Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2024
I wanted to supply some feedback on how the Oregon psilocybin laws might be improved based on my own experience. I almost hate to criticize your state's laws on this topic because they represent such an enormous improvement over the laws of any other state (and almost any other country) when it comes to holistic healing using time-honored indigenous medicines. Nevertheless, the status quo results in extravagant prices for legal psilocybin use and so sharply limits the number of people who could benefit from psilocybin as a practical matter. (I read somewhere that this was the whole point of your regulations, at least in the minds of some Drug Warriors: to limit drug use by reserving it only for the rich.)
I had a week of psilocybin sessions in Oregon two months ago that cost me $4,000. That is a once-in-a-lifetime expenditure for me. The good news is that the sessions confirmed for me that psilocybin can boost my mood and energy dramatically as a chronic depressive; the bad news is that the microdosing that I would like to do as a follow-up is simply impossible, since it would incur a huge cost in both money and time, since even microdosing, under current law, has to be done with a human monitor on scene.
I am told that Oregon is moving in the direction of legalizing the personal use of psilocybin. Such a change cannot come quickly enough for folks like myself, retirees who want to live their life abundantly and cannot afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars to profit from the medicine in a mushroom that grows at their very feet.
Also, I am sure that the need for a monitor makes sense for political and insurance reasons, but I really felt infantilized by the whole process, especially when I learned that I was not even allowed to leave the room that I was in. I actually began to feel like a prisoner at one point, when the peak of the experience had passed and yet I was not even able to go into the next room where there happened to be an art exhibit which I had been looking forward to seeing with my enhanced sensibilities from the session. So I just sat there on the sofa uncomfortably, with the monitor's eyes always on me, as if I might suddenly transform into a raging lunatic. This actually made me feel a little indignant, because in my sensitized state, I really felt like a kidnap victim. I knew consciously, even then, that this was not the actual case, of course, that the monitor was working within the limits of the law. But the situation did make me feel like I was being held against my will.
So while I praise your state for taking the lead in drug law reform, at least with regards to this one substance, psilocybin, the current laws surrounding psilocybin use serve mainly to keep the drug out of the hands of people who need it, while infantilizing the few who can afford to spend thousands to reap the benefits of a simple mushroom.
Author's Follow-up:
April 20, 2025
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
There are endless creative ways to ward off addiction if all psychoactive medicines were at our disposal. The use of the drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin could combat the psychological downsides of withdrawal by providing strategic "as-needed" relief.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
Drug warriors do not want to end "addiction": it's their golden goose. They use the threat of addiction to scare us into giving up our democratic freedoms, like that once supplied by the 4th amendment.
Getting off some drugs could actually be fun and instructive, by using a variety of other drugs to keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. But America believes that getting off a drug should be a big moral battle.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
