8 ms·
I always see these hallucinogenic articles and think wow why is everyone advertising for hallucinogenic usage. I don't drink, not a single drug besides caffeine
by baldfat 6y ago
I always see these hallucinogenic articles and think wow why is everyone advertising for hallucinogenic usage. I don't drink, not a single drug besides caffeine and never smoked but there is an appeal to use hallucinogenic for health reasons is crazy to me.
I am too square I guess.
- melq 6y agoThis is a weird take. I hesitate to accuse you of not reading the study, but calling it an 'article' makes it seem like you just read the headline. The fact that there's a compound that has such a profound effect on the nervous system is certainly an important discovery, regardless of where that compound is found. For context, when I was in undergrad ~10 years ago, it was accepted as fact that a person only ever had the amount of neurons they were born with, and that new neurons could never be produced endogenously. In any event, the authors of this study certainly aren't advocating that anyone start using illegal drugs.
- dylan604 6y agoI read much less of calling it an article as a slight than just the fact the GP has noticed hallucinogens in the news lately, which is true. News tends to equate their lumping of words into sentences into paragraphs as news articles. It stems way back to the times of the printed news paper.
- rriepe 6y agoExactly. It hasn't been this big of a meme since the 60s.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Turing_Machine 6y agoRight. This is Nature, arguably the most prestigious scientific journal in existence. It's not some "Increase Your Brain Cells With This One Weird Trick" clickbait article on Taboola.
- trianglem 6y agoI haven’t done drugs for at least a decade and wasn’t particularly addicted to anything but there is something to experiencing those different head states.
- dylan604 6y agoAny use of herbal substances for medicinal use is going to require research. Sometimes, the results of that research has the result that was hoped for, while other times it has different results. Some of these unintended/unanticipated results could be bad or good. How do you feel about pharmaceutical drugs? A lot of the pharmaceutical drugs are based on plant research including these hallucinogenic types. They have figured out a way to make a synthetic version of these naturally occurring compounds, and now own patents on them. Just look at how many versions of opiates there are. Does that make you feel any less neutral toward the pharma "medicine"? I do appreciate the fact that your post is about self reflection on your decisions rather than the judging of others that do decide to participate.
- Zelphyr 6y agoI don’t think this deserves the amount of downvotes it’s getting. It’s a genuine inquiry and one I share. They’re a fascinating subject of study that I feel needs to continue. I sincerely hope the trend that we’ve been seeing where compounds like DMT, MDMA, and Psilocybin are getting the proper scientific attention they severely lacked for over 50 years. I understand why that is, but it’s a shame that it happened at all. Imagine where we would be if we had had that time to study and put these and other substances to good use.
- pietrovismara 6y agoIt might be a genuine inquiry but it comes from a uninformed point of view. Hence the downvotes.
- Zelphyr 6y agoI really think penalizing someone for asking a question, even if it comes from an uninformed point of view, even if it's as simple as a down-vote, is the wrong way to go. All it does is cause most people to dig their heels into their position instead of encouraging them to explore ideas that vary from their own.
- ggm 6y ago1) Treatment for severe depression (brain plasticity and resetting long wired state might be why this works) 2) Treatment for end of life (it seems to help with some kind of acceptance of the impending death, creates mental states which make for a less agitated ending) If you aren't needing 1) above, then thats good. Keep not needing it. If you aren't needing 2) above, you need to remember we all get there...
- baby 6y agoLots of things change once you try mdma with friends.
- ronyfadel 6y agoIn a good way or in a bad way? And what's with the obsession with "change", especially for "healthy normals"?
- baby 6y agoIn a good way. It’s kind of like trying pizza for the first time. You can live fine without ever doing it, but it’s fucking great, and it has created countless connections between people. I’m not sure how else to describe it, but I think everyone should try it once in their life.
- smokelegend 6y agoI have been preaching MDMA since the 90's In a safe environment, with people you trust, it will "Change" your life.
- pmoriarty 6y agoQuite a few ayahuasca users believe they are taking a sacred medicine which lets them communicate with god(s), cure their illnesses, speak to their dead ancestors or the spirit of nature, solve a host of personal problems, see the world in a whole new way, or give them magical powers. Not really comparable to smoking cigarettes, drinking caffeine or alcohol, which virtually no one believes any similar effect and are usually used for much more mundane reasons.
- CameronNemo 6y agoAlcohol does have some religious connotations. E.g. drinking wine during service by Catholics.
- Apocryphon 6y agoSure, but it's consumed in such limited quantities it doesn't actually provide any of the actual effects of the drug.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y agoMany ayahuasca shamans are using exactly tobacco as a support function in ceremonies. So people using that are also believing that they are doing something more profound than simply taking a drug. Not to start a discussion of what that means, but the difference between tobacco and aya which you pointed out to is not as big as you think.
