American LSD use up 56% since 2017

My theory on the ‘gateway drug’ thing is that it’s not about the drug itself, but people trying this demonized substance, finding out it’s not nearly as bad as other accepted substances like alcohol and saying ‘Well, if they lied about weed, they must be lying about [insert other drug here]’. I certainly had that experience when I finally tried weed after it was legalized federally here, though the other substances I’m willing to try are quite limited.

3 Likes

Micro-dosing has been becoming more of a thing the last few years in certain work circles. It’s actually more like ‘occupational’ drug use in the vein of Adderal versus ‘recreational’ use to trip balls (both being perfectly acceptable :grinning:). Not motivated at the moment to see if the survey was detailed enough around the amount/purpose of use, but IME that kind of use is not really something directly related to the creature in chief.

Psychedelic microdosing

2 Likes

Wamego KS?! I can’t think of a more ironic location for massive psychdelics-manufacturing operation. My family is from there, and I spent summers there as a little kid. The phrase “sleepy old-fashioned small town” doesn’t begin to capture the vibe there - it’s Americana straight out of a nostalgia-tinged Ray Bradbury novel. I’d be surprised if at the time I was there the population cracked 3000. Crazy.

2 Likes

with a missile silo for nuclear warheads.

2 Likes

I once found a book about making LSD in a clearance pile. I think it was by Michael Valentine Smith, which sounds like a pseudonym. I never really looked at it because I mentioned it to someone, and somehow I gave it to him, rather than keep it with that book of papers on LSD from Sandoz.

But yes, Owsley bought up a big batch of something, I think it was Lysergic Acid, to process into LSD. If I remember , he bought the stuff from Sandoz, anticipating the door closing on the stuff.

I don’t know what others did later.

I guess one reason they could churn out so many doses was each was miniscule, so it didn’t take much to amass a large number.

It’s odd to be taking a prescription drug now that’s from Sandoz, since the name is so associated with LSD. The whole process of finding a use for it, all those studies, launched it into the world, and then it was deemed illegal.

4 Likes
1 Like

I can’t remember what I was reading last year, but it suggested that “the scene” around the concerts was a significant factor in the travel of LSD.

2 Likes

I’m one of that believes in the potential therapeutic use of micro-dosing for use in those suffering depression.
The stuff doesn’t turn you away from yourself, but when properly applied allows for inner explorations.

5 Likes

I’m using LSD right now (seriously, I am).

ETA: I ate a lot of it in the 1990s up until 1995. The stuff I ate earlier this week and which I ate again today is waaaaaaaayyyyyy different than the 1990s stuff. Waaaay better. Somebody really knows their shit.

7 Likes

Yeah, I think it’s a wee bit different in my limited experience. Weed takes my brain to places. Once I’ve started visiting places I start to think “maybe other places I could go with other chemicals might also be interesting”. I’m personally not interested in speeding up or slowing down, booze is semi-problematic for me, but I love getting rather high and just laying there and wandering. I’ve already solved field theory/string theory, most of neurology, and am working on world peace.

/s (in case you couldn’t tell)

1 Like

I’d not tried weed since high school when the federal gov’t made it legal here. Tried it and almost immediately ended my slow spiral towards alcoholism. Alcohol ‘solves’ my anxiety temporarily by making me not give a fuck but really messes up the rest of my day/next day. Cannabis reduces it without making me not care about stuff and still allows me to be productive as long as I don’t get too high, and even then I wake up the next day refreshed instead of feeling like I want to die.

I’m really happy it’s legal now, and would love to see them do the same with shrooms.

12 Likes

The occasional shroom experience or microdosing can really help you self integrate. Sorry to sound like such a hippy but I have no better word for it. All the things I’ve tried over the years - booze, anti-depressants, etc - well, I still take the anti-d but if I had to choose one I’d go with shrooms.

Uh, hypothetically. So I’m told.

re: Legalization generally, there is no category I know of in which alcohol is better than weed.

4 Likes

That shouldn’t be possible. People on the same wifi network can intercept your web traffic, but they can’t read secure (HTTPS) traffic. If a site correctly implements “HTTP Strict Transport Security”, and I believe Discourse does, then your browser will never make an unencrypted connection to that site, so there is no way for something like a login name to be identified.

The one exception is if your very first connection to the site includes personal information within the URL, along the lines of http://bbs.boingboing.net/?username=RandomDude. The server will tell your browser never to attempt an insecure connection, but that first request would already have gone over the network unencrypted, and could be read by a targeted, pre-planned snooping effort. (Even this can be prevented, using HSTS preload, but boingboing.net does not currently support that). Other than that, even if you click a link explicitly using http:, your browser will ignore it and use https: instead.

Anyway, I don’t see any reason your username would be in a URL. By the time you even see a login page, your browser is already encrypting everything, and having control of the wifi network won’t help anyone with that. At most, they can see you’re communicating with BoingBoing in some way.

tl;dr

wifi is almost certainly not what your employers are using to spy on you.

6 Likes

Although they could be using some form of bossware and then all bets are off.

1 Like

They analyzed trends since 2015, partly because of the timing of the 2016 presidential election. The researchers found that past-year LSD use increased by 56 percent over three years.

So, 56% rise from 2015-2018. i’m sure it’s back down now that the world is a calmer place.

And THAT right there is why I refuse any “enhancement”. My non-stop anxiety would just be amplified into gibbering terror. No thanks.

3 Likes

Are you saying it’s not?

1 Like

Logically yeah, if your default mode network is screaming at you every waking moment, then cranking up the intracranial gain does not sound like a great idea. In practice however, it tends to attentuate rather than exacerbate.

1 Like

He’s written an interesting book, while in prison. Have a look at “the Rose of Paracelssus: On Secrets & Sacraments”

William was not in it for the money. At least not only for the money.

4 Likes

I recognize that these may not be available in all areas and times, but fwiw…

The natural world is a fascinating place.

4 Likes