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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."
well, "hardly ever".
When you are intoxicated, be it booze or drugs, you can easily lose control and end up doing things you normally wouldn't do. Like: Drive an automobile, have unprotected sex, do crazy things that will follow you the rest of your life. (Employers check youtube/facebook).
TFA shows it is safer even than pot, based upon users self-reporting medical situations to authorities.
Maybe the safest of the hallucinogens they were compared to, but to say they are the safest recreational drug likely means the researchers were themselves shrooming. :P
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Also: Beer puts more than 0.2% of users in the hospital? (per use or per year?)
I bet beer and pot together are safer than shrooms. Beer, pot, rifles, 4x4s, woods and a few shrooms...now we're talking. I digress.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Last time I saw someone hallucinate on that (back in college), she thought I was the devil. It was really weird.
Ah, self-reporting. So there could be a huge selection bias if (for example) half of the shroomers died or became so incapacitated that they couldn't self-report their medical situation.
More like the potheads couldn't be bothered to report
The last place you take someone having a bad reaction to psychedelics is the ER. About the only places worse would be jail or the loony bin. You take them someplace they feel safe...ask them.
So 'going to the ER' is the wrong criteria in the first place. % that needed 'babysitting' over freakout is the better question, could also apply to very drunk people.
How would you even categorize: 'Convincing your tripping friend that climbing a tower crane is a bad idea.'
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I've tried all of the above and shrooms gave me the largest side effect. An hour or so after consumption I would get extremely nauseous, and very emotional at times. A day after consumption my kidneys would hurt, apparently they go into overdrive to get the toxins out of your body. But I would gladly try them again. I knew these were the likely side effects before consumption. I see how LSD could give some people nasty hallucinations, I have seen people getting freaked out due to these. It's hard to stop them once they have begun. MDMA is one my of favorites, but I have seen people with side effects, especially extreme nausea. DISCLAIMER: Like all drugs, understand what you taking, know that consumption comes with risks and potential side effects. Make sure you get the real deal. AND MOST OF ALL take them in a safe environment and a sound state of mind.
Illegal, ishmegal.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Safer than society's favourite OH group?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
TFA shows it is safer even than pot, based upon users self-reporting medical situations to authorities.
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.
Regardless of that fact, it doesn't matter. Government is fighting legalization hard, due to the revenue created from shit that harms the fuck out of you. Tobacco and alcohol not only create deaths that are needed, but also generate billions in revenue related to medical treatments. Weed doesn't provide any of these benefits, proving just how fucked the reasons are for fighting legalization.
Nobody does any hunting during the 'Second week of deer camp.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's a false analogy. More like safest rollercoaster. Because you're not guaranteed to be injured riding a rollercoaster, it's unlikely to result in an injury even if you ride it hundreds of times.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You left out tequila, tits and tannerite.
Hi. You seem like a drug dealer. Please respond.
I jumped at reading the article to validate my existing beliefs, but the article rates mushrooms as safe by the amount of people admitted to the hospital as a result. I don't think that's a great measure to use. Just because you aren't immediately and seriously injured or disruptive doesn't mean it's not bad for your mind or body.
You are invited.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It's not physically possible for someone to injest a lethal dose of THC from marijuana. Marijuana has higher hospital admissions than mushrooms, partly due to the influx of people trying it for the first time (it's easier to both acquire and show up at a hospital if it's legal), or due to not understanding you need to wait 1-2 hours for an edible to kick in, or because someone spiked a unsuspecting person's food/drink with cannabis.
Another problem is that they ignore the quality of the experience. A sugar pill is safe but it would be silly to say it is the "best" drug since it doesn't do anything.
Beer is food.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That's a derogatory, insensitive term that only privileged white males use; please refer to them from now on as "undocumented pharmacists."
"Magic Mushrooms Best, Safest Drug Ever," concludes man who has been wolfing them down for years and has lost all touch with reality.
All that says is pot is more commonly consumed, which it unquestionably is, probably by an order of magnitude or more.
If you only know 'where to look' you are playing Russian roulette of sorts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
i would rather drink a beer or two and smoke a little 100% natural marijuana of the cannabis indica family, if this redneck state dont legalize it soon i am moving to a legal weed state
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Definitely. Where to look, and a lot of experience identifying the species. There are only a few really lethal mushrooms, though. The Death Cap (amanita phalloides) is one of the clean nicer looking white mushrooms out there.
