Psychology

Eating mushrooms isn’t [just] like smoking a joint

“Under legalization, you would have big companies not just making mushrooms available but aggressively marketing them to people, as we’re seeing with cannabis,” said Michael Pollan. Under decriminalization, Oakland police will now put enforcement down among its lowest priorities (which means it won’t be a priority at all), and the city is forbidden from prosecuting…

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Politics

The heady, thorny journey to decriminalize… [psilocybin containing] mushrooms

How quickly is the push to decriminalize psilocybin progressing, exactly? So quickly that it’s even surprised psychedelics advocates. “The fact that it’s happening so fast is kind of amazing,” says Brad Burge, spokesperson for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which leads studies of psychedelic therapies, including the aforementioned MDMA trial. “Here we have…

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Biography/Memoir

Pushes to make it easier to study [psilocybin-containing] mushrooms and other psychedelic drugs

Legislation [was introduced] on Friday, June 10, 2019 to remove a legal barrier that scientists say makes it unnecessarily difficult for them to study the medical benefits of psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and MDMA. “Academics and scientists report that provisions like this create [stigma] and insurmountable logistical hurdles to researching schedule I drugs,” the summary…

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Psychology

[Is it]… time to legalize psilocybin mushrooms?

While… [some] initiatives, including the “medicalization”… are an important step in the right direction… it is time to go further. In contrast to “legalization,” “decriminalization” involves the loosening of criminal penalties… [for the use of the natural variety found in over one hundred species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms that grow worldwide] and, as in the case…

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Psychology

They broke my mental shackles’: could magic mushrooms be the answer to depression?

If common antidepressants dull emotions to help people cope… psilocybin [containing mushrooms] work… on our serotonin system to heighten emotional responses and encourage people to actively confront their depression, which can prompt enduring shifts in mind-set. Much about the neuroscience of psychedelics remains unknown, but fMRI scans of patients’ brains after taking psilocybin showed reduced…

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Politics

California activists take first steps to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms statewide

…crafting a 2020 ballot initiative to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms for medical and religious purposes in California. While the measure would simply lift criminal penalties for psilocybin, the group’s website also states that the campaign is meant to “build the framework for eventual legalization.” Original Article (Marijuana Moment):California activists take first steps to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms…

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Politics

Oakland City Council decriminalizes all “natural psychedelics” in landmark resolution

Unlike last month’s landmark initiative in Denver, which specifically targeted psychedelic mushrooms, this broader resolution groups together a variety of plants and fungi under the banner of entheogenic plants or plant compounds. The term entheogen generally refers to psychoactive substances used in religious or spiritual contexts. The Oakland resolution more specifically defines the term in reference…

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