Decrim of psychedelic mushroom removed from bill
Psychedelic drugs are often associated with trippy visuals and music festivals. Some studies say they may cure anxiety, depression, substance abuse and PTSD.
S.114, a bill that would create a group that studies the physical and mental benefits of psychedelic treatments, passed the Legislature last week and is headed to Gov. Phil Scott.
The group would be full of experts — researchers, psychologists, doctors, and psychedelic treatment providers — who’d analyze studies, seek public testimony and examine other states’ laws. From there, they’d make a plan on whether to allow health care providers to administer the drugs.
Initially, the bill would’ve decriminalized psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms. But after a variety of doctors questioned whether there was enough research on the hallucinogenic, the Senate took it out.
“I think these substances as a whole, but perhaps psilocybin in particular, have the potential to be one of the greatest transformational leaps forward in the mental health field in quite a while,” Kurt White, vice president of outpatient programs and community initiatives at the Brattleboro Retreat psychiatric hospital, told senators in February. “And I say that as a natural skeptic.”
“There was this huge enthusiasm that cannabis would be very effective for a lot of things, and that probably has not really panned out,” Charles MacLean, associate dean of primary care at the University of Vermont, said during the same meeting. “And I think the access issues around cannabis got out way ahead of the evidence that was there.”
MacLean said the promising effects of psychedelic treatment still aren’t super clear. But he told senators that “the direct toxic effects of these compounds are probably less concerning than a lot of things that are currently available, including tobacco, alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines.”
Though psychedelics are illegal in the state, that isn’t stopping Vermonters from using them.
“I don’t know if anybody here is microdosing psilocybin right now or has tried it,” said Rick Barnett, a licensed psychologist and co-founder of Psychedelic Society of Vermont, on May 1. “But it is extremely popular. It’s a huge trend. People have easy access to psilocybin all over the state of Vermont.”
Under the bill, the group of experts is supposed to present findings by Nov. 15.
Psychedelics have negative connotations, but experts say overdoses are rare.
“I think in the history of the recorded use of mushrooms there have been only like three fatal deaths associated with it,” White said during the same meeting. “Which requires about a thousand times more consumption than one would take for a very robust therapeutic dose, an amount that would be almost ridiculous in the amount of physical mushroom you’d have to consume to overdose and die.”
Katherine MacLean, a former Johns Hopkins researcher, studied psilocybin for years. She guided over 100 synthetic mushroom trips during her career and analyzed the effects of psychedelics on her patients.
“I’ve met people who were suicidal because of chronic headaches that would not remit, I’ve met people who had tried every other depression treatment, every kind of therapy, and were at the end of their rope, I’ve met people who were plagued by distress at the end of their life,” Maclean told senators in February. “And in all of these cases, in a way that we still don’t know scientifically how it happens, psilocybin seems to be powerfully transformative for these kinds of situations where someone has tried everything and is still very deeply suffering.”
It was through her work with psychedelics that MacLean was able to save her own life.
“I’m a mother of two young children. When my sister died in 2013, it was like falling into an abyss,” she told senators. “I sought therapy, I sought treatment from medical doctors, but ultimately I sought treatment from medicine that I had seen help so many of the folks that I worked with at Hopkins. And without those experiences with psilocybin, I’m not sure that I would be alive today.”
The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.
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Categories: Drugs and Crime, Legislation
Vermont, the state has millions in unsecured debt and unfunded liabilities, and this bill S.114 is being pushed, what morons drafted this boondoggle of nonsense.
Vermonter, we deserve better, our elected officials should be working on the state’s debt and liabilities and a balanced budget………… you just can’t keep spending and expect anything to change, if you want change, then vote these inept fools out !!
You are right on CHenry. And when our “Veto Proof Legislature” wasn’t working on mushrooms, the were taxing us to death on education and saving the planet.
I previously took a quick look at the Babylon Bee for a little humor, and thought I was still on that website, when I read this article.
CHenry, the morons that drafted this boondoggle of nonsense are more than likely eating these mushrooms….
Holy cow, haven’t these people ever heard of Timothy Leary or the experiments on Viet Nam soldiers, or experiments at Edgewood Arsenal? Nothing good came of it.