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I just wished their was fairer representation online of impact on people's lives when drugs get brought up. I never done drugs. But still, I suffered thanks to

I just wished their was fairer representation online of impact on people's lives when drugs get brought up. I never done drugs. But still, I suffered thanks to people who chose drugs as a way cope - and it's soul sucking. The problem with decriminalizing/legalizing recreational drugs is its interpreted as officials of the state validating drugs as a coping skill. In almost all cases, getting high is maladaptive coping style. My anecdote from being raised by substance abusers: Makes you think you're smart, maybe even makes you look competent to other people. Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances. It's excruciating to have to endure loved ones who become dependent on substances. It saps the energy out of you to deal with. Their brain is rewired to get high - at the expense of their social connections, family, reputation, and so on. Suffering and enduring a drug abuser is a silent pain. The incentive for users to get high and for rehab clinics to make money show why the conversation is so lopsided.

lowdose 7y ago
Problems with mushrooms?
- kleer001 7y ago
  A problem with complex categories and propaganda and probably personal experience lumped in there too.
rollo 7y ago
This article is about psilocybin mushrooms though, not whatever abusable substances you're talking about.
- DanBC 7y ago
  To support your point there's this bit of survey work. https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldrugsurvey/results/GDS2017_key-findings-report_final.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldru... > Out of almost 10,000 last year magic mushroom consumers only 0.2% (n = 17, 13 men and 4 women) reported seeking emergency medical treatment. Magic mushrooms were the safest drugs to take in terms of needing to see emergency medical treatment according to GDS2017. There was no significant different in rates between male and females. > The rate is considerably lower than with LSD presumably because of intrinsic safety of magic mushrooms ( the greatest risk is picking the wrong type), the smaller dosing using units (a single mushroom v an LSD tab) and greater understanding of how many mushrooms may constitute atypical dose for a desired effect in your region. People who use psychedelics are generally very sensible and show some of the best preparation and adoption of harm reduction practices of any drug (see the Global Drug Survey highway https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-High-Way-Code_LSD.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/...
  - empath75 7y ago
    Mushrooms also wear off a lot sooner. You’d be just getting going with lsd by the time you were almost done with mushrooms.
SirFatty 7y ago
I don't disagree with you on this, but I hope you are also including alcohol?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
  And potentially, just barely, coffee.
  - rofo1 7y ago
    Why coffee? I've both drank coffee and not drank coffee for years. The only difference is you are more alert (blocking adenosine). How do you go compare it to drugs? If it's a joke or sarcasm, it's not clear (to me at least).
    - intarga 7y ago
      And the only difference with mushrooms is that you're more open minded. Caffeine also has withdrawal symptoms which psilocybin doesn't, and the LD50 (overdose threshold) is orders of magnitude lower for coffee than mushrooms.
      - rofo1 7y ago
        Funny how you characterize hallucinations as "open minded". It's par for the course for 2020 anyway. We seem to invent better sounding words for things that we already had words, which contained (generally) truer meaning. As I mentioned, I stopped drinking coffee one day out of sudden and I had zero, I repeat: zero symptoms of any kind. Nothing at all. Doesn't seem right to me to put coffee in the same group with mind-altering substances.
        wutbrodo 7y ago
        > Doesn't seem right to me to put coffee in the same group with mind-altering substances. Not sure how to say this more bluntly, but this is nothing but your own ignorance talking. Literally look at the first sentce of the Wikipedia page for caffeine: it's a psychoactive drug. Complaining about people not adhering to your bizarre redefinition of an extremely well-defined term is very odd. > Funny how you characterize hallucinations as "open minded" There's that confident ignorance again... It seems obvious that GP is describing an effect of mushrooms other than hallucinations, not describing hallucinations themselves as open-mindedness. This complaint is about as nonsensical as someone describing that they unwind with a couple drinks and you saying "how do nausea and bloating relax you?"
krohling 7y ago
I respect that perspective as I believe it's an experience many have had with drugs. My anecdotal experience with psychedelics (psilocybin specifically) is that it is a qualitatively different substance. Non-toxic, non-addictive (experience actually discourages frequent usage), and genuinely healing. It has helped me personally and many I have spoken to with depression and a range of other mental illnesses. The key to efficacy with these substances is education and responsible use, neither of which will happen in the current environment of criminalization.
- confuseddesi 7y ago
  Couldn't this be handled instead by allowing doctors to prescribe these substances like they do other medication? Why decriminalize non-prescription possession instead?
  - Bud 7y ago
    Because the medical profession is demonstrably hostile towards this sort of thing and unable to act as a functional conduit for such substances. So for purposes of what is going to be legal vs. what is going to get a lot of (almost entirely black) people tossed in jail, doctors are NOT the right gatekeepers.
  - krohling 7y ago
