Recreational substances have received their share of flak. While many hail them for the kind of ‘trips’ they take you on, there are those who choose to say low and dry for whatever time they have to span the earth.
But if you’re the kind that likes the ‘high’way more than any other, here’s news for you. According to this year’s Global Drug Survey, shrooms have proven to be the safest of the recreational lot. The Guardian reports that of the 12,000 people who consumed psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms confirmed that only 0.2% had ever needed emergency medical treatment. A number five times less than for cocaine, LSD, and MDMA.
Guardian quotes Adam Winstock, a consultant addiction psychiatrist and founder of the Global Drug Survey, who says that magic mushrooms are the safest in the world. The bigger risk with it was people picking and eating the wrong kind of shrooms. He says,
Death from toxicity is almost unheard of, poisoning with more dangerous fungi being a much greater risk in terms of serious harms.
But they aren’t all that safe either. If consumed with other substances, it can cause unwanted effects. Winstock says,
Combined use with alcohol and use within risky or unfamiliar settings increase the risks of harm most commonly accidental injury, panic and short-lived confusion, disorientation, and fears of losing one’s mind.
Shrooms also have the ability to make ‘bad trips’ possibly have a positive outcome. In their 2016 report, Roland Griffiths and Robert Jesse at Johns Hopkins Medicine, surveyed 2000 people on their usage of shrooms. 2.7% said they had received medical help and 7.6% had to undergo treatment for enduring psychological symptoms.
In the list of subtances that cause harm, synthetic cannabis was the riskiest of all drugs, according to the survey. More than 30 users resorted to emergency medical treatment, which accounts for the highest in any drug study except crystal methamphetamine. That accounts for one in ten people, who had used the drug at least 50 times a year. As for psychedelics, people tend not to get dependent on them. Neither do they rot every organ; on the contrary, people cited profound effects that it had made on their life.
Drugs needn’t always be bad, after all.