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Psychedelics are a different game. I’m still not sure if I’m for or against these movements. Nonetheless, I think anyone who wants to vote on the issues around

Psychedelics are a different game. I’m still not sure if I’m for or against these movements. Nonetheless, I think anyone who wants to vote on the issues around psychedelics should have to first go through a bad trip. There’s nothing I can write that can allow you to fully understand what it means to have a good trip, or a bad one. I repeat, you’re playing a different game with this stuff. edit: lol downvotes edit2: The best advice I ever received about tripping is that "the trip always ends".

anm89 6y ago
What does that have to do with whether we should incarcerate people in small metal cages for possession?
vmception 6y ago
Which is why recreationally regulated is a more desirable outcome than decriminalized. At the bare minimum this stuff needs the whole supply chain to be stable for consumer protection. Decriminalized doesn't do that.
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  For real. It’s amazing what legalization has done for the marijuana market in California. I don’t use concentrates but it does seem reassuring that their production is highly regulated here. The packages you buy have all kinds of labels with testing information. It really feels like you know what you’re getting. Compared to unregulated purchases where a concentrate can be some brown or yellow goo and you don’t truly know what you’re getting. I’m not normally in favor of state control and I’d like to see California relax some control here over time, but for a new product on the market it is kind of reassuring seeing the chain of testing and reporting that seems to be required here.
  - vmception 6y ago
    Yeah I'm sure dispensary licensing, county-level prohibitions, as well as growers licensing is all sorts of messed up. Every state seems to be caught in some kind of greedy protectionist cronyism in that regard, and this won't be fixed unless the federal government legalizes. States are also not equipped to have an FDA level of review to create studies. But outside of the west-coast, a lot of states seem to have less-blanked recreational legalization, like they legalize some molecular compounds while prohibiting others and certain strains. Would definitely like to see standardization and just simply treating this stuff as any drug that comes with normal disclaimers and lists of side effects. I just hate all the anecdotes right now.
Moodles 6y ago
I don't think you should be downvoted simply because people disagree with you. This isn't Reddit, guys. However, I've done mushrooms quite a lot. I've had a couple bad trips where I've lost my sense of self, all memories, massive confusion. I've also had bad trips on alcohol. I think with mushrooms, there are rarely really bad trips, usually just challenging ones. I think the benefits outweigh the cons, but for sure we should study them. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-relieves-major-depression-study-shows https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...
f430 6y ago
There have been some cases where someone who took Psilocybe/LSD go crazy and kill themselves but its super rare and not well understood as there are other ongoing issues. I've also been wary of LSD being possibly chemically unpure and the possibility of it causing schizophrenia according to an HN comment I read long time ago, so I've only done psilocybe mushrooms a handful of times. Microdosing is popular but unfortunately its mostly a placebo effect, your body grows tolerance to psilocybe very rapidly. It can't be done weekly and even monthly use will not yield its maximum potential. I haven't done it since summer last year but it seems to have gotten rid of my depression and I've tried just about every anti-depressant there is. Zoloft to my memory has been the absolute worst. While it can be beneficial in some cases, I found Psilocybin mushrooms to be the best for me. Your mileage will vary. I suggest first reading/listening about its properties from people like Terrence McKenna first. He will suggest 5 grams or nothin but tbh its way too much for a beginner. I would say start off with far less. I actually did like 2 or 3 grams and it was absolutely amazing. Your setting is important and your mood too. I guess the most important thing about Psilocybin is that it is very much mechanical and feminine. It appears that you can communicate with it. For a transcendental experience 5 grams is needed. Ego death is very scary because it feels like death but after the comedown, it seems to have had a radical shift in my values and thinking. It's impact does seem to fade however but the values it instills appears to persist. I don't think we need to fear this any longer. We are past the Puritannical age of immaturity and ignorance for the most part. Also once you try it you may never want to do it again because of what it surfaces internally within you. Just a warning that it may make one open minded and consciously aware of itself. Just remember in any part of the journey, its very very hard to kill yourself by eating a bunch of mushrooms and pooping it out the next day. Yeah it does feel like you poisoned yourself when you start tripping and your ego desperately claws at the edges of reality desperate to not let go of the facade. I hope that more people will see reality for itself rather than what they've been subconsciously programmed to believe from early on. I wouldn't describe it as NZT-48 from Limitless movie but it's somewhat close. It feels more like the red pill from Matrix because your view of reality will never be the same again. Disclaimer: I absolutely do not condone you taking substances which you are unfamiliar with.
- hnrodey 6y ago
  >Your setting is important I would say that your setting is of paramount importance.
colecut 6y ago