    I will add to other comments negating the value of doctors as gatekeepers by simply referring to the state of mental health care in our country. As someone who is fortunate to have only had to deal with it for a short amount of time I was still absolutely shocked. Until you've had experience with it personally (or via someone you care about) I think it's difficult to understand how abhorrent and sad it really is. Additionally, I will add that for a drug like psilocybin the financial incentives are unlikely to ever line up. Large pharmaceutical companies will have no interest b/c it would cannibalize existing product lines. Psilocybin would never be a cash cow b/c it's so incredibly easy and inexpensive to produce. Microdoses can literally be manufactured by amateurs for fractions of a penny per dose and a bit of internet searching. Mental health care is in an awful state and people are suffering terribly from illnesses that this drug can help with. It's cheap and easy to produce. Trusting it to the current system of us pharma and healthcare is too dangerous in my opinion.
jswag 7y ago
I think that largely depends on the class of drugs and their addictive potential. Generally psychedelics are viewed as having lower potential for addiction or abuse than other classes of drugs, such as opiates or even alcohol and, I think most importantly, steps such as decriminalization may help with broader arguments that would allow for more research in to the medicinal uses and effects of these drugs. Psilocybin in particular shows great promise in helping people cope with addiction to other substances in rather productive ways. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201705/radical-new-approach-beating-addiction https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201705/radical-n... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007659/
6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
True as that may be, there's a spectrum. When I'm regularly really stressed, I find myself eating more desserts and junk food. It's a coping strategy. So is heroin. It's good that the government doesn't mandate that I don't use sugar to feel good, and frequently argued as good that the government does mandate that I don't use heroin to cope. The question is where each drug lands on this spectrum. We have collectively decided that you can drink alcohol, but that can be a horrible way to cope. My experience with mushrooms puts it pretty close to the marijuana/alcohol end of the spectrum. I'm sorry if mushrooms contributed to a difficult upbringing for you.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  Heroin probably isn't a great example, since kicking it is so much more excruciating than temporary increases in junk food or alcohol consumption. Weed is a much better example; I'm pretty strict about my diet, so during stressful times I notice myself leaning on weed in the way people do with junk food: unconsciously and moderately, rolling it back as soon as I notice it.
newnewpdro 7y ago
You're grossly lumping all drugs into one pile. Presumably you mean illegal drugs when you say "I never done drugs", because I'm certain you've done drugs like caffeine, probably alcohol too. If that's how you define drugs, by those which are illegal at the time, then get ready to accept psilocybin as a non-drug in the future.
pmoriarty 7y ago
Drug abuse is a real problem. But not all drug use is drug abuse. It's possible to use drugs constructively, to actually improve your life and that of others (because what you do, how you feel, and how you live your life impacts others). Mushrooms and other psychedelics have great potentials to improve mental health, if used wisely. There have been studies that show psychedelics successfully being used to treat depression, PTSD, and addiction. This kind of use is the opposite of abuse. It is possible to abuse psychedelics, but it is rare, and one can minimize the risk by educating oneself thoroughly about them and by using them with a clear, constructive intention, in a quiet and safe setting, with an experienced person you like and trust, and with confidence in the identity of the substance and that you're taking the proper dose. I'd strongly recommend reading James Fadiman's Psychedelic Explorer's Guide[1] for more detailed suggestions. Like the Prohibition of the 1920's, decades of the War on Drugs has utterly failed to make us safer. In fact, it makes us less safe because people have and will continue to use drugs, but because of the drug war they often are mistaken about the identity of the drugs they're using or the drug's dosage, leading to overdoses and other adverse effects. The War on Drugs also encourages and makes organized crime more profitable and leads to great violence, not to mention the effect of arrests, imprisonment, and killings by police on non-violent drug users and their families. A tragedy and an outrage is the only way to describe the War on Drugs, and I have a very hard time understanding why anyone who's educated themselves on these issues would support it. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-Journeys/dp/1594774021/ https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...
- akiselev 7y ago
  It's important to note that when people talk about drug abuse and its impacts, they are usually referring to heroin and opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and other alkaloids, benzodiazepines, and so on. While some of those drugs are hallucinogenics, none of them are considered psychedelics, which is what the current decriminalization conversation is about. Magic mushrooms, LSD, and cannabis are in a different universe psychiatrically, addictively, and experientially. It's like comparing viagra to chemotherapy: yeah, a blood thinner carries extra risks for certain subpopulations, but chemotherapy has visibly destructive side effects on the entire population.
zelly 7y ago
> Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances. That's where you're mistaken. Psychedelics aren't for escaping reality. They're for facing it. On heroin/meth/cannabis/alcohol, you take it and feel good, forgetting about stuff like going to work or feeding your baby. On LSD/mushrooms, you are more likely to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room crying than you are to experience euphoria. Nobody takes that stuff for "fun".
