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It seems like the filtration theory still produced by far the most significant impact to our current understanding of psychedelic effects. What I was surprised

It seems like the filtration theory still produced by far the most significant impact to our current understanding of psychedelic effects. What I was surprised to learn was most research in this domain clearly distinguish adult and non-adult, and the filtration theory implies that kids or younger adults are more creative, have more imaginary freedom, and less emotionally stable - meaning they're naturally more "on drug" - make me wonder if 1 year old really feel like sky-high everyday.

dlwdlw 8y ago
Also may explain why they can be damaging to younger people. Like disturbing plants before their root system (filtration system) takes root tends to kill or damage the plants entire lifespan.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  Why do you think psychedelics are damaging for younger people? I doubt this has been studied.
  - virtualwhys 8y ago
    I believe there have been studies done on the detrimental effects of regular marijuana use on adolescents and resulting (permanently) impaired cognition. Having smoked way too much marijuana in my early life, it seems fairly obvious that regular drug use is potentially damaging to the developing brain (or any brain for that matter), independent of how interesting or intense the experiences while under the influence may be.
    - collyw 8y ago
      Marijuana isn't generally considered a psychedelic.
      - titzer 8y ago
        lmgtfy: http://psychedelics.com/thc/is-marijuana-a-psychedelic/ http://psychedelics.com/thc/is-marijuana-a-psychedelic/
        no_identd 8y ago
        "Psychedelics are an informal class", oh please. All classical psychedelics act as agonists of heterodimeric 5-HT2A–mGlu2 receptors.
      - bfuller 8y ago
        marijuana is definitely a psychedelic. eat a few grams of hash and tell me it's not.
        collyw 8y ago
        It isn't listed here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug That's what I mean by its not generally considered a psychedelic. I am aware some people class it as one. Personally I have never experienced psychedelic effects from it.
        bfuller 8y ago
        it is absolutely generally considered a psychedelic. like I said eat a few grams of hash and tell me it's not. it has been used that way in world religions for thousands of years.
        yesenadam 8y ago
        But that's like saying "Alcohol is deadly. Drink 10 bottles of whisky and tell me it's not." It's a spurious argument, irrelevant. That's nothing like how the drug is used 99.9999% of the time. Sure, it can be psychedelic, apparently--though I never came across hash that was at all. I've read about people tripping on hash, but never even heard anyone talk about anyone they know having that experience. I guess you know this.
    - drbojingle 8y ago
      I'd like to see this done with good lsd instead of marijuana.
- munchhausen 8y ago
  That is a really, really poor and flawed metaphor. It is completely arbitrary and there's no logic or reasoning behind it. The "filtration system" that is talked about here is not comparable to a root system, or, in other words, any life-sustaining or life-promoting system. Rather, a malignantly overgrown filtration system is the root cause of feelings of disconnectedness, deprivation, and subsequent depression, that are so common nowadays. A societal tendency to bulk up the "filtration system" to pathological dimensions is the reason why there is an opioid epidemic in North America right now. Thanks to our massive filtration systems we have filtered out most that is good about the human race, and have managed to build a civilization/economic system that is so dehumanized, cutthroat, unfair, lifeless and ultimately unfulfilling and meaningless, that most of us subjects walk around in a daze, in states of deep emotional deprivation, just looking for something, anything, to either anesthetize those painful feelings (opioids and other downers), or distract us from them (social media, porn, television, VR..."entertainment"). Like everywhere in nature, balance is the key to a healthy state. We have erred, for centuries, on the side of boosting the filtration system through whatever means were available, and have managed to build very effective and tall walls within ourselves that separate us from our fellow men, from the environment, and even from deeper strata of our own consciousness. Now, we are reaping the harvest of that - a mankind that is plagued by mental illness, carrying out environmental destruction wherever you look. But I digress. What I really wanted to say is - please, don't draw parallels between the "filtration system" and a root system. Really, most of us would benefit from downsizing the filtration system a notch or twenty...unlike plants, where cutting away roots would be of little benefit.
  - dleslie 8y ago
    I mostly agree, save for the aside about VR; social VR, when done well, is a connecting and expressive experience and not an isolating one.
    - Asooka 8y ago
      As someone who has spent close to 40 hours in VRChat so far (not to mention how many tweaking avatars in Blender and Unity), I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Of all the VR experiences out there nothing beats the ability to just make whatever skin you want for yourself and go around roleplaying in virtual worlds with other people. Or show off your creativity with shaders. You can be a walking shadertoy of your own design and awe people with raytraced fractals or whatever you wish. And it's free! It honestly feels like an early internet forum.
