9 ms·

I'm personally excited to see what sorts of new treatments will come out of using psychedelics medically. I've always been on the skeptical side of medical mari

I'm personally excited to see what sorts of new treatments will come out of using psychedelics medically. I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, but I have a feeling that LSD and psilocybin can really provide mental turning points and help people break out of depression.

freedomben 7y ago
I'm very optimistic as well. My family has hard-to-treat depression and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about psilocybin. Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" was a fantastic read. It only makes me wonder what other possibilities have been out there but banned and therefore unavailable for study and experimentation. Luckily the days of censoring and hoarding information seem to be coming to an end. Of course as a society we love the pendulum effect. We'll swing it too far and then it will come back the opposite way too far (so much for my optimism :-P)
- tempsy 7y ago
  From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I'm in the camp that depression is rarely just some "chemical imbalance" in the brain that you were unlucky to be born with, and yet that is how we currently think of it and treat it. It's most often the case there is something in one's past, very often from one's childhood, that has been avoided, and creates a chronic sense of worry/anxiety/depression that lingers. Psilocybin has the effect of ego death - it feels as though the subconscious hold you have on your brain that pushes down uncomfortable feelings or memories just goes away. This paired with therapy can be very powerful because you naturally become much more open to talk through distressing things that you otherwise normally numb over and helps you process past traumas much more efficiently.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - filoleg 7y ago
    Agreed. Imo, psilocybin won't just magically fix a chemical imbalance in your head. But it can open you up (for the duration of its effect) to some thoughts and ideas that could help you resolve your internal issues causing you depression, and those thoughts and realizations are what can help with getting rid of depression, as those realizations can stay with you even after the trip is over. Which is somewhat similar to what i have read about the ketamine therapy, which essentially just makes certain areas of your brain more neuroplastic for a short duration, helping you get out of your routine thought patterns and help create new neural pathways and reshape the existing ones easier. Note: I am not a brain researcher myself at all, so what I said could totally be just some pseudoscientific bs, but that's what I got after reading a bunch on both of the topic in a lot of places, including other HN threads. If you want to correct some misunderstandings in my post, please feel free to reply. I will be very happy to correct my misunderstandings.
    - tempsy 7y ago
      yeah not sure why my comment was downvoted tbh. i guess there is a large segment of the population that thinks of illness as something that happens to them, and doesn't want to take responsibility in controlling or mitigating it without a so called magic pill.
  - freedomben 7y ago
    > From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I don't think you are accusing me of saying that, but just to be clear I completely agree with this. Michael Pollan's book also doesn't paint it as a "magic pill." No doubt some people assume that, but I don't believe it exists. I do wonder about the accuracy of Freudian ideas, such as something in ones childhood being the cause or at least playing a role. It's certainly possible. Being raised by depressed people sucks, and there's a lot of scars that probably contribute to why depression seems to be inherited.
- yarg 7y ago
  Magic mushrooms were the first substance to make me feel like myself after years and years of deep depression. But I didn't get quite the one hit, life changing state of mind that is often attributed to psychedelics. One thing that I have read is that the whole life-changing thing requires a transcendental experience - and that participants who failed to reach that echelon didn't experience long term improvement. I can't really comment on that - because I simply never reached that breakthrough dose. The biggest issue for me is that magic mushrooms taste kinda bad - it's rather hard to eat enough of them. Truffles on the other hand, are completely inoffensive - tasting (in some way) like a slightly off nut. I could quite happily snack on a big-ass bowl of those things, and watch enthralled as the world turned weird.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    "Magic mushrooms were the first substance to make me feel like myself after years and years of deep depression. But I didn't get quite the one hit, life changing state of mind that is often attributed to psychedelics." Did you take them under the supervision of a trained psychedelic therapist, with the appropriate dose, with the right intention, in a therapeutic context, over multiple sessions, using a protocol designed for maximum therapeutic effect (which usually includes talk therapy both before and after the sessions)? Having the right set and setting are both absolutely critical to get the most out of psychedelics.
    - dx87 7y ago
      They're not talking about multiple sessions, they're talking about people advocating psychodelics who often claim that magic mushrooms are a wonder drug that you take once and it completely changes your outlook on life.
      - pmoriarty 7y ago
        There's no way to guarantee a powerful, life-changing experience. Some people do have one on their first try, some take more tries, others never do. All one can do is optimize the dose, set and setting to increase the odds that it'll happen.
