[blastbeat]

Where I grew up, basically every youngster did drugs to escape the boredom of the 90s, as being trapped in their smallish german home towns. People did mostly cheap drugs like cannabis, binge drinking, magic mushrooms and crystal. Many of them eventually abandoned their habits, apparently without much damage. But I know quite a few who suffered from drug-induced problems like psychosis at some point in their life. Many of them are basically disabled now. Some of them live still with their parents, condemned to take medication for the rest of their life. All of them smoked weed, but only one of them smoked it exclusively. In the other cases where in addition drugs like crystal meth involved.

My guess is, that for some people those drugs act like a tipping point, and bring underlying problems into full blossom. In my case, it was developing an anxiety disorder. Thus, as you don't know where or what your tipping point is, I'm strongly against taking those drugs. Even a one-time experiment with mushrooms can wreck your life.

[mg794613]

Sorry, I agree with your full statement except the last 5 words. Did you hear this from someone who knows someone or do you have the science for that? Because as far as I know, all scientific research on psilocybin conclude the same. If you have experience where someone "became weird after first use" they were probably already weird but hiding it from you.

[clydethefrog]

Mushrooms are banned in the Netherlands because too many tourists died from incidents involving the drug. I figure many of those tourists used it for the first time.

[thedaemon]

Please link your sources. I do not know of anyone dying from mushroom intake.

[clydethefrog]

>Nevertheless, medical intervention was needed for 149 incidents involving mushrooms in 2007, an increase of 19 percent over the previous year. In 2005 there were 70 incidents. Among the high-profile cases was an incident in which a Danish tourist raced his car across a crowded camping. Several tourists jumped or fell from hotel windows.

>In the case that led Ab Klink to propose the ban in October 2007, a 17-year-old French girl committed suicide by jumping from a bridge into busy traffic. It was later revealed that the girl, not old enough to legally enter a smart shop herself, had asked a friend to buy her some mushrooms.

http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/662-mushrooms-ban-amsterdam-net...

[mg794613]

I was sort off hoping you would give those examples. The devil is in the details here. We have a long history of problem with tourist coming to Amsterdam and live like animals. Simultaneously in 2007 after a long time of having barely any seats in Amsterdam, the CDA (Christian Democrats) were looking for a reason for a stricter drug policy. Now I do agree with having more control on the abuse of the freedoms in our city, but I am convinced the ban on mushrooms has been a superficial fake solution. Yes, mushrooms are no longer being sold in the city, but now it's "truffels". The bigger problem, as was in this case with the unfortunate French girl, people come here and have absolute no control. What has been conveniently left out of this story is that the girl was already depressed and had been partying for days. Mushroom usage has been a very safe practice for millennia and some party girl and zealous political party ruined it for us.

[blastbeat]

One could argue that one has to be weird to try drugs. I know one guy for sure how went straight to psychiatry right after first time mushroom usage. I don't know whether he was beforehand that weird, but he needed a long time to recover afterwards. And he did never drugs again afaik.

[agumonkey]

I have a big problem with teenage culture. I didn't really have one but I see a lot of unhealthy escapism (I'm not an orthodox). It seems that teenagehood amplifies every emotion including need for social bonding, affection, status, excitement, self worth.. and the recent decades answer was: we are comfortable let them indulge in pleasures, you only get one childhood. While this is totally understandable, I feel these decades had a bogus point of view. The more I grow the more I think teenagehood energy should be channeled into adulthood smoothly but swiftly (granted variations between individuals). Instead of smoking to avoid anxiety or boredom, you get to throw all your creative energy, even anger in a way into craft/skills that will be very useful for adulthood.

I also believe that this was helped by the advanced education motto (the longer the studies the better).