect to the experiences users can expect to encounter.
My personal use of mushrooms, which isn't always medicinal doses, has been productive. Mostly, I have fun, do things I already love doing, and can be a bit more social. Mushrooms end with an "afterglow" that is a bit like being on an antidepressant for a while, but this depends per strain in my experience.
They're definitely good for addressing trauma and I'd agree with the neuroplasticity claims. I won't claim they've "changed my life" mainly because hallucinogens will only change what you really seek and work to change. In my personal opinion they just kind of grease the wheels for change.
We shall see.
I think your descriptions are accurate, it's very much a catalyst. I'd also say to those who are curious, it is quite difficult to have a "bad" trip, but to be clear, it's certainly possible to have quite "intense" trips, so always a good idea to start gently. Microdosing and going from there can be quite the ride - to me, everything is a little more vivid, real, colors are brighter, etc., but I'm still quite "in the real world".
As far as my personal anecdotal experience, if you can get Steel Magnolias that's the way to go. Penis Envy's are OK too.
Where do you even get them? How do you know how much to take? How do you take them? I’ve tried finding centers to go to where they assist you but can’t seem to find any that aid with it end-to-end.
Technically you can’t get spores delivered to CA. Shipping to a friend in another state is not super hard.
Wish I could tell you where to get them, for me it was 'work in a restaurant'.
Unfortunately, if you don't want to try and grow them you'll have to get them from someone you know. You could also try the dark web if you really want some, I'm sure you could get some there but if you can avoid that, it would be better. Fortunately it seems like getting mushrooms mixed with fentanyl isn't a thing AFAIK.
> How do you know how much to take? / How do you take them?
Up until recently, I was just eating a small amount - kind of hoping a stem and a small cap would do the trick. Most the times, this would work, but every once in awhile you'll get a small guy that is way more powerful than you think. I've found the best way for me now is to grind them into a powder and fill large fillable capsules with them. You can get several different sizes; I would start with smaller ones at first. The trick is to grind up as much of that batch of mushrooms as possible, as well as you can (I just use a simple coffee bean grinder). This does a good job of making sure each capsule you fill with the resulting powder is as evenly spread as it can be without special equipment. The benefit of this is you will now have 10-30 mushroom capsules with the same efficacy and you can then start with a single one and see how you feel. For your first time, I would not push past a single one. It can also sometimes take up to 3 hours before it really sinks in depending on what you're eating and such, so the first time just do not take another one.
They won’t necessarily guide you through the set and setting.
The thing I recommend is to plan a date with yourself. Imagine the time and place you’d like to be in when you get a glimpse of the infinite.
You may wish to go with someone experienced for your first time, or even start with non-hallucinogenic dose and work your way up. (1/4 a hallucinogenic dose causes a barely noticeable pleasant feeling)
Other Psilocybe types, such as semilanceata, azurescens, and baeocystis, differ in that they have more or less of other compounds such as Baeocystin, which some believe have psychoactive effects.
Many people report nonlinear responses to psilocybin/psilocin dosages. For example, 5 grams of dry cubensis is more than twice as strong as 2.5 grams. So it's understandable that stronger varieties have qualitatively different reputations than weaker ones.
Are all the differences due to the ratio of psilocybin to psilocin? Or are there additional molecules that are psychoactive and vary between types?
I've seen a lot of online debate over this question - some believe that psilocin and psilocybin are the only two significant factors, the only differences from this ratio is onset time (one converts to the other in vitro), and all perceived differences between strains are subjective (i.e. people are falsely overgeneralizing their experiences with particular strains).
On the other hand, many seem convinced there are significant differences between types, which to me would indicate there must be additional molecules having an effect.
Also interesting are psychedelics history with Silicon Valley’s early days. See interview with pollan: https://m.timesofindia.com/home/sunday-times/all-that-matter...
It's very unlikely that any studies will be done with such patients as they probably won't pass through any committee.
Several studies have shown small numbers of people with a family history of schizophrenia showing symptoms during and after the study. Granted, this could just be a confounding effect (the symptoms normally manifest during the phase of life the study participants were in) So a causal link has not been established, and studies necessarily to find a causal link would be unethical. (You’d have to deliberately induce schizophrenia in people who wouldn’t normally have it)
But the suspicion is good enough for me. If I had a family history of schizophrenia I would never try psychedelics ever in my life.