- amelius 7y ago
  Curious about the mind-changing aspect. Will these drugs transform my personality type, e.g. from INTJ to ESFP?
ergothus 7y ago
> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the opiods I had used in the past. Some of the more "miracle" claims, however, seem pretty suspect to me and I'd want some reliable reseach. What makes you skeptical of so many claims?
- grawprog 7y ago
  I've definitely experienced the anti-inflammatory properties and the anti-nausea effects allowed my mom to keep food down while going through chemo. It was the only thing that would take away her nausea. I do agree with the parent poster about the more miraculous claims though and I think, personally those more miraculous claims create skepticism for the actual benefits. I kind of wish everyone took a more level headed approach to drugs in general. Every drug out there has some benefits and drawbacks. Without proper study, we're potentially missing many benefits and won't fully understand all the drawbacks. This includes approved pharmaceutical drugs too. Too many drugs get rushed out without fully understanding the side effects until people start suffering or dying.
- yarg 7y ago
  The treatment of Dravet syndrome with CBD seems to have genuine damned near miraculous results. And yes, the pain relief is very real.
- derefr 7y ago
  Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the compounds in marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing marijuana itself as a way of delivering those compounds. It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists. † For what it's being prescribed for, I mean—pain, nausea, anxiety, etc. THC, in its function as a psychedelic, may function as a treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (i.e. for much the same purpose LSD/MDMA/etc. are being investigated for.) But nobody's prescribing medical marijuana for this use-case right now; they're prescribing it for things where the presence of THC seems pretty irrelevant to the goal.
mataug 7y ago
> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases Really? A friend of mine had a similar experience to what @ergothus described in their comments. The friend had a biking accident and got stitches. To ease the pain the doctor prescribed Aadvil / Tylenol, but those drugs just caused diarrhea. So he tried edible marijuana[in a legal state] and it helped him a lot through a few weeks of painful recovery without any side effects. I find miracle claims suspect as well, I don't think marijuana cures cancer.
ArtWomb 7y ago
Low hanging fruit here may be ayahuasca / ibogaine treatment for symptoms of withdrawal from chronic opioid abuse. It sort of makes sense intuitively. If you you can just make it through the agony of junk sickness. You are in the clear. A 36-hour dose seems preternaturally suited. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773453/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773453/
adamsea 7y ago
There’s a great book by Michael Pollan, called “Change Your Mind”, I think, which talks a lot about the history of psychedelic research in the US. Great read.
- alexpetralia 7y ago
  This is a fantastic book. If anyone is interested in exploring the therapeutic uses of psilocybin in a safe, controlled setting, one of my best friends runs the Atman Retreat (recommended here by Pollan: https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/ https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/) Edit to add link: https://atmanretreat.com/ https://atmanretreat.com/
say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
Sativa-dominant strains have psychedelic qualities, offering dramatic introspective, frame-shifting experience. It isn't as profound an experience as one from psilocybin, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've experienced realizations while under the influence of sativa dominant strains similar to, if not greater than, those uncovered during therapy with a psychologist. However, other times the re-framing of reality was simply fiction or not as epic as what it felt like while under the influence. Since the experience is so introspective for me, I partake in it sparingly, in the right settings where I can get the most medicinal value from it.
- yawned 7y ago
  Throwaway because I don't like to tell people I smoke. I must echo this entire post. I'm able to learn so much about myself when high. Far more personal than a therapist ever gets. I do introspection sessions after smoking. I smoke twice a week and do at most 5 hours of introspecting every week. This year I'm doing every other quarter. After smoking I think about how to better myself and insights just flow in perhaps about 3 really good ones a session. And while yes about 10% of my insights are incorrect it's not a problem to write them all down in your phone and verify in a couple hours. Doesn't seem like many people have similar experiences.
  - say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
    Try listening to cognitive behavior therapy audio books while under the influence. I can't go too far into a chapter without pausing and losing myself in contemplation. Listening while under the influence is a great way to trigger introspection.
    - yawned 7y ago
      Have any recommendations?
- throwbackThurs 7y ago
  Sativa makes me go pretty bonkers, not in a good way. On the other hand Mushrooms and LSD are much more mild and therapeutic for my mind, even though the visual hallucinations are stronger. Personally I think weed is much more dangerous than LSD and mushrooms because it's done to such extreme quantities. E.g. the "smoke weed every day" motto is very dangerous for some.

