It's funny how the Wikipedia article call hallucinations "ill effects". I am yet to hear people call caffeine effects "ill effects". People and their sociocultural biases, uh?
Coffee has well known ill-effects, I think every coffee drinker at one point have drank too much and felt them themselves. Apparently such a big topic that it isn't just a section of the Caffeine page, it has it's very own Wikipedia page! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_toxicity
But despite that, this mushroom is not a popular recreational drug. Much like amanita muscaria, which certain people insist must be great if used right, is common as dirt, and yet is so unpopular as a drug that it isn't even restricted.
By these same accounts, you'll get sick. It's unpleasant. Not even the most enthusiastic "psychonauts" seem to manage to take joy in this thing, little people or not.
Most people don't even know about it or have the means to access it as its either not available or not legal in their jurisdiction so not accurate. About 45% of the adults drink. How much lower would that percentage be if alcohol was little known and subjected to the same regulations psychedelics are under?
It's the best argument to legalize them if you ask me. It's clearly a self-limiting problem - I think it's simply because of unpleasant experiences, but I suppose it's also possible that the life-changing experiences make them not need the drugs anymore.
Psilocybe, the genus containing the most commonly cultivated magic mushroom, is also quite common. It is globally distributed with native species on every continent (less antarctica ofc). It didn't become illegal because it was common in the "wild", but because of the cultivation of one particular species at home and in closets.
A. muscaria on the other hand has never been successfully cultivated as far as we know. You would be surprised how many powerful psychoactive "drugs" can be found in ecosystems around the world
I didn't say it was legal because it's common - as you say, psilocybe mushrooms are also common - but because it's so unpleasant it has low abuse potential.
Plants/fungus can help convince your systems that things are okay, that it’s okay to be closer to resting state / content - not just “provide nutrients and fiber” as believed - though those things are super important, too!
No, intent matters. If you drugged someone with caffeine (or someone drank it not knowing what it was) then their symptoms would also be called ill effects.
It's a interesting train of thought if nothing else. How would we "prove" a thing like "humanity benefits from being able to create, share and read books?" for example? Or that we can organize in grassroot movements? It's also really hard to qualify directly, as the impact is so indirect.
Same with psychedelics, a lot of scientists, researchers, creatives or even business-people attribute psychedelic usage to some of their success in their fields, but how can we really know if it was because of that or not?
If you do want to get into the "where big":
Shamanic/ritual/religious/social practices that wholly involve hallucinatory experiences (both with and without the aid of hallucinogenic substances) are well attested and documented throughout human development.
So the existence is there; if you want to argue that actually it was a Bad Thing for human collectives, from Siberia to the Amazon, from 50k years ago to the present day, to engage in these practices and that they'd have been much better off Not Doing It, I guess the burden of that proof is on you?
It is one of my favourite quotes. However, i think it only holds amongst intellects of his calibre.
I've come to the position that false beliefs aren't necessarily harmful, in the context of proles who already believe a lot of wrong things.
I mean, people claim therapeutic benefits to psychedelics, and there is some evidence.
Your analogy is exactly backwards.
How is that different from psychedelics? We can "see" their physical counterparts (and chemical reactions) in people's head and body as they trip too.
This function is listed as a side effect of being on these meds. Which is true, it's not being used to treat depression, though is often being used to treat people with depression and treat the root cause of that depression. It just also happens to "perk" you up.
To wit: multiple people here have definitely heard the thing you have yet to hear.
The adverse effects of psilocybin are well known and documented and we know for sure that it’s not physically dangerous.
For the trip part we mostly know how it work and how interact and it can be healing (or bad trip depending on the context).
Still you may have have digestive adverse effects, not because of poisoning but because the human gut cannot digest crude mushrooms.
But you will not be physically sick per se like you would be with a bacteria or a toxin, your immune system will not fight anything.
I just was under the impression that from a 'medical(?)' point of view, the trip is nothing more than food poisoning
A lot of sold-as pure isomers are also simply racemic. People often won't notice that either (due to placebo and other factors), but they won't be getting the full benefit they wanted.
There are outliers like myself of course that cannot have levoamphetamine, it completely disables me. I do not know why and I don't really care to find out. The one and only time I took regular adderall, I had to sleep it off.
https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/12/3737
https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-nutrition/harvard-st...