outlandish

You can't make a perfect system, there will always be problems and a tradeoff between impinging on personal liberties and protecting individuals from danger. But yes, in my opinion, in the very distant future, allowing adults at some point to have access to clean and safe drugs supplied by a controlled infrastructure would be preferable to the current system where there is a thriving and violent black market that's funded by drug money, and then people's lives getting ruined (and taxpayer money leeched) by the criminal justice system. I don't know what the exact optimal age for that would be, but maybe it would be 21 years old. Intuitively, this is preferable to 16 for sure. Maybe it should be even older, I don't know the optimal age. If you made it too old, you'd not be cutting out the black market, so there's a tricky balance there. Maybe humans are on average not advanced enough to handle legal recreational everything and the black market actually is the optimal system so that only the most rebellious and self-destructive individuals are able to access things like heroin. I don't know, so I don't think society needs to jump head first into this kind of thing. In my opinion we take baby steps towards it, which we're already doing with cannabis, and soon with soft psychedelics, and pull back if it's not going to work out. What I do know is that Portugal is a pretty damn interesting case study that the rest of the world can look at. In Portugal if you get caught by the cops with some drugs (they still have black market drugs around), you are forced to see medical professionals for treatment and counselling, your parents are notified. It's an extremely embarrassing situation, rather than a situation where your life gets ruined. Drug crime is way down (obviously), HIV infection rates have plummeted, addiction rates are way down, jails are not so full. The stats are amazing, it's been a huge success. Finally, society has a handle on controlling these extremely addictive and dangerous drugs, rather than having them run wild. It's really something the rest of the world needs to look at.

I don't know what the ideal system is TBH, I just think the Portuguese model is a step in the right direction. I don't think a teen should ever be given access to heroin, just like we don't give teens booze or weed (in countries where it's legal). So my answer is no, if you're a kid in high school you shouldn't be able to buy heroin from the gov. If we decriminalize and regulate heroin, it could squash the black market and cartels to the point where teens can't access heroin at all. Similar to how teens have a harder time buying booze than weed (in pre-weed legalization places) - there just isn't really a black market for alcohol anymore.

lol @Aeris neither is this a thread about drug legality... the law is really harsh in the UK about weed, definitely do not smuggle drugs into the country, nor consume it openly.

I was of the impression that it's because Amsterdam locals were getting sick of the drug tourism in their city, so there was political support to ban them. I remember mushrooms were legal in England around 2004, as long as they weren't processed. So you could buy fresh magic mushrooms in head shops. I think it is/was the same in Japan. Now England has it's draconian "Psychoactive Substances" bill, which if you know anything about, is quite insane. I think that's how it works in Portugal; if you're an addict you can register as one and then receive safe clean drugs from the government. It becomes treated as a medical issue rather than a criminal one. It seems to have been a big success in Portugal for helping with their previous drug addiction crisis, and they've become a model for the world. There are currently some similar pilot programs in Vancouver for opioid addicts. It's a complex issue though, much more nuanced than simply decriminalizing drugs and giving them out to addicts. There has to be a whole medical infrastructure and attitude shift to accompany the change, and in Portugal they nailed all of that.

It could be risky, and could turn into a shit-flinging BUT that's exactly what the IRL world of politics is like right now. If we're serious about this we need to find a way to transcend that endless shouting match and move upwards. This could be an arena to actually experiment with discussing politics in a more advanced way. The temptation is to not go there, because you don't discuss politics or religion in polite company right? The spirituality forum can also degrade very easily into bickering and pissing matches, which it does from time to time, but I think the community has matured slowly around these challenges, and we do see some pretty great discussion on that board. I'm in support, but I totally understand the concerns. I see this forum as a large scale thought-experiment, and I think we should have the sub-forum to test out these concepts. A practice for the community to begin to look at what it means to be political in a way that steps above left vs right.

Yeah that's my impression too. He sure carried a huge ego around, and people really fed into his personality cult. He made a good product, but I think people tend to over romanticize Steve Jobs. @Apparition of Jack I like your avatar. Looks like you took it from A Ghost Story? That was a really profound and unusual movie. I'd recommend it to anyone on this forum.

