Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2024
I 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.
Author's Follow-up:
April 20, 2025
Who would have thought back in 1776 that Americans would eventually have to petition their government for the right to even possess a damn mushroom. The Drug War has destroyed America.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)
Many psychonauts (like Terence McKenna) praise psychedelics while demonizing other psychoactive substances. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason for some people in some circumstance.
In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.
Someday the world will realize that Freud's real achievement was his discovery of the depression-busting power of cocaine.
We're living in a sci-fi dystopia called "Fahrenheit 452", in which the police burn thought-expanding plants instead of thought-expanding books.
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.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
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