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Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done. That said i

Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done. That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms, there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway. I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin. Sure while you're on them it can be very intoxicating, and temporary loss of speech abilities and all kinds of horrible feelings might occur, particularly in the beginning. Usually you feel better about it later. I think it has been shown to be the least harmful drug in studies and has proven itself to be not very harmful to people or society.

emptyfile 5y ago
>That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms nonsense >there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway. please don't talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. go to any psytrance festival in europe and marvel at people tripping for a week straight >I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin. and I've met bucket loads of people "addicted" to living in the unreality of psychedelics. I guess that's not being "addicted to psilocybin" but if the end result is eating mushrooms x times per week then the effect is the same
- the_only_law 5y ago
  > please don’t talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. Followed by multiple anecdotes…
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - adsfoiu1 5y ago
    I think their point is that anecdotes are not very valuable and then gave examples of anecdotes that differ as a way to show that individual experiences / perceptions can be vastly different, which isn't at odds with their original point.
  - anigbrowl 5y ago
    The point being that you can easily summon anecdotes for or against virtually any proposition, so they tell you very little about the incidence of a phenomenon. Emptyfile also pointed out a venue where it would be easy to find counterexamples to Synaesthesia's claim.
- leesalminen 5y ago
  > I've met bucket loads of people addicted to living in the unreality of psychedelics. Same here. I used to be good friends with one person in particular who couldn't go more than a couple days without using psilocybin or LSD to change their reality. That's when we drifted paths. But, I heard a year ago that he had switched to heroin and died due to a fentanyl overdose. Getting addicted to altering your perception of reality is dangerous.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Yeah MDMA is addictive, not very but it is. You can use 2cb and speed quite frequently. I know about that. But with shrooms taking a dose the next day or two hardly works at all, there is extreme short term tolerance. Trying to do it frequently was not pleasant in my experience, you just dont have a magical or interesting trip.
  - neom 5y ago
    Careful with 2cb though, it's gotten me into some sticky situations more than once.
  - alexnewman 5y ago
    I have met people emotionally addicted to microdosing psylicin. Negative withdrawal symptoms involved extreme emotional symptoms
    - andrei_says_ 5y ago
      I’ve been curious about what are people experiencing when microdosing it? My understanding is that - nothing, there’s no perceivable difference. If this is the case, what is the addiction to?
      - cj 5y ago
        > what is the addiction to? Perhaps psychological addiction to the habit? Fear, anxiety, uncertainty about what might happen if you stop the habit?
    - actusual 5y ago
      There is no such thing as "emotional addiction" or "physical addiction". There is addiction, and some substances have withdrawal symptoms when discontinued.
    - mansoon 5y ago
      As is the case when someone discontinues SSRIs.
- Murfalo 5y ago
  IIRC tolerance builds extremely quickly (after just one use) and is cross-tolerant with most other 5-HT2A agonists so I think tripping a week straight is not really possible.
  - emptyfile 5y ago
    Tolerance just means you double the dose each day. People do it with LSD. Folks do crazy shit with drugs, in all honesty I think most people could hardly believe what kind of stuff drug users get up to. I appreciate the newfound silicon valley, positive, scientific approach to drugs, but over here on the party continent it's a lot different.
- ActorNightly 5y ago
  Its been proven that repeated use of psilocybin quickly builds up a tolerance to it, along with cross tolerance to LSD. Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect. Festivals feature a wide variety of drug use and taking small dosages of mushrooms for recreation for recreation isn't abuse. As far as addiction, there is chemical addiction, and psychological addition. The former isn't present for a lot of drugs. The latter is very hard to control for, because it really depends on the individual. People can definitely find comfort in escape from reality that psychedelics offer, which can lead to dependence. However, given an addictive personality, psilocybin use is still safer than comparable drugs, including weed. First, the method of intake through digestive tract is generally better for health than smoking. Secondly, there are no negative withdrawal symptoms from stopping, even with micro-dosing (so in the case of your festival goers, the supposed straight week of use produces no negative withdrawal effects). Thirdly, the desire to get a stronger escape from reality will involve someone taking a higher dose, which isn't a euphoric experience like weed or MDMA can produce - its fairly exhausting even when you are having a good time. So in the end, given the society view to alcohol and its comparable effects, psilocybin should absolutely be decriminalized and promoted as medicine for use, especially with therapy.
  - thebean11 5y ago
    > Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect. You think it's impossible that people at festivals are consuming significant amounts of mushrooms by the end of the week..? That being said, the vast majority of even the heaviest users probably take a break after the festival.
    - ActorNightly 5y ago
