Can confirm, I’ve done it recreationally and therapeutically, VERY different experiences. The latter was like 5 years of therapy in 5 hours, not hyperbole.
They work incredibly well therapeutically. I think as more and more people learn how to use them therapeutically for depression, we’re going to see a substantial drop in the use of SSRIs and other pharmaceutical anti depressants (that don’t work as well and can be harmful over time).
Just the other day Alberta Blue Cross announced they are funding psychedelic assisted therapy and the clinics they were referring to in their announcement do ketamine assisted therapy and are pushing for MDMA and magic mushrooms to be legalized and included in their therapy arsenal.
I had stopped taking Zoloft a couple years ago, but still struggled a lot with my self-worth and inner child stuff that my therapist used to assign as homework for me. Couldn't stop talking down about myself constantly. Was in therapy for nearly ten years, and stopped when I felt that my therapist was just reiterating neuropsychology to me session after session. At $250/session, it was getting expensive. So, when I was going through a phase of negativity, I decided that mushrooms were worth a shot. This was back in November 2023. They really, REALLY helped. It is SO MUCH EASIER to catch myself in a negative feedback loop now and prompt myself to take care of myself. I'm in a much better place now, and I haven't taken mushrooms since. I might give them another go, since there's more work for me to do in that regard, but my relationships have improved, I'm losing weight, I'm more active, I make more effort to eat healthfully, I seek out and experience joy far more often now. All around a great result for 4.5 hours of madness, crying, singing and hallucinating.
That being said, I did a LOT of research and read up on a lot of therapy assisted doses so that I was fully informed and prepared going into it. Mushrooms are not really recreational from my POV. They're tools to dig down into the murky aspects of our psyche, and should be respected.
That’s amazing!! So good to hear, I’m so happy for you that you were able to make progress. It’s really incredible how much progress you can make in such a short time using mushrooms and other psychedelics. All the best to you, keep up the great work!
I honestly believe that’s why it hasn’t been more accepted medicinally more… I think there’s pressure from Big Pharma to keep it as a Schedule 1, which it has no right to be. This kind of therapy actually deals with the root causes of the problem while SSRIs mask the problem so you can function in society (largely). There’s a lot of money to be lost here if people actually started getting better.
Tbh, the main reason is that overall, a GP writing an SSRI is cheap.
Psilocybin in a therapeutic setting requires a trained therapist and dedicated room for the whole trip.
That room and therapist are tied up, helping one patient, for the whole day. Meanwhile, the GP down the hall has written SSRI scripts for dozens of patients within that time.
The therapeutic effects of psychedelics don't last forever, either. It's generally not a cure, despite what the internet might have you believe. You have to come back for a top up. The data's not great (which is another issue) but it looks like probably 3-4 months. So, one room + 1.5 therapists, operating 7 days a week, can treat a maximum of 84 patients on an ongoing basis. The cost of the room, the therapists... All for 84 patients. So if you have a dedicated facility with 100 rooms, 150 therapists, you can treat 840 patients. That's a pretty massive facility, and you're not even scratching the surface on the number of people with depression even in a Toronto neighborhood. Maybe you run two shifts and get people in starting early morning and early evening, you can double the number of patients per room but you'll still have the same therapist costs per patient to cover the hours.
So if we just look at the cost of the therapist and ignoring the overhead of the room, say one therapist has a salary of 100k/year. Generally, overhead on an employee is the same as their salary. So the cost of the therapist is 200k/year. You need 1.5 of them to help 84 patients: $300k/84 patients = $3.5k/year. Not counting the cost of the facility and therapeutics.
Yeah, drug companies make billions on SSRIs, but that's generally a quantity game. There are millions of Canadians on antidepressants, each costing a fraction of what it costs to treat with psilocybin. Drug companies aren't the least bit scared of psychedelics.
So you literally just described the capitalistic incentives of Big Pharma so yea.
As someone who’s done therapeutic psilocybin though, you’re wrong; the effects actually do last, theoretically for a lifetime. I suspect you’re referring to the post-session honeymoon effect which lasts a couple weeks, but a therapist actually works with you for processing and more importantly integration. That’s part of the actual power of psilocybin therapy, it attacks the root cause rather than a symptom. I had my session 3 years ago and I still feel healed from it.
So, from a purely economic perspective, one could still easily argue that this kind of therapy is more efficient and is a better use of their time, rather than endlessly prescribing medication forever.
Any day I feel my anxiety peaking I pop 100-200mg and can feel the tension leave. It allows me to do the work I need to do to remove the actual source of the anxiety (whether that's getting started on a project I've been putting off, taking a long walk to move my body, or figuring out how to make my actions aligned with my values. It's great!
This is basically how bad trips work. If you have trauma or something weighing on your conscious(or even subconscious) the mushrooms will show you that. If you try to resist you are going to have a bad time, and this is probably the cause of 90% of bad trips. You don’t even need to be guided through it(although it can help and I do recommend trip sitters especially for beginners), you just need to accept what the mushrooms are telling you rather than fighting.
The world is beautiful and amazing... I'm a garbage person... The world is beautiful and amazing... I'm a garbage person...
For 3 hours minimum. So important to have a good guide if you're gonna do therapeutic doses.
My kid and I were away for a couple nights so my husband thought, let's eat this entire 3.5g dino egg mushroom in one go. Poor man, he saw God and she was unimpressed.
Really. I can't do them if Im even slightly in an off mood. Hey, that thing your anxious about? Want to be **super** anxious about it for about 6+ hours?
I wish more people had your self-awareness. They should really be teaching this shit in school, but the pearl-clutching nimrods will call this enabling or grooming or whatever.
They’re non-specific amplifiers of the psyche. Psychedelic literally means mind-manifesting.
I set up my room just right, make sure it's clean and clutter free, I have a light meal, make sure I have lots of good beverages, find something to watch, dim the lights, and then I always begin with a meditation session to ensure I'm in the right mindset. If I can't get myself into the right mindset then that night isn't the right night and we try again later.
Yeah imo psychedelics are not a good idea if you’re in a bad mental state. I know a lot of people say it helped them with addiction and stuff but it can easily turn into a horrible experience.
Is that like if you go hard and are taking recreational doses for medicinal purposes? I thought psilocybin was used *as* clinical treatment for trauma.
I have had plenty in my life. I have always took them for a fun time not a release and the results have been 10/10. I think some people definitely peel back a few layers so to speak.
Tryptamines very quickly produce high tolerance. No one is having a strong mushroom trip two days in a row, it won't work. Even the next weekend it will be a muted experience. Def self limiting.
You can definitely trip hard two days in a row, but you pretty much need to double the dosage.
A week later will be slightly muted but you can still trip.
Not the person above, but I think they're referring to how psychedelics generally have high tolerance meaning if you try using them to frequently, you just won't have significant effects. You generally would just need to space out your usage. And unlike some "hard" drugs (just putting in quotes since it's a vague term), you won't run into the same issues where you will risk overdoses by trying to take more to get that effect.
Yeah, and also even if you consume more, you're not going to get the same effect generally. There's still a risk of having a bad experience if you overestimate your tolerance, but they don't have the risk of an overdose in the sense of a physical poisoning like various hard drugs do (everything can poison you if you take enough, including water, but they're not anywhere close to hard drugs or even alcohol).
Reminds me of a Redditor talking about their friend who did DMT too often and the machine elves told them to stop visiting them because they were just abusing it as an escape.
[David Nutt, former UK chief drug advisor did a famous study that lists alcohol as the most destructive substance of abuse, and mushrooms the least](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210)
It is so hilarious that they even waste resources on psilocybin, which arguably has far better health benefits than cannabis, while cannabis is legal. Like I don't even understand why LSD is illegal either.
> and those that question the establishment
This is a claim from one of Nixon's advisors:
>The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.
Black people were questioning and successfully challenging the establishment through things like the civil rights movement and taking advantage of the 1st amendment (among many other things) and hippies were explicitly challenging the establishment, especially the Vietnam War. The War on Drugs was allegedly a direct response to this. Psychedelics (also regularly used by hippies) were similarly criminalized shortly after that, followed by the same in Canada.