- pengaru 6y agoFTR I've had far more negative physiological effects from caffeine consumption than any reasonable helping of magic mushrooms. Caffeine withdrawal symptoms are up there with a heavy drinking hangover that just won't go away during which I'll contemplate ending it all. I think it's important to realize "drugs" is so ambiguous and overused it's basically meaningless. Rather than this clear black and white dichotomy of non-drugs vs. drugs, good vs. bad, safe vs. harmful, non-hallucinogenic vs. hallucinogenic, there's a lot of nuance and every substance has its own risks vs. benefits to be considered, understood, and respected. This extends well beyond "drugs", the same can be said of food, exercise, sports, relationships... it's life.
- proverbialbunny 6y agoNew medicines come from researching different plants and chemicals. People regularly go out into forests in Africa and South America, find a new plant, and then explore it for medicinal purposes. It's an actual profession. There has been a ban on exploring certain plants in the last 50 years, and with that ban lifting, suddenly there is a constipated rush of research about these plants that would have otherwise been done slowly over decades.
- foota 6y agoWhat was that ban out of curiosity? Also, is there a name for this profession?
- proverbialbunny 6y agoThere is a name for the profession, but I don't know it. It's not my field of expertise. The ban? Schedule one medicine prohibited scientific research of those plants and chemicals. It wasn't until the presidency changed that, by turning a blind eye to it instead of enforcing it. The idea is if states legalize, then research should be legally allowed as well. Where I live all of this is legal, so it's where most of the research was happening. It's legal in more places in the US today, so for all I know research is happening now in more places.
- smokelegend 6y agoIn the US, Oregon is the only state to legalize mushrooms?
- proverbialbunny 6y agoI'm in the SF/Bay Area and it's legal here. What states have done is they legalize in the cities where the research is being done. (Or research follows where cities have legalized.)
- abraxas 6y agoIf you are perfectly content and don’t have an urge to try mind altering substances then don’t bother. What’s the reason to risk building a dependency that might be difficult to shake off? On the other hand if like many people you suffer from anxiety or depression and find that prescription medicine is ineffective then microdosing drugs can have miraculous effects. THC has helped me deal with anxiety way better than prescription drugs so I now micro dose THC capsules. I’m lucky enough to live in a country where weed and its derivatives are fully legal so I can just go to a store and buy what I need.
- dannyw 6y agoJust want to say that therapy and self care can also make a huge impact on anxiety or depression. The choice is not only between pharma drugs or plant drugs.
- abraxas 6y agoYes, this is true but in my case the cognitive behavioural therapies even when coupled with prescription medicine did not deliver tangible results.
- smokelegend 6y agoCurious do you have a exercise schedule? Just wondering if you've noticed any improvement from regular exercising? I'm not the best at "regular" (daily) exercise, but I do notice difference in my mental state when I exercise vs when I haven't for prolonged time periods. I have back problems, my idea of exercise is walking around the block. Which works mostly. Do you have a particular diet you follow to help alleviate anxiety? (I.e. no caffeine or sugar..etc?) Just curious about others who suffer anxiety disorder(s) not trying to single you out.
- bawolff 6y agoI don't drink or do other recreational drugs (personal choice). I still think they are a worthy subject of study. And in this context its studying medicinal properties, so its not even a recreational context.
- solinent 6y agoIt gives you a new perspective, but for some it can be traumatizing. I think it's a much better treatment than any drug out there, though, so maybe it has a potential to be integrated into our culture. Environment seems to be the biggest factor in any successful treatment--drugs, psychedelics, or nothing at all--environment reigns supreme.
- thelittleone 6y agoMany drugs are a method of escaping oneself. Ayahuasca is the opposite.
- forgingahead 6y agoThe media is a consensus-building machine, and there have been indeed more articles/papers/whatnot pushing for increased hallucinogenic usage. The real question is who benefits from this Overton Window shifting. You're not square at all, these are a good set of questions to be asking.
- WalterGR 6y agoThere has been more research into psychedelics in the past 5 years than in the preceding 5 years. Johns Hopkins, one of the top medical schools in the US, opened a research center dedicated to psychedelics last year. Moreover, they report “In 2000, the psychedelic research group at Johns Hopkins was the first to achieve regulatory approval in the U.S. to reinitiate research with psychedelics in healthy volunteers who had never used a psychedelic. Their 2006 publication on the safety and enduring positive effects of a single dose of psilocybin sparked a renewal of psychedelic research worldwide.” More US states are legalizing possession of so-called magic mushrooms. I’m not seeing a conspiracy here. (It’s also worth pointing out that academic research isn’t “the media.”)
- forgingahead 6y agoWho is funding this "research"? Academic research is as susceptible to influence-by-money as much as anyone else. A recent relevant example is Purdue Pharma: https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-purdue-pharma-media-playbook-how-it-planted-the-opioid-anti-story https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-purdue-pharma-medi...
- WalterGR 6y agoWho is funding this "research"? I don’t know. I’m not seeing any malfeasance and I don’t think research into psychedelics is innately immoral or improper, so I’m not motivated to check the institution’s funding sources. You can probably find this out fairly easily. Why do you put the word research in scare quotes? Do you not personally approve of the research, or do you have evidence that the research methodology or conclusions are problematic?