5 ms·
I am nearly 70 years old. I have been taking psychedelics for 50 over years. I am retired psychotherapist and I do not have a predisposition to mental ill heal
by reify 3y ago
I am nearly 70 years old.
I have been taking psychedelics for 50 over years. I am retired psychotherapist and I do not have a predisposition to mental ill health. I was also a substance misuse worker and methadone dispenser for over 10 years. I gave up smoking hash when I was 40 years old.
I did notice that with the introduction of skunk and the increase of up to 20% more Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), there were more and more people being sectioned under the mental health act with psychosis. Whereas prior to skunk when people generally smoked good old fashioned, Moroccan, Lebanese and Afghani hashish it was a rarity.
I know a range of people of different ages who partake in psychedelic use and have no trouble, like me, in holding down a professional job role and engaging fully in life.
As with all drugs there is a risk, however, the risks with Psyceedelics are very low in comparison with other drugs.
We must not use individual cases to determine the safety of any drug.
Here in the UK the media went wild over reports that a 18 year old girl (Leah Betts) had died from taking MDMA. Very rarely are the true facts given; The coroner said that "water intoxication", and not an allergic reaction to the drug, was the cause of death.
I have a great deal of respect for Professor David Nutt who is an English neuropsychopharmacologist specialising in the research of drugs that affect the brain and conditions such as addiction. His recommendations to the government to reclassify drugs were rejected and he was sacked.
heroin is top of the list - alcohol is 5th on the list - LSD is 14th on the list - Ecstacy is 18th on the list
- eimrine 3y ago[flagged]
- nefasti 3y agoGood Ecstasy is pure mdma and fillers not necessarily others drugs.
- quchen 3y agoEcstasy is a street name, and its meaning can vary a lot depending on where you are. Around Berlin you’ll find lots of people that call only MDMA pills ecstasy, while Emma is street MDMA, for example.
- smt88 3y agoI can confirm that in my entire life in the US, no one has ever called pure MDMA "ecstasy". The latter has always referred to MDMA cut with something. There may be different subcultures in the US that I don't know about, of course.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bheadmaster 3y ago> How is it possible that a retired psychotherapist is using interchangably MDMA word and Extasy word, making a tremendous mistake in your own professional field? Because he was not giving a personal opinion - he was talking about a media report: > media went wild over reports that a 18 year old girl (Leah Betts) had died from taking MDMA
- justadolphinnn 3y agoSeems like you're talking about yourself frankly, they are not separate drugs. There is usually other stuff in extasy but otherwise it's just MDMA lil bro
- jajko 3y ago> heroin is top of the list Can you please share the list? Went through the article hoping to find one but either I am blind or its not there. As for rest of the comment - thank you for your work and balanced insight. All this could have been researched to death (and optimal solutions be picked up based on results with regard to population health) if this stuff wasn't illegal for so long and governments acknowledged that people can actually get (a bit) high, since they can already ie drink themselves to death.
- quchen 3y agoNutt’s Wikipedia entry has pictures and sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt He’s been working in the field for quite a while, and many of the drug harmfulness diagrams that pop up every now and then are from one of his papers.
- ramblerman 3y agogiven your long experience with psychedelics and profession, I am curious. Do you feel a "hero's" dose is necessary, or do you see benefit in micro dosing psychedelics. Or any dose in between for that matter.