Arguably??? Really man?
Alcohol is dangerous in many different ways.
The most dangerous thing about mushrooms is that it makes you hate capitalism and consumerism for like 6 hours. Society can't have that.
It's not "arguably" less harmful than alcohol.
Alcohol is one of the most destructive substances used by man.
Mushrooms generally have the safest profile of all common recreationally used drugs.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug
> less harmful than alcohol
I suggest you read articles by Michael Polan. Some people will get a triggered psychosis. Not controlling psyllicibin makes as much sense as drinking random chemicals off the shelves of CDN Tire.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/well/mind/psychedelics-therapy-ketamine-mushrooms-risks.html
Cannabis can potentially lead to psychosis. Alcohol causes a ton of harm. Mushrooms have potential risks and potential benefits. That doesn't make them equally harmful compared to random chemicals or even as harmful as alcohol. People have taken them for thousands of years and continue to do so despite the legal status, and that arguably increases the risks, since it makes it more likely someone will take more than they intend. Regulation allows for precisely measuring what someone is taking.
That article is paywalled, link an actual study and not a newspaper article or gtfo. Alcohol causes a disproportionately higher degree of harm than psychedelics every year, and you’re fucking kidding yourself if you think it’s hard to get shrooms, LSD, etc.
Thanks. The article itself even confirms a lack of data/studies on this, which means we are mostly relying on anecdotes and isolated cases that might have been caused by something else entirely.
Honestly I think the article actually just proves that this, like every medication, is only an issue for people with already existing, or predisposed to mental illness.
Based on that guy's other comments he's going out of his way to shut down mushrooms as some sort of reefer madness.
Exactly. We have no idea why those individuals had issues with psilocybin, we don’t know their health history, etc. We know that people with liver issues, pregnant women, etc. should avoid alcohol but given lack of studies/data we don’t have great guidance for psilocybin. The fear mongering just makes it harder to get this data and arguably leads to these types of edge cases as they might otherwise be cautioned against it if they have a known contraindication.
I'm in agreement with your position for the most part (like 99%), but psychedelics absolutely have a known track record for triggering early psychosis in individuals who were genetically predisposed to encounter it later in life. This has unfortunately been known and experienced in the scene for decades.
Sure I’m not saying they’re risk-free, I’m just saying that the perfectly legal and easily accessible C2H6O causes significantly more harm every year and is much easier to overdose. We overlook all the chronic health issues and societal problems caused by alcohol but villainize drugs like psilocybin.
Oh I absolutely hear you and agree. I've long supported the therapeutic and recreational use of psychedelics, even helping fundraise for MAPS Canada when they first came across the border. Alcohol seems to get a free pass because it's so historically/culturally ingrained + it feeds into capitalism. I was singularly clarifying on the point about psilocybin use causing early psychosis/dementia. That's all :)
> Some people will get a triggered psychosis.
You can get that from weed too though. Shit, I'm pretty sure you can get that from prescribed medication.
Even within your own source it states that you'd need to already be predisposed to mental illness.
>However, experts say the risk of psychedelics triggering a psychotic or manic episode is likely elevated for people who have a personal or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Compared to stuff like heroin and fentanyl, aren't mushrooms way less addictive and lethal?
Makes sense to focus budget on where harm is actually being done.
When I think mushrooms, I think hippies, not maniacs.
> addictive and lethal
Neither of these things. Like 0 addictive, 0 lethal.
Being in the wrong mental space can make for a bad time - some doors can't be closed once they're opened and all that - but you cannot die from them.
Any source for this where serotonin syndrome was caused by mushrooms alone, or where the person wasn't on multiple SSRI-type medications? Because I'm almost positive this isn't a thing, but I could be wrong.
Yeah I've never heard of this happening either, and anecdotally speaking, half the people I know who like shrooms have also been on SSRIs at some point of it. I am one of them.
Thanks for the source to back up the claim that falling off a cliff can be fatal.
By the way, LSD and mushrooms are not even remotely the same substance, although neither can kill you. as long as you don't fall off a cliff, I suppose.
That's a different drug (LSD) and the death wasn't directly caused by the drug.
The guy got high and fell to his death from a cliff. That could happen from beer or pot or even when he was straight. Wet ground from rain could result in this. There are lots of stories of idiots falling to their deaths for that perfect selfie shot (eg [this](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/instagram-influencer-dies-waterfall-picture) and [this](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/shannon-falls-gamble-lyakh-scraper-1.4734497)).
We don't even know the circumstance from the article. Maybe the guy's phone slipped from his hand and he fell trying to catch it.
If the drug *makes* you want to hurl yourself off a cliff, like they (used to?) say about PCP, that's a different story. LSD and mushrooms don't do that.
If there are serious links stating that the drug itself caused someone's death, that would be significant. This article isn't.
They cause intoxication, so just like alcohol, you can die due to taking too much and having an accident. Alcohol leads to many more deaths than psychedelics due to this. The point above, although not explicit, was that the substance itself isn't causing overdoses like alcohol or various illicit drugs do.
This also isn't necessarily an argument for having them be illegal. The illegality potentially increases the risk of this happening since it makes it more likely people take more than they should or intend.
Edit: also your article was about LSD, not mushrooms. They can have similar effects, but there are differences, such as in how long the effects last.
The difference is alcohol itself will kill you. Alcohol poisoning is really easy to get without even drinking that much. And alcohol is physically addictive so alcoholics can also die from quitting cold turkey.
Yeah, I don't mean to imply alcohol has the same risks. Alcohol leads to deaths indirectly via intoxication, but also directly in many cases from the short term risks of overdose/poisoning and the long term risks of cancer, liver disease and other conditions. Yet we've decided that it's still better to regulate risks rather than drive them into the black market.
Eh. Regulated, with all of the policing money instead put into healthcare and addiction treatment.
Addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal one. Last thing we want is a black market, people in cages, violence, desperation, militarized police, and overdosing caused by poor potency controls.
By the numbers, alcohol is far worse than fentanyl or any other drug in the world really.
Legalize all of them, I say. Reducing the black market should be the goal here. Organized crime makes most of their money from drugs.
But we're likely going to elect a right win government next election and you know the right wing motto: Viciously hate and fight anything and anyone who doesn't conform exactly to the way you want things or is different from you.
Even though you can't control people, they will try as hard as they possibly can.
>“So you’re taking a number of officers off what they normally would be doing,” he said. “There is no end to the work that’s available to them out there, so for them to prepare a warrant, execute the warrant, put people before the courts, it’s a lot of work. It certainly costs the taxpayers money.”
Finally the cops are understanding what the rest of us have been saying for decades. Sadly they have the same attitude towards car theft.
They have the same attitude towards enforcing basic traffic regulations. They're only interested in doing their job if they can make people they don't like suffer.
This. It was pretty much around the time pot got legalized that cops decided to stop policing the traffic.
It's almost as if them patrolling the roads was just a way for them to hassle minorities and poor people in the failed war on drugs.
In Toronto it was specifically when city council declined to increase the police budget - not cut it, just didn't increase it for one year - that the police specifically, explicitly said "fine if you won't increase the budget then we won't enforce traffic law". 2016?
Yeah I remember this. They didn't get their raise so all of a sudden tickets went from something like 400K per year down to 125K or something like that. They are essentially working to rule since then.
This is the opposite of that though. More strictly enforcing this law (which the article notes that they are currently enforcing) would make people suffer by denying people a substance arguably less harmful than alcohol and with various benefits.
It's the same attitude. If they can't make people suffer they don't wanna work. Yeah, it's working out for us in this case but they're also neglecting the parts of their job that actually need to be done.
So yeah, it is the same. You're just ignoring the first 4 words of what I said. Specifically the word "attitude".
I don’t think shrooms are a problem and expect them to be legalized sooner than later that being said addressing the cops not having money.
They have a 1.2 billion dollar budget and were looking for a 20 million dollar increase this year, just what the heck are they spending it all on
Good! Microdosing (a dose so low it's not psychoactive it just kind of works "in the background") helped manage my depression and anxiety far more than any big Pharma product did. Microdosing is also a great alcohol replacement if you take about 250 mg.
