Study Finds Magic Mushrooms Are the Safest Recreational Drug (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Mushrooms are the safest of all the drugs people take recreationally, according to this year's Global Drug Survey. Of the more than 12,000 people who reported taking psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms in 2016, just 0.2% of them said they needed emergency medical treatment -- a rate at least five times lower than that for MDMA, LSD and cocaine. Global Drug Survey 2017, with almost 120,000 participants in 50 countries, is the world's biggest annual drug survey, with questions that cover the types of substances people take, patterns of use and whether they experienced any negative effects. Overall, 28,000 people said they had taken magic mushrooms at some point in their lives, with 81.7% seeking a "moderate psychedelic experience" and the "enhancement of environment and social interactions."

Comments

Re:cool

[clovis]

TFA shows it is safer even than pot, based upon users self-reporting medical situations to authorities.

The thing you need to read is not the article, but rather the Global Drug Survey https://www.globaldrugsurvey.c...
If you do read it, you'll see some problems.

Here's the one that bothers me the most, and it basically means the study and related articles are nonsense.

The report isn't based on the number of doses, it's based on the number of people who ever used the drug in the last year.
So you're probably comparing ten million of doses of natural cannabis products with a few ten thousand mushroom doses, if that many.
The report says the average cannabis users used it 134 days over the last year, but fails to mention how many days/doses for mushrooms.
I kind of doubt there are many people who take mushrooms 3-4 times a week, but the Average cannabis user (responding) does just that.

The numbers are similar for users of LSD, except there are more self-reported ER visits for LSD (1%).
Cocaine is reported at 1% have ER visits, amphetamines at 1.1% and cannabis at .6% ER visits.
Pretty close percentages No one thinks cocaine, amphetamines, LSD, and cannabis are that similar in danger, but this study does.
That's because they're looking at the wrong number.

Here's my favorite quote from the GDS study.

People who use psychedelics are generally very sensible and show some of the best preparation and adoption of harm reduction practices of any drug

Re:cool

[TheRaven64]

Marijuana has a history going back thousands of years, with essentially zero fatalities related to its use. I don't believe for one second that anything else is safer for you when it comes to recreational or medical use.

Depends on how you're consuming the marijuana. If you're eating or drinking it, I might believe you, but the negative health impact of inhaling burning hydrocarbons is well documented, even ignoring the drug content.