"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.
“And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.”
The other point you made was “psychedelics aren’t necessarily worse than alcohol or cannabis”, and I feel like I already responded to a similar point elsewhere.
Getting drunk (or high) with children in the house is also not good. I would not expect that to be applauded either.
You mentioned “responsible” alcohol use. Getting drunk around your children is not responsible alcohol use.
People who drink responsibly either have a single drink or two and stop before they get intoxicated, or they go out and hire a babysitter, or they send the kids to the grandparents for the night.
(If you are “tripping balls” and unable to drive, you are intoxicated.)
I didn’t say “get drunk” around children. I said use alcohol responsibly. Do you believe one can do that around alcohol, or is everyone who has a glass of wine with dinner an irresponsible parent?
Just like with alcohol, the dosage matters. The mother isn’t “tripping balls” by doing a bit of MDMA or shrooms. That’s just exaggeration by the article. There’s no mention of a dosage, but to “trip balls” on MDMA, you’d need to do quite a bit. Same with shrooms. Several times the normal recreational dose, just like with alcohol.
But one or two drinks is still intoxication. It might be very mild intoxication, but it is intoxication. You might not believe it, but actually, similarly responsible low dosage recreational use exists with other substances as well. Just because your chosen drug is illegal doesn’t mean you shoot it up into your eyeballs and don’t stop until your whole stash is gone and then go out to prostitute yourself to get some more.
Have you ever had any serotonergic substances, like shrooms, LSD, ecstasy? No? You have no idea how they influence you and how they might or might not impair you? But… I do? And other people do? And science seems to support the things we say about them; people who haven’t used them always fearmonger over them, they’re less harmful and less impairing than alcohol, and still more pleasant. It’s a wholly different effect.
Do you think people who have a prescription for sedatives or antianxiety medications are irresponsible parents? Should they take their children to stay somewhere every time they take an Ambien before they go to bed? Oh wait… then, they’d never sleep in the same place, unless there were other people there as well? Don’t you think it extremely irresponsible to have a sleeping aid before bed… you know, in case of an emergency. Better — just to be safe — take your kids to your in-laws every single night that you might be inclined to think you need a sleeping aid.
I don’t believe you could stand behind something like that in good faith.
And I know that an Ambien impairs a person more than a light recreational dose of LSD or ecstasy or shrooms.
You said in another comment:
You’re the one who said you wouldn’t be fit to drive a car.
And I’m not trying to defend alcohol use, but after one or two drinks (depending on your body size), you can still legally drive a car.
(And this isn’t some bizarre hypothetical. There are plenty of people who have a glass of wine with dinner, and that’s it. They’re not drinking for any of the intoxicating effects of alcohol.)
In any case, I still don’t see how “it’s less harmful than alcohol” means we should be applauding its use, unless you think that its use would result in less alcohol use.
And I doubt anyone would be cheering about increased Ambien use among Texas housewives.