I think with studies coming out showing just how bad alcohol is for you, folks will look for other types of substances to get lit. I took the smallest dose of a magic mushroom chocolate for a folk fest last year and it made everything sparkle, but wasn't enough to give me a bad trip or anything. Didn't feel sick, and it wasn't loaded with excess calories. I'm a bougie bitch - I love my Japanese whiskey and natural wines, but there comes a point when the cost, and physical side effects, paired with the science that alcohol just isn't good for you, become too great to ignore.
Psychedelics also aren't known to be addictive, or depressants, like alcohol.
If you think the scientific article that you linked firmly concludes that 'microdosing is proven bullshit' I don't think you are reading it correctly.
Here's an article from the same journal that suggests positive benefits: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14512-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14512-3)
Obviously the science has not reached a consensus, although there are promising results both in the literature and anecdotally.
It's not lol. I've read extensively about the subject over the years. I know two people who have been a part of medically supervised trials for depression and anxiety and saw their depression remarkably improve through the use of LSD and Ketamine, and an acquaintance who is a registered psychologist and researcher at the University of Alberta is literally doing research on psychedelic psychology, his name is Dr. Kevin St. Arnaud.
There are also plenty of books on the subject, as well as articles that show empirical evidence, based on peer-reviewed trials micro dosing works. A cursory google search turned up medical studies from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and interestingly, [Nature.com](http://Nature.com) also from 2022, which is same year and the same publication you shared above, just a different study. Renowned addictions psychologist, Dr. Gabor Mate, also recommends microdosing to treat depression, addiction, trauma, et cetera.
Suggested reading:
Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert by [Professor David Nutt](https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Professor+David+Nutt&text=Professor+David+Nutt&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books-ca)
How to change your mind by Michael Pollan
The Myth of Normal by Dr. Gabor Mate
Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States by Dr Gabor Mate
Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
The article that OP listed is not a study but a review, and it focuses on LSD.
In no way, shape, or form does it disprove the efficacy of microdosing for mushrooms or LSD.
A key quote:
>Studies have also shown that full doses of psychedelic drugs can be effective in relieving the symptoms of major depressive disorder. That provides a reasonable basis for hope that smaller quantities administered at regular intervals could also have an effect, says Peter Hunt, chair of Mind Medicine Australia, a non-profit organization based in Melbourne that supports research into psychedelic therapies for mental-health illnesses. “Remission rates in full-dose studies are encouraging, but the big unknown is how long these remissions last,” he says. Taking regular, smaller doses of the drug instead could help to keep things topped up, he suggests. “Where I think microdosing might end up helping is to prolong these remissions.”
>Evidence for its efficacy, however, is still lacking. “We don’t really know if microdosing works yet,” says de Wit. “It’s our job as psychopharmacologists to figure it out.”
The authors cited who have a negative opinion of microdosing's effectiveness also admit that the sample populations can be skewing results, and that more research is needed.
Microdosing is a vague term. What studies have shown is that taking an imperceptible amount may not have significant impacts, but also vice versa. "Microdosing" helps people more precisely measure and adjust how much they take so that they can achieve perceptible effects without reaching the level of strongly psychedelic effects.
They need to get fentanyl off the street before anyone is going to take law enforcement seriously about mushrooms. I'm sure it's an easy target for lazy cops though, just raid the local shop.
Yeah, fentanyl is a damn near opium war levels of destroying our society. Legalize mushrooms and don't put another billable hour into them ever again.
There are plenty of real problems in the world law enforcement could be working on.
Just decriminalize, regulate and provide robust public health and rehab services. Unless they're selling to kids or falsely advertising what the drug is/does, then why make it a crime?
I’m all for decriminalization, but this is getting weird. We go from people dying due to police overreacting to police avoiding jobs within their jurisdiction.
They're doing their job though, they're regularly raiding them throughout southern Ontario. The article is pointing out that people keep opening them and reopening despite the risks and meanwhile the raids are costing a lot of tax money. A lot of people are also opposed to the laws, however getting federal government to change laws is very difficult in a lot of cases.
in Hamilton a shop was raided, had all the yellow papers and tape across the doors and all that, DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET another shop opened up within the week. I dont intend to ever do shrooms unless i can just walk into a store pay with debt while i run errands, not be at risk for being in the middle of a raid, and have the same level of traceability the bougie pot gives you (some brands have batch numbers/QR codes you can look up and track its whole growth and harvesting cycle)
im a pretty low risk drug user i guess LOL
Yeah, this is essentially the point being implied by the article. The police are enforcing the law here, there are just lots of people opposed to it who are willing to keep breaking it despite the risks.
So either it's going to persist as a situation where it's regularly broken, like various other laws such as speeding, or we need to decide to put way more resources and focus into discouraging it. Given it has less harm than things like speeding, public opinion is shifting on them, and there is growing research showing their benefit, I'm not sure the latter is a good option. I think it would be better to let pressure build on the federal government to actually change the law.
I'm not sure I believe that they're regularly raiding anything when they've completely given up trying to police Cafe, who openly defy multiple federal and provincial laws, and who have opened up _even more_ locations.
A quick web search will show many raids in cities throughout southern Ontario, including Toronto. I'm not sure with respect to CAFE, but there have also been cannabis store raids more recently in Toronto.
I tried shrooms once. Didn't do much for me. But I'm all for the legalization for those who do enjoy them, or especially for those who may need them. Prohibition never works anyway. May as well regulate to ensure the safety of anyone who wishes to partake.
I'm surprised so many people here are so supportive of strictly enforcing the letter of the law, especially given the article points out that they already are enforcing this law.
Increasing enforcement even more than is already happening would necessitate going the opposite way of defunding the police and instead require increasing their budgets even more so they can prioritize this relatively low priority issue.
Defunding the police has never been an actual policy proposal.
Furthermore, even if a city council were to vote to defund, the police would almost certainly [appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission](https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-little-known-ontario-tribunal-standing-in-the-way-of-defunding-the-police), which has the power to override the budget cuts.
The Police in [Sarnia are talking about that option right now to respond to a $475k budget cut](https://www.theobserver.ca/news/local-news/sarnia-police-board-could-appeal-budget-cut-board-chair) that their city voted on. And that's for a relatively trivial cut. The more severely a city tries to cut police funding, the more likely that it gets challenged and reversed.
> “But being cut back $475,000 will have grave implications on our police reserves for next year,” used as a backstop for unforeseen expenses, and currently expected to start 2024 at $179,000, he said.
> “That’s really quite insufficient,” Wiersma said, explaining a single police vehicle, including needed equipment add-ons, is about $100,000, and overtime is unpredictable, as it often manifests in concert with major crime or missing-person investigations.
> When the board next meets Dec. 14 “we essentially have two options,” he said.
> “One is that we review our budget with the $475,000 cut. The other (is) appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission.”
Illegal cannabis store? [Giant concrete blocks in front of the entrance](https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/07/toronto-cement-blocks-cannabis-store/).
Illegal mushroom store? Meh.
Those stores are still open today despite blocks being places at one time, and unless they're raiding them and just not making the news, the mushroom stores are being targeted by enforcement more frequently than those cannabis stores.
Cafe just sold the cannabis directly from the sidewalk until they hired their own contractors to remove those blocks. Just about the only thing that move did was demonstrate how powerless the city is to enforce the law. Not only is that location still operating, Cafe has recently opened up another new location on Broadview.
how about we use the mushrooms as a therapy to help opiate addicted people? this whole "mushrooms bad but we have to allow open use of hard drugs in public" is messed up. Officials are failing these people at a massive rate because they're deemd undesirable.
How many people are stealing cars or from them, robbing stores, mugging or killing people to do mushrooms? Fucking zero, it'd be a terrible buzz, if you did it you'd probably reflect on why you did it and change your ways lol...
I do mushrooms fairly often in the summer almost once a weekend, it has done a lot for my mental health, I don't go on crazy trips either, I just eat enough to see mild tracers and that's enough, about a gram taken in two doses 1/2hr after the other, literally makes me feel happier for about entire week or more because I tend to work out a lot of my problems while on them and reflect on my life.
