8 ms·

Or one could lift weights, which is even safer and has many positive ancillary effects. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2680311

by User23 8y ago

Or one could lift weights, which is even safer and has many positive ancillary effects. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2680311 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst...

hfourm 8y ago
y not both
allthenews 8y ago
Safer is arguable. We actually don't know how unsafe psychedelics are in a controlled, professional setting, but people get hurt exercising all the time. If you think the two are anywhere near each other in terms of instantaneous effectiveness, you must be tripping. Exercise can take months to possibly help. A single good trip can fix years of depression, months forward.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > people get hurt exercising all the time. Olympic weightlifting is actually one of the safest sports. But most people who lift are doing body building or more sport-specific training, which is where you see most of the injuries.
  - Rumudiez 8y ago
    Olympic athletes are professionals. Anecdotally, my “yoked” coworkers frequently hurt themselves. Out of twenty people on my team, two hurt their backs so badly in the last month that they can’t sit or stand for more than an hour or two, among other minor injuries. Meanwhile, I commute by motorcycle exclusively five days a week and have never missed work due to or come to work with an injury. The safeness of any given activity is relative to each individual and their training.
    - Alex3917 8y ago
      > Olympic athletes are professionals. They're actually required to be amateurs, but otherwise yeah. :-)
    - MortenK 8y ago
      Olympic weightlifting is just the name for a discipline which incorporates a specific set of barbell excercises. It's injury rate is indeed extremely low (From Hamill, B. “Relative Safeety of Weightlifting and Weight Training” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 8(1):53-57, 1994 https://imgur.com/a/0jI0CzK https://imgur.com/a/0jI0CzK). Your typical gym-goer does all kinds of other stuff though, like crossfit and similar nonsense, which is highly injury prone. The "classic" (i.e. Olympic) exercises, is a very safe sport.
Sir_Substance 8y ago
It also takes a lot of commitment and time that not everyone has, and requires you to by physically capable of lifting weights which not everyone is. On a more nuanced note, different things work for different people, and gyms aren't the optimal mental healing environment for everyone. If you're gonna arrange everyone on a hypothetical comfort spectrum between gym and library, it seems reasonable that some people would be more likely to seek mental help if it came in the form of taking a tab under supervision from a qualified professional in a private room than they would if they have to go lift in the company of a bunch of loudly moaning middle-aged men hell bent on proving to the room at large that they are the highest quality specimen of humanity in the room. Lets not be elitist about the paths to mental health, options are good.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- rarec 8y ago
  >It also takes a lot of commitment and time It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues. The latter part of your argument I personally have never ever once experienced, nor have anyone I known experience it outside of the gym at high school. People grunt when exerting effort, everyone wears headphones anyway. And even then, you don't need to go to the gym to lift, calisthenics are perfectly fine for those with no access/no desire to go the gym.
  - Sir_Substance 8y ago
    >It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues. Unless you don't have a car, or live in a congested city, or live outside the city, in which case it can be half an hour of commuting time before you get your half hour of exercise. It's also ~$60 a month, which not everyone can spare. Your statement also assumes people aren't working two jobs, and aren't working shift work (or have access to a 24h gym, which not everyone does).
    - 8y ago
briga 8y ago
A lot of people just want a no-effort cure-all. Things like exercise, meditation, healthy eating--all of which can help with mental health problems--require concentrated effort over a long period of time, and thus are unlikely to be preferred over a pill. Before anyone gets upset, I'm not saying that pills are bad, I'm just saying that many rely on them without making an effort to make other positive changes to their life.
- Jare 8y ago
  "Mental health" and "making an effort" are two dangerous terms to combine in the same argument. Just getting out of bed every morning can already be a big effort for many people with mental health problems, much bigger effort than exercise is for many sane folks; it should be appreciated as such.
  - graphitezepp 8y ago
    It's something you can't understand without experiencing yourself. Always sounds pathetic from the perspective of people who have lived their lives having okay mental health.
  - User23 8y ago
    Your point is taken, but one must remember that in the end we are all of us responsible for our own lives. There's a reason why people who lift joke that the heaviest weight in the gym is the front door. One approach that has worked well for many is establishing positive habits to displace negative ones. That takes a while, but there are tricks to help, like having a group to hold you accountable.
    - Jare 8y ago
      Accountability works for procrastination and things that, as you say, can be described as negative habits or character traits. Depression is a completely different beast. Depression is like I'm sitting on your chest and tell you that breathing is easy and all you need is to do it rhythmically. Depression is like that day your brain doesn't function properly after not sleeping during the night, but every day for years and regardless how much you sleep. Depression is not a bad habit, just like the flu is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.
mancerayder 8y ago
First, why 'or'? Second, anyone who thinks psychedelics are a shortcut or an easy way to do something obviously haven't experienced them.
- DanBC 8y ago
  > anyone who thinks psychedelics are a shortcut or an easy way to do something But this is how the early experiments with ketamine are being described - as a near instant treatment that takes a couple of hours and lasts for months.
  - gvhst 8y ago
    I don't want to be overly pedantic here but Ketamine isn't a psychedelic. Instead it is a dissociative hallucinogen. In that line, Ketamine's mechanism for anti-depression is significantly more pharmacological than a classical psychedelic, which leads to a subjective experience that then leads to an effect.
  - mancerayder 8y ago
    I've never had ketamine, but its status as a hypnotic and its use in surgery suggests it's something that numbs the mind. Psychedelics do the opposite, in a very extreme way. It's an intense experience where certain mental barriers disappear, some of which are crutches which are taken away. Some things become unforgettable. I highly recommend doing more research before pushing exercise as a more moral (or whatever, 'safer' if you prefer, but I suspect most opposition is on old-fashioned moral grounds) alternative. The hand-me-down moralisms about drugs have got to stop, especially in a world of legitimate alcohol and prescription drug use. It's time to question what the authorities have been legitimizing versus stigmatizing. The opioid crisis and long-time cannabis prohibition aren't enough to cause questions about the impartiality of the status quo?
    - User23 8y ago
      You appear to have some kind of problem with morality. I recommend ignoring such persons on the grounds that listening to them is likely to cause harm and unlikely to be beneficial.
DanBC 8y ago
The treatment effects of exercise are often overplayed. Exercise might help prevent mental ill health, and it's important because mental health meds have severe impact on physical health, but it's probably not a great treatment option, even if you can get people to comply with the treatment. Exercise is moderately better than nothing, but only if you include weak studies. As soon as you only include good studies the efficacy drops off. http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depression http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...

