30 years ago today, the Police and School District did more damage to me by kicking me out of school for having LSD than all of LSD I’ve taken since then ever has. It socially isolated me preventing me from forming meaningful peer connections in my first year of high school, and despite night classes and correspondence courses I was not allowed to take enough credits to start my second year as a full sophomore putting me behind academically. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was “previously a good kid” (read I was white and daddy got a lawyer) I would have also been denied the credits for the semester I was a week from completing at the time because “Zero Tollerance”.

Since then, the use of hallucinogens has given me insights into myself and the world that I don’t know I’d have found otherwise, and even helped me overcome past emotional trauma. They’re not for everyone, but they’ve helped me.

I’m not saying there shouldn’t have been consequences for not paying attention to set and setting, but they were certainly disproportionate

It’s past time to rethink drug policy.