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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.)

April 2025 Update

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

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


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.










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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.

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.

Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.

Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.

Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.

The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?

Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.

Whether we judge people only by the words that they say or only by the substances of which they partake, we are ignoring the most important things: what they really mean and how they really behave.

People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.

Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.


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