by User23 8y ago

hfourm 8y ago

y not both

allthenews 8y ago

Safer is arguable. We actually don't know how unsafe psychedelics are in a controlled, professional setting, but people get hurt exercising all the time. If you think the two are anywhere near each other in terms of instantaneous effectiveness, you must be tripping. Exercise can take months to possibly help. A single good trip can fix years of depression, months forward.

Alex3917 8y ago
> people get hurt exercising all the time. Olympic weightlifting is actually one of the safest sports. But most people who lift are doing body building or more sport-specific training, which is where you see most of the injuries.
- Rumudiez 8y ago
  Olympic athletes are professionals. Anecdotally, my “yoked” coworkers frequently hurt themselves. Out of twenty people on my team, two hurt their backs so badly in the last month that they can’t sit or stand for more than an hour or two, among other minor injuries. Meanwhile, I commute by motorcycle exclusively five days a week and have never missed work due to or come to work with an injury. The safeness of any given activity is relative to each individual and their training.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > Olympic athletes are professionals. They're actually required to be amateurs, but otherwise yeah. :-)
  - MortenK 8y ago
    Olympic weightlifting is just the name for a discipline which incorporates a specific set of barbell excercises. It's injury rate is indeed extremely low (From Hamill, B. “Relative Safeety of Weightlifting and Weight Training” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 8(1):53-57, 1994 https://imgur.com/a/0jI0CzK https://imgur.com/a/0jI0CzK). Your typical gym-goer does all kinds of other stuff though, like crossfit and similar nonsense, which is highly injury prone. The "classic" (i.e. Olympic) exercises, is a very safe sport.