You don't start dying from it for awhile after you've eaten it, until it's deep within your system. And its a horrible death.
and a lot of experience identifying the species.
You need knowledge rather than experience, as evidenced by the fact that nearly all experienced mushroom hunters forego the much-needed spore print...
By safe they speak only about emergency medical treatment.
It doesn't include long term damage (non-emergencies) and severity.
You can get to the hospital just because you got into a situation you couldn't control, or because someone else panicked, but you were never in danger to begin with.
Tobacco is probably really safe by this metric. Cancer usually won't get you in an emergency room...
Still interesting, and the results make sense, just know it is not all there is to drug safety.
a semi-common hallucination for pot heads to have is thinking they're dying
I think you mean 'cops'.
There's always the 0.00x% of people who have the perfect DNA to break out in hives or be allergic or some random thing to just about every substance imaginable. Doubly so if its a substance that they have literally never encountered before because its contraband and its the first time.
Basically, you're right - The wrong stat was being tracked.
Its unclear FTA and the stat in question what that ratio was, since they were tracking those "seeking emergency intervention" as opposed to those actually Requiring emergency intervention but its likely that the latter is smaller than the former but not zero.
Bzzzt! Wrong, guess again. The by far most commonly consumed species most definitely is a mushroom, not sure where you came up with that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... And while there is many other species with the active ingredient, they are all still mushrooms. *The more you know*
Isn't jail the best place for them?
No
It's still a crime. and they are definitely a danger to themselves and others.
Silly troll. Take your reefer madness somewhere else.
I was disappointed that caffeine was missing of the list of recreational drugs. Although Global Drug Survey has it listed, the ER statistics for caffeine is not in any of the articles. When we have a party, or go to one we have a can of pop or more. Is caffeine as safe as magic mushroom? Should we take it instead of pop? I am worried about my pop drinking as I have started to go to the hard stuff. I used to be able to get wired from DR Pepper(25mg) but now I sometimes have to drink Mountain Dew(55mg). I don’t want to wind up in the ER after drinking Red Bull if magic mushrooms are the safest reactional drug.
Embrace the future.
Few people seem to realize just how dangerous alcohol is. 10% mortality rate when alcoholics try to quit woke me up.
That's a bad statistic, since it has already selected the most severe sufferers from alcohol. You would find similarly bad outcomes (though not the medically dangerous withdrawal specifically) when you look at the severest sufferers of most any drug addiction.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
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%). .6% ER visits.
Cocaine is reported at 1% have ER visits, amphetamines at 1.1% and cannabis at
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
Should name the mushroom because some varieties are incredibly deadly.
Those aren't the ones used for tripping though, more like the ones you read about in the news where yet another family cooked up some wild mushrooms they couldn't recognise and died.
Unless you go to Australia where nearly every single variety of wild fungi that doesn't look weird is lethally poisonous if eaten.
How do you love smoking Eagel 20/Nova, Avid, Shuttle, Pylon, Meltatox, Floramite and many other for ornamental only pesticides with long residual 1/2 life thats on your weed?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Five times lower than 0.2% would mean 0.04%. Or as an expression 0.002/5 = 0.0004.
Math truly is a wonderful thing.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Mushrooms go back just as far, or farther. Mushrooms are recreational even for deer and the like, no need for fire or anything.
Weed's legal on the whole west coast? Gov's not fighting that hard any more
Also, marijuana is more accepted and people are more willing to report it.
how many heavy pot users die trying to quit.
I'm unfamiliar with any Amy Winehouse type cases amongst pot users.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I don't know anybody that would self-select as being in the worst category of pot smoker, so I don't know what they're like. Unless you can gather some data on what the lives of these people are like, my point stands. It's practically a tautology: the worst among them (self selected) will most likely have pretty rotten lives.
Let me rephrase the above comment to be not so abusive of statistics:
Approximately 0% mortality rate when drinkers try to quit
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
So then the ER wouldn't be the last place. At best it would be the antepenultimate place you'd take someone.
Simpel it is a feature. You cant get high from mushrooms every day. Resistance builds so quickly with mushrooms so you would need to double your dosage every day. And you would not have good trips.
Omce a month atmost if you want a good experince. So yeah i would say that feature alone makes it safer than weed
Amanita muscaria is a more obscure hallucinogen, but it's cousin amanita phalloides is known as the death cap and one of the world's most lethal.
