Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

Comment by maxxxxx | Hacker News Reader

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You will always find people who will abuse something. Happened with alcohol, TV, internet and will happen with mushrooms. The question is whether it’s more costly and damaging to prohibit something vs controlling it. I think people are slowly learning that prohibition is worse than letting some people abuse something.

If we want to make a drug illegal it should be alcohol anyway. It causes huge numbers of deaths every year. It’s probably the most dangerous drug we have.

Clarification: All I m trying to say is that it's dangerous to say "there is no addiction risk in mushrooms. They are totally benign". If you say that it will be really easy for opponents to find counterexamples. Instead we should say they are not more dangerous than already legal things so there is no point in prohibiting mushrooms while other similarly harmful things are legal.

If abuse was possible perhaps we’d have the cartels selling magic mushrooms - if that’s not a thing maybe (as Pollan concluded in his book about psychedelics) “place and setting make a big difference “ in efficacy.

Abuse is possible with almost anything. People abuse food, cars, social media, politics and a lot of other things. I agree that mushrooms are probably not as addictive as other drugs but declaring that nobody will abuse them makes no sense.

As you keep expanding the list of things people "abuse" your definition of "abuse" gets closer and closer to "use in a way I don't like".

I meant “use in a way that’s detrimental to them or others “. How is abuse defined anyway?

>use in a way that’s detrimental to them or others

But that's so vague it's basically meaningless. If you drink enough alcohol to be hung over is that "abuse"? Only the most uptight people would say it is. Similarly, any recreational activity that costs money and results in that money being unavailable for things that other people consider a more important could be considered "detrimental to one's self" and therefore abuse by that metric. I assure you the guy who lives in a trailer with a Corvette in the driveway is not "abusing" cars, he's making a decision that reflects his priorities.

It's not a very useful definition of abuse. Big mac's or running shoes can also be "abused" according to that definition, yet if someone wanted to ban Big Mac's or running shoes because of potential abuse they'd not be taken seriously.

That’s my point. When you look around you can clearly see that some food items have very negative consequences but we don’t prohibit them. So we shouldn’t prohibit other substances that may have the same or less level of risk.

From what I understand psilocybin is sort of like melatonin in that you get no added benefit from taking more than the dose that has the intended effect. You won't die from taking too much of either. It's easier to OD and die on water than either of those substances, and at that point, isn't the definition of abuse becoming a bit too broad?

I hear similar things about Marijuana but I have seen people who smoked way too much until their personal and professional lives suffered. One thing is physical dependency but there is also psychological dependency.

All I m trying to say is that it's dangerous to say "there is no addiction risk in mushrooms. They are totally benign". If you say that it will be really easy for opponents to find counterexamples. Instead we should say they are not more dangerous than already legal things so there is no point in prohibiting mushrooms while other similarly harmful things are legal. .

Yes this is true. From experience i'd estimate there's a 40% increase in tolerance/unit for each subsequent day used.

Some people will abuse it, sure. Mushrooms are usually a good experience, but it is too intense for most people to want to do regularly.

True, but that is not the general use case.

Even with hard drugs such as cocaine the vast majority of people take it recreationally without falling into an addiction.

I don't have a good link to share right now except for these Joe Rogan shows with Dr. Carl Hart:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5jMC8j7ElI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMsquUcea-E

Perhaps we should prohibit alcohol, can’t imagine that going wrong.

Promotion of alcohol makes as much or little sense as prohibition of marijuana or mushrooms. I guess you can pick your side. But banning one while allowing the other doesn’t make sense.

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