I’m a shameless millennial. It’s my nature to publicly document experiences that are significant to me. Unfortunately, this makes me prone to conflict. A prominent trans activist messaged me:

Andi, I am reading your Facebook status about you being on LSD. What are you doing? You are supposed to be a leader and role model in the [trans] community.

Stop. I’m not blinded from the risk of (certain) drugs. But it’s time we stop throwing a blanket over drug use, a category diverse as any other.

Comparing opiates to psychedelics is like fast food to vegetables. And just because some people have bad reactions to peanuts doesn’t mean we should start criminalizing them.

Public opinion on marijuana has gained momentum rapidly, unfortunately we’ve left psychedelics behind. Some will say legalize all drugs. Although we should treat them as a health issue – because it is one – heroin is something no one should fuck with. I’m not even suggesting legalizing all psychedelics, because Ketamine can be really unpleasant. What I’m suggesting may sound absurd: we should teach people about drugs by actually educating them, without bias. You know, like what a pharmacy does.

This is what we should be doing with all recreational drugs. As

Psychedelics, I believe, is untapped potential that could literally revolutionize society. Steve Jobs saw this and invested in MAPS. The structure of DNA was first discovered on Crick’s LSD trip, for fuck’s sake. Recent studies show MDMA (known as molly) lessen social anxiety, even for autistic adults; lasting for a year or more in some cases. Psilocybin mushrooms and LSD have shown to increase mental health by lessening depression, PTSD, addiction, anxiety, self-consciousness and promoting feelings of empathy, interconnectedness and openness. In fact, with just the right dose and a safe environment you won’t even have a bad trip. In the Johns Hopkins study, 94% of subjects said the trip was on their top five most meaningful experiences of their life, 39% said it was their most.

But what about the risks? Shrooms and LSD are virtually impossible to overdose on or even addictive. They’re rated on the top three safest recreational drugs by British researchers. Yet our drug laws are incompatible with actual scientific research based on risk. MDMA is something you can overdose on if used irresponsibly, however. Last summer, the local media franticly warned us about the dangers of this “new” drug. What they probably didn’t tell you is that what is sold as molly, which is theoretically pure MDMA, is often cut with other substances making it falsely advertised ecstasy. This is what causes many of the fatalities. Something that wouldn’t happen if it were legalized and regulated.

Here’s the thing, there are risks to taking any drug. Like, you can literally overdose on caffeine pills. But there is no such thing as a poison, only poisonous dosages. This is toxicology 101. We take calculated risks everyday. Tripping on shrooms or acid is safer than getting behind a car, which is the number one cause of preventable death for youths. The biggest risk is yourself. But mainly it’s your ignorance. You could take a hit of acid and in the wrong circumstances have the worst experience of your life. But if you do it safely, you may see the universe unfold and collapse before you.

I’ve seen into the eye of our cosmos and it was unimaginabley beautiful. I saw myself in third person, as if I was in a video game. I remember feeling like I was in a perpetual state of waking up, like I just opened my eyes for the first time. My vision expanded like a fisheye lens, seeing three times as much. My eyes tracked bug movement as the patterns stood in the air, static and naked. The trees stood like statues demanding to be admired. Objects morphed into beautiful polygonal textures. Waves of saturation and hues washed over me. Pictures turned into windows and illustrations came to life. I remember putting a pencil to paper drew smoke across the page. I remember faces in the trees, the intemperate color of the sky and the way walls breathe. Background noise cycled into symphonic music. I saw into infinity, everywhere. DNA strands ran between my eyes. The sun beamed through the leaves like a celestial temple, unfolding a spiral fractal multi-verse built upon the Fibonacci sequence. Stars formed into constellations of molecular structures. Synesthesia took hold and I watched music carve out complex mechanical patterns in my eyes. Everything seemed to have a metaphorical purpose. It felt like the universe whispering it’s secrets.

Having gender dysphoria since I was 14, I’ve had non-stop anxiety and body dysmorphia that’s driven me to near suicide on several occasions. There’s never been a moment where I felt comfortable in my body in nearly a decade. Except one night, when I took LSD, my perception synced with my identity and I felt pure unadulterated happiness for the first time.

Our brains stabilize our sensory information. When those knobs are turned down, other features takeover, like pattern and facial recognition. There is a sense of spirituality and intellectualism that is otherwise unachievable without psychedelics. They unveil some of the background calculations our brains do. The mind is no longer afraid to explore it’s conscious landscape. Sometimes we’re too concerned about not dying that we forget to live, we might as well be dead already. This is why I do LSD. I’m just addicted to beauty.

Some say even the relatively safe drugs still have consequences by leading to harder drugs. Even though over 50 percent of people who use painkillers recreationally started by legitimate means. And over 80 percent of recent heroin users were introduced to opiates by our legal pharma dealers.

Wake the fuck up, it’s not only drugs that can kill people. The irresponsible criminalization of drugs has blood on it’s hands. The real gateway drug is ignorance. Knowledge is power. Unfortunately, research on psychedelics is severely limited due to it’s illegality.

LSD doesn’t burn holes in your brain, propaganda does.