6 ms·

I’m all for this but part of me gets a very “Brave New World” vibe. Are we all going to have to micodose shrooms to tolerate our prosperous progressive society?

I’m all for this but part of me gets a very “Brave New World” vibe. Are we all going to have to micodose shrooms to tolerate our prosperous progressive society? It’s seeming increasingly likely.

raxxorraxor 5y ago
The trick is that these reservations vanish after being shroomed.
- replygirl 5y ago
  drugs that make you feel good about spending all day in your ego will do that
greatpostman 5y ago
I tripped and it reset my brain in fundamental ways. Felt like an operating system reinstall.
- Overtonwindow 5y ago
  Dis you trip while also on other medication? I was on Wellbutrin and Zoloft, but 3 grams didn’t do anything for me. Four grams did, but only mildly, that was enough to have significant therapeutic relief. I suspect depression medications may inhibit the effect?
  - at_compile_time 5y ago
    I've read that SSRIs interfere with them. It feels like a pretty cruel irony.
  - hobs 5y ago
    After a quick skim https://mind-foundation.org/psychedelic-antidepressant-interactions/ https://mind-foundation.org/psychedelic-antidepressant-inter... is worth reading - in a nutshell I have personally seen this: 1. Someone taking SSRI's and psilocybin finds that the dosage... simply doesnt work. I had one individual who ate up to 8! grams before seeing and feeling things that I would see in normal people at about 1.5. 2. This might be really bad for you! There's some evidence that mixing that level of both drugs might be not good for your liver and might get you into toxic levels, and suggests tapering - I honestly dont suggest tapering your anti-depressants unless you are working with a medical professional because well, suicide. 3. If you really want an undenyable trip, just take some salvia (properly), 15 minutes and many of the same after effects.
  - DrBoring 5y ago
    > I suspect depression medications may inhibit the effect? When I was on Wellbutrin, it stopped the mental effect of alcohol. When I imbibed, there was no loss of inhibition normally associated with alcohol use. However, I did still lose physical coordination. Zoloft did not have the same effect. The brain is a crazy thing.
    - tomek_ycomb 5y ago
      I agree 100% brain is a crazy thing. In general I think this is most pronounced even within antidepressants of the same class, with similar binding affinities, some people report limited success with one or the other seemingly similar drug. All this said, wellbutrin is a very different drug than zoloft. It have more dopamine and norepinephrine activity iirc. Also for anyone else, try to avoid alchohol and wellbutrin or take it knowing that your seizure threshold goes down on wellbutrin so its easy to black out and do worse than you realize (also related to the reported effects above)
  - hackingthelema 5y ago
    Depends on the antidepressant, but SSRIs like Zoloft do suppress the effect. MAOIs, on the other hand, tend to increase the effect. I'm not sure about Wellbutrin. There's some charts floating around about it on the internet: https://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Drug_combinations https://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Drug_combinations
    - pmoriarty 5y ago
      Be very, very careful about combining MAOI's with psychedelics (or other drugs). Educate yourself thoroughly on what effect such combinations could have before you even think of doing this. Combining drugs in general is often a very bad idea, and many overdoses and other adverse reactions have been due to this.
  - Stevvo 5y ago
    Yes, depression medications inhibit the reuptake of serotonin whilst psychedelics bind to your serotonin receptors.
throw93232 5y ago
SF folks will now support microdosing for homeless, because it may cure their depression, and help them of the streets :)
DrBoring 5y ago
I would argue that many people today already have their own form of Soma. Alcohol being the most popular one due to its abundant supply. A lot of people just need to step out of their own minds every now and then.
BossingAround 5y ago
The alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and sugar that helps us cope doesn't give you a "Brave New World" vibe?
- replygirl 5y ago
  to me, getting a box of macarons delivered is the same as taking small doses of a psychedelic at work
  - imilk 5y ago
    Is there psilocybin in the macarons? That's really the only way it would be the same.
    - replygirl 5y ago
      yeah i was mocking ggp
vermarish 5y ago
I always understood BNW's soma as a drug that is administered regularly to provide an escape and instill complacency. Modern examples might include alcohol, Netflix, and cushy salaries. Psychedelics are the opposite; they provide perspective and they make you yearn for something greater.
- dkarp 5y ago
  Opioids and Benzodiazepines (Xanax) are even closer to what I imagined Soma was
Trasmatta 5y ago
Shrooms had the opposite effect on me, where I suddenly became much more cognizant of the damaging aspects of our society, to an almost unbearable level. It made me overall less capable of operating in society, not more. Can't say I was really a fan of its effects on me. Psilocybin seems to induce a highly plastic state of mind, and so the results can be somewhat unpredictable.
