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Before you go spending thousands of dollars on ketamine infusions I urge you to do two things: 1. read Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind 2. Look

Before you go spending thousands of dollars on ketamine infusions I urge you to do two things: 1. read Michael Pollan’s book, How to Change Your Mind 2. Look into the process of cultivating your own mushrooms at home - it’s ultimately very easy to produce your own medicine

after_care 5y ago
Clearly ketamine infusions are about being legal and all the benefits of doing business out in the open. Anyone could buy illicit ketamine for 1/50th the cost and administer at home, but that is a felony.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  Ketamine is not a psychedelic.
  - nisegami 5y ago
    I think GP commenter was replying to your remark that ketamine infusions cost thousands of dollars, not your remark about mushrooms.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Jerrrry 5y ago
    have you ever k-holed? Nitrous is also a dissociative, with psychedelic properties. Alcohol can even push this boundary.
- samatman 5y ago
  It is in fact a misdemeanour, within the US at least, outside of the most benighted states.
  - after_care 5y ago
    Some states allow for small amounts of ketamine to be a misdemeanor, but for many (most?) it’s a felony. In Texas and Florida, the second and third most populous states, possession of any amount of Ketamine is a felony.
augustuspolius 5y ago
Educating yourself on psychoactive substances is a good advise. Saying that, many people who are dealing with depression and anxiety need active help. Growing and consuming your own mushrooms might be a very counterproductive or even dangerous advise for an inexperienced person with severe anxiety. Managed ketamine therapy starts as low as $1200 for 6 sessions I believe.
- akomtu 5y ago
  Those 6 sessions are bundled with a long manuscript that relieves the clinic from all liability, so you're on your own anyway.
  - augustuspolius 5y ago
    Check out Mindbloom. These sessions are bundled with a psychiatric and medical assessment, integration sessions, clear and easy to follow guidance for every session, music options. They are very focused on “set and setting”. Also the first session requires you to have a guide present (your friend or relative), who has to communicate over video with your Mindbloom guide right before the session. This system is not perfect but practically as close as it can get to a fully guided affordable session.
    - goatsi 5y ago
      Do you have any experience with them? From this recent article it seems like they are having issues with scaling and staff turnover: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpp3k/psychedelic-telemedicine-has-arrived-what-could-possibly-go-wrong https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpp3k/psychedelic-telemedic...
      - augustuspolius 5y ago
        I am having an exceptionally positive experience with them. Saying that, I am pretty experienced when it comes to therapy and psychedelics, so didn’t need a lot of handholding from them.
ghostly_s 5y ago
Ketamine and Psylocibin are in no way equivalent.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- whalesalad 5y ago
  Correct. Ketamine is making strides due to the fact that it is already a legal drug and pharma can charge big bucks for it. It is very helpful in the acute sense, but long-term results are bleak. Psilocbin on the other hand has decades of research behind it showing how well it can be used for therapeutic purposes, but there is no money in it right now. I hate to sound like a tin hat conspiracy theorist - but I guarantee that once a pharmaceutical company can legally sell psilocybin therapy you'll never hear about ketamine again.
  - MisterChris11 5y ago
    I've tried many antidepressants with mild improvement. The drugs give me the ability to function, but i'm just pretty numb. I've done lots of talk therapy, with little success. The problem is that I emotionally shutdown as a child due to a lot of traumatic events. Would ketamine open me up, to allow me to deal with the trauma I buried ?
    - GordonS 5y ago
      Have you tried 5-HTP? I started taking it around a decade ago, maybe more, and it was really helpful for my depression. Aside from 5-HTP, I started taking oral ketamine for chronic neuropathic pain around 1-2 years back, and it's been absolutely transformational - I've suffered with depression for my entire life, even when I was a kid, and now for the first time ever I feel... like it's maybe not an issue! The dark feelings of sadness and loneliness, the random tears, the pointless futility of existence... those just aren't there anymore.
fnord77 5y ago
going off and doing mushrooms on your own is nowhere equivalent to psychedelic-assisted therapy. this is irresponsible advice for people who have mental illneses
irishloop 5y ago
