"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.
“And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.”
Unfortunately some people have no idea women like this actually exist and need to be told that drug use is a part of normal suburban life. Though to be honest I am kind of against the idolisation of suburbs, they are really inefficient, but I digress. Articles like this help break down the stigma around this kind of drug. A stigma that makes little sense as well given their safety profile and effectiveness in treating some illnesses like treatment resistant depression, anxiety, and PTSD.
We should start with the most dangerous drug in our society: alcohol.
Oh wait the Americans tried that and it actually made things worse. Shocking.
Drug prohibition doesn’t and has never worked. We also know neither voters nor politicians understand nor follow scientific consensus on drugs. Not popular consensus. Scientific consensus. Very different things unfortunately.
Look up any ranking of drug harms published by scientists. You might honestly be shocked. Things that people consider safe like alcohol normally end up being ranked much higher than other things commonly thought of as dangerous like nicotine or amphetamines. As much as smoking is bad there is way too much focus on it compared to alcohol and some other stuff. I know there are even some people that think of cocaine as being relatively normal and safe because of its overall popularity, yet if you actually look into it it’s not healthy at all.
The reason things like Alcohol are “considered and generally recognized as safe” has a lot to do with their effect length on the body. It’s possible to isolate someone intoxicated this way for up to 24 hours and see them recover all of their facilities in the short term.
Granted; it still has long-term effects that are bad, just not show-stoppingly so, and it only affects people who actually abuse the stuff long-term for many years.
I do agree we should be a lot tougher on Alcohol use in general. Maybe not Prohibition levels; but some framework to cut off people from acquiring quantities that can intoxicate them so badly that they pose a danger to themselves and others.
You really have no idea.
Drinking enough will make you overdose, it’s called alcohol poisoning and can be fatal. This isn’t really any different to other substances you can overdose on. There are some substances where a fatal overdose has never happened in fact, THC and LSD being notable examples. I don’t know about you but I consider death to be pretty show stopping for me. Obviously if your some supernatural entity or something it might not be a huge deal for you.
As for effect length: how many drugs do you think take longer than 24 hours to stop being high? There are some that have long legs don’t get me wrong, but they are the minority. Some substances such as DMT and Ketamine actually last a shorter time than alcohol, and have less after effects like a hangover. In fact a bad alcohol hangover can easily last longer than 24 hours after imbibing. Alcohol withdrawal for serious addicts lasts quite a while too, up to a couple weeks I think, and can also be fatal if not treated correctly.
All you are doing here is proving you don’t understand how drugs work nor do you have practical experience by the sounds of it. I would argue if you don’t understand how drugs work you shouldn’t be allowed to set policy on them. Uninformed opinions are dangerous.