achileas 8y ago
Anecdotally, when I experimented with these, that's basically how I felt - it was very reminiscent of my imagination when I was much younger. As I started studying neuroscience, especially in grad school (I specialized in attention and sensory systems), the filtration theory made even more sense because our brain works on a lot of things in this way, especially our senses. I was also interested in autism and there's a fascinating hypothesis that the sensory effects are from malfunctioning sensory filters.
- bwang29 8y ago
  I feel that somehow this also changed how adults process pain and happiness. Now I have a million other questions - are adults seeking psychedelic as a result of fatigue or emotional boredom, as a method to revive imagination?
  - akvadrako 8y ago
    I would say for exploration. It's like traveling to an exotic land, more alien than anywhere on Earth.
dleslie 8y ago
I have kids, and I have family and friends who imbibe psychedelics. I have not imbibed such, but having observed their behaviour... My mother-in-law high on psylocibin paints pictures in a manner not too dissimilar to how my toddlers approach it. The things they say, the way they use colour, the concepts being expressed, and how it becomes play... Make of that what you will.
- sporkologist 8y ago
  If your mother-in-law is a professional artist, then I'd say this is interesting. If not, then she is just a novice like most people, and is having fun discovering the world of art, from the viewpoint that she discontinued it from childhood, when most kids give up drawing because their brains are frustrated with reconciling their drawings with the world around them which has correct perspective. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
  - cjslep 8y ago
    This comment seems to me to be incredibly condescending and implies that a professional artist (whatever that definition is) cannot have fun making new discoveries for themselves in the world of art. I am sorry that you are only interested in the professional artists on psychedelics; I think looking at its effect on all artists novice or otherwise is interesting.
    - yesenadam 8y ago
      Well, this comment seems incredibly condescending to me. You're not 'sorry', and I can't see the implication you suggest at all. Please allow people to freely be interested in what they're interested in.
      - cjslep 8y ago
        I am fine with people being interested in whatever pleases them, so long as they aren't being mean to others about it. Granted, a sibling comment to yours made me see how the person I responded to could formulate a reasonable argument. Whereas previously I could only see bourgeois academic snobbery. So, like you, I thought there was only one way to interpret it. But now, I have been enlightened. I am indeed sorry.
MikkoFinell 8y ago
The problem is the theory implies that people with brain damage should experience psychological effects similar to those induced by psychedelic drugs, and we don't see anything like that.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  It doesn’t imply that. “Brain damage” usually means gross structural damage, while psychedelics seem to operate at the neurotransmitter level.
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    Okay so damaging the neurotransmitters (filters) should create a more psychedelic experience for that person. I find that unlikely.
- iaml 8y ago
  Have you seen "my beautiful broken brain"(2014) ? It's exactly about that happening to one person. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSfpA3AEKmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSfpA3AEKmY
  - MikkoFinell 8y ago
    No hadn't seen it.
- stinos 8y ago
  we don't see anything like that Yes we do. For quite some effects seen in patients in psychiatry it's not too hard to come up with a drug which induces similar experiences. Take paranoia for instance. And hallucinations of course. Or, to mention an extreme and very rare example: there are people lacking a certain connection between the low-level visual processing and the parts translating that to known objects (sorry, don't remember exact terminology). It's extremely hard to imagine, but such people have normal vision yet they do not recognize based on what they see. E.g. they see a chair, but don't know it is a 'chair'. However when they touch the chair they know 'aha, chair'. Someone I know described that exactly once when on psychdelics; psilocybin IIRC.
anfractuosity 8y ago
I thought this was interesting: "It has been proposed that this connectivity may facilitate arbitrary sensory experiences in infants that are unlike anything experienced by typical adults but are similar to the sensory experiences of adults with synaesthesia, a rare sensory phenomenon that has been associated with exuberant neural connectivity and that is characterized by strong arbitrary associations between different sensations. We provide the first evidence for this infant-synaesthesia hypothesis by showing that the presence of particular shapes influences color preferences in typical 2- and 3-month-olds, but not in 8-month-olds or adults." From "Synaesthetic Associations Decrease During Infancy" by Katie Wagner and Karen R. Dobkins

dlwdlw 8y ago

Also may explain why they can be damaging to younger people. Like disturbing plants before their root system (filtration system) takes root tends to kill or damage the plants entire lifespan.