Indeed, but you would be hard pressed to mistake them for each other, I think. The first one is bright red, normally with white 'dots' all over, very recognisable - you don't need to eat it to see something psychedelic - whereas the second one is a dull, brownish-green colour and looks a bit like something you might find in the supermarket.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Interesting that the report mentions synthetic cannabis but not organic cannabis
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Everything is lethal in Australia. Snakes, jellyfish, crocodiles, spiders, sharks, stingrays. Even birds will freakin disembowel people. I'm surprised anyone even lives past 16 over there.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
and the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all...
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Ah, self-reporting. So there could be a huge selection bias if (for example) half of the shroomers died or became so incapacitated that they couldn't self-report their medical situation.
Yeah, except that no one has ever died from psilocybin mushrooms. You cannot overdose on mushrooms. And the people in the study who did call for medical assistance had been using alcohol as well. RTFA. This is almost always the case, just as the vast majority of “heroin overdoses” involve the use of alcohol, or other CNS depressants such as benzodiazepines. It’s rarely heroin alone.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
No, the truth is more that a semi-common hallucination for pot heads to have is thinking they're dying. A non-zero amount of these idiots will actually call emergency services while freaking out. The weed isn't significantly more dangerous physically if you exclude possible long-term lung damage, it's just a lot more likely to freak you out to the point your dumb ass calls the cops on yourself.
Really? Do you have any documentation of that? I can't recall ever having had that particular hallucination, nor do I know anybody that has (at least, that they've communicated with me. Indeed, I can't recall anybody at all ever -- ever -- seeking emergency medical treatment because they got high smoking pot. Some complete neophyte, smoking for the first time, maybe could freak out, or somebody who was fed brownies and didn't know that they were getting a huge dose of weed along with them, sure, but both of those are special cases and not "pot heads" calling EMS because they think they are dying.
Pot is one of the safest "mind altering/illegal" substances on the planet. There is no lethal dose -- you'd be dying of smoke inhalation, not from the effects of the drug, if you tried to kill yourself with it. There are no long term effects -- if you quit, it clears out of your system end of story. There isn't even a particularly solid link between weed and e.g. lung cancer, although it wouldn't surprise anybody if smoke of any sort is a factor in inflammation, which in turn is a factor in cancer. As pointed out above, the metric of "chose to visit the ER" is just plain silly, and the levels they are reporting for this are pretty absurd -- one in 200.
Did none of those 200 have, say, something to drink as well? Alcohol as a confounding factor would all by itself explain the difference. Is all of the pot that they were smoking JUST pot, or was some of it laced with opium, or cheap weed mixed with cheaper spice to simulate "good" weed? There are zero controls, they are relying on self-reported statistics about stuff everybody lies about (in an ER, are you going to admit that you just used a felonious schedule 1 substance that you might still be holding out in your car or house, or are you going to claim that your meth-induced DTs are due to smoking weed?), and whether or not you go to the ER, tripping balls on serious hallucinogens is a hell of a lot more dangerous than getting high on pot and listening to music while gaming with friends. Your odds of self-inflicted or accidental injury are (IMO) orders of magnitude higher once you have completely disassociated your head from reality with a hefty dose of a real hallucinogen, where it is difficult to ingest enough pot to get a hallucinogenic experience in the most common ways of using it (although if you eat a pile of hash brownies or pot chile you can manage it, sure). If you try it via smoking it you'll just fall asleep before you actually hallucinate, or more likely, stop smoking because you are as relaxed and high as you care to be.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
I bet beer and pot together are safer than shrooms.
That’d be a bad bet. Alcohol can kill you, psilocybin can’t. Alcohol causes liver, (and other organic), damage, psilocybin doesn’t. I would say pot and ‘shrooms are equally safe. No one has ever been known to overdose on either. Alcohol, not so much. But any recreational drug, including alcohol, if used in moderation is not going to cause you any harm. Few recreational drugs are as dangerous as, say, Tylenol, (acetaminophen), which is a liver toxin.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Another problem is that they ignore the quality of the experience. A sugar pill is safe but it would be silly to say it is the "best" drug since it doesn't do anything.