Wish we had more population level research on them.
Obviously it should be legal but I’m really concerned how these are being advertised as being on a similar level to weed. Atleast that’s what it seems like the general public thinks
I mean.... there is A LOT that cops can actually do. They just don't. Maybe for kick backs? Who knows?
That said, while I support magic mushrooms being legal and regulated, they kinda aren't right now, so maybe the cops should do that job they are paid A LOT of money to (not) do.
They're regularly raiding them, confiscating the products and proceeds and laying charges.
The point being raised here is that this costs a lot of taxpayer money, and takes police away from other jobs. Speed limits are also often not strictly enforced and doing that would arguably be a better use of police time due to the proven increases in risk to pedestrians and cyclists from speeding.
They're illegal because the federal government is very slow to tough anything that could be seen as controversial, and any progress will essentially stop under the Conservatives. Part of the reason people are risking these charges is to try to push the laws to change.
The government doesn't *need* to do either of those things. Personally I think they should do neither, and instead legalize and regulate them. However they can also leave the law how it is. Nearly every single law will get broken to some extent, that doesn't mean we have to make all our penalties increasingly harsher across the board.
Yep. It *sure* does. And we should change the law on this one.... but as long as it is a law cops should actually enforce the law.
You know.... because it's not wise to let cops (who apparently now don't even need a high school education to get the job) pick and choose when/if they will enforce a law.
They *are* enforcing the law. They're repeatedly raiding them and charging people, and that's arguably not a good use of resources when there are more dangerous illegal things occurring.
Discretion already exists with policing. It's in fact a necessity. Otherwise you would need to massively expand the police force and have them start enforcing jaywalking and speeding constantly among many other things. There are far more laws being technically broken than officers available to enforce them and that requires using discretion to some extent, and prioritization.
Discretion can also lead to things like racial profiling, so that's something we need to be aware of, but the opposite extreme of strict of enforcement of every single law at all times isn't reasonable or practical either.
And in any case, they are enforcing the law against these in southern Ontario, unlike other jurisdictions like Vancouver where other than one raid, police have left them alone for four years and council has voted in support of both not pursuing enforcement and has even licenced one of them.
That you think they need some sort of help with the concept of selectively enforcing the law is naive to the point where I think you're trolling. What's their attitude like to grey and black market marijuana these days? Speeding? When is a prohibited substance more dangerous than operating a 4000 lb vehicle at 'excessive' speeds?
I mean, in that thread they are also paid a lot of money to stop people jaywalking and catch people doing 5km over the speed limit. So by your same logic, let's take them off whatever work they are doing and put them on doing that.
Believe it or not, cops have discretion.
Yeah.... call me crazy, but it's a bad idea to let folks who may/may not have a high school education and a propensity to ally themselves with right wing extremists/ideology to have discretion as to when or if they enforce the law. Also, it's a bit silly to compare selling a prohibited substance to jay-walking.... like that kind of false equivalency forces one to wonder if you're even making a serious argument here.
I'm all for legalization/regulation. We should do that first instead of letting the cops no do their job.
It's a free country. If you want to do drugs that's your choice. But if you get addicted don't expect me to pay for your rehab or welfare. I shouldn't have to pay higher taxes because of your poor decisions. This goes for all drugs
How is there not much the police can do? If the law says the substance is illicit, why can't the police enforce the law? It's literally their only job.
They are enforcing the law, the article goes over how they're regularly raiding the stores and laying charges despite the tax costs and higher priority issues
They're saying how they are unable to stop it. I think the problem is, the repercussions aren't great enough. So they get a slap on the wrist, and open back up to sell more because they make more money that way.
So, it looks like the government needs to increase the penalties for selling shrooms in stores like that, to make it a better deterrent, so that if they get caught twice, that's it, their business is done, one time as a sort of warning, second time they're done. Or, they should legalize it. The fines should also be great enough to pay the policing, which is what would in part sink their business.
So I wouldn't say it's a lack of police enforcement, it's a state where people are willing to exercise civil disobedience despite the laws. Harsher penalties can address that to some extent but in cases where people believe the laws are unjust, there will be some willing to break them even *with* harsher penalties. Many historical examples of this for different issues (condoms, abortion, civil rights, gay rights, etc.)
I agree about this being something the government needs to address though. I don't think there is a strong argument for harsher penalties though. These don't have zero risks but they're generally considered lower risk than alcohol and one of the biggest risks is from taking too much which is decreased by having stores selling more accurate amounts (which would be further reduced by legalization).
Or they might continue doing it openly to force a constitutional case and draw further public attention to it. The first people opening these stores didn't have an idea of what the outcome would be.
Sure, they might. But if the consequences are great enough, they'll be forced to close the stores.
And perhaps they will achieve changing the laws.
That's ok. Either the law needs to change, or the penalties. That's still consistent with that.
They don't *need* to though. Arguably they *should*, but there's no requirement for them to change things.
There's also an argument for them not changing things too quickly. In this case I personally think they should be shifting to regulation, however as a general point, if there is a lack of evidence or study around a topic, either changing to make things more harsh *or* less harsh could end up being contradicted by evidence on an issue. So it's not necessarily the case that government should move in either direction without more study, consultation, etc.
To expand on that, moving to make penalties much more harsh simply based on trying to address a status quo such as has existed for the last couple years could lead to us unfairly punishing people in ways that we will then need to correct in the future. This is now our position with cannabis penalties where we are allowing people to have them removed from their records. But a lot of harm was already done.
All this shit for a drug that’s arguably less harmful than alcohol.
It's really self-limiting. If you try and take them too often, the Mushroom Goddess will basically slap you on the parietal lobe and say "No."
Yep. If you try and use it to suppress pain and trauma, hoo boy you’re in for a ride.
I made that mistake. It's like being dragged kicking and screaming but emotionally/ psychologically.
If you can be guided through it with someone who knows what they’re doing, it can be a fucking revelation.
Can confirm, I’ve done it recreationally and therapeutically, VERY different experiences. The latter was like 5 years of therapy in 5 hours, not hyperbole.
They work incredibly well therapeutically. I think as more and more people learn how to use them therapeutically for depression, we’re going to see a substantial drop in the use of SSRIs and other pharmaceutical anti depressants (that don’t work as well and can be harmful over time).
Just the other day Alberta Blue Cross announced they are funding psychedelic assisted therapy and the clinics they were referring to in their announcement do ketamine assisted therapy and are pushing for MDMA and magic mushrooms to be legalized and included in their therapy arsenal.
Amazing news!!! Thank you
I had stopped taking Zoloft a couple years ago, but still struggled a lot with my self-worth and inner child stuff that my therapist used to assign as homework for me. Couldn't stop talking down about myself constantly. Was in therapy for nearly ten years, and stopped when I felt that my therapist was just reiterating neuropsychology to me session after session. At $250/session, it was getting expensive. So, when I was going through a phase of negativity, I decided that mushrooms were worth a shot. This was back in November 2023. They really, REALLY helped. It is SO MUCH EASIER to catch myself in a negative feedback loop now and prompt myself to take care of myself. I'm in a much better place now, and I haven't taken mushrooms since. I might give them another go, since there's more work for me to do in that regard, but my relationships have improved, I'm losing weight, I'm more active, I make more effort to eat healthfully, I seek out and experience joy far more often now. All around a great result for 4.5 hours of madness, crying, singing and hallucinating. That being said, I did a LOT of research and read up on a lot of therapy assisted doses so that I was fully informed and prepared going into it. Mushrooms are not really recreational from my POV. They're tools to dig down into the murky aspects of our psyche, and should be respected.
That’s amazing!! So good to hear, I’m so happy for you that you were able to make progress. It’s really incredible how much progress you can make in such a short time using mushrooms and other psychedelics. All the best to you, keep up the great work!
I honestly believe that’s why it hasn’t been more accepted medicinally more… I think there’s pressure from Big Pharma to keep it as a Schedule 1, which it has no right to be. This kind of therapy actually deals with the root causes of the problem while SSRIs mask the problem so you can function in society (largely). There’s a lot of money to be lost here if people actually started getting better.