- colpabar 5y ago
  Did you take them alone? Did you go outside at all? I think your environment really affects your experience. I always tell people to go outside as much as possible, ideally on a nice sunny day. Walk around in a park or the woods and I bet you'd have a different experience. If you're alone and indoors, you'll most likely end up going deep inside your own head, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but things can definitely start getting dark.
  - Trasmatta 5y ago
    I took them alone, but did go outside. Going outside was the best part of the trip. It wasn't a "bad trip" (had those on DXM before, this was much different). It was more that it opened my mind more fully to the amount of suffering in the world, and how much of it is caused by humans. Something we usually have to suppress in order to function from day to day. It was probably overall a good thing to have those realizations, but it was highly challenging, and it was detrimental to my mental health over the following months. But the lessons were probably just as important as a trip filled with just love and joy (never had one of those).
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "Shrooms had the opposite effect on me, where I suddenly became much more cognizant of the damaging aspects of our society, to an almost unbearable level. It made me overall less capable of operating in society, not more." It's important to connect with others who've had similar realizations of the dysfunction of our society. Together we are stronger, can support each other, and work together for positive change. Don't go it alone.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Microdosing - definitely not. Regardless of what the proponents say, even small doses of psychedelics induce some degree of impairment (please don't microdose and drive!) But you touched on one of the key problems with psychedelics: We can't really expect people to trip every few months forever. If psychedelics are used, I would expect them to be in the context of intense therapy. Many of the studies will require patients to go through 10 or more therapy sessions before, during, and after their psychedelic dose.
derbOac 5y ago
I don't know why this doesn't get more attention. It's a classic ethical dilemma in psychiatry, and ultimately the basis for many science fiction works. Let's say, for the sake of argument, you have a pill that can make people feel really positive and boundless, that they love their lives and nothing could make them feel better. This pill will work regardless of their circumstances. On the other hand, their environment is horrible: they are in poverty due to societal injustices and systemic failures, and loved ones are dying from completely preventable diseases due to those same societal failures. Works like The Matrix explored this theme in an extreme form, almost to a fault, where the premise is so absurd that it becomes dismissed. It's difficult to argue about treatments that will help people feel better and be better in their lives, whatever that means for them, but I can't help but be angry, even furious at the paradigm that underlies current behavioral biomedical research, where everything is seen as being a problem within the individual. It's not so much that there's something wrong with doing research like this, it's that other research, focused on more environmental factors, is seen as soft or unsexy, or the domain of some other field, or some such thing. I can't help but feel that our society is hurtling at astonishing speed toward an ethical crisis that gets almost no attention. What happens when we can alter behavior and experience with extreme precision and power, but still live in a worldview that treats individuals as the primary determinants of their own fate? What happens when withholding treatments or enhancements becomes a salient problem, when opportunity costs become a form of corruption?
- emadabdulrahim 5y ago
  You're talking about too many different points in one: 1. How much of someone's suffering and/or depression is due to brain chemical imbalance vs society and environment around them. 2. Would alleviating someone's depression and/or excessive anxiety would make them happy but with indifference to their surrounding, making them oblivious to the environment around them while being in a state of bliss. 3. The ethical dilemma of "fixing" someone by handing them a pill, instead of working on actually improving the real issues that may be contributing to their psychological pain. I think these are different issues that are not necessarily easy to answer one way or another. Non of these issues are self evidently clear which way should we go about them.
asdff 5y ago
Humanity has always been getting intoxicated on drugs and alcohol though. Society practically evolved to organize the brewing of beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It's only recently that human societies have gotten so conservative with these things.

raxxorraxor 5y ago

The trick is that these reservations vanish after being shroomed.

replygirl 5y ago
drugs that make you feel good about spending all day in your ego will do that

greatpostman 5y ago

I tripped and it reset my brain in fundamental ways. Felt like an operating system reinstall.