They didn't say Shrooms were the "Best" drug, they said the safest. Two very different things. "Best" would surely be subjective.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There are no long term effects -- if you quit, it clears out of your system end of story. There isn't even a particularly solid link between weed and e.g. lung cancer, although it wouldn't surprise anybody if smoke of any sort is a factor in inflammation, which in turn is a factor in cancer.
I can't remember the exact statistics, but, I think I recall the volume of carcinogens in Marijuana smoke (many being the same as in cigarettes) is somewhere around the 1000% that of an average tobacco cigarette. (I could be off a few hundred % there in one direction or the other- point being, its multiple times worse)
Now, that number is pretty misleading. Yeah, an individual smoke me be 10 times as *um* high, but no-one chain smokes Marijuana. (at least I hope not).
Your average cigarette smoker probably smokes way more than 10 times more frequently than your average pot-head. Cigarette smoker over their lifetime is going to get a lot more risk for lung cancer. Pot head is going to have a higher risk too but probably not in the range of a smoker.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
They probably only included "drugs" where it is actually possible to use them and need medical attention afterwards.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Alcohol is but far the most dangerous drug that isn't guaranteed to kill you if you ingest at at all.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You do know that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, and that they are mushrooms that happen to have the organic chemical psilocybin in them, right?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Documentation? Seriously, just spouting bullshit doesn't prove anything at all. And bullshit articles with completely fake graphs culled from the internet are no better. If you want facts, you can try reading actual medical journal articles:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
From the abstract: The LD50 for dogs is 3 grams of PURE THC per kilogram of body weight. I have a body mass a bit over 100 kg, so the likely LD50 for me would be roughly 300 grams. The most potent varieties of pot on the market are around 1/4 THC (reportedly, I still have a bit of a hard time believing that on a pure sanity check basis, but hey, let's go with it). That means I'd have to ingest 4x300 grams or 1.2 kilograms of not just any pot, but the very "best" (most unbelievably potent) pot on the planet in order to get a dose with a 50% chance of killing me. A person with a body mass of 50 kg would still need well over a pound of the very best pot, and would need to smoke it all (or eat it all) so quickly that the body couldn't metabolize it away before it depressed his/her CNS to a lethal degree.
If one directly eats concentrated THC or a product like "butter" that is half THC or better, one "could" ingest a lethal dose, but all in all, THC is slightly safer than caffeine. People die every year from caffeine overdoses, caused not by drinking coffee or tea but by taking large number of caffeine pills, which concentrates it to a far higher level than one can ever manage drinking a naturally caffeinated beverage.
So please -- no, there are not "many" fatalities related to marijuana use. There are pretty much zero fatalities from THC poisoning from marijuana use per se. I suppose there could be a fatality or three from people who chug a pint of melted concentrated marijuana butter, but that isn't marijuana "use", that is specifically ingesting THC as a drug in mind-numbingly stupid quantities, as stupid as downing a bottle of No-Doz to stay awake to study for a test the next day. If you want to argue that there are highway deaths or accidental deaths attributable to marijuana use, that isn't what this study is looking at and has nothing to do with LD50, but again it is difficult to get meaningful statistics (with controls for confounding factors) to support this with actual numbers. For example, in Washington state, which recently legalized pot, there has been a corresponding increase in the percentage of people involved in fatal accidents that have measurable THC in their systems. Specifically, authorities in Washington recorded 436 fatal crashes in 2013, and determined that drivers involved in 40 crashes tested positive for THC, the active chemical in marijuana, according to the study. In 2014 they found that of 462 fatal crashes, 85 drivers tested positive for THC.
BUT, correlation is not causality -- it is reasonable to assume that legal weed is smoked by more people than smoked illegal weed, more frequently, so that the number of people with detectable THC in their systems has increased (THC is detectable weeks after ingestion). The main question is, has the number of traffic fatalities itself increased since legalization, and the delta indicated in this study isn't even a statistically significant change. These numbers completely ignore confounding factors -- such as what percentage of the THC users had blood alcohol levels in excess of the legal limits, what the population of the state has done in the meantime, how the number of registered drivers has changed, changes in the available roadway, and "normal statistical variation" in the number of traffic fatalities. The number itself is nearly meaningless.
With that said, I don't doubt that there are some surplus deaths due to accidents caused by people being too high to drive and driving anyway, or using power tools while high, etc. But even there, pot is almost certainly far safer than alcohol and a long list of prescription or over the counter drugs.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Where does it mention marijuana anywhere? Synthetic cannabis != marijuana.