TL;DR the computing world we know today was shaped (at least partly) by acidheads and potheads as well as some squares.
Personal hot take: I've done this stuff before. I've seen the before and after of people who've done it. None of the people who did it were better off
When it comes to psychedelics, there are two faces to them: how people talk about them and what they actually are. How they're talked about is 99% bullshit
People will talk about "life changing experiences", that's cool. From the outside, the only changes I see are people turning to deadbeats and doing more and more drugs. Of course, Portland is already a containment zone for mentally ill people on the streets. They could always use more
What with the many medical studies demonstrating treatment efficacy, it’s hardly surprising that scare-mongering anecdotes and ignorance-based commentary are downvoted.
We had a lot of intimate conversations (daily check-ins, 365 days a year). On the topic of existential dread and depression, he stated that the single most impactful thing he'd ever experienced was one shroom trip. He wasn't a regular user; just this single trip had a lasting effect on him. I've heard similar from less familiar sources, who are similarly successful and aren't drugged out.
That said, I appreciate you're being skeptical here. I know more than one "medical cannabis" user who became a deadbeat. Dosing control needs to be a thing in this space, it's just a free-for-all right now.
What were your experiences like? Ive seen people do more and more drugs and fry their brain before but it never seemed like mushrooms were a big part of that.
But we should absolutely be talking about it. Its not like anyone is best served by only hearing a narrow subset of experiences.
I'm really happy that you got something positive out of them
My issue with psychedelics in general is that one experience was able to accomplish significant changes. People make this sound like a good thing, but for most people that's way too much. The number of beneficiaries isn't enough to offset the number of casualties
Some people will read this description I've written here and think "this is exactly what I need". Those are the last people who should be doing them. Making them available for "therapeutic use" just fast tracks access to people who are doing them for the wrong reasons
> What were your experiences like? Ive seen people do more and more drugs and fry their brain before but it never seemed like mushrooms were a big part of that.
I had one trip where I saw a sign that I should stop (in hindsight it was likely a coincidence, but it scared the shit out of me)
I had a close friend who I introduced to them (because at the time I thought they were "good for people"). He dropped out of college and has been between jobs ever since. He still does them and is completely obsessed
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/psilocybin-mush...
"More than 80% of those who were given the psychedelic treatment had drastically reduced their drinking eight months after the study started, compared to just over 50% in the antihistamine control group, according to results published Wednesday in JAMA Psychiatry. At the end of the trial, half of those who received psilocybin had quit drinking altogether, compared to about one-quarter of those who were given the antihistamine."This isn't a genpop study.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02872-9
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206443
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8156539/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
My brother's schizophrenia started while I sat with him on the grass trying to comfort him after he had taken mushrooms.
This led to moment after moment of things that are difficult to for me to talk about. My family spent 3 Christmases at the state hospital to be with him. Thanks to the help he was able to get at the hospital and through continued care, he's now able to live with my parents.
Please be wise.
But if approached properly, single session with psychedelics may have beneficial effects of months or even years of psychotherapy. Week or two after such session you start noticing that some things simply stopped being problematic.
Would you rather have no meds for some conditions because we don't fully understand how existing ones work, or would you dissect living humans' brains for faster research?
This statement about what is "good for society" can't be evaluated by statistics or metrics. It has to be believed, taken on faith.
Oh, they'll cite studies about miraculous results with overcoming addiction and depression. Pardon me for being skeptical about the massive amount of junk science that has over promised, under delivered, or been outright unrepeatable.
This is no different than the "AI" algorithms that are quickly making their way into decision making in society. It's a black box that worked great in the lab, so let's ship it to everyone. Surely it will be good for us!
The Gods of the Copybook Headings will return as they always do.
Well-functioning societies have steered clear of intoxication. A
A Clear-headed, rational, and objective view of reality is the goal.
There’s nothing new about messing with your perception of reality.
Wise men steer clear of it. Wise men counsel against intoxication of any kind. Fools don’t ask why.
There is only perspective, which somehow relates to a thing we like to call "reality" but the relationship is tenuous at best and doesn't always directly correspond.
Understanding the role of perspective I believe can be valuable. Sometimes maybe a shakeup helps to understand perspective is just that, or otherwise produce a different way of looking at things.