I spent quite a bit of my late adolescence consuming mind-altering substances like LSD and mushrooms. It did expand my mind and made me appreciate certain things. But it did not fix my depression or make me feel less alone. I might feel connected to the universe -- for a time. But it eventually fades, and the old demons come back. Sooner or later, you need to deal with the issues at hand. The reason you feel this way. For me, going to therapy allowed me to address some of the root issues -- generational trauma, a lack of affection, perhaps chemicals in my brain -- and allowed me to start rewriting my story of myself. I enjoyed my experiments with psychedelics, and I would not discourage anyone from using them. But they are not the cure-all many claim, either.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  The drugs certainly do not magically fix your problems. But it does allow you to see them, where you can inspect them (read: yourself) without judgement. This is what people refer to when they say "ego death". Your ego is not dying, it's just that your consciousness has been relaxed to a point that you are capable of witnessing it for what it truly is. "Set and setting" is a frequent quip of the psychonaut that doesn't get enough respect. You must have intention. Psychedelics are like removing the bumpers from the side of a bowling lane - without intention you will just fall into the gutter (figuratively). Therapy is vitally important, either externally or internally. One can certainly perform self-therapy, which is sometimes only enabled with the help of a mind-altering substance like Psilocybin. I think you would be surprised to try them again. You have a lot more lived experiences under your belt, new perspectives, new/fewer biases, etc...
  - blackhaz 5y ago
    Great comment. This "ego death" can also be achieved through practices like Atma Vichara. Taking a shroom is catapulting yourself into that state of witnessing. It will definitely come off and the mind will take over, as it was induced artificially, the question is - what are you going to do with yourself during this state? Defining or, rather, roughly sketching out, a mission might be one way to approach psychedelics. You don't want to follow it to the letter, to avoid self-limits, but at least define your attitude: are you looking for a master, an answer, a resolution? Do you want to feel what's inside of something, i.e. how your reactions are built, where this or that comes from? Just mildly keeping your goal in mind may set you to achieve the right result. As a quick example of the outcome, at some point I felt my body telling me "man, what are you doing with this e-cigarette? Just stop putting this in me." In a few months I quit for good. Understand this might not be a demon as big as the one causing depression, but maybe this will help? Where did that guy came from?
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Advising people to self medicate is very bad advice.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Well... almost everybody self medicates, one way or another. I doing think I know anybody that doesn’t reach for caffeine, Tylenol, alcohol, or cannabis, once in a while.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    Taking Tylenol is the same as taking an illicit drug for serious mental illness? Self medicating with cannabis and alcohol are bad news bears too. I wouldn't advise doing anything without your doctor being in the loop.
foobiekr 5y ago
No one will ship spores to California. I've looked. We tried shrooms once on a whim, in Amsterdam, and while it wasn't that interesting a trip, it did have the side effect of eliminating my wife's OCD for almost a full year. I wish they were easily available. I've even considered driving to that "church" in Oakland to get her something. I don't otherwise have the right kind of friends (or they are quite discrete about it despite my having mentioned it).
- lezojeda 5y ago
  Have you searched on https://www.shroomery.org/ https://www.shroomery.org/ or the subreddit unclebens? Maybe this goes against hackernews rules, but you may contact someone with prints there. There is a discord called Fungus Amongus as well, you may have luck there.
- whalesalad 5y ago
  Get a PO Box in Reno. Make a day trip out of it. Driving through Tahoe would be tough right about now but it would be well worth it. Or just drive up to Oregon where you can buy them (the fruits) legally.
jmcgough 5y ago
even better than psilocybin for me has been MDMA - there was a study recently about how it can help with social anxiety in autistic people. It's also helped me a lot in dealing with trauma, opening up to people and deepening my existing friendships and relationships.
pacija 5y ago
Uh, why so expensive? Some 20 years ago liquid ketamine was available over the counter in veterinaries here on Balkans, it being known anaesthetics for animals like kettle. You could buy like 2l bottle for less than 20 EUR. When it became really popular among partygoers it became harder to get in cities (also some people got reported to the police), but there was still plenty of it in villages and smaller farming towns. One would just pour the liquid on china plate and put it on smallest temperature on a kitchener. Liquid would soon evaporate, leaving crystals ready for snorting. Fun times. I'm glad they are over for me. I guess I'm cured :)
- GordonS 5y ago
  Here in the UK, I pay my pharmacy £13 for a 10ml vial containing 50mg/ml ketamine (I take it for chronic neuropathic pain, prescribed privately since the NHS wouldn't do it). It's available much cheaper in bulk - I know these therapies need equipment and supervision, but I still have no idea how they are so expensive.
7thaccount 5y ago
I don't know anything about psychedelics or any drugs, but isn't it true that they can burn out your brain? So although they may have some benefits for those suffering from certain ailments, isn't there significant risk involved? If so, it would seem like your post is missing some very important disclaimers.
zaxbeast 5y ago
> 2. Look into the process of cultivating your own mushrooms at home - it’s ultimately very easy to produce your own medicine there's only 3 states where it is illegal to have those mushroom spores and I'm in one of them....
blockwriter 5y ago
2. How?