It's in the Global Drug Survey that is linked to in the Slashdot summary. SLASHDOT SUMMARY IS NOT THE ARTICLE!
BLASPHEMY!
I've heard this argument, but it is difficult to back with actual statistics. Here's an article from 2008 that looks comparatively clean:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
It suggests that smoking pot regularly and heavily is associated with around a 5% increased incidence in lung cancer, but N in the study is pretty small for me to be happy with this number. Its an epidemiological study and hence has the usual problems with confounding -- lots of people smoke pot AND tobacco, use pot AND drink alcohol -- plus the usual difficulties of relying on self-reporting of use. In a sense the article is surprising -- in spite of nominally being more toxic, the bump in risk appears smaller than it is for tobacco, something I've read about in other research articles as well. Tobacco appears to be uniquely bad for you, worse than "just smoke" including pot smoke. It could be that pot has some anti-inflammatory activity (reported here and there as part of its possible "medical benefits") that partially offsets the smoke-related damage, since cancer, like most cardiovascular disease, appears to be associated with inflammatory response.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Nobody suggested you shouldn't. I said it was the most dangerous, not that it should be outlawed. Drug laws are absurd.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I've heard this argument, but it is difficult to back with actual statistics. Here's an article from 2008 that looks comparatively clean:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
It suggests that smoking pot regularly and heavily is associated with around a 5% increased incidence in lung cancer, but N in the study is pretty small for me to be happy with this number.
I don't remember the article that I'm "reciting" from, it was one of the popular science type magazines (probably from around the same timeframe as that article, and maybe partially based upon it). The article was actually talking about the relative safety of marijuana, but stated the smoke was "x time worse" (x being something around the 10 mark). I think it mentioned something about lack of filters, etc.
It might have been poorly researched, I don't remember the details.
From your article 5% increase in risk would indicate a "per-puff" more dangerous smoking product than tobacco when you consider people probably average less than 1 a day. I can't imagine many people use more than 5 a week.
That said, pot smokers are probably more likely to be tobacco smokers than non pot-smokers, so that 5% could be correlation not causation.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I wouldn't be surprised if shrooms are safer for your body than pot by some small margin, but I'm sure it's not safer for your mind. Taking shrooms too many times can turn you into a Gary Busey-style space cadet and you'll just think you're "enlightened." You have to smoke weed every day for years to even risk such mental effects from pot.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Another problem is that they ignore the quality of the experience. A sugar pill is safe but it would be silly to say it is the "best" drug since it doesn't do anything.
Hold on there cowboy! If the sugar pill contains Fructose, it is a proven killer. Make certain your placebo pills are only of the safe and healthy sugar, Sucrose! Brought to you by the Sugar Cane Growers Association
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They didn't say Shrooms were the "Best" drug, they said the safest. Two very different things. "Best" would surely be subjective.
Where can I score some of this "subjective", dude?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So then the ER wouldn't be the last place. At best it would be the antepenultimate place you'd take someone.
Bet you've been waiting for years to use antepenultimate in a sentence.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah there was a recent case in Thailand where 2 tourist had magic mushrooms and one of them decided he feel like flying asking the friend to join him, then proceeding to jump to his death following that.
Don't think just smoking marijuana can make you do something like that....
Just try throwing a bag of Cheetos on the sidewalk and see what the potheads will do.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah, lets take someone with an unknown allergic reaction to hallucinogenic mushrooms to "some place safe" instead of the ER. I seriously doubt that 0.2% of folks were going to the ER because they were having a bad trip.
But it can trigger psychosis that leads to death. Marijuana addicts* can have other social and/or economical problems or even (though less common than for heavy drug users) become criminals in order to get more drugs.
(* yes one can get addicted to marijuana)
The safest drug is nitrous oxide. The only documented medical problem for the drug itself is reduced B12 levels but only on (for most people) unrealistic levels of use. The number of users seeking medical help associated with the drug use are extremely small.
There are associated problems like people getting frostbites due to incompetent handling of compressed gas and people suffocating due to inhaling too little oxygen but neither of those are a problem with the drug itself.
Nitrous have a very short lasting mild disassociative and calming effect that most tolerates well.
Despite these quibbles with methodology, I'm personally miffed at the superstitious reference to "magic" mushrooms.