akvadrako 8y ago
Why do you think psychedelics are damaging for younger people? I doubt this has been studied.
- virtualwhys 8y ago
  I believe there have been studies done on the detrimental effects of regular marijuana use on adolescents and resulting (permanently) impaired cognition. Having smoked way too much marijuana in my early life, it seems fairly obvious that regular drug use is potentially damaging to the developing brain (or any brain for that matter), independent of how interesting or intense the experiences while under the influence may be.
  - collyw 8y ago
    Marijuana isn't generally considered a psychedelic.
    - titzer 8y ago
      lmgtfy: http://psychedelics.com/thc/is-marijuana-a-psychedelic/ http://psychedelics.com/thc/is-marijuana-a-psychedelic/
      - no_identd 8y ago
        "Psychedelics are an informal class", oh please. All classical psychedelics act as agonists of heterodimeric 5-HT2A–mGlu2 receptors.
    - bfuller 8y ago
      marijuana is definitely a psychedelic. eat a few grams of hash and tell me it's not.
      - collyw 8y ago
        It isn't listed here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug That's what I mean by its not generally considered a psychedelic. I am aware some people class it as one. Personally I have never experienced psychedelic effects from it.
        bfuller 8y ago
        it is absolutely generally considered a psychedelic. like I said eat a few grams of hash and tell me it's not. it has been used that way in world religions for thousands of years.
        yesenadam 8y ago
        But that's like saying "Alcohol is deadly. Drink 10 bottles of whisky and tell me it's not." It's a spurious argument, irrelevant. That's nothing like how the drug is used 99.9999% of the time. Sure, it can be psychedelic, apparently--though I never came across hash that was at all. I've read about people tripping on hash, but never even heard anyone talk about anyone they know having that experience. I guess you know this.
  - drbojingle 8y ago
    I'd like to see this done with good lsd instead of marijuana.
munchhausen 8y ago
That is a really, really poor and flawed metaphor. It is completely arbitrary and there's no logic or reasoning behind it. The "filtration system" that is talked about here is not comparable to a root system, or, in other words, any life-sustaining or life-promoting system. Rather, a malignantly overgrown filtration system is the root cause of feelings of disconnectedness, deprivation, and subsequent depression, that are so common nowadays. A societal tendency to bulk up the "filtration system" to pathological dimensions is the reason why there is an opioid epidemic in North America right now. Thanks to our massive filtration systems we have filtered out most that is good about the human race, and have managed to build a civilization/economic system that is so dehumanized, cutthroat, unfair, lifeless and ultimately unfulfilling and meaningless, that most of us subjects walk around in a daze, in states of deep emotional deprivation, just looking for something, anything, to either anesthetize those painful feelings (opioids and other downers), or distract us from them (social media, porn, television, VR..."entertainment"). Like everywhere in nature, balance is the key to a healthy state. We have erred, for centuries, on the side of boosting the filtration system through whatever means were available, and have managed to build very effective and tall walls within ourselves that separate us from our fellow men, from the environment, and even from deeper strata of our own consciousness. Now, we are reaping the harvest of that - a mankind that is plagued by mental illness, carrying out environmental destruction wherever you look. But I digress. What I really wanted to say is - please, don't draw parallels between the "filtration system" and a root system. Really, most of us would benefit from downsizing the filtration system a notch or twenty...unlike plants, where cutting away roots would be of little benefit.
- dleslie 8y ago
  I mostly agree, save for the aside about VR; social VR, when done well, is a connecting and expressive experience and not an isolating one.
  - Asooka 8y ago
    As someone who has spent close to 40 hours in VRChat so far (not to mention how many tweaking avatars in Blender and Unity), I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. Of all the VR experiences out there nothing beats the ability to just make whatever skin you want for yourself and go around roleplaying in virtual worlds with other people. Or show off your creativity with shaders. You can be a walking shadertoy of your own design and awe people with raytraced fractals or whatever you wish. And it's free! It honestly feels like an early internet forum.