- toomanybeersies 7y ago
  I completely disagree. I've used psychedelics plenty of times as a form of escapism. I tend to stop worrying about reality when I'm 500 µg of LSD deep. I also use it frequently for fun, in fact I can't remember the last time I didn't use it for "fun".
  - suby 7y ago
    How comparable is LSD to Mushrooms?
    - joejerryronnie 7y ago
      Not an expert but have experimented with both several times. For me, LSD produced much stronger visuals and deeper “meaning of the universe” insight, but also more anxiety. Mushrooms were a more mellow trip but, at the same time, much more emotional.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      On the street, mushrooms have a reputation for being much more gentle than LSD, and LSD is supposed to be more pushy (ie. LSD will make you face your issues, while mushrooms might just invite you to do so). But it's questionable how strong a dose of mushrooms those who maintain it's more gentle than LSD actually took. Also, a long time ago I read of studies that showed that even experienced users couldn't tell the difference between all the various major types of psychedelics when they were administered in a double-blind fashion. Something else to consider is that, as I've mentioned in another comment, a lot of what's sold as LSD on the black market actually isn't, and most people don't test their drugs. So much of what you read these days about self-reported LSD use is probably actually about other substances.
ur-whale 7y ago
There's not very much in your diatribe that considers the individual freedom aspect of the problem.
ph4 7y ago
It's ironic that you ask for a "fairer representation", and then go on to deliver an inaccurate, "reefer madness"-esque, culturally and personally conditioned caricature of psilocybin.
thelittleone 7y ago
I used to work 80 hrs a week. Get drunk with colleagues 3 or 4 nights a week and took recreational drugs. Even though my team was crushing it, this Life wasn’t for me, I was miserable inside. I lost my marriage, kids moved to another country with the mother. Fast forward a few years I take LSD first time. This experience compels me to clean up my diet. Over the next 24 months I completely stop drinking and recreational drugs and have a healthy diet. Inspired, I go to Peru to study Plant medicines with a Shipibo Maestro Shaman. And now after years of training I serve this medicine to people walking my old life in the cities. I can’t consider it work because it’s my passion, it’s a self perpetuating energy loop. I’m so happy that I just don’t want to escape anything. Without having tried recreational drugs I doubt I would have tried LSD. Without LSD I would not have ended up with in the Amazon. Money is no longer a concern, it’s a by product of my passion.
- evjim 7y ago
  The fact that doing a drug once compelled you to move countries and become a distributor for drugs does not convince me that it is a good idea.
  - elevenoh 7y ago
    The least generous interpretation. You could use a little more open mindedness ;)
  - thelittleone 7y ago
    I don't recall trying to convince you of anything. I simply share one perspective. Things I have seen transform in one night: 1) Chronic depression with year of taking pharmaceuticals 2) People with anxiety stopping taking xanax 3) Bitter marriage disputes resolved. 4) People letting go of child hood sexual abuse trauma. Unlike the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the end goal with this plant medicine is that the client does not need to come back. If it makes you feel better to lump this into the same category as drug distribution by all means go ahead.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    If you'd like to step outside of narrow-minded pattern-matching for a second, there was a period in my mid-20s during which I took LSD once a month or so, and I literally had an epiphany every time. These weren't unfalsifiable philosophical larks about the universe, they were things like "I can be pretty self-centered" and "do I have a healthy relationship with drugs?" and seeing relationships from the other person's perspective that stuck with me in the longterm and improved me as a person. I had a pretty messed up childhood, and while I wouldn't give all the credit to LSD, I'd say it deserves more than half the credit for repairing the toxic relationships I had with my parents. Since this seems to matter to people, I'm about as normal as you could expect. I have a high-paying 9-5 job that I'm passionate about, I'm in a leadership role that requires me to be reliable and stable (unlike when I was a junior engineer and could randomly take days off on a whim), I play sports and eat healthy and have a couple long-term hobbies. Letting the word "drug" do all the thinking for you is a really bizarre embrace of the brainwashing that you've been subjected to. It's not even consistent brainwashing! Anyone with a couple of brain cells should be able to figure out that alcohol is a central example of a drug and yet magically nobody terrified of "drugs" had trouble accepting that alcohol can be responsibly enjoyed despite its potential for immense social damage.
tsukurimashou 7y ago
You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs". Well I can tell you what you described doesn't apply to psychedelics, things like "Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances." There might be a very few people addicted to LSD / shrooms, but I've never seen it myself, I tried both multiple times and never felt a sense of addiction. I want to do it again, but it is very different from cannabis, with cannabis I feel very much the addiction.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  > You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs". This likely isn't even true, unless OP has never touched caffeine or alcohol, the most widely used drugs in the world. There's no reasonable definition of drugs that doesn't include those two, beyond the one meant to trick simple-minded pattern-matchers from thinking critically about either their alcohol use or their potential use of other drugs.

