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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."
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
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 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.
That's a derogatory, insensitive term that only privileged white males use; please refer to them from now on as "undocumented pharmacists."
LSD poisoning is also almost unheard of. While it is technically possible to take a lethal dose, it don't think it has ever happened. You need thousands of doses for this.
Those who seek emergency medical attention usually just went into a trip that is too much for them to handle. Same situation as with cannabis.
One reason shrooms have less problems is that inexperienced people tend to take it in small doses. With LSD and cannabis it is common for people to take way more than they can handle. With LSD, you are never sure about the dosage, and cannabis (a "soft" drug) tends not to be taken seriously.
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.
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
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
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.
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..."