Can we agree, henceforward, to refer to these as "Science Mushrooms" ?
Signed,
A highly rational libertarian genius.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Is it safer than ibuprofen? That's a drug and there's not a lot of recreational value there either.
As they said:
Your average cigarette smoker probably smokes way more than 10 times more frequently than your average pot-head
And that alone gives your body time to recover. Having enough recovery time would mean a lower overall cancer risk - because it's not just accumulation of toxic substances, it's also inflammation. And inflammation that isn't continuous is much less dangerous to long-term health.
Is it safer than ibuprofen? That's a drug and there's not a lot of recreational value there either.
Have you tried smokin' some profen? Ibuprofen brownies anyone?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I've never gotten ill or thrown up from smoking pot. But I have from shrooms.
You're an idiot.
Five times lower means five times as much as .2 which is 1. 1 lower than .2 is -.8 .
Math and reading comprehension are wonderful things. Hence why all pedantic nerds hate X times less.
Marketing is what it is:
Nobody wants to feel "scientific" when they take a recreational drug.
Feeling "magical," however, is another matter entirely.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Really? Do you have any documentation of that? I can't recall ever having had that particular hallucination, nor do I know anybody that has (at least, that they've communicated with me.
Cop Eats Pot Brownies Calls 911
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This was self reported, presumably they did not report in after landing so weren't included in the stats.
Nullius in verba
Not all drug laws are absurd, Meth for example is a menace. I think the problem is that drug laws are abused to crack down on $peopleIwishToDiscriminateAgainst rather than being targeted to minimize the burden drugs place on communities.
Nullius in verba
Not really.
Cases of people dying while trying to quit booze are common.
Name a case of a person dying trying to quit pot. (At the least, it's several orders of magnitude lower than the rate for alcohol drinkers.)
There don't appear to be any.
The two biggest risks of pot use are emphysema (only if you smoke it tho and increasingly edibles are the way to go) and increased risk of psychosis if you have a family history of psychosis (and it's possible the heavy pot use was an indicator that you were at a higher risk of psychosis and were self medicating).
Fewer people die from consuming pot than die from swimming, skiing, mountain climbing, smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, eating peanuts, eating shellfish, hiking, and so on. And those activities are legal.
And we are destroying our police, judicial systems, and our civil liberties in our effort to keep pot illegal.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I support the legalization of weed, because I think it is at least as safe as alcohol. I do have to point out some factual errors in your post. THC, just like water, has a lethal dose. It is something between 6 and 12 times the lethal dose of caffeine, depending on which studies you believe. Secondly, it can have some very profound and lasting effects that won't just flush out eventually. The chief of which is, if you are schizophrenic, or at genetic risk of becoming schizophrenic, it can trigger the disease. Broadly speaking, this is true of just about any hallucinogen, and is very near and dear to me because it happened to a family member of mine. Now, does that make it worse than cigarettes or alcohol? Not even nearly. But we need to take pains to avoid this gift of Gaia characterization. It's not a vitamin, it's not good for you, we shouldn't pretend that it is.
Methamphetamine is legal if prescribed by a doctor. Doctor's don't generally prescribe alcohol, though they concede that a single glass of red wine with dinner can be beneficial. The danger with meth comes from them being illegal, and the fact that the home cooked product is impure, as well as being dangerous to produce by amateurs.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
We're all dying, man. Just at different speeds.
negative health impact of inhaling burning hydrocarbons is well documented
If its so well document, perhaps you can provide a citation or two? What are the exact health effects of inhaling the smoke from 1/2 gram of burning hydrocarbons without any drug content?
I just can't see it being a good idea to make meth legal and available in the same way as alcohol or, now, weed. If the arguments about legalizing drugs are valid, then we should start seeing a drop in demand for meth now that weed is less illegal right ?
Nullius in verba
No. That is a straw man. Nobody argued that people who like uppers would switch to a drug that relaxes you. That would be a stupid argument.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The dangers posed by illegal labs are a problem that might be addressed by legalization, but I mostly associate meth use with addiction and people fucking up their lives and the lives of those around them by running their health into the ground and turning to crime to fund their habit.
I know the same could be said for some other drugs, maybe even alcohol though I doubt in such a high proportion of users.
What would you say has to be legalized to make meth and other highly addictive drugs an insignificant problem ?