freedomben 7y ago

I'm very optimistic as well. My family has hard-to-treat depression and there's a lot of reason to be optimistic about psilocybin. Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" was a fantastic read. It only makes me wonder what other possibilities have been out there but banned and therefore unavailable for study and experimentation. Luckily the days of censoring and hoarding information seem to be coming to an end. Of course as a society we love the pendulum effect. We'll swing it too far and then it will come back the opposite way too far (so much for my optimism :-P)

tempsy 7y ago
From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I'm in the camp that depression is rarely just some "chemical imbalance" in the brain that you were unlucky to be born with, and yet that is how we currently think of it and treat it. It's most often the case there is something in one's past, very often from one's childhood, that has been avoided, and creates a chronic sense of worry/anxiety/depression that lingers. Psilocybin has the effect of ego death - it feels as though the subconscious hold you have on your brain that pushes down uncomfortable feelings or memories just goes away. This paired with therapy can be very powerful because you naturally become much more open to talk through distressing things that you otherwise normally numb over and helps you process past traumas much more efficiently.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- filoleg 7y ago
  Agreed. Imo, psilocybin won't just magically fix a chemical imbalance in your head. But it can open you up (for the duration of its effect) to some thoughts and ideas that could help you resolve your internal issues causing you depression, and those thoughts and realizations are what can help with getting rid of depression, as those realizations can stay with you even after the trip is over. Which is somewhat similar to what i have read about the ketamine therapy, which essentially just makes certain areas of your brain more neuroplastic for a short duration, helping you get out of your routine thought patterns and help create new neural pathways and reshape the existing ones easier. Note: I am not a brain researcher myself at all, so what I said could totally be just some pseudoscientific bs, but that's what I got after reading a bunch on both of the topic in a lot of places, including other HN threads. If you want to correct some misunderstandings in my post, please feel free to reply. I will be very happy to correct my misunderstandings.
  - tempsy 7y ago
    yeah not sure why my comment was downvoted tbh. i guess there is a large segment of the population that thinks of illness as something that happens to them, and doesn't want to take responsibility in controlling or mitigating it without a so called magic pill.
- freedomben 7y ago
  > From my experience it's incorrect to think of psilocybin as some magic pill that will magically make your depression go away. I don't think you are accusing me of saying that, but just to be clear I completely agree with this. Michael Pollan's book also doesn't paint it as a "magic pill." No doubt some people assume that, but I don't believe it exists. I do wonder about the accuracy of Freudian ideas, such as something in ones childhood being the cause or at least playing a role. It's certainly possible. Being raised by depressed people sucks, and there's a lot of scars that probably contribute to why depression seems to be inherited.
yarg 7y ago
Magic mushrooms were the first substance to make me feel like myself after years and years of deep depression. But I didn't get quite the one hit, life changing state of mind that is often attributed to psychedelics. One thing that I have read is that the whole life-changing thing requires a transcendental experience - and that participants who failed to reach that echelon didn't experience long term improvement. I can't really comment on that - because I simply never reached that breakthrough dose. The biggest issue for me is that magic mushrooms taste kinda bad - it's rather hard to eat enough of them. Truffles on the other hand, are completely inoffensive - tasting (in some way) like a slightly off nut. I could quite happily snack on a big-ass bowl of those things, and watch enthralled as the world turned weird.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  "Magic mushrooms were the first substance to make me feel like myself after years and years of deep depression. But I didn't get quite the one hit, life changing state of mind that is often attributed to psychedelics." Did you take them under the supervision of a trained psychedelic therapist, with the appropriate dose, with the right intention, in a therapeutic context, over multiple sessions, using a protocol designed for maximum therapeutic effect (which usually includes talk therapy both before and after the sessions)? Having the right set and setting are both absolutely critical to get the most out of psychedelics.
  - dx87 7y ago
    They're not talking about multiple sessions, they're talking about people advocating psychodelics who often claim that magic mushrooms are a wonder drug that you take once and it completely changes your outlook on life.
    - pmoriarty 7y ago
      There's no way to guarantee a powerful, life-changing experience. Some people do have one on their first try, some take more tries, others never do. All one can do is optimize the dose, set and setting to increase the odds that it'll happen.
amelius 7y ago
Curious about the mind-changing aspect. Will these drugs transform my personality type, e.g. from INTJ to ESFP?

ergothus 7y ago

> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases, Really? I've always found the milder claims fairly believable (fighting nausea or chronic low level pain relief). As an anecdote, I can attest to dealing with kidney stone pain well (rather than stopping the pain it reduced how much I noticed it) and it ended up more effective and felt less dangerous than the opiods I had used in the past. Some of the more "miracle" claims, however, seem pretty suspect to me and I'd want some reliable reseach. What makes you skeptical of so many claims?

