Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2024
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.)
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.
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.
People groan about "profiling," but why is profiling even a "thing"? There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
I agree that Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy -- but it is common sense that non-Big Pharma drugs that elate could be used to prevent suicide and obviate the need for ECT.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
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?
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon: an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority, published on August 29, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
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.) 
You have been reading an article entitled, Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon: an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority, published on August 29, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)