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I’ve always wondered… Do psychedelics cause mental illness or treat mental illness? Our minds are so weird that I have a simple theory that we are all slightl

I’ve always wondered… Do psychedelics cause mental illness or treat mental illness? Our minds are so weird that I have a simple theory that we are all slightly insane in at least some small way. But from what I have observed from friends who take them - they cause them to cope with troubles that are normally difficult to deal with. I guess I’m not brave enough to try them to deal with my own troubles myself right now.

the_only_law 4y ago
I don’t think the brain or the drugs themselves are are simple enough to be reduced to one or the other.
zwkrt 4y ago
My strong-man description of your (I think correct!) feeling is that we all have a very specific lens through with we look at the world. Because all of us have very very limited lenses, but the world is actually quite large and complicated, we each end up with our own neurotic worries that are in a way over-blown when compared with the chaotic complexity of actual reality. Just think of that friend you have that always brings up the cost of something, or that person in your life who seems to always bring the conversation to how their political viewpoint would alleviate the problem, or the person who seems to always have a new and exciting reason to not have a kid yet. Psychedelics just allow us to step out of our rigid framework for a few hours. For people with flexible/creative minds it might not be such a big deal as they are used to looking at reality and asking "but what if it were this way...", but lots of us have rather rigid conceptions of reality. Taking mushrooms and realizing that most of our worries are 'made up' in the sense that they don't relate to our basic needs can be eye opening.
- mountainriver 4y ago
  Yeah this seems intuitively correct. Psychedelics are largely playing with your beliefs of the world, which is why it can go a lot of ways and is hard to study. In a good setting with good guides it can be wildly transformative in a positive direction.
ActorNightly 4y ago
The best description that I have heard that most users that I have spoke to agree on is that psychedelics have an aspect of "flattening" emotional significance of things by making any thought that you have just as "prominent" as another experience. The reduction of blood flow to the area of the brain that is responsible for parsing reality means that your thoughts become more prominent, making any thought of change or improvement just as impactful mentally as what you believe your reality is. This in turn gives lasting perspectives in the form of "hey, I am able to think and feel about things differently and not locked into this pattern of thought", which could be the necessary catalyst for change.
drooby 4y ago
If it is true that the mind is "anti-fragile", in that, appropriately dosed stressors make it stronger, then perhaps its not "or", but "and". Psychedelics treat mental illness and cause mental illness. They treat it by causing it. Regardless, mental illness seems highly relative to societal norms. And psychedelics have a way of minimizing the importance of societal norms, so maybe thats a factor too.
int_19h 4y ago
One of the effects of psychedelics is that they allow you to perceive, for a while, just how incoherent many of the things we take for granted really are, both about ourselves and about the society around us. This can be hugely beneficial to figure out the root cause of some mental health issue one suffers, because they often lie in those two areas - mistreatment of oneself, and/or traumas caused by other people's behavior that we're conditioned to treat as normal. But that knowledge is also something that'll nag you ever after, and might make you more politically active, which is its own can of worms in terms of mental health.

the_only_law 4y ago

I don’t think the brain or the drugs themselves are are simple enough to be reduced to one or the other.

zwkrt 4y ago

My strong-man description of your (I think correct!) feeling is that we all have a very specific lens through with we look at the world. Because all of us have very very limited lenses, but the world is actually quite large and complicated, we each end up with our own neurotic worries that are in a way over-blown when compared with the chaotic complexity of actual reality. Just think of that friend you have that always brings up the cost of something, or that person in your life who seems to always bring the conversation to how their political viewpoint would alleviate the problem, or the person who seems to always have a new and exciting reason to not have a kid yet. Psychedelics just allow us to step out of our rigid framework for a few hours. For people with flexible/creative minds it might not be such a big deal as they are used to looking at reality and asking "but what if it were this way...", but lots of us have rather rigid conceptions of reality. Taking mushrooms and realizing that most of our worries are 'made up' in the sense that they don't relate to our basic needs can be eye opening.

mountainriver 4y ago
Yeah this seems intuitively correct. Psychedelics are largely playing with your beliefs of the world, which is why it can go a lot of ways and is hard to study. In a good setting with good guides it can be wildly transformative in a positive direction.

ActorNightly 4y ago

The best description that I have heard that most users that I have spoke to agree on is that psychedelics have an aspect of "flattening" emotional significance of things by making any thought that you have just as "prominent" as another experience. The reduction of blood flow to the area of the brain that is responsible for parsing reality means that your thoughts become more prominent, making any thought of change or improvement just as impactful mentally as what you believe your reality is. This in turn gives lasting perspectives in the form of "hey, I am able to think and feel about things differently and not locked into this pattern of thought", which could be the necessary catalyst for change.

drooby 4y ago

If it is true that the mind is "anti-fragile", in that, appropriately dosed stressors make it stronger, then perhaps its not "or", but "and". Psychedelics treat mental illness and cause mental illness. They treat it by causing it. Regardless, mental illness seems highly relative to societal norms. And psychedelics have a way of minimizing the importance of societal norms, so maybe thats a factor too.

int_19h 4y ago

One of the effects of psychedelics is that they allow you to perceive, for a while, just how incoherent many of the things we take for granted really are, both about ourselves and about the society around us. This can be hugely beneficial to figure out the root cause of some mental health issue one suffers, because they often lie in those two areas - mistreatment of oneself, and/or traumas caused by other people's behavior that we're conditioned to treat as normal. But that knowledge is also something that'll nag you ever after, and might make you more politically active, which is its own can of worms in terms of mental health.