I'd beg to differ. One can think up any number of metrics that would be inarguably good for society. Reduction in suicide would be a huge one. Reduced crime rate. Reduced addiction rate. Increase in lifespan. Increase in standard of living. Reduction of domestic violence. There are many more dimensions you could measure, establishing direct causation is the tricky part but it is certainly possible to establish if the state of society in general is improving.
Yes, a society with less suicide is a better thing. We can achieve that in many ways -- however, some ways come with significant or unpredictable side effects.
Not that being skeptical about this is bad, frankly its good, but probably best when it is specific and focused into criticism.
For comparison to topics-de-jour, in the US 0.3% of the population will get an abortion in a given year, 3.5% are gay/bi, 0.3% are trans, <0.03% die from gun violence (and over half are suicides potentially reduced by this treatment) each year, and about 1/40th of them are killed by law enforcement. Improvements in these areas will have a smaller effect size (ie. protecting gay marriage will not improve the lives of gay people as much as curing someone's depression will, gun control will not end all gun violence).
Big caveat here is that this treatment is relatively new, and depression treatments tend to be promising initially with results that fade in the long term. Additionally, the legalization of that treatment does not mean everyone who needs it will get it. On the other hand, depression is only one of the many issues that can be treated with psychadelics. We'll have to wait and see
Even if your friend just sits there for four hours while reading a book, it's comforting to know that someone you trust is there to say "yes" when you start asking "is this really happening?" That can make the difference between a wonderful experience and an alarming one.
It is much cheaper if you have cows nearby.
Contrast with: One session of psychedelic assisted therapy has been shown to offer months of relief from depression.
I’m not saying it’s a magic cure, just that we owe it to ourselves to continue to study psychedelic assisted therapy.
If psychological and medical research on psychoactive substances is successfully resumed I believe we will see helpful and possibly ground breaking applications of these drugs. They're indisputably powerful compounds, the question is simply whether those effects can be harnessed by medicine and therapy to provide long lasting interventions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_109
https://ballotpedia.org/Oregon_Measure_110,_Drug_Decriminali...
Source: voted for both of them. 110 probably needs some tweaking (hah hah) and/or better implementation, but I still think the basic idea is a good one.
He had a kind of psychotic break, became violent, and poured juice all over himself during the course of a very unpleasant sounding afternoon. He was definitely changed after that day and is no longer part of our friend group because of it. Every time we see him now he mentions the healing powers of crystals, and sometimes mentions that he hears voices. I think doing mushrooms definitely triggered some kind of schizophrenia in him.
It’s totally scary and put me off trying it forever.
I wonder if Oregon will see a rise in things like schizophrenia?
If I realize early enough I can avoid it mostly. If it's to late I can atleast get some sleep after a hour or so and have little to none aura the next day.
Interestingly enough LSD doesn't have that effect on me. It doesn't lower my headaches (makes them less painful tho) and the aura is just less annoying but still very present.
I recently had a episode of cluster like headaches (most likely because a sinus infection) and nothing helped at no dose. I even tried DMT at the pain peak but no help.
Psychosis can happen. Overconfident guides can lead you there. Make sure you're working with someone who knows that there are risks.
Do you have any advice on how to procure a suitable guide? Ideally I'd want someone who's an experienced psychotherapist.
If things have never gone wrong for them, then they're not that experienced.
Find out if this is someone who takes responsibility for their actions.
Decriminalization is removing criminal penalties - there may still be fines or other non criminal penalties.
The whole system of a patchwork of half-measures is really insanity in the face of the simplicity of just de-scheduling cannabis.
Hopefully, a bill like this will get passed into law: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/459... and provide much more structure for removing the remaining barriers.
At this point it doesn't seem like many people in the fed world really want to do any gatekeeping, but apparently elected reps are more cautious.
I also spent an hour lined up against a wall while MP's buzzed around and tried to get CSPD to extradite me from a military base over some "spice" (that awful engineered-to-be-legal weed) which turned up in a search of the truck I had borrowed to buy a couch on Craigslist.
So in gray areas like those, the tug of war still lives. But nobody I know of is afraid that the feds are gonna kick their door in over something that's legal in CO.
