Biography/Memoir

LSD now: How the psychedelic renaissance changed acid

“Nonetheless, psychedelics – including acid – have unquestionably returned to the American mainstream. One study suggests that Google searches for LSD nearly doubled between 2012 and 2014, and the amount of activity around the world – including the organization of a worldwide psychedelic community – suggests an almost undeniable psychedelic uptick.” 

The growing acceptance has let a new generation of users come out of the “psychedelic closet” Around the world, psychedelic users have begin to organize around an ongoing campaign with hashtags like #psychedelicsbecause. With the harsh mandatory minimum sentences of the Drug War fading into the past, psychedelic users are becoming more vocal about their experiments and practices, and the ways that psychedelics have positively transformed their lives. Self-consciously borrowing a model from identity politics (for which they’ve also been criticized), the groups of loosely connected organizations share the mission of normalizing what is sometimes considered a deviant activity.  And the newly outted community of LSD users is organizing The social media age has also produced an infrastructure of advocacy groups and community organizations supporting a range of ideas, including medical regulation, private practices, experience sharing and pill testing. MAPS is perhaps prototypical of these groups, working to influence policy, nurturing a network of trained psychedelic therapists, and supporting groups to provide risk reduction services at festivals around the world. Often using sites like MeetUp.com to connect, a group of loosely connected psychedelic societies is springing up. The strategy to try and legalize LSD has evolved. With psychedelics permanently enmeshed in American life, groups like MAPS have worked to create frameworks for psychedelic therapy, and many over the years (such as Timothy Leary) have made the argument for cognitive freedom. But Jag Davies of the anti-criminalization Drug Policy Alliance believes that a more direct approach might come through the decriminalization movement, discovering in early polling that even in conservative states like South Carolina, some 59 percent of primary voters supported outright decriminalization of drug possession. “There’s no good reason for people who use psychedelics to be treated as criminals, especially given the current political and scientific consensus that drug use is best addressed as a health issue instead of a criminal issue,” says Davies. With Portugal and other European countries already a decade or more into successful decriminalization, the United States could be closer than some think. “Even if psychedelic therapy becomes legal,” Davies adds, “most people who use psychedelics will certainly continue to do so outside of government-sanctioned, medically-supervised settings.” 

Original Article (Rolling Stone):
LSD now: How the psychedelic renaissance changed acid
Artwork Fair Use: Harry Rose

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