      This is kinda anecdotal, but if you have ever done shrooms/LSD, you would understand how extremely unlikely this is. I generally should never say "false" with absolutism, since it is plausible, but in this case, given the users previous statements, I would bet significant money that he has no evidence of festival goers doing this with mushrooms. A good trip is usually around the 3.5 gram mark based on average experiences. If you do this, you are going to be fairly "fucked up" as people say. Its not gonna be a purely positive experience like MDMA, where once the effects wear off, you are going to want to do more to get back to your happy place. Most reality warping trips end up with person wanting it over because its so exhausting. The next day, if you really want to have the experience again, you have to do something like 5 grams to get the effect. The next day its going to be like 8 grams. Over a week, you are going to be ingesting something like 30 grams - in many places where shrooms are illegal, bringing that much to the festival is likely going to get you involved with security as intent to sell/distribute. LSD is way easier to do this with, as dosages last longer (12 hours on the average), and multiple tabs or it in liquid form is way easier to sneak in. However, again, the reality warping trips are not exactly pleasurable and quite exhausting, and you still have to do a boatload towards the end of the week, to get the same effect, which costs money and is a waste of a drug (and money). The way people consume psychedelics at festivals is usually in smaller dosages, where they are certainly not disassociated even remotely Doing this for a week is arguably less harmless than drinking enough beers to get a buzz every day. Weed/alcohol/mdma are much more common things that get used on a repetitive basis since the effects are pleasurable and you can redose to get back to euphoric state. There are definitely people that abuse psychs in general, but this is more of a personality issue than a drug issue. People can abuse generally harmless things like video games, and ruin their lives.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms Untrue. People can and do get hooked on the deliriant and escapist effects. Some people get addicted to the idea that the trip is revealing important information that they need to continue receiving. It may not be common, but it's very much possible.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  Ok fine I suppose in rare cases it is possible.
- pault 5y ago
  It's important to use precise language when talking about addiction. It sounds like you're interpreting "addiction" as "habit forming", whereas I believe GP means "physical dependency". I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread.
  - ggm 5y ago
    I agree with this. The canadian report into the misuse of drugs (a pelican book from the 70s) drew a distinction between addiction and habituation which I think has stood the test of time. Addictive things cause change in the bodies own processes, such as the replacement of ?dopamine? by opiod drugs, and a decline in the bodys own production due to homeostasis: this means the withdrawal is a real physiological effect, lack of dopamine until the body restarts production. Some drugs (I mean drugs in the wider sense not recreational drugs) can cause PERMANENT change in the bodys own hormone cycle and so you cease production of a function entirely. Menopause is an instance of this but there are others I believe, the endocrine system is fantastically complex. I believe some bone anti-demineralisation drugs have this side effect and so deciding to take them has huge longterm consequences (again unsure I have the right background drug issue here) Habituation is the mental binding of pleasure or some other desired state (numbing, dissociation) to the repeated effect (as I understand it) and is a different thing: It feels good because you've learned the response, might be the way to put it. This is NOT the same as a homeostatic change in body function.
  - PragmaticPulp 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
brnt 5y ago
If tourists drown in the canals of Amsterdam, they often did mushrooms (and came from France!).
habeebtc 5y ago
Agree that the pro-legalization movement likes to claim "not addictive" but what they always have meant (which if pressed, they generally will acknowledge) is that it is not physically addictive. It is, of course, psychologically addictive because literally anything can be.
- filoleg 5y ago
  Surprised i had to scroll so far down the comments to see this reply among the sea of “but weed is addictive, despite everyone claiming otherwise”. You are fully correct, people talk only about the physical component of addiction when it comes to drugs, because, as you said, literally anything can be psychologically addicting. Videogames, movies, tv shows, work, etc., all of those. If it is an activity or something you interact with, it can be psychologically addictive. In light of that, I am confused by all those “but weed is addicting” comments. It is kind of obvious that the article is talking about physical addiction exclusively.
yhorawu8 5y ago
If marijuana is addictive how is it I’m able to take weeks and months off each year (I live in a legal state) without withdrawals? It stores itself in fat and I’ve definitely noticed it takes a few weeks before I’m entirely off the effects. That’s a lot different than meth where addicts have mental breakdown without it. Routine interaction with others is chemically stimulating and withdrawal into isolation can hurt. Is having friends addictive? Lockdown isolation has been harder than going without weed when I needed to. I think the normies should stop trying to be experts. Experience and ability are relative just like physics. Seeing patterns in reality isn’t interesting; we all do it inherently as part of our innate biology.
tyingq 5y ago
"Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done." I agree with this, but I think some of the pushback may be coming from people in recovery from alcohol, meth, cocaine, opiates, etc. We only have so many words to choose from, and those "addictions" more often drive death, divorce, abandonment, insane decisions, and so on. So adding marijuana to the list feels like it might dilute the message, or diminish someone's view of the dangers, etc. "almost impossible to abuse mushrooms" No personal experience with that, but I can attest to how different people's experiences with anything are. There's plenty of heavy users of my list of substances above that never seem to slip into the kind of hell that other people do.