I had been on dozens if not a hundred trips, and it wasn't until my son was born that I had bad trips. I have experienced what I perceived to be hell-like experiences three times in total now. The sense of gratitude that I feel when those trips end have more than made up for the bad experiences themselves, in my cases. I have two friends that have experienced prolong psychiatric states, I'm talking several days to weeks of just being out of it, not making sense, not being able to really function as a normal human.. I feel lucky to have not dealt with that. The good trips can be so amazing and even life changing that many want to discount the horror stories, but sadly many are true. I think people should be able to make the decision for themselves legally as with any substance.
sneak 6y ago
If we're not free to intentionally harm our own bodies, the only thing to which we plainly and unambiguously hold complete title, we cannot be said to be free to own or control anything in our lives. This is a moral issue above all else: we are not the property of the state, and the state does not have any claim whatsoever to a property interest in our own bodies. They are ours to build and ours to destroy, full stop.
- adventured 6y ago
  That's an excellent summation of the root of all human rights: ownership over one's self.
denkmoon 6y ago
Should then people not be allowed to make their own decisions on this? I mean, honestly, they can and do currently. The illegality of psychedelics never once stopped me from investigating and trying them. It just means I'd be screwed if I had an encounter with the law while holding them, and I had to buy them through shady means. Both things we'd all be better off without.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
Good or bad, does it warrant going to jail for 10 years for doing a drug in the privacy of your own home? Esp. if you do so responsibly with someone to "watch" you in case of an issue. Though, I heard small doses are enough for some of the mental pickups - too small to cause even a mild trip. But I'm not a doctor/researcher on the subject. I've never even had a drug, though I'm tempted to go out of state and try something cause my anxiety/depression is strangling me this year.
- codr7 6y ago
  You might get away with it for some time, but sooner or later all psychedelics will put you in an uncomfortable place where you have to deal with yourself, cannabis included. I wouldn't recommend self medicating anxiety/depression though, not without a VERY experienced mentor. Most likely not dangerous in itself, but it could potentially turn up the volume for a while which might become unbearable.
throwanem 6y ago
All life is either risk or stagnation. I've had a bad trip, or at least a trip that went bad for a while near the end. I was sitting under a gnarled old tree in a forest southwest of Baltimore, and over what seemed a very little time I became certain that the tree had formed several misshapen mouths out of its trunk with which it was very soon going to eat me alive. It sounds as absurd to me now as it does to you, but in the moment it was so real I could see it - in fact, I can still see it in memory now, most of twenty years hence - and, in the moment, it was very bad. It stopped being that way when I understood that, while the fear was real and I couldn't simply make it stop, my reaction to it was totally within my control. Nothing else in my life to date had given me such a clear opportunity to recognize the difference between feeling the urge to panic, and actually panicking. I suppose that wouldn't have amounted to much on its own, except that I successfully chose not to panic, and instead of leaping to my feet and probably running off a cliff or something, I wiggled my butt more firmly into the space between two roots where I was sitting, and deliberately leaned back against the trunk of the tree. It made my skin crawl, but only for a little while. A few minutes later, I felt just fine again, if somewhat tired. Every new kind of experience brings with it some degree of risk. It's for everyone to decide for themselves whether the potential risk outweighs the potential reward, or not. For me? I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> anyone who wants to vote on the issues around psychedelics should have to first go through a bad trip I don’t do mushrooms. I don’t need my tax dollars being spent keeping people in their good trip and bad trip buckets. There are lots of things you can do to have a good or bad day. That, alone, shouldn’t make it illegal.
practicalpants 6y ago
Not sure why so downvoted. I recall a psychedelics advocate/former Vice reporter on the Joe Rogan podcast couple years back who warned how his good friend had a schizophrenic break after doing shrooms. Likely some medical pre-dispositions in place, but it's not a risk free activity. I read Michael Pollan's How to Change your Mind, and concluded that it's a richer if not safer experience if you're older/figured out yourself, e.g. have more set grooves in your brain where psychedelics can help you realize new connections; and that it's probably actually pretty risky if you're young, confused, anxious, or don't have your basic coordinates yes.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jjj123 6y ago
  I don’t think the OP is being downvoted for saying a bad trip can be a really awful experience. OP got downvoted because bad trips aren’t bad enough to put people in prison for possession over.
CuriouslyC 6y ago
Relationships should be illegal because there are terrible relationships. Jobs should be illegal because there are terrible jobs. Food should be illegal because food poisoning exists. People are going to do what they want to do, and by making things that are mostly harmless (and with the potential only to harm the person doing it) illegal, you are turning broad swathes of society into criminals. Pair this with racism, classism and selective enforcement and you have the unholy shitshow that is the war on drugs.

anm89 6y ago

What does that have to do with whether we should incarcerate people in small metal cages for possession?

vmception 6y ago

Which is why recreationally regulated is a more desirable outcome than decriminalized. At the bare minimum this stuff needs the whole supply chain to be stable for consumer protection. Decriminalized doesn't do that.

