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Highly highly doubt this. Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done alot of mushrooms knows that they have cognitive "peculiarities". Th

• rileyphone 5y ago
  The Aztecs were very fond of mushrooms but definitely not hippies. You’re describing a mimetic cultural phenomenon facilitated by the neuroplasticity the drug confers.
  • diatomaceous_ 5y ago
    This is the correct answer; people whose only understanding of psychedelics draws from media portrayals of the 60s have a dramatically warped and puritanical perspective on what is a pharmacological effect vs a cultural effect
• blamestross 5y ago
  > Psilocybin has no short- or long-term __detrimental__ effects in healthy people
• usmannk 5y ago
  is that a detrimental effect?
  • wombat-man 5y ago
    As described no. But I think it can affect ones attachment to reality. It's not going to affect you like smoking cigarettes, or how drinking can hit the liver. But it definitely has some effect on ones thinking. Is this detrimental? I think that's a more subjective question. Personally though, I consider Psychedelics to be pretty safe unless one starts playing games with high frequency usage, or high dosage. There are also outliers, for example Brian Wilson ended up having a pretty bad time with LSD.
    • alexk307 5y ago
      Brian Wilson has Schizophrenia. Not a healthy participant.
  • vkou 5y ago
    It is in the Terran Federation.
• jchw 5y ago
  Headline reader here but it does say “detrimental” which I admit may include said personality traits in some eyes but I would expect “detrimental” to mean side-effects that actually negatively impact quality of life.
  • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    I'm sure there are correlations between some life risks and being a hippie vs not being a hippie. Stereotypes say hippies are more care-free, so that may make them more prone to risk taking, and more likely to die of (fun example) ziplining accidents. If something has detrimental effects (dyeing on ziplines) that are outweighed by positive effects (lower blood pressure), it is not fair to say it has no detrimental effects whatsoever. However I would say the biggest issue with the title is that it doesn't mention the number receiving psilocybin. 60 people is not a lot to say it has no detrimental effects, even if it weren't turning people into hippies.
• relaunched 5y ago
  Can you help me connect the dots on how these are "clearly a neurological effect"?
• arcticbull 5y ago
  Uh, they did say "detrimental effects." Those don't sound detrimental to me. In fact, knowing as we do that psilocybin has a significant impact on reducing depression for months after a single dose - including for otherwise untreatable major depression - it sounds like those folks may have had some low-level baseline depressive symptoms. [edit] Not to the point of being clinical of course. [1] > I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen. I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what. [edit] > I would also describe the effect as "loopy" While high, totes. After, no so much. [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/psychedelic-treatment-with-psilocybin-relieves-major-depression-study-shows https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...
  • snikeris 5y ago
    > I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what. Some spiritual practices aim at direct experience of the true nature of reality. They're about sharpening your mind such that it is capable of intuiting such insights.
  • mistermann 5y ago
    > I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what. Who among us determines what "reality" is and is not? Science is quite excellent at measuring the materialistic subset of it, but when one gets into the subjective, phenomenological aspects of it (including complex matters like causality, human psychology, emergence, etc), science is not much help (and is even a hindrance to some degree I'd say, since a lot of people (but not all) seem to believe that science is the only lens through which reality can be viewed, and that it sees all of reality, or that which it does not see is irrelevant).
• dgs_sgd 5y ago
  Is it possible the people who regularly use shrooms are already predisposed to those traits?
  • actusual 5y ago
    Or that the culture surrounding them pushes people in that direction? I do shrooms with people who work in tech (just did them last Wednesday). We talked about the intersection of "intelligence" and "emotional vulnerability", and why are group of friends gravitates toward and attracts people who have a healthy dose of both. No woo-woo love chants...just some deeper conversations, below surface level that provided insight into who we are.
• alexk307 5y ago
  Oh no! Not peace and love! You assert evidence of a clear neurological affect, and then edit your post to say that science can't measure it, and it must be "mystic" or "spiritual".
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• neuro_image2 5y ago
  It's an unfortunate feature of our culture that a shift towards peace, love and empathy is perceived as detrimental.
  • quotemstr 5y ago
    If you tell someone "this pill will cure your depression" without telling him "by turning you into a hippie", you're doing him a disservice. The zeitgeist right now is that psychedelics cure a broad range of mental illnesses without any downsides whatsoever. That's far, far from true. It's my right not to be turned into a hippie.
    • alexk307 5y ago
      No one asked you to take any drugs? No one is forcing you to take drugs or be a hippie, what does that have to do with anything?
    • xboxnolifes 5y ago
      Nothing that you have said here defends the claim of that the effects themselves are detrimental. You just claimed that not telling someone the effects is a disservice. Which, while I agree, is irrelevant to the original claim. Having effects and having detrimental effects are two different things.
      • quotemstr 5y ago
        The claim in the article is categorical. The claim is that there are no detrimental side effects. In order for that to be true, it must be the case that everyone prefers his personality to be shifted towards being a peace and love hippie. If I don't want my personality shifted that way (and I certainly don't), then that effect of psilocybin counts as detrimental for me, and therefore, the categorical claim being made is simply false. This recent fad for "fixing" people by taking them on psychedelic trips is creepy.