lowdose 7y ago

Problems with mushrooms?

kleer001 7y ago
A problem with complex categories and propaganda and probably personal experience lumped in there too.

rollo 7y ago

This article is about psilocybin mushrooms though, not whatever abusable substances you're talking about.

DanBC 7y ago
To support your point there's this bit of survey work. https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldrugsurvey/results/GDS2017_key-findings-report_final.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/themes/globaldru... > Out of almost 10,000 last year magic mushroom consumers only 0.2% (n = 17, 13 men and 4 women) reported seeking emergency medical treatment. Magic mushrooms were the safest drugs to take in terms of needing to see emergency medical treatment according to GDS2017. There was no significant different in rates between male and females. > The rate is considerably lower than with LSD presumably because of intrinsic safety of magic mushrooms ( the greatest risk is picking the wrong type), the smaller dosing using units (a single mushroom v an LSD tab) and greater understanding of how many mushrooms may constitute atypical dose for a desired effect in your region. People who use psychedelics are generally very sensible and show some of the best preparation and adoption of harm reduction practices of any drug (see the Global Drug Survey highway https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/The-High-Way-Code_LSD.pdf https://www.globaldrugsurvey.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/...
- empath75 7y ago
  Mushrooms also wear off a lot sooner. You’d be just getting going with lsd by the time you were almost done with mushrooms.

SirFatty 7y ago

I don't disagree with you on this, but I hope you are also including alcohol?