after_care 5y ago

Clearly ketamine infusions are about being legal and all the benefits of doing business out in the open. Anyone could buy illicit ketamine for 1/50th the cost and administer at home, but that is a felony.

whalesalad 5y ago
Ketamine is not a psychedelic.
- nisegami 5y ago
  I think GP commenter was replying to your remark that ketamine infusions cost thousands of dollars, not your remark about mushrooms.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Jerrrry 5y ago
  have you ever k-holed? Nitrous is also a dissociative, with psychedelic properties. Alcohol can even push this boundary.
samatman 5y ago
It is in fact a misdemeanour, within the US at least, outside of the most benighted states.
- after_care 5y ago
  Some states allow for small amounts of ketamine to be a misdemeanor, but for many (most?) it’s a felony. In Texas and Florida, the second and third most populous states, possession of any amount of Ketamine is a felony.

augustuspolius 5y ago

Educating yourself on psychoactive substances is a good advise. Saying that, many people who are dealing with depression and anxiety need active help. Growing and consuming your own mushrooms might be a very counterproductive or even dangerous advise for an inexperienced person with severe anxiety. Managed ketamine therapy starts as low as $1200 for 6 sessions I believe.

akomtu 5y ago
Those 6 sessions are bundled with a long manuscript that relieves the clinic from all liability, so you're on your own anyway.
- augustuspolius 5y ago
  Check out Mindbloom. These sessions are bundled with a psychiatric and medical assessment, integration sessions, clear and easy to follow guidance for every session, music options. They are very focused on “set and setting”. Also the first session requires you to have a guide present (your friend or relative), who has to communicate over video with your Mindbloom guide right before the session. This system is not perfect but practically as close as it can get to a fully guided affordable session.
  - goatsi 5y ago
    Do you have any experience with them? From this recent article it seems like they are having issues with scaling and staff turnover: https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpp3k/psychedelic-telemedicine-has-arrived-what-could-possibly-go-wrong https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkpp3k/psychedelic-telemedic...
    - augustuspolius 5y ago
      I am having an exceptionally positive experience with them. Saying that, I am pretty experienced when it comes to therapy and psychedelics, so didn’t need a lot of handholding from them.

ghostly_s 5y ago

Ketamine and Psylocibin are in no way equivalent.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
whalesalad 5y ago
Correct. Ketamine is making strides due to the fact that it is already a legal drug and pharma can charge big bucks for it. It is very helpful in the acute sense, but long-term results are bleak. Psilocbin on the other hand has decades of research behind it showing how well it can be used for therapeutic purposes, but there is no money in it right now. I hate to sound like a tin hat conspiracy theorist - but I guarantee that once a pharmaceutical company can legally sell psilocybin therapy you'll never hear about ketamine again.
- MisterChris11 5y ago
  I've tried many antidepressants with mild improvement. The drugs give me the ability to function, but i'm just pretty numb. I've done lots of talk therapy, with little success. The problem is that I emotionally shutdown as a child due to a lot of traumatic events. Would ketamine open me up, to allow me to deal with the trauma I buried ?
  - GordonS 5y ago
    Have you tried 5-HTP? I started taking it around a decade ago, maybe more, and it was really helpful for my depression. Aside from 5-HTP, I started taking oral ketamine for chronic neuropathic pain around 1-2 years back, and it's been absolutely transformational - I've suffered with depression for my entire life, even when I was a kid, and now for the first time ever I feel... like it's maybe not an issue! The dark feelings of sadness and loneliness, the random tears, the pointless futility of existence... those just aren't there anymore.

fnord77 5y ago

going off and doing mushrooms on your own is nowhere equivalent to psychedelic-assisted therapy. this is irresponsible advice for people who have mental illneses

irishloop 5y ago

I spent quite a bit of my late adolescence consuming mind-altering substances like LSD and mushrooms. It did expand my mind and made me appreciate certain things. But it did not fix my depression or make me feel less alone. I might feel connected to the universe -- for a time. But it eventually fades, and the old demons come back. Sooner or later, you need to deal with the issues at hand. The reason you feel this way. For me, going to therapy allowed me to address some of the root issues -- generational trauma, a lack of affection, perhaps chemicals in my brain -- and allowed me to start rewriting my story of myself. I enjoyed my experiments with psychedelics, and I would not discourage anyone from using them. But they are not the cure-all many claim, either.