Edit: grey area was the wrong phrase. But when the military is trying to hand you off to the cops and the cops won't take you, you know the system still has some kinks.
A gray area would be when federal agents/LEO attempt to enforce federal laws in places where the state has jurisdiction (such as raids of dispensaries).
But federal land is definitely the worst. I had a federal agent obtain a search warrant to strip search me and drag me to a hospital and 'internally search' my GI tract because they claimed there were drugs up my ass.
Your last two sentences are correct, but there are actually grey areas here. It's actually more complicated than it seems. IANAL, but I have worked in drug policy previously, so I have worked with lawyers who are very well-versed on the nuances of this law.
The ambiguity isn't whether marijuana falls under the CSA (it does) - it's the extent to which federal agents can pursue violations of it in specific circumstances. Especially since this often involves the cooperation of local law enforcement (ie, subject to the state), and some states even statutorily prohibit local law enforcement from assisting federal law enforcement with matters that are legal under state law.
A lot of it is grey specifically because aspects of these issues haven't been definitively tested in court in recent years, and as time goes on, they become more murky because state laws change, and federal agents become less excited about pressing the issue with the possibility of an unfavorable court ruling.
> But federal land is definitely the worst. I had a federal agent obtain a search warrant to strip search me and drag me to a hospital and 'internally search' my GI tract because they claimed there were drugs up my ass. It's truly insane.
I'm sorry that happened to you. That's awful.
Some alternative suggestions for title:
Oregon defies federal government, stops impeding on citizens rights
Government no longer violating rights of individuals consuming life-enhancing super food.
Government replaces black market of mushrooms with regulatory capture to pacify pharmaceutical executives and big government spenders
We treat the population too much like children. Let people make their own decisions. If it kills them, it kills them. They made their choice. If they want help, they'll seek it on their own.
If you become a public nuisance, and/or threaten or injure people due to the influence, those are also obvious offenses.
If you drive under the influence of chemicals that reduce your motor skills and reaction time, and alter your perception of reality, that is an obvious offense.
Other than those cases which we can almost all agree should be intervened, why are we telling people what they're allowed to do with their bodies?
But if there was one thing I would consider trying, it's psychedelics. It can help you think outside the box, apparently has some link to treating depression, and they're not particularly addictive (other than an adrenaline junkie type of addiction, which can develop with anything).
Point being, I don't do anything of the sort. But it baffles me that people are incapable of allowing others to do things that they personally don't want to partake in.
In the UK, being treated for an overdose is an expense of the tax payer. Obviously people still overdose, and that expense already exists. But the legality of dangerous substances is to minimize the harm, and therefore the cost associated with that harm.
A free-for-all approach would either have to accept a greater expense (not just economically) or introduce other measures to minimize the harm.
I'm sure there is an optimal balance with legality that minmizes harm and cost. I think we are on the conservative side of that balance. But going for a free-for-all approach is the other extreme side.
We treat obese people while enacting laws to improve public health. Such as food quality laws.
Drugs have won the war on drugs.
I, personally, would argue that enforcing overly harsh rules results in a net cost for society, due to the costs of enforcement, loss of productivity to society by those you put in jail, etc. But the motive behind these laws is not always just "muh morality," and it's not a sure bet that allowing people unfettered freedom in their personal life is a good thing for society.
I refer to the 18th century gin craze, here's an impressive print: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/William_...
The previous commenter's handle alludes to one possible item, crystal meth: that's a substance that doesn't seem to have any redeeming value, and a lot of risk for other cooperative endeavors. So perhaps we should all agree not to traffic in it. (And if we later find a good use for it that stance can be revised.) Mushrooms have a very different calculus, and all that said I agree in general that the drug war has been very badly conceived and executed.
In particular, classical liberalism depends on rational actors. Even in the most liberal countries, there are ways to declare particular individuals as wards of another (disability, elderly, children, etc). Without rationality, the basis of classical liberal philosophy disintegrates.
So if we want to be consistent as a liberal individualist, we need to place rationality on quite a high pedestal, which means at least making concessions that those taking drugs ought to be temporarily at least deprived of particular civil rights.
It does not; classical liberalism is an ideology that depends on a particular structure of moral precepts of rights, independently of how people might make use of them.