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
And potentially, just barely, coffee.
- rofo1 7y ago
  Why coffee? I've both drank coffee and not drank coffee for years. The only difference is you are more alert (blocking adenosine). How do you go compare it to drugs? If it's a joke or sarcasm, it's not clear (to me at least).
  - intarga 7y ago
    And the only difference with mushrooms is that you're more open minded. Caffeine also has withdrawal symptoms which psilocybin doesn't, and the LD50 (overdose threshold) is orders of magnitude lower for coffee than mushrooms.
    - rofo1 7y ago
      Funny how you characterize hallucinations as "open minded". It's par for the course for 2020 anyway. We seem to invent better sounding words for things that we already had words, which contained (generally) truer meaning. As I mentioned, I stopped drinking coffee one day out of sudden and I had zero, I repeat: zero symptoms of any kind. Nothing at all. Doesn't seem right to me to put coffee in the same group with mind-altering substances.
      - wutbrodo 7y ago
        > Doesn't seem right to me to put coffee in the same group with mind-altering substances. Not sure how to say this more bluntly, but this is nothing but your own ignorance talking. Literally look at the first sentce of the Wikipedia page for caffeine: it's a psychoactive drug. Complaining about people not adhering to your bizarre redefinition of an extremely well-defined term is very odd. > Funny how you characterize hallucinations as "open minded" There's that confident ignorance again... It seems obvious that GP is describing an effect of mushrooms other than hallucinations, not describing hallucinations themselves as open-mindedness. This complaint is about as nonsensical as someone describing that they unwind with a couple drinks and you saying "how do nausea and bloating relax you?"

krohling 7y ago

I respect that perspective as I believe it's an experience many have had with drugs. My anecdotal experience with psychedelics (psilocybin specifically) is that it is a qualitatively different substance. Non-toxic, non-addictive (experience actually discourages frequent usage), and genuinely healing. It has helped me personally and many I have spoken to with depression and a range of other mental illnesses. The key to efficacy with these substances is education and responsible use, neither of which will happen in the current environment of criminalization.

confuseddesi 7y ago
Couldn't this be handled instead by allowing doctors to prescribe these substances like they do other medication? Why decriminalize non-prescription possession instead?
- Bud 7y ago
  Because the medical profession is demonstrably hostile towards this sort of thing and unable to act as a functional conduit for such substances. So for purposes of what is going to be legal vs. what is going to get a lot of (almost entirely black) people tossed in jail, doctors are NOT the right gatekeepers.
- krohling 7y ago
  I will add to other comments negating the value of doctors as gatekeepers by simply referring to the state of mental health care in our country. As someone who is fortunate to have only had to deal with it for a short amount of time I was still absolutely shocked. Until you've had experience with it personally (or via someone you care about) I think it's difficult to understand how abhorrent and sad it really is. Additionally, I will add that for a drug like psilocybin the financial incentives are unlikely to ever line up. Large pharmaceutical companies will have no interest b/c it would cannibalize existing product lines. Psilocybin would never be a cash cow b/c it's so incredibly easy and inexpensive to produce. Microdoses can literally be manufactured by amateurs for fractions of a penny per dose and a bit of internet searching. Mental health care is in an awful state and people are suffering terribly from illnesses that this drug can help with. It's cheap and easy to produce. Trusting it to the current system of us pharma and healthcare is too dangerous in my opinion.

jswag 7y ago

I think that largely depends on the class of drugs and their addictive potential. Generally psychedelics are viewed as having lower potential for addiction or abuse than other classes of drugs, such as opiates or even alcohol and, I think most importantly, steps such as decriminalization may help with broader arguments that would allow for more research in to the medicinal uses and effects of these drugs. Psilocybin in particular shows great promise in helping people cope with addiction to other substances in rather productive ways. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201705/radical-new-approach-beating-addiction https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201705/radical-n... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6007659/

6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago

True as that may be, there's a spectrum. When I'm regularly really stressed, I find myself eating more desserts and junk food. It's a coping strategy. So is heroin. It's good that the government doesn't mandate that I don't use sugar to feel good, and frequently argued as good that the government does mandate that I don't use heroin to cope. The question is where each drug lands on this spectrum. We have collectively decided that you can drink alcohol, but that can be a horrible way to cope. My experience with mushrooms puts it pretty close to the marijuana/alcohol end of the spectrum. I'm sorry if mushrooms contributed to a difficult upbringing for you.