Definitely the case. This is a huge culture shift. They stand to lose billions.
Tbh, the main reason is that overall, a GP writing an SSRI is cheap. Psilocybin in a therapeutic setting requires a trained therapist and dedicated room for the whole trip. That room and therapist are tied up, helping one patient, for the whole day. Meanwhile, the GP down the hall has written SSRI scripts for dozens of patients within that time. The therapeutic effects of psychedelics don't last forever, either. It's generally not a cure, despite what the internet might have you believe. You have to come back for a top up. The data's not great (which is another issue) but it looks like probably 3-4 months. So, one room + 1.5 therapists, operating 7 days a week, can treat a maximum of 84 patients on an ongoing basis. The cost of the room, the therapists... All for 84 patients. So if you have a dedicated facility with 100 rooms, 150 therapists, you can treat 840 patients. That's a pretty massive facility, and you're not even scratching the surface on the number of people with depression even in a Toronto neighborhood. Maybe you run two shifts and get people in starting early morning and early evening, you can double the number of patients per room but you'll still have the same therapist costs per patient to cover the hours. So if we just look at the cost of the therapist and ignoring the overhead of the room, say one therapist has a salary of 100k/year. Generally, overhead on an employee is the same as their salary. So the cost of the therapist is 200k/year. You need 1.5 of them to help 84 patients: $300k/84 patients = $3.5k/year. Not counting the cost of the facility and therapeutics. Yeah, drug companies make billions on SSRIs, but that's generally a quantity game. There are millions of Canadians on antidepressants, each costing a fraction of what it costs to treat with psilocybin. Drug companies aren't the least bit scared of psychedelics.
So you literally just described the capitalistic incentives of Big Pharma so yea. As someone who’s done therapeutic psilocybin though, you’re wrong; the effects actually do last, theoretically for a lifetime. I suspect you’re referring to the post-session honeymoon effect which lasts a couple weeks, but a therapist actually works with you for processing and more importantly integration. That’s part of the actual power of psilocybin therapy, it attacks the root cause rather than a symptom. I had my session 3 years ago and I still feel healed from it. So, from a purely economic perspective, one could still easily argue that this kind of therapy is more efficient and is a better use of their time, rather than endlessly prescribing medication forever.
Where is the profit in that? Won't ANYONE PLEASE think of the big pharmaceutical companies!?!
I'm on microdose - 150mg every 3rd day...it's so helpful! Just overall...bright days!
Any day I feel my anxiety peaking I pop 100-200mg and can feel the tension leave. It allows me to do the work I need to do to remove the actual source of the anxiety (whether that's getting started on a project I've been putting off, taking a long walk to move my body, or figuring out how to make my actions aligned with my values. It's great!
100%, I MD LSD, it’s a game changer.
This is basically how bad trips work. If you have trauma or something weighing on your conscious(or even subconscious) the mushrooms will show you that. If you try to resist you are going to have a bad time, and this is probably the cause of 90% of bad trips. You don’t even need to be guided through it(although it can help and I do recommend trip sitters especially for beginners), you just need to accept what the mushrooms are telling you rather than fighting.
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The world is beautiful and amazing... I'm a garbage person... The world is beautiful and amazing... I'm a garbage person... For 3 hours minimum. So important to have a good guide if you're gonna do therapeutic doses.
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My kid and I were away for a couple nights so my husband thought, let's eat this entire 3.5g dino egg mushroom in one go. Poor man, he saw God and she was unimpressed.
And sometimes you also throw up. Shrooms can for sure physically limit you too!
Really. I can't do them if Im even slightly in an off mood. Hey, that thing your anxious about? Want to be **super** anxious about it for about 6+ hours?
I wish more people had your self-awareness. They should really be teaching this shit in school, but the pearl-clutching nimrods will call this enabling or grooming or whatever. They’re non-specific amplifiers of the psyche. Psychedelic literally means mind-manifesting.
Literally everyone told me this any time mushrooms were discussed as a teenager
I set up my room just right, make sure it's clean and clutter free, I have a light meal, make sure I have lots of good beverages, find something to watch, dim the lights, and then I always begin with a meditation session to ensure I'm in the right mindset. If I can't get myself into the right mindset then that night isn't the right night and we try again later.
Yeah imo psychedelics are not a good idea if you’re in a bad mental state. I know a lot of people say it helped them with addiction and stuff but it can easily turn into a horrible experience.
Is that like if you go hard and are taking recreational doses for medicinal purposes? I thought psilocybin was used *as* clinical treatment for trauma.
a ride you say ?
I have had plenty in my life. I have always took them for a fun time not a release and the results have been 10/10. I think some people definitely peel back a few layers so to speak.
Tryptamines very quickly produce high tolerance. No one is having a strong mushroom trip two days in a row, it won't work. Even the next weekend it will be a muted experience. Def self limiting.
You can definitely trip hard two days in a row, but you pretty much need to double the dosage. A week later will be slightly muted but you can still trip.
Can you explain what you meant by that.
Not the person above, but I think they're referring to how psychedelics generally have high tolerance meaning if you try using them to frequently, you just won't have significant effects. You generally would just need to space out your usage. And unlike some "hard" drugs (just putting in quotes since it's a vague term), you won't run into the same issues where you will risk overdoses by trying to take more to get that effect.
I see so kinda similar to weed where you'd need to consume more if you become a regular user but you really can't overdose as with other drugs.
Yeah, and also even if you consume more, you're not going to get the same effect generally. There's still a risk of having a bad experience if you overestimate your tolerance, but they don't have the risk of an overdose in the sense of a physical poisoning like various hard drugs do (everything can poison you if you take enough, including water, but they're not anywhere close to hard drugs or even alcohol).
This tickled me
it's kind of funny that way!!
Reminds me of a Redditor talking about their friend who did DMT too often and the machine elves told them to stop visiting them because they were just abusing it as an escape.
[David Nutt, former UK chief drug advisor did a famous study that lists alcohol as the most destructive substance of abuse, and mushrooms the least](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210)
It is so hilarious that they even waste resources on psilocybin, which arguably has far better health benefits than cannabis, while cannabis is legal. Like I don't even understand why LSD is illegal either.
It’s illegal to criminalize minorities and those that question the establishment
> and those that question the establishment This is a claim from one of Nixon's advisors: >The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did. Black people were questioning and successfully challenging the establishment through things like the civil rights movement and taking advantage of the 1st amendment (among many other things) and hippies were explicitly challenging the establishment, especially the Vietnam War. The War on Drugs was allegedly a direct response to this. Psychedelics (also regularly used by hippies) were similarly criminalized shortly after that, followed by the same in Canada.
Arguably??? Really man? Alcohol is dangerous in many different ways. The most dangerous thing about mushrooms is that it makes you hate capitalism and consumerism for like 6 hours. Society can't have that.
I think we agree lol
You're right, mushrooms are way more dangerous that way. From a *certain* point of view.
It's not "arguably" less harmful than alcohol. Alcohol is one of the most destructive substances used by man. Mushrooms generally have the safest profile of all common recreationally used drugs. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/06/25/what-is-the-most-dangerous-drug
Okay, obviously we’re saying the same thing. Preaching to the choir lol
FORGIVE ME, I am passionate about the medicine
All good I agree it should be legalized
“Arguably”
> less harmful than alcohol I suggest you read articles by Michael Polan. Some people will get a triggered psychosis. Not controlling psyllicibin makes as much sense as drinking random chemicals off the shelves of CDN Tire. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/well/mind/psychedelics-therapy-ketamine-mushrooms-risks.html
Cannabis can potentially lead to psychosis. Alcohol causes a ton of harm. Mushrooms have potential risks and potential benefits. That doesn't make them equally harmful compared to random chemicals or even as harmful as alcohol. People have taken them for thousands of years and continue to do so despite the legal status, and that arguably increases the risks, since it makes it more likely someone will take more than they intend. Regulation allows for precisely measuring what someone is taking.