emptyfile 5y ago

>That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms nonsense >there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway. please don't talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. go to any psytrance festival in europe and marvel at people tripping for a week straight >I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin. and I've met bucket loads of people "addicted" to living in the unreality of psychedelics. I guess that's not being "addicted to psilocybin" but if the end result is eating mushrooms x times per week then the effect is the same

the_only_law 5y ago
> please don’t talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. Followed by multiple anecdotes…
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- adsfoiu1 5y ago
  I think their point is that anecdotes are not very valuable and then gave examples of anecdotes that differ as a way to show that individual experiences / perceptions can be vastly different, which isn't at odds with their original point.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  The point being that you can easily summon anecdotes for or against virtually any proposition, so they tell you very little about the incidence of a phenomenon. Emptyfile also pointed out a venue where it would be easy to find counterexamples to Synaesthesia's claim.
leesalminen 5y ago
> I've met bucket loads of people addicted to living in the unreality of psychedelics. Same here. I used to be good friends with one person in particular who couldn't go more than a couple days without using psilocybin or LSD to change their reality. That's when we drifted paths. But, I heard a year ago that he had switched to heroin and died due to a fentanyl overdose. Getting addicted to altering your perception of reality is dangerous.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Yeah MDMA is addictive, not very but it is. You can use 2cb and speed quite frequently. I know about that. But with shrooms taking a dose the next day or two hardly works at all, there is extreme short term tolerance. Trying to do it frequently was not pleasant in my experience, you just dont have a magical or interesting trip.
- neom 5y ago
  Careful with 2cb though, it's gotten me into some sticky situations more than once.
- alexnewman 5y ago
  I have met people emotionally addicted to microdosing psylicin. Negative withdrawal symptoms involved extreme emotional symptoms
  - andrei_says_ 5y ago
    I’ve been curious about what are people experiencing when microdosing it? My understanding is that - nothing, there’s no perceivable difference. If this is the case, what is the addiction to?
    - cj 5y ago
      > what is the addiction to? Perhaps psychological addiction to the habit? Fear, anxiety, uncertainty about what might happen if you stop the habit?
  - actusual 5y ago
    There is no such thing as "emotional addiction" or "physical addiction". There is addiction, and some substances have withdrawal symptoms when discontinued.
  - mansoon 5y ago
    As is the case when someone discontinues SSRIs.
Murfalo 5y ago
IIRC tolerance builds extremely quickly (after just one use) and is cross-tolerant with most other 5-HT2A agonists so I think tripping a week straight is not really possible.
- emptyfile 5y ago
  Tolerance just means you double the dose each day. People do it with LSD. Folks do crazy shit with drugs, in all honesty I think most people could hardly believe what kind of stuff drug users get up to. I appreciate the newfound silicon valley, positive, scientific approach to drugs, but over here on the party continent it's a lot different.
ActorNightly 5y ago
Its been proven that repeated use of psilocybin quickly builds up a tolerance to it, along with cross tolerance to LSD. Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect. Festivals feature a wide variety of drug use and taking small dosages of mushrooms for recreation for recreation isn't abuse. As far as addiction, there is chemical addiction, and psychological addition. The former isn't present for a lot of drugs. The latter is very hard to control for, because it really depends on the individual. People can definitely find comfort in escape from reality that psychedelics offer, which can lead to dependence. However, given an addictive personality, psilocybin use is still safer than comparable drugs, including weed. First, the method of intake through digestive tract is generally better for health than smoking. Secondly, there are no negative withdrawal symptoms from stopping, even with micro-dosing (so in the case of your festival goers, the supposed straight week of use produces no negative withdrawal effects). Thirdly, the desire to get a stronger escape from reality will involve someone taking a higher dose, which isn't a euphoric experience like weed or MDMA can produce - its fairly exhausting even when you are having a good time. So in the end, given the society view to alcohol and its comparable effects, psilocybin should absolutely be decriminalized and promoted as medicine for use, especially with therapy.
- thebean11 5y ago
  > Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect. You think it's impossible that people at festivals are consuming significant amounts of mushrooms by the end of the week..? That being said, the vast majority of even the heaviest users probably take a break after the festival.
  - ActorNightly 5y ago
    This is kinda anecdotal, but if you have ever done shrooms/LSD, you would understand how extremely unlikely this is. I generally should never say "false" with absolutism, since it is plausible, but in this case, given the users previous statements, I would bet significant money that he has no evidence of festival goers doing this with mushrooms. A good trip is usually around the 3.5 gram mark based on average experiences. If you do this, you are going to be fairly "fucked up" as people say. Its not gonna be a purely positive experience like MDMA, where once the effects wear off, you are going to want to do more to get back to your happy place. Most reality warping trips end up with person wanting it over because its so exhausting. The next day, if you really want to have the experience again, you have to do something like 5 grams to get the effect. The next day its going to be like 8 grams. Over a week, you are going to be ingesting something like 30 grams - in many places where shrooms are illegal, bringing that much to the festival is likely going to get you involved with security as intent to sell/distribute. LSD is way easier to do this with, as dosages last longer (12 hours on the average), and multiple tabs or it in liquid form is way easier to sneak in. However, again, the reality warping trips are not exactly pleasurable and quite exhausting, and you still have to do a boatload towards the end of the week, to get the same effect, which costs money and is a waste of a drug (and money). The way people consume psychedelics at festivals is usually in smaller dosages, where they are certainly not disassociated even remotely Doing this for a week is arguably less harmless than drinking enough beers to get a buzz every day. Weed/alcohol/mdma are much more common things that get used on a repetitive basis since the effects are pleasurable and you can redose to get back to euphoric state. There are definitely people that abuse psychs in general, but this is more of a personality issue than a drug issue. People can abuse generally harmless things like video games, and ruin their lives.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms Untrue. People can and do get hooked on the deliriant and escapist effects. Some people get addicted to the idea that the trip is revealing important information that they need to continue receiving. It may not be common, but it's very much possible.