The utilitarian, rather than deontological, argument for laissez-faire capitalism depends on the rational (in a very particular technical sense) actors, but this is (while people who identify as “classical liberals” overlap considerably with rhetorical, at least, advocates of laissez-faire capitalism) not the same thing.
I can understand why someone may take this stance, but I think this argument is something of a hasty generalization when it comes to drug policy. For starters, the policy alone (prohibited vs decriminalized vs legalized) does not appear to be the determining factor in the "certain proportion" of the population that use drugs problematically or otherwise. The US consistently has some of the highest drug usage and abuse rates compared to our western counterparts in Europe. I don't know of the exact reason for this. Could be other cultural differences between the US and Europe. Could be the fact that most European countries approach drug abuse as a public health issue opposed to a criminal one, and focus on harm reduction and rehabilitation instead of jail time.
1. Europe has a greater emphasis on welfare and has greater social saftey nets
2. US private healthcare makes it harder for the poorest in society to get drug-related issues cared for
3. US War on drugs being a historical political selling point to gather voters
4. Private prisons; lobbying for stricter drugs laws equals profit
5. Over-prescription of pain medication by US doctors; lobbied by pharmaceutical companies for profit
The problem is you can extend this to all sorts of things that people abuse. Sugar, video games, alcohol, caffeine, etc. The solution is not to put people in jail and ruin their lives, its to educate them on the risks and to provide solutions to get help when needed.
Too many good innocent people will be unable to fix the issue once it gets started. This view may appear well intentioned but the end result is suffering for people who are lied to by people offering prescriptions or who fall for the people who talk up legal things that they themselves like but that are actually bad for health. (Like alcohol)
In her third week of college, my daughter found the naked body of a student who leapt through the eighth story dorm window to his death while tripping on magic mushrooms.
She is traumatized for life because somebody chose to make a choice with their body by ingesting unpredictable drugs.
I am fairly confident, given the state of pro-psychedelics evangelism today, that the young man expected a fun trip. Instead, he died and could have killed another student with his fall.
But for every mushroom related death, there are literally tens of thousands of alcohol related deaths.
Maybe what society needs is each city gets its own walled Sin City, a sort of padded playground where people can choose to risk hangovers, overdose or death by their substance of choice, without being amid general society. Then after they sober up, they get to return to society.
In the case of alcohol, in my opinion we need a similar cultural attitude. Your state flips on your 21st birthday from absolute prohibition to...as much as you want. We need not so much a place for people to safely binge, as to guide them to considering for themselves why they would want to in the first place. Some people always will of course, just like there will always be people who drive like assholes.
Or perhaps the inverse, where folks like yourself can live fully protected, and insulated from individual liberty.
They don't know if he fell, jumped, or slipped. They only have released anecdotals that he ingested psilocybin. You don't know what kind of trip the young man had, you don't know if he had suicidal tendencies, you're speculating that psilocybin, if even ingested, was responsible based on nothing but your own bias. Hell, we have people falling out of windows to their death trying to catch cell phones they've dropped.
> If you are in society
Here we go. Every time I see a sentence start with this, I know that there's a "we need to protect everyone from themselves" take that's sure to follow.
This is the kind of boomer anecdote I call bullshit on. My father is in his late 70s and any time low-dose medicinal studies around psychedelics are brought up he defaults to the same kind of Nixon-esc paranoia about "gateway drugs" and "I heard about..." boomerisms, because he lived through the 60s and saw things he didn't like, and is incapable of considering new information. It's the same kind of thinking that has cannabis still illegal at the federal level. Psilocybin, like any intoxicant or stimulant, can be lethal when abused. You can die from taking too much Tylenol, and the doses aren't even that high [1].
[1] https://nypost.com/2010/11/08/death-plunge-at-the-st-george-...
I would respond more in depth, but your total lack of sympathy shows a dismissive bias as tenacious as any boomer you insult.
[1] http://www.montanakaimin.com/features/a-death-at-aber-hall/a...
So if keeping them illegal apparently utterly failed to prevent people from having ready access to them as your anecdote suggests, what was the benefit of keeping them illegal in the first place? Other than funneling government coffers into the prison-industrial complex, itself perpetuating far more tragedy and engendering a far more dangerous society as a result...and not just for your daughter, but for everyone.