achileas 8y ago

Anecdotally, when I experimented with these, that's basically how I felt - it was very reminiscent of my imagination when I was much younger. As I started studying neuroscience, especially in grad school (I specialized in attention and sensory systems), the filtration theory made even more sense because our brain works on a lot of things in this way, especially our senses. I was also interested in autism and there's a fascinating hypothesis that the sensory effects are from malfunctioning sensory filters.

bwang29 8y ago
I feel that somehow this also changed how adults process pain and happiness. Now I have a million other questions - are adults seeking psychedelic as a result of fatigue or emotional boredom, as a method to revive imagination?
- akvadrako 8y ago
  I would say for exploration. It's like traveling to an exotic land, more alien than anywhere on Earth.

dleslie 8y ago

I have kids, and I have family and friends who imbibe psychedelics. I have not imbibed such, but having observed their behaviour... My mother-in-law high on psylocibin paints pictures in a manner not too dissimilar to how my toddlers approach it. The things they say, the way they use colour, the concepts being expressed, and how it becomes play... Make of that what you will.

sporkologist 8y ago
If your mother-in-law is a professional artist, then I'd say this is interesting. If not, then she is just a novice like most people, and is having fun discovering the world of art, from the viewpoint that she discontinued it from childhood, when most kids give up drawing because their brains are frustrated with reconciling their drawings with the world around them which has correct perspective. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
- cjslep 8y ago
  This comment seems to me to be incredibly condescending and implies that a professional artist (whatever that definition is) cannot have fun making new discoveries for themselves in the world of art. I am sorry that you are only interested in the professional artists on psychedelics; I think looking at its effect on all artists novice or otherwise is interesting.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    Well, this comment seems incredibly condescending to me. You're not 'sorry', and I can't see the implication you suggest at all. Please allow people to freely be interested in what they're interested in.
    - cjslep 8y ago
      I am fine with people being interested in whatever pleases them, so long as they aren't being mean to others about it. Granted, a sibling comment to yours made me see how the person I responded to could formulate a reasonable argument. Whereas previously I could only see bourgeois academic snobbery. So, like you, I thought there was only one way to interpret it. But now, I have been enlightened. I am indeed sorry.

MikkoFinell 8y ago

The problem is the theory implies that people with brain damage should experience psychological effects similar to those induced by psychedelic drugs, and we don't see anything like that.

TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
It doesn’t imply that. “Brain damage” usually means gross structural damage, while psychedelics seem to operate at the neurotransmitter level.
- MikkoFinell 8y ago
  Okay so damaging the neurotransmitters (filters) should create a more psychedelic experience for that person. I find that unlikely.
iaml 8y ago
Have you seen "my beautiful broken brain"(2014) ? It's exactly about that happening to one person. Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSfpA3AEKmY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSfpA3AEKmY
- MikkoFinell 8y ago
  No hadn't seen it.
stinos 8y ago
we don't see anything like that Yes we do. For quite some effects seen in patients in psychiatry it's not too hard to come up with a drug which induces similar experiences. Take paranoia for instance. And hallucinations of course. Or, to mention an extreme and very rare example: there are people lacking a certain connection between the low-level visual processing and the parts translating that to known objects (sorry, don't remember exact terminology). It's extremely hard to imagine, but such people have normal vision yet they do not recognize based on what they see. E.g. they see a chair, but don't know it is a 'chair'. However when they touch the chair they know 'aha, chair'. Someone I know described that exactly once when on psychdelics; psilocybin IIRC.

anfractuosity 8y ago

I thought this was interesting: "It has been proposed that this connectivity may facilitate arbitrary sensory experiences in infants that are unlike anything experienced by typical adults but are similar to the sensory experiences of adults with synaesthesia, a rare sensory phenomenon that has been associated with exuberant neural connectivity and that is characterized by strong arbitrary associations between different sensations. We provide the first evidence for this infant-synaesthesia hypothesis by showing that the presence of particular shapes influences color preferences in typical 2- and 3-month-olds, but not in 8-month-olds or adults." From "Synaesthetic Associations Decrease During Infancy" by Katie Wagner and Karen R. Dobkins