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> In the past, I might have said to her, “Dying is natural; it’s part of the human experience,” but without this experience, it would not have landed well. She
by travisjungroth 5y ago
> In the past, I might have said to her, “Dying is natural; it’s part of the human experience,” but without this experience, it would not have landed well. She had to feel this in her whole person, not just as an intellectual or philosophical exercise.
This seems to be a big part of the magic of psychedelics. So many mental issues are cognitive. It’s not always happening at the chemical level. Why would it be in a person who has a healthy brain, but their depression came on with their terminal cancer diagnosis?
The problem is cognition is really hard to change. Especially in adults and especially when things are going badly. The overall effectiveness of talk therapy is not great.
Psychedelics break down our normal barriers so we can truly know the things other people have been telling us and we’ve been telling ourselves. (Or they put us in contact with spirits that gift wisdom. Six of one, half a dozen of another). I talked with someone with OCD who finished a trip thinking “just because my hand touches my phone doesn’t mean it’s dirty”. A simple statement, but he had contact OCD and this had been a huge problem. Something about the message “coming from inside the house” made it work.
One thing I almost never see mentioned in these articles about terminal patients with psychedelics is the concept of the afterlife. Mushrooms are so Earthy, it’s like they tell you that heaven is returning to the soil. Other psychs (DMT, ayahuasca) can give you a picture of where your spirit goes after it splits from your body.
Aside from whether these spiritual beliefs are right they’re certainly less depressing than what the average American is walking around with. There’s “sleep and never wake up”. There’s “heaven, maybe, I think. But lots of people going to hell I guess”, and then, probably the most common case: “who the fuck knows?”. A bit anxiety inducing, really.
- netizen-936824 5y ago>So many mental issues are cognitive. It’s not always happening at the chemical level. As a biochemist with a passion for neuroscience, I entirely 100% do not agree The statement doesn't even make sense to me. All cognition is based on the dynamics happening at the biochemical level. All of it is chemical All of our thoughts and behaviors are the product of chemical reactions and interactions which determine the behavior of individual neurons and their networks. You literally cannot separate those things.
- pharrington 5y agoThe comment you're replying to simply describes emergence.
- netizen-936824 5y agoEmergence still depends on the underlying mechanisms
- SnowHill9902 5y agoSo theoretically you could know what your wife wants for dinner by solving the Schrödinger equation?
- netizen-936824 5y agoEssentially, yes. Although we don't fully understand the system so we can't model it just yet
- travisjungroth 5y agoYes it all happens as chemistry. I mean the cause of the problem isn’t always what we would normally call “chemical”. That’s what I meant by “happening at the chemical level”. I’m just drawing a distinction between something like depression caused by a B12 deficiency and depression caused by the loss of your spouse. Thinking can’t fix B12, but sometimes it helps with loss. If I try to word it better, would you agree that sometimes mental health issues are caused by biological problems and sometimes by events in our lives and how we think about them?
- netizen-936824 5y agoI'm not sure I could agree with that. What I could agree with is a statement that live events can alter our epigenetic regulation mechanisms which impacts our neuronal chemistry which can alter our thought processes and behaviors. At the end of the day its still chemistry, and at the end of the day chemistry is still physics, and as far as I've learn physics is deterministic. We can't separate our conscious experience from these underlying mechanisms because our entire existence is based on their rules. The brain is not a construct on which the software of the mind runs, it is the mind.
- jsnodlin 5y ago