        • snikeris 5y ago
• MAGZine 5y ago
  You think that peace and love is detrimental? I assert we could use more of it. Note, I wouldn't say that such peace and love is blind--people are still very much grounded in reality--but the ability for compassion and empathy is increased. Perhaps you see compassion as a weakness?
  • bopbeepboop 5y ago
• misc213 5y ago
  I think that's the point. Isn't the high level plan for this treatment: 1)The psilocybin breaks down the patients ego and 2) the psycho therapist molds it hopefully for the better? "people who have done a lot of mushrooms..." In my experience those people also take just about anything. How could one say it was the psilocybin
  • snikeris 5y ago
    I believe the therapist is mostly there for support. E.g. hold your hand and assure you that everything is fine. The mind/body heals itself.
• gspr 5y ago
  Purely anecdotal. Have you controlled for the correlation between those personality traits and the wish to explore drugs like psilocybin?
• quotemstr 5y ago
  Agreed. It would be a terrible crime to market a substance that causes permanent personality shifts in a direction not necessarily wanted as a "magic cure" for depression, anxiety, and whatever other manifestation of unpleasantness in life. And that's exactly what we're doing now. Lobotomy was marketed as a magic cure for all sorts of psychological problems too. There is no free lunch. There's no quick and easy way to "fix" someone.
  • amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    As a theoretical: perhaps personality shifts are exactly what is required to treat depression and anxiety.
• mwattsun 5y ago
  I'm a fan of Psilocybin but anyone who has been around for awhile in a psychedelic culture like my home town knows people who did too many mushrooms. LSD is a thing in itself: acid casualties are a real thing.
  • fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
    This is my point, I think these academic researchers and common people have no idea what they are getting into. There are clearly positives to the drugs, but alot of these articles are very naive
    • mwattsun 5y ago
      Did you ever notice how the shroomers have a different look in their eyes than the acid heads? There's a lot more warmth to the former as you noted, but there's a tendency to believe really far out things. One friend of mine was convinced she was immortal so she worried a lot about how she was going to replenish the sun with hydrogen so it didn't burn out. The acid heads have a look in their eyes like they are lost in a void and are struggling to get back. Edit: I should note I'm talking about people who do a lot of mushrooms. For example, my friend lived on a commune in England for several years that did high doses of mushrooms on a weekly basis as a community bonding thing (like a Sunday church ritual)
    • giantg2 5y ago
      I think the articles are similar to most articles on a "new" pharmaceutical. They overblow the benefits, misinterpret the underlying study, and just generally want to seduce the reader. In this case, the phase 1 trial found that psilocybin has a favorable safety profile in a small study, clearing it for larger studies to find rarer side-effects and evaluate efficacy as a treatment. That's basically it. They can't legitimately claim "psilocybin has no short- or long-term detrimental effects" in a study that small. But it's commonly done for this and other pharmaceuticals.
    • tharne 5y ago
      > This is my point, I think these academic researchers and common people have no idea what they are getting into. I don't think that's true. Most people knew smoking was bad for you long before the medical establish said so, ditto for opiates. The only folks who "don't know what they are getting into", are recreational users lying to themselves. That's no reason to dismiss a whole class of drugs that could potentially help people.
• mrtnmcc 5y ago
  Thinking reality makes sense is pretty loopy too.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• bratwurst3000 5y ago
  There was an interesting article in slatestarcodex that statet that the prime effekt of psychodelics is reducing primers. This can have negativ consequenz on healthy people that take psyhcodelics. A) because primers are your past so somehow they are you. If the primers get erased your personality is gettig erased. B) if primers are reduced they are near primers that arent that evolved and those primers could suck. Usualy there is filter in our brain that prohibits us from thinking dumb shit like the world is flat. But if those primers are reduced, how should one know that the world doesnt end at the horizont? I have friends that take ketamin lsd mushrooms etc regulary and they dont seem to have a classical paychosis but something else… the superb ability to believe every shit someone posts on social media. Honestly they are gone and thats this primer effect. Btw did some shrooms 2 times and it was great
  • winnit 5y ago
    I think they refer to ‘priors’ rather than ‘primers’ but otherwise enjoyed your comment :)
  • wincy 5y ago
    For those curious, here's the article https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relaxed-beliefs-under-psychedelics-and-the-anarchic-brain/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relax...
    • monopoledance 5y ago
      True or not, great read and interesting idea. The concept of “flattening an energy landscape” resonates a lot with me. I feel like the filter on which internal and external impressions make it into the consciousness varies in people, like an island's extend depending on sea levels. I always thought of it as a uniform, plane threshold, so the idea of a "rule based" filter of priors is inspiring to me. However, the article extends this to other things than just the "event horizon" of the unconsciousness, while my intuitive understanding relates more to the experience, but not quality, of cognition. When I close my eyes, I can usually "see my brain thinking/sorting/searching" (closed eye hallucinations), a visual soup of (random) associations, patterns and transformations, and experience visual snow in dim light, most of the time. Although I got used to it, I do suffer from that "meta experience", when gravely exhausted and stressed - makes reality a bit unreal at times. According to wikipedia, closed eye hallucinations occur to most people only when tripping, so, assuming I am not psychotic, I guess the threshold/prior-filtering varies. I had this as long as I can remember, but I fear smoking weed in my youth didn't help (HPPD). Not sure, if I should experiment with psychedelics... I see a possible benefit and great danger, too.
