KnowYourStuffNZ

It's still an interesting study with some useful results, and we're here for it 😊

🍄After 12 weeks, ¼ of participants went into remission. This is much more than the usual 10% remission in an antidepressant trial.

There are a few limitations of this study:
1) Small sample size
2) All white participants

This makes it hard to tell how useful it would be for the wider population.

🍄Psilocybin was effective at improving symptoms of depression
🍄However, in patients who also had PTSD, it was much less effective.
🍄No serious adverse effects were reported during the study, but two participants reported headaches and one patient got worse depression after taking psilocybin.

2/n

Single-Dose Psilocybin for Depression With Severe Treatment Resistance: An Open-Label Trial | American Journal of Psychiatry Objective: Depression varies along a difficulty-to-treat spectrum. Patients whose illness fails to respond to at least five treatments may be considered to have severely treatment-resistant depression...

Hi friends! It's Peer Review Friday 🥳🥳🥳

This week's article is a trial of psilocybin for treatment-resistent depression. Aaronson et al. administered a 25mg dose of psilocybin to 12 patients with treatment-resistant depression.

Interesting things for us:

1/n

psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10....

Kia ora e hoa mai i Whāingaroa! Kua tae mai ta matou whare haumanu tātari matū ia marama 😃

💛 Ina: 4-7pm, 18 Whiringa-ā-nuku
💛 Kei hea: 45 Bow St, Whāingaroa

Ko te tātaritanga matū he kore utu, he muna, he kore-whakawa, he 100% te ture 😘

Hi Raglan friends! We've got our regular drug checking coming your way this weekend! 😃

💛 When: 4pm-7pm, 18 October
💛 Where: Raglan Community House, 45 Bow St

Drug checking is free, confidential, non-judgmental, and 100% legal, so bring us your gear and find out what's in your stuff 😘

Safe Drugs on Trial: DULF’s Trafficking Case Begins | The Tyee The founders are charged with trafficking. Their lawyers argue they had a legal exemption from drug laws.

thetyee.ca/News/2025/10...

Hi friends! Can you help Minske with their research?

Kia ora e hoa mai i Tāmaki Makaurau! Kua tae mai ta matou whare haumanu tātari matū auau

💛 Ina: 6-9pm, 18 Whiringa-ā-nuku
💛 Kei hea: The Button Factory, 2 Abbey Street, Te pokapū o Tāmaki Makaurau

Ko te tātaritanga matū he kore utu, he muna, he kore-whakawa, he 100% te ture 😘

Hi Auckland friends! We've got another fortnightly drug checking clinic coming up this week 😁

💛 When: 6-9pm, 18 October
💛 Where: The Button Factory, 2 Abbey Street, Auckland Central

Drug checking is free, confidential, non-judgmental, and 100% legal, so come and find out what's in your stuff 😘

Kia ora e hoa mai i Ōtautahi! Kotahi noa ta matou wātū tātari matū i mua i te mutunga o te tau o te whare wananga😄

💛 Ina: 3-7pm, 17 Whiringa-ā-nuku
💛 Kei hea: The Club Rooms, Haere Roa, 90 Ilam Road, Ilam.

Ko te tātaritanga matū he kore utu, he muna, he kore-whakawa, he 100% te ture 🙂

Hi Christchurch friends! There's only a couple of weeks left of our regular checking clinics at UCSA, so come see us while we're here 💛

💛 When: 3-7pm, every Wednesday
💛 Where: The Club Rooms, Haere Roa, 90 Ilam Road, Ilam.

Drug checking is free, confidential, non-judgmental, and 100% legal 😘

More receipts:

Riots in Aotearoa
nzhistory.govt.nz/keyword/riots

Aotearoa in the Vietnam War
vietnamwar.govt.nz/nz-vietnam-war

Polynesian Panthers
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynes...

Receipts:

Hansard quote: babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc...

TWO data search queries:
Key findings - Services Provided - Number of clients seen by team type x District

Clients - Special Services x Year x Age group x Team Type
tewhatuora.shinyapps.io/mental-healt...