Nullius in verba
The closest I've ever gotten to 'shrooms is a guy in my dorm back in the 70s... Not sure how many he ate, but his nickname was "Birdman" after he recovered from taking a trip out of a second (third? I forget) story window.
He wasn't trying to kill himself. It was more "Wow, everything's moving so slowly. (drops pencil) "Floats like a feather." (jumps up) Whoa, I'm floating! Gotta try this... (out the window) "Wow, I'm floating! Far out, man! Here comes the ground. I wonder if it will be friendl... OW OW OW OW OW!" To the hospital with a broken leg.
Bottom line, anything that alters your perception of reality is a potential hazard when reality doesn't alter to meet your altered perceptions.
Me, the only illegal drugs I've ever done was half a bottle of beer when I was 17.
The reason legalization actually reduces the problem is manifold, but let's start with the bit about turning to crime to fund their habit. Alcohol is one of the worst drugs on the planet both from a health persective and a danger to others persepctive, but as you may have noticed, there isn't a rash of people committing crimes to fund their alcohol habit. Why? Because alcohol is inexpensive and readily available. When people do get out of control with it we tend to send them to detox and rehab, imprisoning them only when their use results in significant danger to others caused by intoxication, such as multiple DUIs or crimes committed because they have lost their faculties and killed someone or beat them, etc.
... often just for possessing the drug ... and so can't get a decent job due to the social stigma and the fact that companies don't tend to hire felons. A company will hire a guy who had an alcohol problem and cleaned up because he has no felonies. He is every bit as much an addict as the others, but he hasn't done hard time for the sin of having an AMA recognized disease.
Again, you won't eliminate crime through legalization. You can only minimize it. The Heroin addict or Meth addict that can beg for change on a street corner to fund his habit will not take the risk of breaking and entering to fund his habit. Furthermore, legalization allows taxation, which means we can afford to build more detoxes and rehabs for those who are ready to try to address their issues. Right now most crimes are committed by drug users who want to stop, recognize that they have a problem, do not want to commit crimes to fund their habit, but either have no way out due to lack of availability of help, or because they don't see a way out. Many have given up, as they are felons
Note that your belief that the benefit of legalization is that people already using hard drugs will switch to less hard drugs is a misnomer. Marijuana is the exception because many who use alcohol have switched to the "harder" drug (alocohol) when they would prefer to use the less harmful drug (Marijuana), due to the problems caused by legal dangers of the "softer" drug. In this case the law makes the otherwise much more safe drug more dangerous to use due to risk of imprisonment.
Murder ;-)
(Hopefully you get the somewhat inappropriate joke after reading what I wrote)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No shooting while _shitfaced_. But just like practicing martial arts with a buzz...when are you most likely to get into a fight?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Firearms aren't more dangerous than cars, many tools etc etc.
Drunk, hell no. But 0.08 ISN'T DRUNK, 'under the influence' is a bunch of weasel words. You judgement goes to hell at 0.15.
If you sober enough to wheel (in the woods where cops are a non-issue) you are sober enough to take some target practice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"So 'going to the ER' is the wrong criteria in the first place. "
I think you are confusing a dangerous medical reaction with "a bad experience." You can have "a bad experience" on something literally every time you try it 10000 times in a row and it still be 100% safe.
And that is emergency intervention, someone mentioned what you do in the event of a "bad reaction" but that reaction isn't a medical issue it is more akin to the cop who ate brownies, nothing wrong whatsoever just a guy freaking out and no more a medical situation than getting your spooked when alone after watching a horror movie.
Marijuana is still going to be the winner here with almost no acute negative medical incidences whereas shrooms cause vomiting and diarrhea in at least half the people who take them.
"No, the truth is more that a semi-common hallucination for pot heads to have is thinking they're dying."
I think you are talking about a situation akin to getting yourself freaked out when alone in the house after watching a scary movie. That has very little to do with marijuana and a great deal to do with a cop who ate brownies and then freaked himself out with all the nonsense propaganda the DEA spreads... Marijuana does not trigger hallucinations. Hell, mushrooms barely trigger hallucinations.
I've consulted with dispensaries growing marijuana and producing over 99% pure THC extracts... THC does not cause hallucinations. What some would call soaring or flying is actually simple dizziness combined with euphoria. The light intoxication makes it easier to see low light hallucinations like a door moving/breathing in a dim room but you won't see anything you can't manage to see as a normal combination and freaking yourself out, mind playing tricks on you, or optical effect when perfectly sober.