• hristov 5y ago
  Except the ones that go on murder sprees. I guess they converge somewhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner
  • Synaesthesia 5y ago
    Hmm definitely the shrooms that made him do it, not the alcohol, or cocaine... That couldn't be it
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• slibhb 5y ago
  It's hard to estimate effects like this based on your personal experiences. People who do drugs like mushrooms tend to be a certain way: hippies, left-wing, creative and "open". Unless you're performing rigorous experiments with large samples, it's hard to separate that out as a confounder.
• jknoepfler 5y ago
  > "Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done a lot of mushrooms knows..." As someone in this group, I strongly disagree. The "consensus" you're appealing to doesn't exist. > I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen. The effects of both psilocybin and spiritual beliefs on individual health outcomes is an active, ongoing topic of research. The assertion that there's something intangibly wrong with the mental lives of (of whom exactly? people who do shrooms? Or do you include people who do yoga or practice meditation in this group? What about people who attend Catholic mass?) that "current science can't measure" is precisely the sort of baseless nonsense well-operationalized research is designed to eliminate, so we can rationalize our laws and healthcare policies.
  • karmakurtisaani 5y ago
    It is slightly ironic to look down on people who believe "loopy" things while admitting it's not a scientific way to measure people. Sounds kinda loopy to me.
• Jaepa 5y ago
  The plural of anecdote is not data. What you are saying is that there is a correlation, but the causation could be any number of tangentially related things. e.g. a self re-enforcing subculture, predisposition for substance abuse, or tainted sourcing.
  • basch 5y ago
    Even with causation something is amiss with the generalization as presented. If a chemical amplifies an experience, and a person experiences a peaceful hippie experience, that doesnt mean the drug made them a hippie, it means the experience did. The same chemical in a violent experience could exasperate violent tendencies. Pinning "I know some people that fell into a culture" on a chemical is very much on the wrong side of nature/nurture and ignores set/setting.
• srcreigh 5y ago
  For what it's worth, spiritual teachers believe psychedelics open people up to spiritual realities. That's pretty much the life story Ram Das (ex psych professor). Orthodox Christian priests tend to say it's spiritually dangerous akin to using a Ouija board or something - they would prefer people use safe methods like prayer to explore the spiritual world. Scientists could probably measure negative psychological effects, anyways, as you say.
• echlebek 5y ago
  Your personal anecdotes, no matter how significant or varied, don't meaningfully contradict this research. This research happened in a controlled environment. Your friends doing mushrooms and likely other drugs in a recreational setting is different. Science can measure the changes you're talking about, but your friends weren't doing science.
• seabird 5y ago
  A lot of sibling comments here questioning the parent comment's definition of detrimental. Psychedelic drugs can absolutely have a permanent detrimental effect on people. There is a difference between a positive emotional experience and a warped "revelation" that gives somebody the impression that they're privy to some universal truth or meaning. If the latter happens enough, the results range from the person being pretty fundamentally changed (less like depressed vs. not depressed, more like somebody is wearing a skinsuit of somebody you used to know) to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality. These people may be happy in their own reality, but it's very painful to watch it happen to them. Headlines like this article's are best left unsaid. A single (or rarely administered) 10-25mg dose in a highly controlled environment may be reasonably safe, and the headline may be true in the strictest sense, but it's going to work out about as well as the "marijuana is not addictive" line of thinking has.
  • fdgsdfogijq 5y ago
    I think you articulated my point much better. The spiritual effect I was describing is definitely also: "to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality" What these researchers are doing in a lab on well adjusted humans with no psychedelic experience, and what happens when people take doses recreationally are two completely different things. Its like doing cocaine one time with a small dose and claiming it has no negative effects.
• smiley1437 5y ago
  The dose makes the poison. The study was testing at 10mg and 25mg which are TINY (microdoses) Your experience appears to be with people who take macrodoses repeatedly. I'm not sure these two situations are comparable.
  • pizzeriafrida 5y ago
    I wouldn't say those doses are micro. 25mg of psilocybin is equivalent to almost 3 grams of mushrooms.
    • smiley1437 5y ago
      Whoops - thanks for letting me know
• monopoledance 5y ago
  Possibly a heavy selection bias, don't you think? Shrooms are illegal almost everywhere, or at least not very popular. I assume there is a very significant filter on which type of personalities seek these experiences (unlike e.g. trying alcohol or cannabis, as those are accessible and culturally integrated everywhere).
• beeboop 5y ago
  I think people with those tendencies are simply more likely to use mushrooms. I've used them plenty and I'm still the typical HackerNews cynical nerd that expresses skepticism towards everything.