wutbrodo 7y ago
Heroin probably isn't a great example, since kicking it is so much more excruciating than temporary increases in junk food or alcohol consumption. Weed is a much better example; I'm pretty strict about my diet, so during stressful times I notice myself leaning on weed in the way people do with junk food: unconsciously and moderately, rolling it back as soon as I notice it.

newnewpdro 7y ago

You're grossly lumping all drugs into one pile. Presumably you mean illegal drugs when you say "I never done drugs", because I'm certain you've done drugs like caffeine, probably alcohol too. If that's how you define drugs, by those which are illegal at the time, then get ready to accept psilocybin as a non-drug in the future.

pmoriarty 7y ago

Drug abuse is a real problem. But not all drug use is drug abuse. It's possible to use drugs constructively, to actually improve your life and that of others (because what you do, how you feel, and how you live your life impacts others). Mushrooms and other psychedelics have great potentials to improve mental health, if used wisely. There have been studies that show psychedelics successfully being used to treat depression, PTSD, and addiction. This kind of use is the opposite of abuse. It is possible to abuse psychedelics, but it is rare, and one can minimize the risk by educating oneself thoroughly about them and by using them with a clear, constructive intention, in a quiet and safe setting, with an experienced person you like and trust, and with confidence in the identity of the substance and that you're taking the proper dose. I'd strongly recommend reading James Fadiman's Psychedelic Explorer's Guide[1] for more detailed suggestions. Like the Prohibition of the 1920's, decades of the War on Drugs has utterly failed to make us safer. In fact, it makes us less safe because people have and will continue to use drugs, but because of the drug war they often are mistaken about the identity of the drugs they're using or the drug's dosage, leading to overdoses and other adverse effects. The War on Drugs also encourages and makes organized crime more profitable and leads to great violence, not to mention the effect of arrests, imprisonment, and killings by police on non-violent drug users and their families. A tragedy and an outrage is the only way to describe the War on Drugs, and I have a very hard time understanding why anyone who's educated themselves on these issues would support it. [1] - https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic-Journeys/dp/1594774021/ https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...

akiselev 7y ago
It's important to note that when people talk about drug abuse and its impacts, they are usually referring to heroin and opioids, amphetamines, cocaine and other alkaloids, benzodiazepines, and so on. While some of those drugs are hallucinogenics, none of them are considered psychedelics, which is what the current decriminalization conversation is about. Magic mushrooms, LSD, and cannabis are in a different universe psychiatrically, addictively, and experientially. It's like comparing viagra to chemotherapy: yeah, a blood thinner carries extra risks for certain subpopulations, but chemotherapy has visibly destructive side effects on the entire population.

zelly 7y ago

> Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances. That's where you're mistaken. Psychedelics aren't for escaping reality. They're for facing it. On heroin/meth/cannabis/alcohol, you take it and feel good, forgetting about stuff like going to work or feeding your baby. On LSD/mushrooms, you are more likely to curl up in a ball in the corner of the room crying than you are to experience euphoria. Nobody takes that stuff for "fun".

toomanybeersies 7y ago
I completely disagree. I've used psychedelics plenty of times as a form of escapism. I tend to stop worrying about reality when I'm 500 µg of LSD deep. I also use it frequently for fun, in fact I can't remember the last time I didn't use it for "fun".
- suby 7y ago
  How comparable is LSD to Mushrooms?
  - joejerryronnie 7y ago
    Not an expert but have experimented with both several times. For me, LSD produced much stronger visuals and deeper “meaning of the universe” insight, but also more anxiety. Mushrooms were a more mellow trip but, at the same time, much more emotional.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    On the street, mushrooms have a reputation for being much more gentle than LSD, and LSD is supposed to be more pushy (ie. LSD will make you face your issues, while mushrooms might just invite you to do so). But it's questionable how strong a dose of mushrooms those who maintain it's more gentle than LSD actually took. Also, a long time ago I read of studies that showed that even experienced users couldn't tell the difference between all the various major types of psychedelics when they were administered in a double-blind fashion. Something else to consider is that, as I've mentioned in another comment, a lot of what's sold as LSD on the black market actually isn't, and most people don't test their drugs. So much of what you read these days about self-reported LSD use is probably actually about other substances.