grawprog 7y ago
I've definitely experienced the anti-inflammatory properties and the anti-nausea effects allowed my mom to keep food down while going through chemo. It was the only thing that would take away her nausea. I do agree with the parent poster about the more miraculous claims though and I think, personally those more miraculous claims create skepticism for the actual benefits. I kind of wish everyone took a more level headed approach to drugs in general. Every drug out there has some benefits and drawbacks. Without proper study, we're potentially missing many benefits and won't fully understand all the drawbacks. This includes approved pharmaceutical drugs too. Too many drugs get rushed out without fully understanding the side effects until people start suffering or dying.
yarg 7y ago
The treatment of Dravet syndrome with CBD seems to have genuine damned near miraculous results. And yes, the pain relief is very real.
derefr 7y ago
Personally, I'm a skeptic that 1. CBD+THC offers any additional medical† benefits over CBD used alone; 2. that it makes any medical sense to prescribe a (non-dose-controllable) plant over a pill, or at the very least an extract with tested dosage. I'm not skeptical of the medical benefits of (some of) the compounds in marijuana; I'm just a skeptic of prescribing marijuana itself as a way of delivering those compounds. It's like prescribing willow bark for a headache when aspirin exists. † For what it's being prescribed for, I mean—pain, nausea, anxiety, etc. THC, in its function as a psychedelic, may function as a treatment for certain psychiatric disorders (i.e. for much the same purpose LSD/MDMA/etc. are being investigated for.) But nobody's prescribing medical marijuana for this use-case right now; they're prescribing it for things where the presence of THC seems pretty irrelevant to the goal.

mataug 7y ago

> I've always been on the skeptical side of medical marijuana usage in all but the most extreme cases Really? A friend of mine had a similar experience to what @ergothus described in their comments. The friend had a biking accident and got stitches. To ease the pain the doctor prescribed Aadvil / Tylenol, but those drugs just caused diarrhea. So he tried edible marijuana[in a legal state] and it helped him a lot through a few weeks of painful recovery without any side effects. I find miracle claims suspect as well, I don't think marijuana cures cancer.

ArtWomb 7y ago

Low hanging fruit here may be ayahuasca / ibogaine treatment for symptoms of withdrawal from chronic opioid abuse. It sort of makes sense intuitively. If you you can just make it through the agony of junk sickness. You are in the clear. A 36-hour dose seems preternaturally suited. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773453/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5773453/

adamsea 7y ago

There’s a great book by Michael Pollan, called “Change Your Mind”, I think, which talks a lot about the history of psychedelic research in the US. Great read.

alexpetralia 7y ago
This is a fantastic book. If anyone is interested in exploring the therapeutic uses of psilocybin in a safe, controlled setting, one of my best friends runs the Atman Retreat (recommended here by Pollan: https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/ https://michaelpollan.com/resources/psychedelics-resources/) Edit to add link: https://atmanretreat.com/ https://atmanretreat.com/

say_it_as_it_is 7y ago

Sativa-dominant strains have psychedelic qualities, offering dramatic introspective, frame-shifting experience. It isn't as profound an experience as one from psilocybin, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I've experienced realizations while under the influence of sativa dominant strains similar to, if not greater than, those uncovered during therapy with a psychologist. However, other times the re-framing of reality was simply fiction or not as epic as what it felt like while under the influence. Since the experience is so introspective for me, I partake in it sparingly, in the right settings where I can get the most medicinal value from it.

yawned 7y ago
Throwaway because I don't like to tell people I smoke. I must echo this entire post. I'm able to learn so much about myself when high. Far more personal than a therapist ever gets. I do introspection sessions after smoking. I smoke twice a week and do at most 5 hours of introspecting every week. This year I'm doing every other quarter. After smoking I think about how to better myself and insights just flow in perhaps about 3 really good ones a session. And while yes about 10% of my insights are incorrect it's not a problem to write them all down in your phone and verify in a couple hours. Doesn't seem like many people have similar experiences.
- say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
  Try listening to cognitive behavior therapy audio books while under the influence. I can't go too far into a chapter without pausing and losing myself in contemplation. Listening while under the influence is a great way to trigger introspection.
  - yawned 7y ago
    Have any recommendations?
throwbackThurs 7y ago
Sativa makes me go pretty bonkers, not in a good way. On the other hand Mushrooms and LSD are much more mild and therapeutic for my mind, even though the visual hallucinations are stronger. Personally I think weed is much more dangerous than LSD and mushrooms because it's done to such extreme quantities. E.g. the "smoke weed every day" motto is very dangerous for some.