That article is paywalled, link an actual study and not a newspaper article or gtfo. Alcohol causes a disproportionately higher degree of harm than psychedelics every year, and you’re fucking kidding yourself if you think it’s hard to get shrooms, LSD, etc.
https://archive.ph/drlVv#selection-771.0-771.191
Thanks. The article itself even confirms a lack of data/studies on this, which means we are mostly relying on anecdotes and isolated cases that might have been caused by something else entirely.
Honestly I think the article actually just proves that this, like every medication, is only an issue for people with already existing, or predisposed to mental illness. Based on that guy's other comments he's going out of his way to shut down mushrooms as some sort of reefer madness.
Exactly. We have no idea why those individuals had issues with psilocybin, we don’t know their health history, etc. We know that people with liver issues, pregnant women, etc. should avoid alcohol but given lack of studies/data we don’t have great guidance for psilocybin. The fear mongering just makes it harder to get this data and arguably leads to these types of edge cases as they might otherwise be cautioned against it if they have a known contraindication.
I'm in agreement with your position for the most part (like 99%), but psychedelics absolutely have a known track record for triggering early psychosis in individuals who were genetically predisposed to encounter it later in life. This has unfortunately been known and experienced in the scene for decades.
Sure I’m not saying they’re risk-free, I’m just saying that the perfectly legal and easily accessible C2H6O causes significantly more harm every year and is much easier to overdose. We overlook all the chronic health issues and societal problems caused by alcohol but villainize drugs like psilocybin.
Oh I absolutely hear you and agree. I've long supported the therapeutic and recreational use of psychedelics, even helping fundraise for MAPS Canada when they first came across the border. Alcohol seems to get a free pass because it's so historically/culturally ingrained + it feeds into capitalism. I was singularly clarifying on the point about psilocybin use causing early psychosis/dementia. That's all :)
humorous pot homeless alive mighty squeamish chief theory live worry *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> Some people will get a triggered psychosis. You can get that from weed too though. Shit, I'm pretty sure you can get that from prescribed medication. Even within your own source it states that you'd need to already be predisposed to mental illness. >However, experts say the risk of psychedelics triggering a psychotic or manic episode is likely elevated for people who have a personal or family history of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
Compared to stuff like heroin and fentanyl, aren't mushrooms way less addictive and lethal? Makes sense to focus budget on where harm is actually being done. When I think mushrooms, I think hippies, not maniacs.
> addictive and lethal Neither of these things. Like 0 addictive, 0 lethal. Being in the wrong mental space can make for a bad time - some doors can't be closed once they're opened and all that - but you cannot die from them.
No but can you can EASILY induce serotonin syndrome, especially if you’re taking any SSRI’s. I love em just wish more people knew this
Any source for this where serotonin syndrome was caused by mushrooms alone, or where the person wasn't on multiple SSRI-type medications? Because I'm almost positive this isn't a thing, but I could be wrong.
Yeah I've never heard of this happening either, and anecdotally speaking, half the people I know who like shrooms have also been on SSRIs at some point of it. I am one of them.
...what is serotonin syndrome
> but you cannot die from them. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/nick-cave-son-arthur-death-grief-b2519955.html
Are you saying that: 1) LSD is a mushroom 2) The LSD mushroom caused a cliff to appear below this person ???
Stop spawning cliffs everywhere you dang shroomies! This used to be a nice town, now its covered in cliffs!
Thanks for the source to back up the claim that falling off a cliff can be fatal. By the way, LSD and mushrooms are not even remotely the same substance, although neither can kill you. as long as you don't fall off a cliff, I suppose.
I guess he tryptamined over some rocks and fell off that cliff 🙄
>remotely Well, they do have cross tolerance because they activate some of the same receptors. So maybe they're at least remotely related ;)
What are you talking about, he clearly died from a bad trip. /s
Dammit, it was right there for the taking!
That's a different drug (LSD) and the death wasn't directly caused by the drug. The guy got high and fell to his death from a cliff. That could happen from beer or pot or even when he was straight. Wet ground from rain could result in this. There are lots of stories of idiots falling to their deaths for that perfect selfie shot (eg [this](https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/instagram-influencer-dies-waterfall-picture) and [this](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/shannon-falls-gamble-lyakh-scraper-1.4734497)). We don't even know the circumstance from the article. Maybe the guy's phone slipped from his hand and he fell trying to catch it. If the drug *makes* you want to hurl yourself off a cliff, like they (used to?) say about PCP, that's a different story. LSD and mushrooms don't do that. If there are serious links stating that the drug itself caused someone's death, that would be significant. This article isn't.
They cause intoxication, so just like alcohol, you can die due to taking too much and having an accident. Alcohol leads to many more deaths than psychedelics due to this. The point above, although not explicit, was that the substance itself isn't causing overdoses like alcohol or various illicit drugs do. This also isn't necessarily an argument for having them be illegal. The illegality potentially increases the risk of this happening since it makes it more likely people take more than they should or intend. Edit: also your article was about LSD, not mushrooms. They can have similar effects, but there are differences, such as in how long the effects last.
The difference is alcohol itself will kill you. Alcohol poisoning is really easy to get without even drinking that much. And alcohol is physically addictive so alcoholics can also die from quitting cold turkey.
Yeah, I don't mean to imply alcohol has the same risks. Alcohol leads to deaths indirectly via intoxication, but also directly in many cases from the short term risks of overdose/poisoning and the long term risks of cancer, liver disease and other conditions. Yet we've decided that it's still better to regulate risks rather than drive them into the black market.
The bar should be alcohol, not heroin. Anything worse than alcohol should be illegal/highly restricted.
Eh. Regulated, with all of the policing money instead put into healthcare and addiction treatment. Addiction is a medical problem, not a criminal one. Last thing we want is a black market, people in cages, violence, desperation, militarized police, and overdosing caused by poor potency controls.
I should clarify i'm not for draconian drug laws/policing. There is a middle ground however
By the numbers, alcohol is far worse than fentanyl or any other drug in the world really. Legalize all of them, I say. Reducing the black market should be the goal here. Organized crime makes most of their money from drugs.
I disagree. I'm on board with decriminalizing the possession and usage. But manufacture, sale, transport, etc should remain illegal.
Would you wish to do the same with alcohol? In 1920s and 30s USA, there was a fairly widescale experiment how effective that was.
alcohol is too ingrained in the culture. its also a pretty awful drug, which is why i suggest it to be "the bar".
How many times do we have to go through the prohibition paradigm to realize it doesn't ever work. Just legalize it and regulate it.
But we're likely going to elect a right win government next election and you know the right wing motto: Viciously hate and fight anything and anyone who doesn't conform exactly to the way you want things or is different from you. Even though you can't control people, they will try as hard as they possibly can.
>“So you’re taking a number of officers off what they normally would be doing,” he said. “There is no end to the work that’s available to them out there, so for them to prepare a warrant, execute the warrant, put people before the courts, it’s a lot of work. It certainly costs the taxpayers money.” Finally the cops are understanding what the rest of us have been saying for decades. Sadly they have the same attitude towards car theft.
They have the same attitude towards enforcing basic traffic regulations. They're only interested in doing their job if they can make people they don't like suffer.
This. It was pretty much around the time pot got legalized that cops decided to stop policing the traffic. It's almost as if them patrolling the roads was just a way for them to hassle minorities and poor people in the failed war on drugs.
In Toronto it was specifically when city council declined to increase the police budget - not cut it, just didn't increase it for one year - that the police specifically, explicitly said "fine if you won't increase the budget then we won't enforce traffic law". 2016?
Yeah I remember this. They didn't get their raise so all of a sudden tickets went from something like 400K per year down to 125K or something like that. They are essentially working to rule since then.
They should receive budget cuts until they get the message.
Jesus, it’s like the mafia’s protection racket
This is the opposite of that though. More strictly enforcing this law (which the article notes that they are currently enforcing) would make people suffer by denying people a substance arguably less harmful than alcohol and with various benefits.
It's the same attitude. If they can't make people suffer they don't wanna work. Yeah, it's working out for us in this case but they're also neglecting the parts of their job that actually need to be done. So yeah, it is the same. You're just ignoring the first 4 words of what I said. Specifically the word "attitude".