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
For real. It’s amazing what legalization has done for the marijuana market in California. I don’t use concentrates but it does seem reassuring that their production is highly regulated here. The packages you buy have all kinds of labels with testing information. It really feels like you know what you’re getting. Compared to unregulated purchases where a concentrate can be some brown or yellow goo and you don’t truly know what you’re getting. I’m not normally in favor of state control and I’d like to see California relax some control here over time, but for a new product on the market it is kind of reassuring seeing the chain of testing and reporting that seems to be required here.
- vmception 6y ago
  Yeah I'm sure dispensary licensing, county-level prohibitions, as well as growers licensing is all sorts of messed up. Every state seems to be caught in some kind of greedy protectionist cronyism in that regard, and this won't be fixed unless the federal government legalizes. States are also not equipped to have an FDA level of review to create studies. But outside of the west-coast, a lot of states seem to have less-blanked recreational legalization, like they legalize some molecular compounds while prohibiting others and certain strains. Would definitely like to see standardization and just simply treating this stuff as any drug that comes with normal disclaimers and lists of side effects. I just hate all the anecdotes right now.

Moodles 6y ago

I don't think you should be downvoted simply because people disagree with you. This isn't Reddit, guys. However, I've done mushrooms quite a lot. I've had a couple bad trips where I've lost my sense of self, all memories, massive confusion. I've also had bad trips on alcohol. I think with mushrooms, there are rarely really bad trips, usually just challenging ones. I think the benefits outweigh the cons, but for sure we should study them. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-relieves-major-depression-study-shows https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...

f430 6y ago

There have been some cases where someone who took Psilocybe/LSD go crazy and kill themselves but its super rare and not well understood as there are other ongoing issues. I've also been wary of LSD being possibly chemically unpure and the possibility of it causing schizophrenia according to an HN comment I read long time ago, so I've only done psilocybe mushrooms a handful of times. Microdosing is popular but unfortunately its mostly a placebo effect, your body grows tolerance to psilocybe very rapidly. It can't be done weekly and even monthly use will not yield its maximum potential. I haven't done it since summer last year but it seems to have gotten rid of my depression and I've tried just about every anti-depressant there is. Zoloft to my memory has been the absolute worst. While it can be beneficial in some cases, I found Psilocybin mushrooms to be the best for me. Your mileage will vary. I suggest first reading/listening about its properties from people like Terrence McKenna first. He will suggest 5 grams or nothin but tbh its way too much for a beginner. I would say start off with far less. I actually did like 2 or 3 grams and it was absolutely amazing. Your setting is important and your mood too. I guess the most important thing about Psilocybin is that it is very much mechanical and feminine. It appears that you can communicate with it. For a transcendental experience 5 grams is needed. Ego death is very scary because it feels like death but after the comedown, it seems to have had a radical shift in my values and thinking. It's impact does seem to fade however but the values it instills appears to persist. I don't think we need to fear this any longer. We are past the Puritannical age of immaturity and ignorance for the most part. Also once you try it you may never want to do it again because of what it surfaces internally within you. Just a warning that it may make one open minded and consciously aware of itself. Just remember in any part of the journey, its very very hard to kill yourself by eating a bunch of mushrooms and pooping it out the next day. Yeah it does feel like you poisoned yourself when you start tripping and your ego desperately claws at the edges of reality desperate to not let go of the facade. I hope that more people will see reality for itself rather than what they've been subconsciously programmed to believe from early on. I wouldn't describe it as NZT-48 from Limitless movie but it's somewhat close. It feels more like the red pill from Matrix because your view of reality will never be the same again. Disclaimer: I absolutely do not condone you taking substances which you are unfamiliar with.

hnrodey 6y ago
>Your setting is important I would say that your setting is of paramount importance.