Are we ready yet? Because now's good.

Join us next week as we look at some of the factors that led to the Class A scheduling of cannabis and LSD.

7/n

“It’s not easy to legislate for what is really a social problem… the whole problem of drugs is much more a social problem than a criminal one. We have to recognise...that New Zealand is not yet ready to accept...that perhaps there are other ways of trying to cope with some of these problems.”

7/n

What we also have now is a justice system filled with drug-related offenders under MoDA - over 10k people in the last 10 years.

We’ll end here with a very relevant quote during the reading of the bill that became MoDA in 1975:

6/n

MoDA was put in place to stop drug harms happening here. They happened anyway 😕

People using addiction services: 1968=159, 2024=23,890 (Te Whatu Ora)

Children <15 accessing drug and alcohol teams: 1968=0, 2024=1,708 (Te Whatu Ora)

5/n

The Blake Palmer report feared that it was only a matter of time before drug use got chaotic.

International drug use and abuse was rising, and the UN were pushing for us to join the fold. NZ accepted that new drugs were causing major riots, so we went along with the UN’s consensus.

4/n

1. Polynesian Panthers protesting racism in sport, 1970 (2 arrests)
2. Anti-Vietnam war protests 1969 & 1970 (41 arrests)

Things didn’t get chaotic until the 1981 Springbok riots (1,500 arrests).

So why did we accept the UN’s international drug laws?

3/n

“...improper use of drugs in New Zealand has a long history, it has affected only a very small segment of the population and until recently it has not been regarded as a serious threat…”

Our 60s civil rights movement was tame compared to the US. We had 3 big Police clashes in the hippy era:

2/n

Hi friends! It's Mythbuster Wednesday🙂

This is part 2 of our dive into MoDA’s legal background. You can find part 1 in our feed.

The 1969 Blake Palmer report claimed that our drug problem was a non-event:

1/n

Kia ora e hoa mai i Ōtepoti! Kua tae mai ta matou whare haumanu tātari matū i te Rāmere 😄

💛 Ina: 4:30-7:30pm, 17 Whiringa-ā-nuku
💛 Kei hea: OUSA Clubs & Societies building, 84 Albany Street

Ko te tātaritanga matū he kore utu, he muna, he kore-whakawa, he 100% te ture 😊

Kia ora e hoa mai i Mauao! Kei te haere mai ta matou whare haumanu tātari matū

💛 Ina: 12-3pm, 17 Whiringa-ā-nuku
💛 Kei hea: NEMMS needle exchange, 21b Totara Street, Mauao. Whakamahia te tatau o muri i te huarahi o Phoenix

Ko te tātaritanga matū he kore utu, he muna, he kore-whakawa & 100% te ture

Hi Dunedin friends! We've got a drug checking clinic heading your way this week 😃😃 😃

💛 When: 4:30-7:30pm, 17 October
💛 Where: OUSA Clubs and Societies Centre, 84 Albany Street, Dunedin North

Drug checking is free, confidential, non-judgmental, and 100% legal 💛

Hi Bay of Plenty friends! We've got our regular Mount Maunganui drug checking clinic this week😀

💛 When: 12-3pm, 17 October
💛 Where: NEMMS Needle Exchange, 21b Totara Street, Mount Maunganui (Use the Phoenix Lane entrance)

Drug checking is free, confidential, non-judgmental, and 100% legal 💛

We've got over a centuries' worth of data from the entire WORLD showing the absolute failure of prohibition and its punitive legal frameworks.

How many more people have to die before things change?

6/6

Instead they took away something that's been proven to lower peoples' risks, and now people are dying. Just like everyone told the LNP they would.

This is what happens when 'tough on crime' legislation ignores basic common sense.

5/n

If the LNP truly wanted to hurt dealers like they say they do, they'd let people use drug checking services. The reputational and associated economic consequences would fall on the dealer and the rest would be history.

4/n

The reports given by multiple stakeholder groups including medical professionals said that people were going to die because of this.

Other reports given to the LNP echoed what our data has shown over the last decade - people will decline to take substances that are unexpected high risk.

3/n