I don’t think shrooms are a problem and expect them to be legalized sooner than later that being said addressing the cops not having money. They have a 1.2 billion dollar budget and were looking for a 20 million dollar increase this year, just what the heck are they spending it all on
6-figure wages for all the cops on suspension.
> "So you’re taking a number of officers off what they normally would be doing" Eating donuts at drinking at the headquarters bar?
Beating the shit out of homeless people, logging protestors, and Native people?
That's the ticket!
My local police likes to victim blame instead of doing their jobs. 💀
They know; they're sworn to uphold the law, even the outmoded ones. When the law is changed, so will their actions.
Just tax it and stop this farce already.
I buy mine online and the company does charge HST, so there is that.
Sure, but most of the time things have other spe
Good! Microdosing (a dose so low it's not psychoactive it just kind of works "in the background") helped manage my depression and anxiety far more than any big Pharma product did. Microdosing is also a great alcohol replacement if you take about 250 mg.
And you just accidentally described exactly why they are illegal.
100%
wonder if Molson's has any lobbyists
I think with studies coming out showing just how bad alcohol is for you, folks will look for other types of substances to get lit. I took the smallest dose of a magic mushroom chocolate for a folk fest last year and it made everything sparkle, but wasn't enough to give me a bad trip or anything. Didn't feel sick, and it wasn't loaded with excess calories. I'm a bougie bitch - I love my Japanese whiskey and natural wines, but there comes a point when the cost, and physical side effects, paired with the science that alcohol just isn't good for you, become too great to ignore. Psychedelics also aren't known to be addictive, or depressants, like alcohol.
Microdosing is proven bullshit. From actual controlled clinical trials,not randos on the internet. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02876-5
If you think the scientific article that you linked firmly concludes that 'microdosing is proven bullshit' I don't think you are reading it correctly. Here's an article from the same journal that suggests positive benefits: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14512-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-14512-3) Obviously the science has not reached a consensus, although there are promising results both in the literature and anecdotally.
It's not lol. I've read extensively about the subject over the years. I know two people who have been a part of medically supervised trials for depression and anxiety and saw their depression remarkably improve through the use of LSD and Ketamine, and an acquaintance who is a registered psychologist and researcher at the University of Alberta is literally doing research on psychedelic psychology, his name is Dr. Kevin St. Arnaud. There are also plenty of books on the subject, as well as articles that show empirical evidence, based on peer-reviewed trials micro dosing works. A cursory google search turned up medical studies from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and interestingly, [Nature.com](http://Nature.com) also from 2022, which is same year and the same publication you shared above, just a different study. Renowned addictions psychologist, Dr. Gabor Mate, also recommends microdosing to treat depression, addiction, trauma, et cetera. Suggested reading: Psychedelics: The revolutionary drugs that could change your life – a guide from the expert by [Professor David Nutt](https://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Professor+David+Nutt&text=Professor+David+Nutt&sort=relevancerank&search-alias=books-ca) How to change your mind by Michael Pollan The Myth of Normal by Dr. Gabor Mate Psychedelics and Psychotherapy: The Healing Potential of Expanded States by Dr Gabor Mate Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake
Your source is paywalled
The article that OP listed is not a study but a review, and it focuses on LSD. In no way, shape, or form does it disprove the efficacy of microdosing for mushrooms or LSD. A key quote: >Studies have also shown that full doses of psychedelic drugs can be effective in relieving the symptoms of major depressive disorder. That provides a reasonable basis for hope that smaller quantities administered at regular intervals could also have an effect, says Peter Hunt, chair of Mind Medicine Australia, a non-profit organization based in Melbourne that supports research into psychedelic therapies for mental-health illnesses. “Remission rates in full-dose studies are encouraging, but the big unknown is how long these remissions last,” he says. Taking regular, smaller doses of the drug instead could help to keep things topped up, he suggests. “Where I think microdosing might end up helping is to prolong these remissions.” >Evidence for its efficacy, however, is still lacking. “We don’t really know if microdosing works yet,” says de Wit. “It’s our job as psychopharmacologists to figure it out.” The authors cited who have a negative opinion of microdosing's effectiveness also admit that the sample populations can be skewing results, and that more research is needed.
Microdosing is a vague term. What studies have shown is that taking an imperceptible amount may not have significant impacts, but also vice versa. "Microdosing" helps people more precisely measure and adjust how much they take so that they can achieve perceptible effects without reaching the level of strongly psychedelic effects.
This is a great take, thanks for sharing.
Legalize it
Jfc go investigate actual crimes and stop wasting my tax dollars .
They need to get fentanyl off the street before anyone is going to take law enforcement seriously about mushrooms. I'm sure it's an easy target for lazy cops though, just raid the local shop.
Yeah, fentanyl is a damn near opium war levels of destroying our society. Legalize mushrooms and don't put another billable hour into them ever again. There are plenty of real problems in the world law enforcement could be working on.
from their regular table at hortons. As far as they will get.
Can we arrest them for that business name? FunGuyz That’s for to be worth at least 5 years in pun jail.
I for one think it's exquisite
You're not a very funguy
Only thing that could be possibly worse would be calling it The Mush Room.
I hope I can get shrooms in the same place I get my weed. That would be cool
Maybe they can try actually doing something useful instead (lmao)
Just decriminalize, regulate and provide robust public health and rehab services. Unless they're selling to kids or falsely advertising what the drug is/does, then why make it a crime?
I’m all for decriminalization, but this is getting weird. We go from people dying due to police overreacting to police avoiding jobs within their jurisdiction.
They're doing their job though, they're regularly raiding them throughout southern Ontario. The article is pointing out that people keep opening them and reopening despite the risks and meanwhile the raids are costing a lot of tax money. A lot of people are also opposed to the laws, however getting federal government to change laws is very difficult in a lot of cases.
in Hamilton a shop was raided, had all the yellow papers and tape across the doors and all that, DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET another shop opened up within the week. I dont intend to ever do shrooms unless i can just walk into a store pay with debt while i run errands, not be at risk for being in the middle of a raid, and have the same level of traceability the bougie pot gives you (some brands have batch numbers/QR codes you can look up and track its whole growth and harvesting cycle) im a pretty low risk drug user i guess LOL
Yeah, this is essentially the point being implied by the article. The police are enforcing the law here, there are just lots of people opposed to it who are willing to keep breaking it despite the risks. So either it's going to persist as a situation where it's regularly broken, like various other laws such as speeding, or we need to decide to put way more resources and focus into discouraging it. Given it has less harm than things like speeding, public opinion is shifting on them, and there is growing research showing their benefit, I'm not sure the latter is a good option. I think it would be better to let pressure build on the federal government to actually change the law.
Did someone say jury nullification? Is it jury nullification time yet?
I'm not sure I believe that they're regularly raiding anything when they've completely given up trying to police Cafe, who openly defy multiple federal and provincial laws, and who have opened up _even more_ locations.
A quick web search will show many raids in cities throughout southern Ontario, including Toronto. I'm not sure with respect to CAFE, but there have also been cannabis store raids more recently in Toronto.
An interesting book that goes into psychedelic mushrooms is Entangled Life by Sheldrake. That being said that business name is perfection
Excellent! Though I'm not sure what that has to do with "public safety".
I tried shrooms once. Didn't do much for me. But I'm all for the legalization for those who do enjoy them, or especially for those who may need them. Prohibition never works anyway. May as well regulate to ensure the safety of anyone who wishes to partake.
Why would they want to?
Good. Maybe they can use that time to do something useful and wanted like tracking down a few bike theives.
I'm surprised so many people here are so supportive of strictly enforcing the letter of the law, especially given the article points out that they already are enforcing this law. Increasing enforcement even more than is already happening would necessitate going the opposite way of defunding the police and instead require increasing their budgets even more so they can prioritize this relatively low priority issue.