Sir_Substance 8y ago

It also takes a lot of commitment and time that not everyone has, and requires you to by physically capable of lifting weights which not everyone is. On a more nuanced note, different things work for different people, and gyms aren't the optimal mental healing environment for everyone. If you're gonna arrange everyone on a hypothetical comfort spectrum between gym and library, it seems reasonable that some people would be more likely to seek mental help if it came in the form of taking a tab under supervision from a qualified professional in a private room than they would if they have to go lift in the company of a bunch of loudly moaning middle-aged men hell bent on proving to the room at large that they are the highest quality specimen of humanity in the room. Lets not be elitist about the paths to mental health, options are good.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
rarec 8y ago
>It also takes a lot of commitment and time It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues. The latter part of your argument I personally have never ever once experienced, nor have anyone I known experience it outside of the gym at high school. People grunt when exerting effort, everyone wears headphones anyway. And even then, you don't need to go to the gym to lift, calisthenics are perfectly fine for those with no access/no desire to go the gym.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  >It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues. Unless you don't have a car, or live in a congested city, or live outside the city, in which case it can be half an hour of commuting time before you get your half hour of exercise. It's also ~$60 a month, which not everyone can spare. Your statement also assumes people aren't working two jobs, and aren't working shift work (or have access to a 24h gym, which not everyone does).
  - 8y ago

briga 8y ago

A lot of people just want a no-effort cure-all. Things like exercise, meditation, healthy eating--all of which can help with mental health problems--require concentrated effort over a long period of time, and thus are unlikely to be preferred over a pill. Before anyone gets upset, I'm not saying that pills are bad, I'm just saying that many rely on them without making an effort to make other positive changes to their life.

Jare 8y ago
"Mental health" and "making an effort" are two dangerous terms to combine in the same argument. Just getting out of bed every morning can already be a big effort for many people with mental health problems, much bigger effort than exercise is for many sane folks; it should be appreciated as such.
- graphitezepp 8y ago
  It's something you can't understand without experiencing yourself. Always sounds pathetic from the perspective of people who have lived their lives having okay mental health.
- User23 8y ago
  Your point is taken, but one must remember that in the end we are all of us responsible for our own lives. There's a reason why people who lift joke that the heaviest weight in the gym is the front door. One approach that has worked well for many is establishing positive habits to displace negative ones. That takes a while, but there are tricks to help, like having a group to hold you accountable.
  - Jare 8y ago
    Accountability works for procrastination and things that, as you say, can be described as negative habits or character traits. Depression is a completely different beast. Depression is like I'm sitting on your chest and tell you that breathing is easy and all you need is to do it rhythmically. Depression is like that day your brain doesn't function properly after not sleeping during the night, but every day for years and regardless how much you sleep. Depression is not a bad habit, just like the flu is not a warm and fuzzy feeling.

mancerayder 8y ago

First, why 'or'? Second, anyone who thinks psychedelics are a shortcut or an easy way to do something obviously haven't experienced them.

DanBC 8y ago
> anyone who thinks psychedelics are a shortcut or an easy way to do something But this is how the early experiments with ketamine are being described - as a near instant treatment that takes a couple of hours and lasts for months.
- gvhst 8y ago
  I don't want to be overly pedantic here but Ketamine isn't a psychedelic. Instead it is a dissociative hallucinogen. In that line, Ketamine's mechanism for anti-depression is significantly more pharmacological than a classical psychedelic, which leads to a subjective experience that then leads to an effect.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  I've never had ketamine, but its status as a hypnotic and its use in surgery suggests it's something that numbs the mind. Psychedelics do the opposite, in a very extreme way. It's an intense experience where certain mental barriers disappear, some of which are crutches which are taken away. Some things become unforgettable. I highly recommend doing more research before pushing exercise as a more moral (or whatever, 'safer' if you prefer, but I suspect most opposition is on old-fashioned moral grounds) alternative. The hand-me-down moralisms about drugs have got to stop, especially in a world of legitimate alcohol and prescription drug use. It's time to question what the authorities have been legitimizing versus stigmatizing. The opioid crisis and long-time cannabis prohibition aren't enough to cause questions about the impartiality of the status quo?
  - User23 8y ago
    You appear to have some kind of problem with morality. I recommend ignoring such persons on the grounds that listening to them is likely to cause harm and unlikely to be beneficial.

DanBC 8y ago

The treatment effects of exercise are often overplayed. Exercise might help prevent mental ill health, and it's important because mental health meds have severe impact on physical health, but it's probably not a great treatment option, even if you can get people to comply with the treatment. Exercise is moderately better than nothing, but only if you include weak studies. As soon as you only include good studies the efficacy drops off. http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depression http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...