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A comment on Mexico's Supreme Court has decriminalised the private use of cannabis by adults. Parent comment

Re:Mexico's Supreme Court has decriminalised the private use... by pmoriarty on Tuesday June 29, 2021 @02:30AM (#27672544)
If you come to forgive yourself or your parents as a result of taking psilocybin, is that a hallucination? If you overcome your depression or PTSD as a result of taking ketamine (a "dissociative"), is that a hallucination?

Calling these substances hallucinogens is inaccurate, and it's pejorative because it presumes that what's experienced on them is unreal.

Many of the things experienced on them not only seem to be but are to many of their users more real than ordinary waking reality. To dismiss them as hallucinations is to privilege your own view of reality over theirs.

Perceptual anomalies and changes in thought, emotion, and consciousness all happen on psychedelics, dissociatives, and deleriants. These are not useful distinctions.

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Re:Mexico's Supreme Court has decriminalised the private use... by PaulDavisThe1st on Tuesday June 29, 2021 @11:24AM (#27677170)
It's handy to differentiate between the "resting state" of perception and other states. That doesn't make the "resting state" (i.e. no recent ingestion/injection of any psycho-active compounds) more real, but it does provide a baseline that makes it easier to discuss the differences, similarities and unknowns when in other states.

I'm sorry that you think that the term "hallucinogen" is so loaded with perjorativeness. I don't find it hard to notice how many terms we use in English may have in the past had been used with perjorative intent and have lost that sense. From my perspective, "hallucinogen" (and "hallucinating") is one of them. I don't read "hallucinating" as "having an unreal experience of the world", but rather "having an experience of the world that differs substantively from the resting state".

> To dismiss them as hallucinations is to privilege your own view of reality over theirs.

AFAIK, anyone who has had such an experience has also experienced the world in the "resting state". Because of this, the "priviledging" is not my view of reality versus theirs, but "one of their experiences" versus "another one of their experiences". It doesn't need to be inter-personal comparisons in any way.

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