"But Rachel also has another hobby, one that makes her a bit different from the other moms in her Texas suburb—not that she talks about it with them. Once a month or so, after she and her husband put the kids to bed, Rachel texts her in-laws—who live just down the street—to make sure they’re home and available in the event of an emergency.
“And then, Rachel takes a generous dose of magic mushrooms, or sometimes MDMA, and—there’s really no other way to say this— spends the next several hours tripping balls.”
The reason things like Alcohol are “considered and generally recognized as safe” has a lot to do with their effect length on the body. It’s possible to isolate someone intoxicated this way for up to 24 hours and see them recover all of their facilities in the short term.
Granted; it still has long-term effects that are bad, just not show-stoppingly so, and it only affects people who actually abuse the stuff long-term for many years.
I do agree we should be a lot tougher on Alcohol use in general. Maybe not Prohibition levels; but some framework to cut off people from acquiring quantities that can intoxicate them so badly that they pose a danger to themselves and others.