Synaesthesia 5y ago
Ok fine I suppose in rare cases it is possible.
pault 5y ago
It's important to use precise language when talking about addiction. It sounds like you're interpreting "addiction" as "habit forming", whereas I believe GP means "physical dependency". I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread.
- ggm 5y ago
  I agree with this. The canadian report into the misuse of drugs (a pelican book from the 70s) drew a distinction between addiction and habituation which I think has stood the test of time. Addictive things cause change in the bodies own processes, such as the replacement of ?dopamine? by opiod drugs, and a decline in the bodys own production due to homeostasis: this means the withdrawal is a real physiological effect, lack of dopamine until the body restarts production. Some drugs (I mean drugs in the wider sense not recreational drugs) can cause PERMANENT change in the bodys own hormone cycle and so you cease production of a function entirely. Menopause is an instance of this but there are others I believe, the endocrine system is fantastically complex. I believe some bone anti-demineralisation drugs have this side effect and so deciding to take them has huge longterm consequences (again unsure I have the right background drug issue here) Habituation is the mental binding of pleasure or some other desired state (numbing, dissociation) to the repeated effect (as I understand it) and is a different thing: It feels good because you've learned the response, might be the way to put it. This is NOT the same as a homeostatic change in body function.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

brnt 5y ago

If tourists drown in the canals of Amsterdam, they often did mushrooms (and came from France!).

habeebtc 5y ago

Agree that the pro-legalization movement likes to claim "not addictive" but what they always have meant (which if pressed, they generally will acknowledge) is that it is not physically addictive. It is, of course, psychologically addictive because literally anything can be.

filoleg 5y ago
Surprised i had to scroll so far down the comments to see this reply among the sea of “but weed is addictive, despite everyone claiming otherwise”. You are fully correct, people talk only about the physical component of addiction when it comes to drugs, because, as you said, literally anything can be psychologically addicting. Videogames, movies, tv shows, work, etc., all of those. If it is an activity or something you interact with, it can be psychologically addictive. In light of that, I am confused by all those “but weed is addicting” comments. It is kind of obvious that the article is talking about physical addiction exclusively.

yhorawu8 5y ago

If marijuana is addictive how is it I’m able to take weeks and months off each year (I live in a legal state) without withdrawals? It stores itself in fat and I’ve definitely noticed it takes a few weeks before I’m entirely off the effects. That’s a lot different than meth where addicts have mental breakdown without it. Routine interaction with others is chemically stimulating and withdrawal into isolation can hurt. Is having friends addictive? Lockdown isolation has been harder than going without weed when I needed to. I think the normies should stop trying to be experts. Experience and ability are relative just like physics. Seeing patterns in reality isn’t interesting; we all do it inherently as part of our innate biology.

tyingq 5y ago

"Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done." I agree with this, but I think some of the pushback may be coming from people in recovery from alcohol, meth, cocaine, opiates, etc. We only have so many words to choose from, and those "addictions" more often drive death, divorce, abandonment, insane decisions, and so on. So adding marijuana to the list feels like it might dilute the message, or diminish someone's view of the dangers, etc. "almost impossible to abuse mushrooms" No personal experience with that, but I can attest to how different people's experiences with anything are. There's plenty of heavy users of my list of substances above that never seem to slip into the kind of hell that other people do.