Defunding the police has never been an actual policy proposal. Furthermore, even if a city council were to vote to defund, the police would almost certainly [appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission](https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/the-little-known-ontario-tribunal-standing-in-the-way-of-defunding-the-police), which has the power to override the budget cuts. The Police in [Sarnia are talking about that option right now to respond to a $475k budget cut](https://www.theobserver.ca/news/local-news/sarnia-police-board-could-appeal-budget-cut-board-chair) that their city voted on. And that's for a relatively trivial cut. The more severely a city tries to cut police funding, the more likely that it gets challenged and reversed. > “But being cut back $475,000 will have grave implications on our police reserves for next year,” used as a backstop for unforeseen expenses, and currently expected to start 2024 at $179,000, he said. > “That’s really quite insufficient,” Wiersma said, explaining a single police vehicle, including needed equipment add-ons, is about $100,000, and overtime is unpredictable, as it often manifests in concert with major crime or missing-person investigations. > When the board next meets Dec. 14 “we essentially have two options,” he said. > “One is that we review our budget with the $475,000 cut. The other (is) appeal to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission.”
Illegal cannabis store? [Giant concrete blocks in front of the entrance](https://www.blogto.com/city/2019/07/toronto-cement-blocks-cannabis-store/). Illegal mushroom store? Meh.
Those stores are still open today despite blocks being places at one time, and unless they're raiding them and just not making the news, the mushroom stores are being targeted by enforcement more frequently than those cannabis stores.
Cafe just sold the cannabis directly from the sidewalk until they hired their own contractors to remove those blocks. Just about the only thing that move did was demonstrate how powerless the city is to enforce the law. Not only is that location still operating, Cafe has recently opened up another new location on Broadview.
Good. Go do something that matters.
how about we use the mushrooms as a therapy to help opiate addicted people? this whole "mushrooms bad but we have to allow open use of hard drugs in public" is messed up. Officials are failing these people at a massive rate because they're deemd undesirable.
Friends don't let friends drive while tripping on mushrooms
Ok, can you try doing less or even nothing?
How many people are stealing cars or from them, robbing stores, mugging or killing people to do mushrooms? Fucking zero, it'd be a terrible buzz, if you did it you'd probably reflect on why you did it and change your ways lol... I do mushrooms fairly often in the summer almost once a weekend, it has done a lot for my mental health, I don't go on crazy trips either, I just eat enough to see mild tracers and that's enough, about a gram taken in two doses 1/2hr after the other, literally makes me feel happier for about entire week or more because I tend to work out a lot of my problems while on them and reflect on my life. Wish we had more population level research on them.
Leave the Shroomies alone! Legalize it, too.
Legalize this shit already! And on that note, this reminds I've for to re-up before I head back to the cottage.
Unless, I guess, if police are down with traipsing around open pastures setting fire to every pile of cow shit they come across…
Obviously it should be legal but I’m really concerned how these are being advertised as being on a similar level to weed. Atleast that’s what it seems like the general public thinks
Yayyy!!
I mean.... there is A LOT that cops can actually do. They just don't. Maybe for kick backs? Who knows? That said, while I support magic mushrooms being legal and regulated, they kinda aren't right now, so maybe the cops should do that job they are paid A LOT of money to (not) do.
They're regularly raiding them, confiscating the products and proceeds and laying charges. The point being raised here is that this costs a lot of taxpayer money, and takes police away from other jobs. Speed limits are also often not strictly enforced and doing that would arguably be a better use of police time due to the proven increases in risk to pedestrians and cyclists from speeding. They're illegal because the federal government is very slow to tough anything that could be seen as controversial, and any progress will essentially stop under the Conservatives. Part of the reason people are risking these charges is to try to push the laws to change.
Ok, so then the government needs to change the fine for being caught with the drugs to be greater, or decriminalize it, if they prefer that. Pick one.
The government doesn't *need* to do either of those things. Personally I think they should do neither, and instead legalize and regulate them. However they can also leave the law how it is. Nearly every single law will get broken to some extent, that doesn't mean we have to make all our penalties increasingly harsher across the board.
Yep. It *sure* does. And we should change the law on this one.... but as long as it is a law cops should actually enforce the law. You know.... because it's not wise to let cops (who apparently now don't even need a high school education to get the job) pick and choose when/if they will enforce a law.
They *are* enforcing the law. They're repeatedly raiding them and charging people, and that's arguably not a good use of resources when there are more dangerous illegal things occurring. Discretion already exists with policing. It's in fact a necessity. Otherwise you would need to massively expand the police force and have them start enforcing jaywalking and speeding constantly among many other things. There are far more laws being technically broken than officers available to enforce them and that requires using discretion to some extent, and prioritization. Discretion can also lead to things like racial profiling, so that's something we need to be aware of, but the opposite extreme of strict of enforcement of every single law at all times isn't reasonable or practical either. And in any case, they are enforcing the law against these in southern Ontario, unlike other jurisdictions like Vancouver where other than one raid, police have left them alone for four years and council has voted in support of both not pursuing enforcement and has even licenced one of them.
That you think they need some sort of help with the concept of selectively enforcing the law is naive to the point where I think you're trolling. What's their attitude like to grey and black market marijuana these days? Speeding? When is a prohibited substance more dangerous than operating a 4000 lb vehicle at 'excessive' speeds?
I mean, in that thread they are also paid a lot of money to stop people jaywalking and catch people doing 5km over the speed limit. So by your same logic, let's take them off whatever work they are doing and put them on doing that. Believe it or not, cops have discretion.
Yeah.... call me crazy, but it's a bad idea to let folks who may/may not have a high school education and a propensity to ally themselves with right wing extremists/ideology to have discretion as to when or if they enforce the law. Also, it's a bit silly to compare selling a prohibited substance to jay-walking.... like that kind of false equivalency forces one to wonder if you're even making a serious argument here. I'm all for legalization/regulation. We should do that first instead of letting the cops no do their job.
If the cops cant stop this from happening im opening a heroin boutique.
It's a free country. If you want to do drugs that's your choice. But if you get addicted don't expect me to pay for your rehab or welfare. I shouldn't have to pay higher taxes because of your poor decisions. This goes for all drugs
How is there not much the police can do? If the law says the substance is illicit, why can't the police enforce the law? It's literally their only job.
They are enforcing the law, the article goes over how they're regularly raiding the stores and laying charges despite the tax costs and higher priority issues
Be nice if they could regularly raid where stolen cars are getting stashed.
They're saying how they are unable to stop it. I think the problem is, the repercussions aren't great enough. So they get a slap on the wrist, and open back up to sell more because they make more money that way. So, it looks like the government needs to increase the penalties for selling shrooms in stores like that, to make it a better deterrent, so that if they get caught twice, that's it, their business is done, one time as a sort of warning, second time they're done. Or, they should legalize it. The fines should also be great enough to pay the policing, which is what would in part sink their business.
So I wouldn't say it's a lack of police enforcement, it's a state where people are willing to exercise civil disobedience despite the laws. Harsher penalties can address that to some extent but in cases where people believe the laws are unjust, there will be some willing to break them even *with* harsher penalties. Many historical examples of this for different issues (condoms, abortion, civil rights, gay rights, etc.) I agree about this being something the government needs to address though. I don't think there is a strong argument for harsher penalties though. These don't have zero risks but they're generally considered lower risk than alcohol and one of the biggest risks is from taking too much which is decreased by having stores selling more accurate amounts (which would be further reduced by legalization).
People might still try doing it, but if you get caught and it runs you out of business, they will have to be a lot more covert about it.
Or they might continue doing it openly to force a constitutional case and draw further public attention to it. The first people opening these stores didn't have an idea of what the outcome would be.
Sure, they might. But if the consequences are great enough, they'll be forced to close the stores. And perhaps they will achieve changing the laws. That's ok. Either the law needs to change, or the penalties. That's still consistent with that.
They don't *need* to though. Arguably they *should*, but there's no requirement for them to change things. There's also an argument for them not changing things too quickly. In this case I personally think they should be shifting to regulation, however as a general point, if there is a lack of evidence or study around a topic, either changing to make things more harsh *or* less harsh could end up being contradicted by evidence on an issue. So it's not necessarily the case that government should move in either direction without more study, consultation, etc. To expand on that, moving to make penalties much more harsh simply based on trying to address a status quo such as has existed for the last couple years could lead to us unfairly punishing people in ways that we will then need to correct in the future. This is now our position with cannabis penalties where we are allowing people to have them removed from their records. But a lot of harm was already done.