DENVER, COLORADO: Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's eldest child, Jaden, recently revealed that his mother "introduced" their whole family to controversial hallucinogenics or psychedelic drugs. The 24-year-old appeared at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver and said that psychedelics helped him improve his relationship with loved ones and caused him to have increased empathy for others.
"I think it was my mom, actually, that was really the first one to make that step for the family. It was just her for a really, really long time and then eventually it just trickled and evolved and everybody found it in their own ways," Jaden said, as per USA Today. He also shared that psychedelics had a "profound" impact on his relationship with siblings, sister Willow Smith, 22, and half-brother Trey Smith, 30. "Siblings can argue so much and fight so much, and lord knows me and my siblings have done so much of that in the past. But the level of love and empathy that I can feel for them inside of the (psychedelic) experiences and outside of the experiences has been something that's profound and beautiful," the 'Karate Kid'star added.
What are psychedelics?
Psychedelic drugs are a form of hallucinogens that affects people's senses and non-ordinary mental states (psychedelics), along with altering their mood, emotion, perception, and cognitive thinking processes. The substances can even tamper with a person's sense of time. According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, some of the common types of psychedelics include LSD, magic mushrooms (psilocybin), DMT, Mescaline, 2C-B, NBOMes, Peyote, and Ayahuasca. Some of these substances reportedly grow naturally, such as in trees, leaves, seeds, fungi, and vines, and some are artificially created in laboratories. As of now, the controversial substances are available in several forms, like tablets, fine powders, crystalline powders, dried mushrooms, and blotter paper.
Are psychedelics considered illegal?
While the recreational use of psychedelics is common among a large group of people across the globe, many psychedelic drugs are considered illegal worldwide as per the UN conventions, with occasional exceptions given to psychedelics used for religious or research purposes. As per a 2022 study conducted by YouGov, 28% of Americans had used at least one psychedelic at some point in their life.
Another study conducted in 2021 revealed that roughly 8.8 million American adults use psychedelic mushrooms, and millions of others use substances like LSD. Psilocybin and psilocin were reportedly listed as Schedule I drugs under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances. These substances are usually said to have a high potential for abuse with no recognized medical uses.
However, some studies have argued that psilocybin mushrooms have had numerous medicinal and religious uses throughout history and allegedly have lower abuse potential as compared to other Schedule I drugs. A 2018 report in New Atlas revealed that psychedelic psilocybin therapy for treating depression was granted Breakthrough Therapy status by the FDA. Another research study titled "The Non-medical Use of Drugs: Interim Report of the Canadian Government's Commission of Inquiry" said that "physical dependence does not develop to LSD," reportedly suggesting that psychedelics are physiologically safe and hardly lead to addiction.
Despite several studies, psychedelics are still classified under Schedule I of the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances of 1971 as drugs having the potential to cause harm with no acceptable medical uses. However, efforts to decriminalize the use of psychedelics have long been prevalent in several countries across the world. Some countries where a few psychedelics are considered completely legal or are in the process of achieving legality include Brazil, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands, as reported by Psychedelic Spotlight.
While the US follows an analog law, the Federal Analogue Act of 1986, which automatically bans any drug sharing similar chemical structures or chemical formulas as psychedelics to illicit or prohibited substances if sold for human consumption, some US states went forward to make some psychedelic drugs legal. In 2019, Denver became the first American city to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. Colorado has already decriminalized the recreational use of them, while Oregon made magic mushrooms legal for medicinal purposes, as per Green State. Some cities in Massachusetts and California also decriminalized the use of mushrooms, and a few psychedelics were decriminalized in some cities in Washington.
'It's loaded with spiritual experiences and mystical states'
During his appearance at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, Jaden revealed that psychedelics help him and his family members to "open up" their minds and "get out of the old ways of thinking that got us into lots of these arguments and open it up so that it just releases and makes room for you to work it out." While he did not specify the kind of psychedelics used by his family, Jaden opened up about using magic mushrooms last year. "I believe that mushrooms are going to help us expand consciousness. The collection is not just clothes to sell," he told Mr Porter Journal in 2022. "It's loaded with spiritual experiences and mystical states. We're just making clothes that can go along with people's journeys," Jaden added.
During an episode of her show 'Red Table Talk', Jada admitted to using the drug ecstasy during her battle with depression, saying, "In my depression, using ecstasy, drinking a whole lot, you know, and smoking a bunch of weed and trying to just find some peace in my mind. It's like, I knew [what] I was doing - I was doing ecstasy because I wanted to party."
