4 ms·

I really enjoyed Sasha's books. That said, I'm not so sure it's easy to replicate his experience: 1) Sasha generally took low/threshold doses. Drugs are all ab

I really enjoyed Sasha's books. That said, I'm not so sure it's easy to replicate his experience: 1) Sasha generally took low/threshold doses. Drugs are all about the dosage. It might not be so easy for you to replicate that. 2) He was an extraordinarily talented chemist and would make the drugs himself. You would need to either use shrooms/peyote (harder to take low doses( or buy from the darknets (with questionable safety and dosage) 3) He is an anecdote/small sample size, we don't have a large scale study here 4) There is an element of survivorship bias - you've never heard of the chemist who made LSD in their 30s and had a mental breakdown because, well, they didn't write a book

esperent 5y ago
> low/threshold doses... It might not be so easy for you to replicate that. Why? If you can take a full dose, you can take a threshold dose. Just divide the full dose up - e.g. dissolve a blotter in a 10ml dropper bottle of vodka. Then 1ml = 10% of a dose (or probably a bit less). Maybe a bit harder for weird research chems, but if you're getting into those then hopefully you'll do the research to know how to dose correctly. > use shrooms/peyote (harder to take low doses Again, why? It's particularly easy to take low doses of shrooms, all you need is a scale that measures down to 0.1g, such as a coffee scale. > you've never heard of the chemist who made LSD However, they also didn't die. Because then we would have heard about it.
Workaccount2 5y ago
On the safety/purity part If you have the means ($100? $200) there are labs (or lab) that will test the chemical for you before you take it.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  In the US, I believe these labs are prohibited by law from telling you how pure the compound is. They can only tell you what it is, not its purity. This is allegedly because the government doesn't want to help illegal drug manufacturers to refine their products. Which, if true, is horrible because it doesn't lead to improved safety but to more dangerous illegal drugs.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    Another example of how prohibition does more harm than good
elevaet 5y ago
I'll bite.. while we all have unique experiences in life, I believe Sasha and Anne's positive lifetime experiences with psychedelics is neither unusual nor surprising, and not that hard to replicate. 1) It's not that hard to take low doses of psychedelics as regularly or irregularly as you'd like. They are extremely non-compulsive. 2) Testing is not so hard these days in many parts of the world. In my city there are at least a couple mass spectrometry machines available for free testing. Besides that, no need for powders from the internet; growing magic mushrooms at home is a simple project anyone can take on. 3) No we don't have a study, so like a lot of things in life we have to rely on more informal observation and anecdotes. A couple of other notable psychedelic old-timers are Albert Hofmann, Paul Stamets. I've met many "psychedelic seniors" over the years, and they've always been very bright, admirable people. Personally, I've been using psychedelics for 30y, and while I can see that they aren't completely without risks, on the whole they are of great benefit and I plan on aging into becoming one of these psychedelic seniors myself. 4) Psychedelic use is associated with improved mental health outcomes: - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063972 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114565653 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114565653 - https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/5/2/article-p83.xml https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/5/2/article-p83.xm... I haven't heard of the psychedelic chemist who had a mental breakdown, I think that's a myth. The biggest risk to mental health for a psychedelic chemist is ending up in prison.
- elevaet 5y ago
  Another study re: psychedelics and mental health: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01301-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01301-9 "Repeated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) reverses stress-induced anxiety-like behavior, cortical synaptogenesis deficits and serotonergic neurotransmission decline" (in mice)
- verbify 5y ago
  > I haven't heard of the psychedelic chemist who had a mental breakdown, I think that's a myth. The biggest risk to mental health for a psychedelic chemist is ending up in prison. Anecdotally I do know someone who had a psychotic episode on psychedelics and spent awhile in recovery. They eventually did recover, but that did make me wary. As for your point about doses - low doses are hard on chemicals because you don't know what you're getting. Using mushrooms, well dosage varies wildly per gram depending on what you've picked. It wasn't a point about addiction. I have had great experiences on threshold doses of mushrooms (and experimented on much higher doses of acid in my past), but I do think a healthy amount of caution is generally good.

esperent 5y ago

> low/threshold doses... It might not be so easy for you to replicate that. Why? If you can take a full dose, you can take a threshold dose. Just divide the full dose up - e.g. dissolve a blotter in a 10ml dropper bottle of vodka. Then 1ml = 10% of a dose (or probably a bit less). Maybe a bit harder for weird research chems, but if you're getting into those then hopefully you'll do the research to know how to dose correctly. > use shrooms/peyote (harder to take low doses Again, why? It's particularly easy to take low doses of shrooms, all you need is a scale that measures down to 0.1g, such as a coffee scale. > you've never heard of the chemist who made LSD However, they also didn't die. Because then we would have heard about it.

Workaccount2 5y ago

On the safety/purity part If you have the means ($100? $200) there are labs (or lab) that will test the chemical for you before you take it.

pmoriarty 5y ago
In the US, I believe these labs are prohibited by law from telling you how pure the compound is. They can only tell you what it is, not its purity. This is allegedly because the government doesn't want to help illegal drug manufacturers to refine their products. Which, if true, is horrible because it doesn't lead to improved safety but to more dangerous illegal drugs.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  Another example of how prohibition does more harm than good

elevaet 5y ago

I'll bite.. while we all have unique experiences in life, I believe Sasha and Anne's positive lifetime experiences with psychedelics is neither unusual nor surprising, and not that hard to replicate. 1) It's not that hard to take low doses of psychedelics as regularly or irregularly as you'd like. They are extremely non-compulsive. 2) Testing is not so hard these days in many parts of the world. In my city there are at least a couple mass spectrometry machines available for free testing. Besides that, no need for powders from the internet; growing magic mushrooms at home is a simple project anyone can take on. 3) No we don't have a study, so like a lot of things in life we have to rely on more informal observation and anecdotes. A couple of other notable psychedelic old-timers are Albert Hofmann, Paul Stamets. I've met many "psychedelic seniors" over the years, and they've always been very bright, admirable people. Personally, I've been using psychedelics for 30y, and while I can see that they aren't completely without risks, on the whole they are of great benefit and I plan on aging into becoming one of these psychedelic seniors myself. 4) Psychedelic use is associated with improved mental health outcomes: - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0063972 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114565653 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0269881114565653 - https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/5/2/article-p83.xml https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/5/2/article-p83.xm... I haven't heard of the psychedelic chemist who had a mental breakdown, I think that's a myth. The biggest risk to mental health for a psychedelic chemist is ending up in prison.

elevaet 5y ago
Another study re: psychedelics and mental health: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01301-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01301-9 "Repeated lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) reverses stress-induced anxiety-like behavior, cortical synaptogenesis deficits and serotonergic neurotransmission decline" (in mice)
verbify 5y ago
> I haven't heard of the psychedelic chemist who had a mental breakdown, I think that's a myth. The biggest risk to mental health for a psychedelic chemist is ending up in prison. Anecdotally I do know someone who had a psychotic episode on psychedelics and spent awhile in recovery. They eventually did recover, but that did make me wary. As for your point about doses - low doses are hard on chemicals because you don't know what you're getting. Using mushrooms, well dosage varies wildly per gram depending on what you've picked. It wasn't a point about addiction. I have had great experiences on threshold doses of mushrooms (and experimented on much higher doses of acid in my past), but I do think a healthy amount of caution is generally good.