arcanum said:
Your self proclaimed status as a "mystic" amused me I must admit, though I've since revised my definition of the term, from ," someone transcending ordinary human knowledge via direct communication with the divine" to: " Person puzzled before the obvious, but understands the non -existent": Enough said, and I won't mention it again.
Perhaps I should just let this go and not make it a tit for tat, so I'm not sure I should bite on this... but I am
not the least bit puzzled before the obvious, and I don't know how one can truly understand something that is non-existent. I think we can wrap our heads around
non-existence or other Eastern concepts of void and whatnot. It seems that saying one understands the non-existent is a way of saying someone is deluded and imagines oneself to understand things that aren't real.
Needless to say, I prefer your first definition, and it is more in line with what I believe mysticism is... as well as the historical use of the word. With some mystics, divine might not play into it as much, but the idea is that mystics prefer direct experience of ineffable things and tend not to be satisfied with faith or the pronouncements of others. In this way, most psychonauts are mystics to some degree.
I don't see how someone's stance on a civil liberties issue factors in to either definition, so I still find this whole mystic issue to be a red herring/ straw man. I don't find it to be ad hominem per se, just an inconsequential side track.
My bottom line is not the chemicals themselves , (and I'm quite definitely against the war on drugs), It's quite simply that someone can legally supply them, while declining any responsibility for quality, provenance and potential health problems. Even the street corner dealer of heroin has an ethics code of sorts, and a modicum of accountability ( fear of reprisals, being denounced)
The comparisons of snowboarding injury ratios to RC incidents are churlish. I'm a skydiver and mountaineer, should those activities be curtailed? of course not, would I prevent my children doing them?, no. Is the war on drugs justified?, no. Should shady vendours be allowed to sell potentially toxic substances without accountability? A definite no. They should face the same levels of risk their street corner counterparts run. Children are educated from an early age on to avoid such street corner transactions. There is at least a ( albeit fragile) security barrier in place.
I think you kind of missed my points that address this. The fact is that there are thousands of dangerous and psychoactive drugs being sold legally. An automotive supply store will sell you any number of proven brain killing chems even if you are obviously under 16. They don't even bother with the "not for human consumption" diclaimer, and they are not held accountable for the kids who sit around and huff octane booster.
Supermarkets are filled with drugs. Some of them might have disclaimers on them, but I have yet to see a package of nutmeg that warns you not to try and get high from it. Kids can buy sassafrass, ephedra, any number of OTC drugs... At my local garden shop they sell live san pedro, morning glory seeds, and datura cuttings.
The RC vendors are a mixed bunch. Some have scruples, others don't. But banning the chems is not dealing with them. They will merely switch to even newer and less tested RCs and not send the banned ones to places that forbid them. This is counter productive because all RCs are not equal. Most of them are cheap party drugs that are clearly inferior to whatever they are trying to copy. Most of them have been created for this reason by shadowy people.
Some, are not this in the least. 4 ACO DMT for example is just a slight twist on Psylocin, and was made by people who wanted to make an orally active shroomlike tryptamine that could be given in small doses. The chances that this RC is any worse than eating mushrooms is slim, and it could very well be easier on the body than having to process handfuls of fungi.
In fact, most of the novel tryptamines available now are things that hold actual interest for the psychonaut community. They should not be lumped in with mephedrone or benzo fury.
And, to come back to the big boy on the block... the ever popular MXE. This was invented by a well known underground chemist... the famous one-armed alchemist.
Interview with a Ketamine Chemist He invented it purposefully to collect the best effects from the drugs that gave him relief from his phantom limb syndrome. He, as a fairly knowledgeable guy, set out to create a version of Ketamine that would be less disorienting, longer lasting, require 1/10th the dose, and avoid the long term issues that regular K-Heads had to deal with (like the bladder issue). By all accounts, he succeeded, and while we won't know the full picture of this disso for many years to come, it certainly seems to be safer than the other dissos like K, DXM, PCP etc. Considering that it is possible to use all of those chems without hurting yourself, the idea that an adult can not choose to test out this novel disso at their own risk is totalitarian.
(note: He is a bit of an unstable character, and I am not holding him up as a model of sanity. He admits to being incarcerated in a psych ward after overdosing on some 3 MEO PCP that he invented... so there you go.)
You speak about vendors legally offering something that is untested as if it was a reason to ban something. I contend that this is not sufficient reason to limit the freedoms we are losing daily. You can not achieve safety by sacrificing freedom. There will always be drugs that can be easily had. Kids getting into them is not a reason to control adults' access to things. This is the parents job. There are worse things than RCs to save your kids from.
As an avid practitioner of many adventure sports, I don't find that analogy to be churlish. (boorish, rude, mean, peasant like) I think you are stretching for vocabulary here. It is a prescient and poignant analogy in that people (vendors) can provide you legally with a product that is possible to misuse and which many people hurt themselves with. If you rent or buy a snowboard and then go into the back country and get yourself buried in an avalanche, this is not the vendor's fault. In fact, despite the fact that it will cost the public money to send a helicopter out to pluck you out of your self created situation... no one is talking about banning back country boarding. (insert big mountain, big wave riding, fun park, rail jibing, sky diving, cave diving etc.)
The idea is that we are responsible for ourselves. The argument that you make against RCs could (and probably will) be brought to bear against MHRB. You may find something personally distasteful and still recognize the need to protect it. It is a domino effect where today they come for 59 drugs you don't care for... but when they come for your DOC, no one is there to cry foul. If you don't care for the War On Drugs, then how can you sit here promoting the idea that 59 new chemicals be added to that war? It is a disconnect that makes my head spin.
Considering the fact that the number of deaths and injuries do to RCs is so small, I think that wholesale banning of them is both premature and knee-jerk. If you were of a mind to fight the War on Drugs, A case could be made against mephedrone and a couple of the other stims... but 59 chems? I think not. And if you truly think this ridiculous, endless war needs to end, I can't see how giving the authorities more chems to control will accomplish this.
Fact is, drugs will always be available. Street vendors are not more ethical than online vendors. They both face the exact same pressure for quality... namely customer satisfaction. The fact is that if drugs were uniformly legal, both business models would be mooted and the overall quality of drugs would improve. The governments could regulate chemicals for purity and promote accurate information about them. But in the end, what you put into your body is your choice.
If we really want to talk about drugs that hurt people we need to address the giant elephant in the room. The latest studies show that the
2nd leading cause of unintentional injury death in the US is...
prescription drugs. Care2 is the world's largest social network for good, a community of over 40 million people standing together, starting petitions and sharing stories that inspire action. Forget RC's. Forget all illegal drugs combined. This is only surpassed by car accidents.
(note: You won't see doctors going to jail for prescribing their poison, and cars will not be made illegal because teens sometimes steal them to go joyriding.)
In fact, the Journal Of American Medicine shows that as of last year, Doctors are the #3 cause of death overall. Seriously. After Heart Attacks and Cancer... Healthcare.
Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death
So, instead of freaking out about a relatively minor blip of an issue... how about turning your parental rage against the actual unscrupulous drug vendor who is likely to hurt you and your kids... your family doctor. (aka Wholly owned shill of Big Pharma)
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On other forums you'd be threatened with death or worse but not here on the Nexus. I really love this fact.