whalesalad 5y ago
The drugs certainly do not magically fix your problems. But it does allow you to see them, where you can inspect them (read: yourself) without judgement. This is what people refer to when they say "ego death". Your ego is not dying, it's just that your consciousness has been relaxed to a point that you are capable of witnessing it for what it truly is. "Set and setting" is a frequent quip of the psychonaut that doesn't get enough respect. You must have intention. Psychedelics are like removing the bumpers from the side of a bowling lane - without intention you will just fall into the gutter (figuratively). Therapy is vitally important, either externally or internally. One can certainly perform self-therapy, which is sometimes only enabled with the help of a mind-altering substance like Psilocybin. I think you would be surprised to try them again. You have a lot more lived experiences under your belt, new perspectives, new/fewer biases, etc...
- blackhaz 5y ago
  Great comment. This "ego death" can also be achieved through practices like Atma Vichara. Taking a shroom is catapulting yourself into that state of witnessing. It will definitely come off and the mind will take over, as it was induced artificially, the question is - what are you going to do with yourself during this state? Defining or, rather, roughly sketching out, a mission might be one way to approach psychedelics. You don't want to follow it to the letter, to avoid self-limits, but at least define your attitude: are you looking for a master, an answer, a resolution? Do you want to feel what's inside of something, i.e. how your reactions are built, where this or that comes from? Just mildly keeping your goal in mind may set you to achieve the right result. As a quick example of the outcome, at some point I felt my body telling me "man, what are you doing with this e-cigarette? Just stop putting this in me." In a few months I quit for good. Understand this might not be a demon as big as the one causing depression, but maybe this will help? Where did that guy came from?

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Advising people to self medicate is very bad advice.

amanaplanacanal 5y ago
Well... almost everybody self medicates, one way or another. I doing think I know anybody that doesn’t reach for caffeine, Tylenol, alcohol, or cannabis, once in a while.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  Taking Tylenol is the same as taking an illicit drug for serious mental illness? Self medicating with cannabis and alcohol are bad news bears too. I wouldn't advise doing anything without your doctor being in the loop.

foobiekr 5y ago

No one will ship spores to California. I've looked. We tried shrooms once on a whim, in Amsterdam, and while it wasn't that interesting a trip, it did have the side effect of eliminating my wife's OCD for almost a full year. I wish they were easily available. I've even considered driving to that "church" in Oakland to get her something. I don't otherwise have the right kind of friends (or they are quite discrete about it despite my having mentioned it).

lezojeda 5y ago
Have you searched on https://www.shroomery.org/ https://www.shroomery.org/ or the subreddit unclebens? Maybe this goes against hackernews rules, but you may contact someone with prints there. There is a discord called Fungus Amongus as well, you may have luck there.
whalesalad 5y ago
Get a PO Box in Reno. Make a day trip out of it. Driving through Tahoe would be tough right about now but it would be well worth it. Or just drive up to Oregon where you can buy them (the fruits) legally.

jmcgough 5y ago

even better than psilocybin for me has been MDMA - there was a study recently about how it can help with social anxiety in autistic people. It's also helped me a lot in dealing with trauma, opening up to people and deepening my existing friendships and relationships.

pacija 5y ago

Uh, why so expensive? Some 20 years ago liquid ketamine was available over the counter in veterinaries here on Balkans, it being known anaesthetics for animals like kettle. You could buy like 2l bottle for less than 20 EUR. When it became really popular among partygoers it became harder to get in cities (also some people got reported to the police), but there was still plenty of it in villages and smaller farming towns. One would just pour the liquid on china plate and put it on smallest temperature on a kitchener. Liquid would soon evaporate, leaving crystals ready for snorting. Fun times. I'm glad they are over for me. I guess I'm cured :)

GordonS 5y ago
Here in the UK, I pay my pharmacy £13 for a 10ml vial containing 50mg/ml ketamine (I take it for chronic neuropathic pain, prescribed privately since the NHS wouldn't do it). It's available much cheaper in bulk - I know these therapies need equipment and supervision, but I still have no idea how they are so expensive.

7thaccount 5y ago

I don't know anything about psychedelics or any drugs, but isn't it true that they can burn out your brain? So although they may have some benefits for those suffering from certain ailments, isn't there significant risk involved? If so, it would seem like your post is missing some very important disclaimers.

zaxbeast 5y ago

> 2. Look into the process of cultivating your own mushrooms at home - it’s ultimately very easy to produce your own medicine there's only 3 states where it is illegal to have those mushroom spores and I'm in one of them....

blockwriter 5y ago

2. How?