ur-whale 7y ago

There's not very much in your diatribe that considers the individual freedom aspect of the problem.

ph4 7y ago

It's ironic that you ask for a "fairer representation", and then go on to deliver an inaccurate, "reefer madness"-esque, culturally and personally conditioned caricature of psilocybin.

thelittleone 7y ago

I used to work 80 hrs a week. Get drunk with colleagues 3 or 4 nights a week and took recreational drugs. Even though my team was crushing it, this Life wasn’t for me, I was miserable inside. I lost my marriage, kids moved to another country with the mother. Fast forward a few years I take LSD first time. This experience compels me to clean up my diet. Over the next 24 months I completely stop drinking and recreational drugs and have a healthy diet. Inspired, I go to Peru to study Plant medicines with a Shipibo Maestro Shaman. And now after years of training I serve this medicine to people walking my old life in the cities. I can’t consider it work because it’s my passion, it’s a self perpetuating energy loop. I’m so happy that I just don’t want to escape anything. Without having tried recreational drugs I doubt I would have tried LSD. Without LSD I would not have ended up with in the Amazon. Money is no longer a concern, it’s a by product of my passion.

evjim 7y ago
The fact that doing a drug once compelled you to move countries and become a distributor for drugs does not convince me that it is a good idea.
- elevenoh 7y ago
  The least generous interpretation. You could use a little more open mindedness ;)
- thelittleone 7y ago
  I don't recall trying to convince you of anything. I simply share one perspective. Things I have seen transform in one night: 1) Chronic depression with year of taking pharmaceuticals 2) People with anxiety stopping taking xanax 3) Bitter marriage disputes resolved. 4) People letting go of child hood sexual abuse trauma. Unlike the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the end goal with this plant medicine is that the client does not need to come back. If it makes you feel better to lump this into the same category as drug distribution by all means go ahead.
- wutbrodo 7y ago
  If you'd like to step outside of narrow-minded pattern-matching for a second, there was a period in my mid-20s during which I took LSD once a month or so, and I literally had an epiphany every time. These weren't unfalsifiable philosophical larks about the universe, they were things like "I can be pretty self-centered" and "do I have a healthy relationship with drugs?" and seeing relationships from the other person's perspective that stuck with me in the longterm and improved me as a person. I had a pretty messed up childhood, and while I wouldn't give all the credit to LSD, I'd say it deserves more than half the credit for repairing the toxic relationships I had with my parents. Since this seems to matter to people, I'm about as normal as you could expect. I have a high-paying 9-5 job that I'm passionate about, I'm in a leadership role that requires me to be reliable and stable (unlike when I was a junior engineer and could randomly take days off on a whim), I play sports and eat healthy and have a couple long-term hobbies. Letting the word "drug" do all the thinking for you is a really bizarre embrace of the brainwashing that you've been subjected to. It's not even consistent brainwashing! Anyone with a couple of brain cells should be able to figure out that alcohol is a central example of a drug and yet magically nobody terrified of "drugs" had trouble accepting that alcohol can be responsibly enjoyed despite its potential for immense social damage.

tsukurimashou 7y ago

You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs". Well I can tell you what you described doesn't apply to psychedelics, things like "Until you don't have the drug anymore, in which case you're left with an anxious person who can't cope with difficult circumstances." There might be a very few people addicted to LSD / shrooms, but I've never seen it myself, I tried both multiple times and never felt a sense of addiction. I want to do it again, but it is very different from cannabis, with cannabis I feel very much the addiction.

wutbrodo 7y ago
> You seem to put all drugs in the same basket, you say it yourself "I never done drugs". This likely isn't even true, unless OP has never touched caffeine or alcohol, the most widely used drugs in the world. There's no reasonable definition of drugs that doesn't include those two, beyond the one meant to trick simple-minded pattern-matchers from thinking critically about either their alcohol use or their potential use of other drugs.