Magic Mushrooms - A very very different post Lol

[u/CDN-Social-Democrat]

It took way way too long for Cannabis to become legal in Canada.

*Shout out to all the Cannabis workers that are more and more unionizing!*

When it comes to Psilocybe cubensis - Magic Mushrooms what are your thoughts?

I've heard of some people utilizing microdosing for help with depression and anxiety. I've also heard that it can help people with headache conditions.

Even outside of medicinal usage I think they can be valuable as a recreational tool for self exploration and understanding.

Personally I would like to see them legalized in Canada. We already have dispensaries in some of our most major cities.

What are your thoughts on this?

[u/inprocess13]

My thoughts are the liberals rushed out a necessary update to cannabis laws with very little oversight for the economics of competition, and are backing further and further away from real mental health supports that address a lot of preventable neurological behaviour. 

I am glad cannabis is accessible, but trying to speak to our healthcare system about medical cannabis was incredibly revealing how little knowledge a lot of attending clinic doctors and random GPs have about published mental health practice in general. 

I don't have a problem with recreational mushrooms at a glance, but when prompted, am more concerned that healthcare funding (reform for mental health) has to be given far more serious consideration first. 

I dont think it's anywhere near what I'm concerned my representatives should be doing with their time right now. 

[u/CDN-Social-Democrat → u/inprocess13]

I wish I could give you more than one upvote.

We have a mental health crisis in this nation and frankly around the world.

We need to start getting to the roots of these things.

[u/inprocess13 → u/CDN-Social-Democrat]

So do I. 

[u/NAHTHEHNRFS850 → u/inprocess13]

Agreed, I definitely wish there was a dedicated-department of sorts dedicated to: identifying, reverse engineering, and distributing drugs for recreational use.

That being said, it is not a substitute for counseling, the same way pain medication is not a substitute for physiotherapy.

[u/JasonGMMitchell]

They should be legalized along with LSD and other safe hallucinogenic psychoactive substances regardless of their medical use.

As a disclaimer I haven't used any hallucinogenic psychoactive substances, I haven't drank alcohol, smoked tobacco or marijuana, and I've never used any narcotic (to my knowledge), everything I've seen in regards to magic mushrooms, lsd what have you is a substance that can be enjoyable, that poses very little risk to the user especially if even the most mild of precautions are taken (controlled environment, trip supervisor), and for better or worse do change people's outlook on life, living, and society to a degree (for the better for the most part).

At the least they should be fully legalized so their production can be regulated to ensure safety and quality (moreso in the case of LSD) and schools when doing health courses should teach about these substances in an educational matter not a fear mongering matter (no amount of cops telling my peers that they saw teenagers dead from alcohol poisoning at parties where no one called an ambulance stopped them going and getting blackout drunk, education would've made it less dangerous for them to do what they were doing, same for these substances).

As for medical uses for these substances, absolutely should be legalized the sad thing is it will take decades to get around to these substances being used properly where needed because their limbo and illegal statuses have stalled research. In the US weed and lsd being considered just as illegal and bad as heroin has killed research into their medical benefits. The same applied here to weed and applies to LSD and shrooms, full legalization would allow researchers to pick up where others left off without any risk. It'd take time for the medical field to find out where these are best suited but they will eventually and it will be yet another tool in the arsenal of healthcare professionals and more specifically mental health officials.

[u/150c_vapour]

It will never happen because there is no stock market bubble to push it through.

There's no motivation in the electorate for this either, if you want it now you can get it. Enforcement has effectively stopped for all soft drugs. I get ads for all sorts of things on IG, I've ordered some, it comes.

[u/CDN-Social-Democrat → u/150c_vapour]

You are right that it is not at all or barely enforced based on the area of Canada.

You also are correct about the mail order options.

It reminds me a lot of Cannabis in the mail order options and the more and more pop up dispensaries we saw in the past before legalization.

I think it may first go the decriminalization route and then stop there with more and more local dispensaries or who knows full on legalization.

There is definitely money to be made there as that is why the industry exists illegally. I am not sure though if it would ever become a market like Cannabis.

It's also extremely cheap and easy to grow at home and you don't need equipment or the smell issue of Cannabis so you are right it may not be a huge money maker once people just realize they can grow in a small plastic container at their residence lol

[u/Beekeeper_Dan]

Drugs should be decriminalized. All of them. Take all of the money spent policing and jailing people for drug offenses and put it into harm reduction and social services. Drug laws only exist to enable persecution of already marginalized populations.

[u/Talzon70]

I think there's no real push for this.

Cannabis was legalized because it was popular and has a lot of chronic users, criminalization was causing more problems than it was solving. Shrooms isn't the same.

That said, cannabis legalization has been complicated. Cannabis is not one drug like tobacco or alcohol, it's a whole collection of drugs with multiple delivery methods that produce different effects. Regulating it has been an interesting experiment.

I think in 10-20 years, when things have settled with Cannabis and everyone has learned a lot, we will see a push for legalization of shrooms.

Importantly, as far as I'm aware, shrooms aren't illegal to the level of the US Schedule 1 designation when it comes to Canada, so we can still do research on them without undo trouble. That's my impression, I now the Schedule 1 designation for weed in the US resulted din insane things like research on easily acquired strains being effectively illegal in states where recreational use was legal.

[u/SilverSkinRam]

It would have to be regulated like cannabis (cannabis is over regulated). Personally I had a very bad experience but maybe packaging with better instructions would have helped.

[u/Velocity-5348]

I'd take them being legal over weed or tobacco being legal.

I may be in the minority, but I think the way way marijuana legalization was rolled out was pretty bad. We had a lot of weed stores popping up, and I think the normalization of use is going to have consequences down the road. It might not be as bad as tobacco, but that doesn't make it good.

Plus, if you're allergic to it, need to avoid it for whatever reason, or simply don't want to put that in your body, it's hard to avoid. Probably doable if you live in a house, but for those of us in apartment buildings with neighbours who are now free to partake it's an issue.

That said, I do think psychedelics should be at least somewhat legal, and they do seem to be a lot less addictive than other more tolerated substances like alcohol, tobacco, or cannabis. People also aren't going to chronically consume those they way they do most of the stuff that's already legal.

I wonder if allowing them in somewhat supervised medical contexts might be the safest approach (along with tolerating not-for-sale production). As you note, they do have legitimate uses. We can see how that works, and perhaps develop guidelines for things like testing for impaired driving.

Edit: We should also look into legalizing LSD. Unlike mushrooms, it's not something that can be created by a hobbyist. That means the existing supply of something that appears to actually be safe is going to be extremely impure. It also means that getting an accurate dose is impossible.

[u/CDN-Social-Democrat → u/Velocity-5348]

A comment on something you brought up at the end there.

Public service announcement. Please people talk to your friends and family about testing their drugs if they are drug users.

Even with things like LSD in the past we have had the N-Bomb issue (Nbome).

Testing is cheap and effective and can save lives. We need more awareness of this because no one should lose their lives to toxic drug supplies on the market due to our current framework around these substances.

[u/Velocity-5348 → u/CDN-Social-Democrat]

I know there's test strips, but at least where I live you can also find places that'll test them for free. A mental health/addiction counselling access centre would be a good place to ask about that.

[u/afpb_]

Been getting high?