Even LSD which is dramatically more hallucinogenic doesn't cause real honest to god hallucinations beyond optical effects that can easily be created with lenses. Textures on the wall slightly shifting and blurring together? Sure. People who aren't real? Nope. Voices. Nope. People who tell you otherwise are busting your chops or most likely just lying about having ever taken the stuff to begin with. I used to sell LSD in high school, trust me, it isn't a quantity thing at least not within the realm of a hundred hits or so. You don't take this stuff to actually go to wonderland, you take it because of the extreme euphoria that lasts 8-12hrs and leaves your face aching from smiling so hard for that long.
I've only encountered one thing that didn't induce a completely dreamlike (stationary, eyes closed or unseeing so everything is 100% imagination) experience that triggers full on hallucinations mixed with reality. I'm not going to spread what that is but is nothing you'd take for fun.
It isn't really a fair comparison. At least 60% of those who take shrooms experience vomiting and diarrhea. Often they smoke marijuana alongside to treat the sides. Neither causes any sort of serious medical condition.
Where to look is in the humidity dome in your closet. The spores are perfectly legal and outside of making sure things are nice and sterile extremely easy to cultivate.
Agreed. Also, the death cap wouldn't trick anyone who had handled the real thing fresh. One scrap of the fingernail on that white flesh would reveal it wasn't the real thing and you'd have a pretty good idea when it was that pristine white in the first place.
Not quite.
We didn't have any poisonous amphibians so a state government decide to import some in the 1930s and their population exploded (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cane_toads_in_Australia).
I agree with you, but none of that negates the abuse of statistics. You just don't say " of X is bad" where X is already selected to be the worst fraction of a group. It tells you nothing, unless you're conducting an analysis of X rather than the group. However, we're considering alcohol drinkers, pot smokers, heroin users. We are not specifically considering alcoholics, potheads who are stoned all the time, and heroin junkies.
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
ROTFL. Yeah, like that.
Seriously, anybody who has never used pot and eats loaded brownies is going to feel highly "disoriented" and scared. One of many reasons it is highly unethical to put LSD into the punch at the school prom or set out a tray of pot brownies at a party without clearly warning people. Heck, it isn't terribly ethical to serve a vodka laced punch as "orange juice" to teetotalers, either.
But ASIDE FROM DRIVING or operating heavy machinery etc, individuals who eat a brownie by accident are not at any particular health risk -- from the brownie. If they just go have a good lie down and enjoy the spinning mandalas they'll wake up right as rain.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Um, I actually said it had an LD50 dose. It's just so incredibly absurdly high that you can't possibly reach it unless you ingest chemically purified THC in massive quantities -- hundreds of grams. Pot is not pure THC, and you'd have to smoke or eat pounds of it to reach it. I won't say it can't be done -- one of my favorite Darwin awards is an idiot who killed himself with a 9 volt transistor radio battery doing exactly what his instructor told him not to do -- but I think you'd have to set out to deliberately try.
People DO die, OTOH, of caffeine poisoning because one CAN buy pure/concentrated caffeine over the counter and swallow a bottle of it. And eating a single cigarette is potentially lethal to a small child and will make a full grown adult cry like a baby as they projectile vomit and go into convulsions -- but hey, even thought nicotine is an insecticide convulsant poison, cigarettes and tobacco products are legal.
I do agree that pot is not a good idea for schizophrenics and bipolars as I have anecdotal experiences of my own where it has triggered psychotic breaks in acquaintances and relatives. I'm not sure they wouldn't have had their breaks eventually anyway, but some people should indeed go through life stone-cold sober as doing ANY mind-altering substance is likely to be bad and/or addictive to them. With that said, a lot of people use it to self-medicate for depression and anxiety, and in that context it probably works as well as a lot of much more expensive antidepressants (and with lower risks).
It's not a vitamin. Judging what is "good for you" is an individual choice, not a global moral statement -- salt isn't "good for me", but on the other hand, it is. Sugar ditto. It's all about balance. But it is, as you say, wrong to pretend that there are no downsides to pot or assert that we should all start our day with a nice fat brownie...:-)
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Ha! Actually I use it from time to time, almost always greeted by eyerolls :-)