Overtonwindow 5y ago
Dis you trip while also on other medication? I was on Wellbutrin and Zoloft, but 3 grams didn’t do anything for me. Four grams did, but only mildly, that was enough to have significant therapeutic relief. I suspect depression medications may inhibit the effect?
- at_compile_time 5y ago
  I've read that SSRIs interfere with them. It feels like a pretty cruel irony.
- hobs 5y ago
  After a quick skim https://mind-foundation.org/psychedelic-antidepressant-interactions/ https://mind-foundation.org/psychedelic-antidepressant-inter... is worth reading - in a nutshell I have personally seen this: 1. Someone taking SSRI's and psilocybin finds that the dosage... simply doesnt work. I had one individual who ate up to 8! grams before seeing and feeling things that I would see in normal people at about 1.5. 2. This might be really bad for you! There's some evidence that mixing that level of both drugs might be not good for your liver and might get you into toxic levels, and suggests tapering - I honestly dont suggest tapering your anti-depressants unless you are working with a medical professional because well, suicide. 3. If you really want an undenyable trip, just take some salvia (properly), 15 minutes and many of the same after effects.
- DrBoring 5y ago
  > I suspect depression medications may inhibit the effect? When I was on Wellbutrin, it stopped the mental effect of alcohol. When I imbibed, there was no loss of inhibition normally associated with alcohol use. However, I did still lose physical coordination. Zoloft did not have the same effect. The brain is a crazy thing.
  - tomek_ycomb 5y ago
    I agree 100% brain is a crazy thing. In general I think this is most pronounced even within antidepressants of the same class, with similar binding affinities, some people report limited success with one or the other seemingly similar drug. All this said, wellbutrin is a very different drug than zoloft. It have more dopamine and norepinephrine activity iirc. Also for anyone else, try to avoid alchohol and wellbutrin or take it knowing that your seizure threshold goes down on wellbutrin so its easy to black out and do worse than you realize (also related to the reported effects above)
- hackingthelema 5y ago
  Depends on the antidepressant, but SSRIs like Zoloft do suppress the effect. MAOIs, on the other hand, tend to increase the effect. I'm not sure about Wellbutrin. There's some charts floating around about it on the internet: https://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Drug_combinations https://wiki.tripsit.me/wiki/Drug_combinations
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    Be very, very careful about combining MAOI's with psychedelics (or other drugs). Educate yourself thoroughly on what effect such combinations could have before you even think of doing this. Combining drugs in general is often a very bad idea, and many overdoses and other adverse reactions have been due to this.
- Stevvo 5y ago
  Yes, depression medications inhibit the reuptake of serotonin whilst psychedelics bind to your serotonin receptors.

throw93232 5y ago

SF folks will now support microdosing for homeless, because it may cure their depression, and help them of the streets :)

DrBoring 5y ago

I would argue that many people today already have their own form of Soma. Alcohol being the most popular one due to its abundant supply. A lot of people just need to step out of their own minds every now and then.

BossingAround 5y ago

The alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and sugar that helps us cope doesn't give you a "Brave New World" vibe?

replygirl 5y ago
to me, getting a box of macarons delivered is the same as taking small doses of a psychedelic at work
- imilk 5y ago
  Is there psilocybin in the macarons? That's really the only way it would be the same.
  - replygirl 5y ago
    yeah i was mocking ggp

vermarish 5y ago

I always understood BNW's soma as a drug that is administered regularly to provide an escape and instill complacency. Modern examples might include alcohol, Netflix, and cushy salaries. Psychedelics are the opposite; they provide perspective and they make you yearn for something greater.