colecut 6y ago

I had been on dozens if not a hundred trips, and it wasn't until my son was born that I had bad trips. I have experienced what I perceived to be hell-like experiences three times in total now. The sense of gratitude that I feel when those trips end have more than made up for the bad experiences themselves, in my cases. I have two friends that have experienced prolong psychiatric states, I'm talking several days to weeks of just being out of it, not making sense, not being able to really function as a normal human.. I feel lucky to have not dealt with that. The good trips can be so amazing and even life changing that many want to discount the horror stories, but sadly many are true. I think people should be able to make the decision for themselves legally as with any substance.

sneak 6y ago

If we're not free to intentionally harm our own bodies, the only thing to which we plainly and unambiguously hold complete title, we cannot be said to be free to own or control anything in our lives. This is a moral issue above all else: we are not the property of the state, and the state does not have any claim whatsoever to a property interest in our own bodies. They are ours to build and ours to destroy, full stop.

adventured 6y ago
That's an excellent summation of the root of all human rights: ownership over one's self.

denkmoon 6y ago

Should then people not be allowed to make their own decisions on this? I mean, honestly, they can and do currently. The illegality of psychedelics never once stopped me from investigating and trying them. It just means I'd be screwed if I had an encounter with the law while holding them, and I had to buy them through shady means. Both things we'd all be better off without.

gremlinsinc 6y ago

Good or bad, does it warrant going to jail for 10 years for doing a drug in the privacy of your own home? Esp. if you do so responsibly with someone to "watch" you in case of an issue. Though, I heard small doses are enough for some of the mental pickups - too small to cause even a mild trip. But I'm not a doctor/researcher on the subject. I've never even had a drug, though I'm tempted to go out of state and try something cause my anxiety/depression is strangling me this year.

codr7 6y ago
You might get away with it for some time, but sooner or later all psychedelics will put you in an uncomfortable place where you have to deal with yourself, cannabis included. I wouldn't recommend self medicating anxiety/depression though, not without a VERY experienced mentor. Most likely not dangerous in itself, but it could potentially turn up the volume for a while which might become unbearable.

throwanem 6y ago

All life is either risk or stagnation. I've had a bad trip, or at least a trip that went bad for a while near the end. I was sitting under a gnarled old tree in a forest southwest of Baltimore, and over what seemed a very little time I became certain that the tree had formed several misshapen mouths out of its trunk with which it was very soon going to eat me alive. It sounds as absurd to me now as it does to you, but in the moment it was so real I could see it - in fact, I can still see it in memory now, most of twenty years hence - and, in the moment, it was very bad. It stopped being that way when I understood that, while the fear was real and I couldn't simply make it stop, my reaction to it was totally within my control. Nothing else in my life to date had given me such a clear opportunity to recognize the difference between feeling the urge to panic, and actually panicking. I suppose that wouldn't have amounted to much on its own, except that I successfully chose not to panic, and instead of leaping to my feet and probably running off a cliff or something, I wiggled my butt more firmly into the space between two roots where I was sitting, and deliberately leaned back against the trunk of the tree. It made my skin crawl, but only for a little while. A few minutes later, I felt just fine again, if somewhat tired. Every new kind of experience brings with it some degree of risk. It's for everyone to decide for themselves whether the potential risk outweighs the potential reward, or not. For me? I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> anyone who wants to vote on the issues around psychedelics should have to first go through a bad trip I don’t do mushrooms. I don’t need my tax dollars being spent keeping people in their good trip and bad trip buckets. There are lots of things you can do to have a good or bad day. That, alone, shouldn’t make it illegal.

practicalpants 6y ago

Not sure why so downvoted. I recall a psychedelics advocate/former Vice reporter on the Joe Rogan podcast couple years back who warned how his good friend had a schizophrenic break after doing shrooms. Likely some medical pre-dispositions in place, but it's not a risk free activity. I read Michael Pollan's How to Change your Mind, and concluded that it's a richer if not safer experience if you're older/figured out yourself, e.g. have more set grooves in your brain where psychedelics can help you realize new connections; and that it's probably actually pretty risky if you're young, confused, anxious, or don't have your basic coordinates yes.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jjj123 6y ago
I don’t think the OP is being downvoted for saying a bad trip can be a really awful experience. OP got downvoted because bad trips aren’t bad enough to put people in prison for possession over.

CuriouslyC 6y ago

Relationships should be illegal because there are terrible relationships. Jobs should be illegal because there are terrible jobs. Food should be illegal because food poisoning exists. People are going to do what they want to do, and by making things that are mostly harmless (and with the potential only to harm the person doing it) illegal, you are turning broad swathes of society into criminals. Pair this with racism, classism and selective enforcement and you have the unholy shitshow that is the war on drugs.