I don't think this is a useful defense of permissiveness, because it proves too much. We don't let people mutilate themselves either, because we consider it an indication of wrong thinking. It just isn't the case that all choices are respected, because not all behavior is accepted either.
I don't think the state treats subjects like children. It treats them like components, components exist within tolerances or they are discarded/altered. The state isn't my parent, it is my master.
This attitude is fine, and I understand it, if it's accompanied by actually letting people fail. Unfortunately, when they do fail, it's the impetus to start yet another social welfare program for people who made terrible decisions, instead of just regulating the terrible decision out of existence to begin with.
You could start thinking outside the frames your government and/or religious leaders wants you to to keep between.
But someone I know told me a director at his bank was fired for inviting interns over after a bar crawl to do drugs. Or something like that. That was the test: do you know who to let know what you do?
I agree that adults should be able to take whatever substance they want, but I also know that if we did that people who had negative experiences would then blame the media, sellers, their parents, the medical establishment, the internet, the courts, the FDA and anyone else for the consequences, except themselves.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
I don't know what to think about that. Seems like 'grifter' business.
I would love it if someone explained what they were thinking when they opened a shroom shop right on a Main Street. This happened recently[1].
[1] https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2022/12/08/portland-police...
It's possible Oregon regrets this for some reason I can't imagine, but a repeat of the opioid crisis isn't a realistic outcome.
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/03/us-dru...
There are always companies that will try to make bank in an emerging market, but the details are different than an entrenched company using their power like in the opioid crisis.
But there is certainly risk that it creates a new class of problems. But, people are doing clandestine treatment with psilocybes currently, so it seems unlikely that legalization will find new classes of issues or a higher incidence rate of issues vs relatively-uninformed clandestine use. If there is a concerning issue, we'd expect that we've already seen it, but perhaps underestimated it.
The rise in software and hardware innovations that came out of the SF counter culture included Steve Jobs and Apple. He did quite a bit of acid.
But even if there were no such thing as tolerance, psychedelics aren't pleasant in the day-in-day-out way that a beer after work can be, or that I imagine an opioid would be. They require far too much emotional work. It's typical to take a moderate mushroom dose, and then spend a month or two "integrating" the experience (i.e., figuring out what the heck all those insights mean).
The government shouldn't be telling you how to live your life, sure. But that doesn't change reality that the vast majority of people out there are not qualified to make a medical assessment for themselves about the severity of synthetic substances (and many naturally occurring substances as well)f
It feels like the culture of family and community is steadily being eroded in the United States in favor of liberalization at any cost.
Predictably, too, police culture is one of violence: High rates of domestic violence among police is one of the pillars of the kind of cultural rot exemplified and spread by Andrew Tate. The real problems are not that we lack a "culture of family and community" but that, based partly on the Drug War and partly on white Christian nationalism, we have a culture of brutality.
People should have the right to treat themselves as best they can.
Finally, if you look into the history of the War on Drugs, you'll find that the basis of it was oppression of classes of people, not safety.
I'm saying the same thing. It appears irresponsible to resort to substances that affect your behavior in non deterministic ways to fix a perceived problem.
A child with the privilege of growing up in a good community, tends to have better outcomes and socio economic problems don't have solutions at the end of a needle.
While I slagged pharma solutions I also acknowledge that they have value too. Our brains are biochemical machines and sometimes the chemistry needs a tweak. When done right it's life changing.
> A child with the privilege of growing up in a good community
And those that don't?
> don't have solutions at the end of a needle
That's quite a leap.
Medication can be valuable for mental health, but there are risks. While there are abuses of this, it still doesn't discount the value for those it does help.
Psychedelics/Ketamine/MDMA are showing great promise in therapeutic contexts and it's about time they are allowed to be used. They also can be enjoyed recreationally (and also abused), but again, that doesn't discount the legitimate medicinal use of them.
Your approach seemed to be that people just need to be born in the right community and upbringing and have a good life and everything will be all right.
The War on Drugs has been a catastrophic failure and attitudes such as yours support the continuation of that mistake.
Great ending, right? Too bad he's too stupid to make the right decisions. Or maybe you're saying he made HIS decision, so fuck him anyway.
You'll be pleased to hear then that the law we're discussing requires trained supervision: https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/27/oregon-trains-psilocy...