dkarp 5y ago
Opioids and Benzodiazepines (Xanax) are even closer to what I imagined Soma was

Trasmatta 5y ago

Shrooms had the opposite effect on me, where I suddenly became much more cognizant of the damaging aspects of our society, to an almost unbearable level. It made me overall less capable of operating in society, not more. Can't say I was really a fan of its effects on me. Psilocybin seems to induce a highly plastic state of mind, and so the results can be somewhat unpredictable.

colpabar 5y ago
Did you take them alone? Did you go outside at all? I think your environment really affects your experience. I always tell people to go outside as much as possible, ideally on a nice sunny day. Walk around in a park or the woods and I bet you'd have a different experience. If you're alone and indoors, you'll most likely end up going deep inside your own head, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but things can definitely start getting dark.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  I took them alone, but did go outside. Going outside was the best part of the trip. It wasn't a "bad trip" (had those on DXM before, this was much different). It was more that it opened my mind more fully to the amount of suffering in the world, and how much of it is caused by humans. Something we usually have to suppress in order to function from day to day. It was probably overall a good thing to have those realizations, but it was highly challenging, and it was detrimental to my mental health over the following months. But the lessons were probably just as important as a trip filled with just love and joy (never had one of those).
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Shrooms had the opposite effect on me, where I suddenly became much more cognizant of the damaging aspects of our society, to an almost unbearable level. It made me overall less capable of operating in society, not more." It's important to connect with others who've had similar realizations of the dysfunction of our society. Together we are stronger, can support each other, and work together for positive change. Don't go it alone.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Microdosing - definitely not. Regardless of what the proponents say, even small doses of psychedelics induce some degree of impairment (please don't microdose and drive!) But you touched on one of the key problems with psychedelics: We can't really expect people to trip every few months forever. If psychedelics are used, I would expect them to be in the context of intense therapy. Many of the studies will require patients to go through 10 or more therapy sessions before, during, and after their psychedelic dose.

derbOac 5y ago

I don't know why this doesn't get more attention. It's a classic ethical dilemma in psychiatry, and ultimately the basis for many science fiction works. Let's say, for the sake of argument, you have a pill that can make people feel really positive and boundless, that they love their lives and nothing could make them feel better. This pill will work regardless of their circumstances. On the other hand, their environment is horrible: they are in poverty due to societal injustices and systemic failures, and loved ones are dying from completely preventable diseases due to those same societal failures. Works like The Matrix explored this theme in an extreme form, almost to a fault, where the premise is so absurd that it becomes dismissed. It's difficult to argue about treatments that will help people feel better and be better in their lives, whatever that means for them, but I can't help but be angry, even furious at the paradigm that underlies current behavioral biomedical research, where everything is seen as being a problem within the individual. It's not so much that there's something wrong with doing research like this, it's that other research, focused on more environmental factors, is seen as soft or unsexy, or the domain of some other field, or some such thing. I can't help but feel that our society is hurtling at astonishing speed toward an ethical crisis that gets almost no attention. What happens when we can alter behavior and experience with extreme precision and power, but still live in a worldview that treats individuals as the primary determinants of their own fate? What happens when withholding treatments or enhancements becomes a salient problem, when opportunity costs become a form of corruption?

emadabdulrahim 5y ago
You're talking about too many different points in one: 1. How much of someone's suffering and/or depression is due to brain chemical imbalance vs society and environment around them. 2. Would alleviating someone's depression and/or excessive anxiety would make them happy but with indifference to their surrounding, making them oblivious to the environment around them while being in a state of bliss. 3. The ethical dilemma of "fixing" someone by handing them a pill, instead of working on actually improving the real issues that may be contributing to their psychological pain. I think these are different issues that are not necessarily easy to answer one way or another. Non of these issues are self evidently clear which way should we go about them.

asdff 5y ago

Humanity has always been getting intoxicated on drugs and alcohol though. Society practically evolved to organize the brewing of beer in Mesopotamia and Egypt. It's only recently that human societies have gotten so conservative with these things.