I disagree that it's humane. Shamans etc. have to think it's humane because their ceremony depends on it, and it doesn't look so cruel because toads don't express themselves the way humans do."Humane" is relative, and toad venom is more humane than skinning a snake alive or something like that, but it's certainly not in the best interests of the toad. They catch these toads from the wild, and then milk their venom before releasing them. During this time the toads can get injured, they get stressed out, depleted of their natural defence, and can be exposed to fungal infections. It's not the worst practice in the world, and it's cute and all to take a "natural" drug, but I don't think it's worth it for the stress it induces on these animals, especially when the pure form is so easily available, and probably delivers a cleaner experience anyways.

It's really hard on the toads to have their venom harvested, it stresses them out and can expose them to infection. Using synthetic is more humane. The toad already gave us it's gift by showing us this molecule, now we can synth it relatively easily in the lab, and have a more pure and versatile substance. I've never taken toad venom, so I can't comment on any difference in effects vs. synthetic. It's certainly possible that the bufotenine in it affects the 5-MeO-DMT experience slightly. It's debated whether or not the substance is psychedelic, but it certainly causes some unpleasant side effects.

The more I think about it, the more Berlin seems a great candidate for being a Tier-2 city. At least on paper. Berlin's roots come from a city that was split in two by the global superpowers representing capitalism and socialism (however flawed that socialism, and capitalism, were ). What a unique situation that was! It was then unified, and thus it represents the union of these two paradigms. Of course capitalism "won" in this scenario, but when you talk to people in/from Berlin you get the sense of a population that's acutely aware of the limits of capitalism. There's a strong presence of green in the city, a big history of counterculture and philosophy reaching back even before WWII, and I think the unification in a way can represent the transcendence of orange and green into Tier 2. Berlin has learned a lot of grim lessons from the past. It's an extremely diverse city full of people of all nationalities and viewpoints. A mecca for artists, tech innovation, celebration, progressive living, and experimentation. The heart of one of the most advanced nations on the planet. I've not really spent enough time there to really have a firm stance on this, but the theory sounds good, and agrees with my limited interactions with the city, and the people I've met coming from and going to the city. But as Leo points out, it doesn't matter so much the flavour of the city if you're doing your own thing. And we are lucky to be able to connect in ways that transcend physical space anyways.

@Leo Gura I noticed that there isn't an explicit place for politics or political discussion, meta-political discussion etc on this forum. By default it's tended to go in Self-Actualization, which does seem to be the best fit right now. So perhaps you should add it to the "official" list of topics for the Self-Actualization sub-forum? Or perhaps we need a new sub-forum, something like Society and Politics.. Not really sure the best solution here, but wanted to open the discussion. The new politics videos are ACE by the way.

Here you go:

? Awesome

Melatonin can help reset your sleep cycles. You can take it right before you go to bed, at your normal bedtime.

@khalifa Did you end up getting some sleep? Make sure you're eating nicely, get some exercise while you're up, and rest well at night. Normally, I feel completely back to earth the next day, with maybe a bit of an afterglow. If you're still feeling weird, you've probably had your boat rocked a bit too much from the 5-MeO-DMT and are having psychological echoes from it. It's also vaguely possible that your drug was mislabelled and that you ingested a longer lasting psychedelic. That's unlikely, so I would assume the former. Wise words from @zikzak Rest up and give it time. You'll be fine.

Are there any working industrial thorium reactors? Last time I checked in on this it was still an experimental technology. I agree that in principal thorium reactors could be part of the solution. They should be vastly safer than current uranium fission reactors. Solar, wind, and other renewables are definitely also part of the solution. We currently already have many gigawatts of power being generated by photovoltaics and wind, on the ground. We have this huge amount of energy being showered upon us from the heavens, we only need to tap a little bit of it to meet the needs of all of humanity. It's a huge, multi-faceted problem and it won't have one single solution. We need high-voltage DC transmission lines, more solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric. We probably have to consider more advanced nuclear power sources at this point. We need to get off coal, that would be a good start. Maybe there can be "clean coal" but I doubt it. We also need to look at the under-discussed problem of refrigerants. Refrigerants vented into the atmosphere account for a hugely disproportional part of the GHG problem, and it's hardly talked about. They need to be much more tightly controlled and re-used. Hopefully some day we achieve the dream of clean, small-scale fusion power.

