Your consciousness and how you access it is and should always be legal. A simple thought that begs to be highlighted in the time of a psychedelic renaissance.
🌿 Understanding the healthy moderation of consumption. Use vs misuse.
There are numerous substances out there that have literally very little to no negative effects on the user, yet they are classified as “dangerous” and rendered falsely “illegal”.
Take coca leaves (cocaine) for example – People in Peru have been using coca as a topical anaesthetic in the Andean tribal communities of South American for millennia, thanks to its numbing properties. It is used as a treatment for irritable bowel disease and other intestinal dysfunctions. Ask them if it’s a drug, and they will laugh at you, knowing that this plant and its healing modalities are sacred.
Other substances like opiates, psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA and cannabis are being currently (via 7 “drugs” that could be used as medicine) studied for their medicinal properties and modalities and show mind-blowing medicinal potential when USED safely and with harmless intention, for instance in therapeutic and personal development, mental support or substance/plant-assisted psychotherapy. The potential problem is not and should not be associated with the ability to use those substances – and this should be a legal choice for everyone, but with defined cases of a misuse, for instance when used in the antisocial, harmful or damaging manner.
A knife or a car is just a tool, harmless by definition and constructed to help us achieving tasks, preparing meals or getting from point A to point B. When used careless they can become a dangerous to their user and environment around them. Same rule should be applied to psychedelic and entheogenic substances.
In the end, it is the intention and the understanding of what is being consumed, alongside with the amount consumed that will matter. You can overdose pretty much anything and everything out there and make it dangerous to your health. You can overdose water, suffer from water intoxication and hyponatremia as a result, and die. Same applies to oxygen overdose called hyperoxia. Should we ban water and breathing or classify them as life threatening chemical substances, which both examples exactly are?
Well, this pretty much applies to anything out there we consume, from any type of food, minerals and vitamins to recreational substances. All we need is a solid education on the amount/effect ratio.
🌿 There are no illegal substances in nature
Substances on their own can’t be illegal. They are just chemical substances. A naturally occurring or synthetically modified chemical elements that exist in the reality and of which we also happen to be composed. The act of controlling them seems to be a little… problematic and it all comes down to a rather limiting aspect of understanding what substances are. Linguistics and semantics.
“Controlling substances” is simply a name for controlling your access to your very own consciousness and your biochemical structure to which you should always have a full constitutional right as a human being. For gods sake, it is your very own consciousness we’re talking about! Your perception, your mental state and health, your self-awareness and self-esteem and your view on reality. Can there be something more intimate than this? Yet, we’re being told that exploring that fascinating realm of self using naturally present compounds is unnatural and illegal. This is straight forward ridiculous.
As a side note here – a very interesting talk on the legality of substances pointing clearly out that it is the language-based law and its broken semantics that render their application obsolete has been presented by Darryl Bickler. Well worth watching on youtube.
🌿 highlighting the therapeutical properties of psychedelics and other substances
The problem with psychedelics and their current legal status comes from a obsolete idea that they are the same as dangerous toxic substances and seen as narcotics. Therefore they are also seen as “bad”, or “addictive”, or “damaging”. As a matter of fact you can’t really overdose most of the psychedelic substances (here’s research by Robert Gable, a professor of legal psychology at Claremont Graduate University), but that doesn’t mean you need not to be careful and respectful if you experiment with them.
Let’s take some close Irish example of magic mushrooms and psilocybin. Once, and not that far away, completely legal, magic mushrooms have been banned in Ireland in 2005 after 1 fatal, likely careless accident. This one episode, highlighted in media resulted in placing a ban a substance with proven therapeutic properties and great potential to help people deal with depression, emotional and existential crisis.
Yes, recent clinical evidence for the efficacy of psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy to treat depression, even in cases where all other treatments have failed is scientifically proven. A case of psilocybin is just drop in the sea of possible benefits other entheogenic and psychedelic substances carry. The data is out there and publicly available. That brings us to the next point.
🌿 Money-fuelled hypocrisy
There is no need to look far. Alcohol is responsible for 88 deaths every month in Ireland. Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in Ireland with almost 500 smokers dying each month from tobacco-related diseases. Both products are legal and well.
Deaths in Ireland due to alcohol and related harm facts.
Smoking in Ireland – facts on HSE.ie
🌿 Education and positive examples are critical
So what should we do next if we ever want to live to a point where psychedelics are legally approved and understood better? We need to talk about them as much as we can. We need to educate each other and open public space for progressive debates. A fresh reflection is needed that will lead to an updated psychedelic education and open field for more advanced and precise scientific research.
Finally, a law has to be rewritten at some stage, it’s dead and obsolete in its current shape. I feel like today we simply need more progressive lawyers and lawmakers than shamans. We need solid education and promotion of a mature understanding of what each substance carries and how does it interact with our bodies and psyche.
We need that sharp mature voice out there, supported by progressive science. Blessings to all involved in psychedelic/entheogenic renaissance/resistance.
Let’s fly on the wings of love and persistence. 💚
by Karol Liver / Pangean Path
pangeanpath.wordpress.com 