WARNING - Forum Includes Threads about Psychoactive Substances

[LucyHenry]

Love the openness and honesty. I have had no luck with pharmaceuticals. While it's great for those who are helped by them, I'm tired of the insistence that they are the best or only course of action.
There's a good documentary on netflix for DMT and another for Ayahuasca. I've read that psilocybin can rewire the traumatized brain.
While visiting a legal state, I tried a sativa type cannabis and felt great even though I smoked quite a bit. I tried gummies that were concentrated THC and got anxiety (no worse than too much caffeine) so it's whole plant products only for me. A very low dose CBD tincture just made me sleep really well as did the bath product.

[kingkut]

Does anyone know any practicing MDMA therapists or other psychedelics in Canada?

Thank you!

[sigiriuk]

I have tried cannabis, but cannabis doesn't like me.

Alcohol does get rid of my bodily pain, and helps sleep, but alcohol doesn't like me either.

Psilocybin is gentle, and it does not induce terrifying flashbacks. I have found that it  treats me with respect. It also  (scientifically) rearranges our neurons, stimulates new neuron growth, and treats depression after only two therapeutic experiences.
Psilocybin like me...
Slim

[Kizzie]

I have tried cannabis, but cannabis doesn't like me.  Alcohol does get rid of my bodily pain, and helps sleep, but alcohol doesn't like me either.

Ditto Slim and thanks for sharing about your experience with psilocybin.  Based on the MAPS clinical trials I had been looking at the potential of MDMA assisted psychotherapy to help us. So far, however, the trials have only been for PTSD, so unsure of whether/how it works for Complex PTSD and trials, if any, are a ways off. It's proving quite helpful for PTSD, but that doesn't mean it's safe/effective with CPTSD. 

Lately I've been reading more about psilocybin and must admit I've become quite interested in its potential. It does seem to be a 'gentle' psychedelic as you've described and I like that you find it treats you with respect. 

[MountainGirl]

I have fretted about the fact that there are drugs, both legal and illegal, which very likely could help me with my C-PTSD, but getting them is a major difficulty because of the "war on drugs." In my reading on the internet I found these several sources which I think give some perspective on the attitudes prevalent among the general public and the US medical establishment. This is a link to an article by some Harvard public health PhDs and MDs. https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/appi.ajp.20240030 who object to the demonization
of benzodiazepines. The authors point to words like "stigma" and "fear" that patients who need these drugs often feel. As the authors say, some patients simply cannot function without such help.

And the quote below is from a brief interview that the journalist Dan Baum (he wrote for the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and many other publications) had with John Ehrlichman, a a prominent aide to  President Richard Nixon. Ehrlichman says that the "war on drugs" was a political tactic intended to sideline minorities and anti war protesters. The quote is contained in this Harper's article : https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

"We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders...Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

Ehrlichman went to jail, along with several other Nixon aides, because of his part in the Watergate scandal. That the "war on drugs" began as a political tactic had never entered my head, though it certainly explains why marijuana is a schedule 1 drug. I don't think you can overdose on grass, but you can on ...water, it's called hyponatremia.

At any rate, I found these articles interesting and thought provoking. Oh, and there is a book
"Undoing Drugs" that is utterly fascinating on the history of the war on drugs and the more recent movement toward "harm reduction." Well written and informative with detailed references .