Yes! It's important to listen to your intuition in these matters. Best luck to you.

Asking for a friend? It depends completely on what kind of sex you had. I think it's actually pretty low generally, but the consequences are very high obvs. Either way you absolutely must get tested, it will put your heart at ease to know the answer with certainty, and you have to know if you carry a risk to other sexual partners.

@john23 Agreed, I definitely find the same about Shavasana and 5-MeO-DMT. Lying down flat on my back on a carpet or something is the just right posture for heavy tripping in my body.

@Elisabeth Thanks for remembering to follow up with this report here! I'm sure you know this, but perhaps it helps to hear it again from a stranger on the internet: Don't be discouraged, you can't force these experiences and there is not guarantee that they occur even in the best circumstances. All you can do is create the likely situation for it to happen, and if it does, it does. If not, it's no matter and you keep doing your practice. I agree that synthetic is probably more reliable (and less cruel). I wouldn't give up on 5-MeO-DMT after one disappointing experience, but of course that's your call. It definitely takes most people at least a few psychedelic sessions just to acclimatize to that kind of experience anyways. For me it took about 20 years between the first time I tried a psychedelic and until I had a full fledged breakthrough experience - although I definitely had tastes of it along the way, and piles of insight and growth.

Do you ever look back at something in your past that was so good that it makes you feel kind of sad? It's so strange because there are some very special times from long ago in my life, that when I look back at, somehow feel sad, or heartache or something. It is such a strange emotion, because it's not like I miss that time and want to go back to it. If I had the choice I would not. I feel like nostalgia is meant to be coupled with a desire to return to that time, which isn't really the case. This "sad" feeling isn't really unpleasant or depressing either, but sometimes it's so strong I could almost cry, and it's painful in a way. I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to ask here, perhaps just trying to understand the nature of this feelings. Why would it make you feel a sad down feeling to revisit something from the past that was very good and special?

My biggest objection is: Spirituality implies there is a non-spirituality, but since spirituality is all-encompassing, how can this be? How can we distinguish something as spiritual when everything is spiritual? Point me to something that's not spirituality, and then I will believe that there can be such a thing as spirituality.

Cool, I'd love to check it out. Noisia radio comes out of there too, one of my favourite podcasts Amsterdam feels like a very advanced city, I love the Netherlands. Vancouver and SF are up there for sure. London feels extremely advanced to me, but it's like advanced stage blue, blue taken to its outermost limits. I love that city. I imagine NYC to have a similar but USAmerican vibe, but haven't spent enough time there yet. Berlin is pretty neat, it might be up there into blue, green, maybe some transcendent flashes of yellow. Again, haven't spent enough time there to really know. Cities are fascinating. You could easily spend lifetimes on them.

When I studied compsci there were very few girls in the program, and 90% of the guys were extremely stereotypical geeky types, very awkward around women, and would hit on them in the most awkward ways. It was so cringey, borderline harassment actually. I hope for your sake that it's not like that anymore, in Finland at least.

I've been there, almost exactly the same kind of situation. It's really hard to give advice because everyone and every relationship is different. In my particular case, it ended up being really hard on my ex GF, I didn't realize it at the time but she was still in love with me and it really fucked with her heart. It also made it hard for me to move on, always having a "plan B" available when I chickened out of a new relationship, and doubting if I should have broken up with ex GF. After I went through all that, I basically never went back in any subsequent relationships. I'm now of the philosophy that it's usually best to rip the bandaid off quickly and not look back. But I can't say that doing FWB with my ex was a mistake exactly, it was all part of the process, it was part of that particular situation, and an experience in life that I don't regret. Plus we had awesome FWB sex lol.

Do you mean when you make close friendship with any man, or a gay man specifically? If he only wants to be friends with you because of his sexual desires, you won't really be friends and it will feel obviously like a not-real friendship, and you won't want to be friends with that person. If it feels like a real friendship then that's cool, and you have nothing to worry about. It's ok if he has some sexual attraction to you, you can still be just friends. Human relationships are full of imperfections and unbalanced dynamics and that's ok.