10 ms·

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compound

• mkoryak 4y ago
  sounds like you had a good trip. If you had a bad trip, you might feel differently about it.
  • sharklazer 4y ago
    I’ve had several bad trips in my life. I think they are the most impactful and clarifying. Uncomfortable for sure. Good trips let me know I’m comfortable with myself. Bad trips usually lead to uncovering or bringing to the front things that need to be addressed in my life.
  • golergka 4y ago
    I've had many bad trips throughout my life, and they have always been the most educational. Learning about your shortcomings and confronting your demons and traumas isn't supposed to be a pleasant experience.
  • sianemo 4y ago
    I have had good trips and bad trips on a variety of highly psychedelic substances, and I've had a lot of those trips. Trying to engineer the trip out of the drug to get a desired psychoactive result free from pesky side effects like not being as grounded to reality for a while is absolutely missing the forest for the trees. Not to say that it can't produce some benefit but it's leaving a lot of unexplored potential on the table, largely in deference to failed puritanical ideals about recreational drug use.
  • anigbrowl 4y ago
    It's not that simple at all. Bad trips can be more therapeutic than good ones. If you have tripless neuroplasticity, (a possibility I doubt) then what's your feedback mechanism? You might wind up selecting for shitty or dysfunctional behavior.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
    "Good trip" and "bad trip" are older terms created by recreational drug users who wanted to get high and have a good time. Today, in therapeutic contexts, they use "easy trip" and "difficult trip" to give patients a sense of what to expect, and some context for how to interpret the experience they're about to have. Some trips are like tropical vacations; peaceful respites. But others feel closer to climbing a perilous mountain, or trekking through endless desert, or slogging through dark marshlands. Some of the most fulfilling journeys in life can be quite uncomfortable and hard, and notably, 70% of people that have bad/difficult trips do not regret the experience. What makes the trip is worthwhile is if it causes you to learn and grow in a meaningful way.
  • psyc 4y ago
    Please. A million people have gotten back on the horse after having terrifying trips, myself included. Oh, you said might
• turdit 4y ago
  the word you were looking for was probably “psychoactive” not “neuroplastic”
  • NickC25 4y ago
    Perhaps. The whole point of the article is that psychedelics increase neuroplasticity within the brain, and that pharma companies are trying to synthesize a molecule that does exactly that, but without the hallucinations. Here's the article in question - perhaps there's something I missed that you might understand better than I do: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/opinion/hallucinations-psychedelics-depression.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/opinion/hallucinations-ps...
• heap_perms 4y ago
  "Talk about missing the forest from the trees. The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. " I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.
  • sharklazer 4y ago
    My belief is that the “trip” is us being able to observe more about our brains than we typically access. My personal experience indicates to me that the “trip” is removing filtering processes the brain uses to remove noise and irrelevant information to the task at hand. When in a “trip” then, it’s more like we are seeing what our brain sees—the things that appear auditorilly and visually are due to neural circuits overfitting and subsequently not being able to filter the misreads and “extra data”. I’ve always thought of it like a self-diagnostic mode/tool where we get exposed to debug data that our brain normally would filter out.
    • nickparker 4y ago
      Anyone curious about psychedelic methods of action, particularly based on their personal experience, should read Surfing Uncertainty or at least the SSC review/summary of it. The predictive processing interpretation of these drugs is that they change the balance between top-down predictive generative models from our "deep" brain and noisy bottom-up sensory percepts from the peripheral brain. When you get super-resolution like experiences of banal everyday textures, that's your peripheral brain failing to filter them out for lacking novelty, when you get psychedelia style visuals that's intermediate "layers" of abstraction running amok, and when you go off on extended narrative experiences fully detached from reality that's the deep generative models doing their own thing unmoored from the error signals your senses would otherwise generate. It's an awesome book in many other respects, but IMO the best bit is how many plausible mechanistic explanations it offers for psychedelic experience. https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-uncertainty/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...
      • aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago
• danaris 4y ago
  > Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me. And I personally know people for whom the exact opposite is the case. I'm very much looking forward to the rise of psychedelic therapy.
  • NickC25 4y ago
    And that's a good thing! I am in NO way advocating for a one-size-fits-all approach. There should be many different avenues available for those who wish for different experiences. For people who aren't experienced with psychedelics, doing it in a place they are comfortable in is of utmost importance. The same logic applies to those who are experienced with the substances. If you want to trip in nature, or on your couch, or in your therapist's office, or wherever else you might find to be the optimal set/setting for your experience, you should be able to do so. That said, I'm all for taking whatever works in a setting that works for the user.
  • dmix 4y ago
    You mean the isolated subparts right, not actually doing LSD-style drugs in a clinical setting? Every person I know who had a 'bad trip' did so at a concert or some place they weren't alone or in a quiet area outdoors with close friends (not that there aren't rare exceptions to this rule).
• Scoundreller 4y ago
  It’s like when med chemists trialled a cannabinoid-blocker as an experimental appetite suppressant. Surprise surprise, it gave the participants depression and suicidality. Like, what did you expect? https://www.nature.com/articles/nrcardio.2010.148 https://www.nature.com/articles/nrcardio.2010.148
• TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  Well, I love my therapist, and research suggests that psychedelic assisted therapy is effective. I've never taken a large dose of mushrooms because I am nervous about where it would take me, so personally doing that with my therapist could be pretty nice. Tho expensive lol. I've only really done LSD once tho and it was interesting, and seemed more low key than shrooms, so maybe I should try that again.
  • recyclelater 4y ago
    It’s not more low key it’s actually much more intense, or rather can be depending on dosage. Easier to exact dose with LSD. Mushrooms are over quicker and as a result can be more pleasant.
  • akvadrako 4y ago
    Well you can get a guide (or just an experienced friend) for less than a therapist. Also, LSD is not lower key than shrooms; maybe you took a smaller dose or personally have a tolerance. But with high doses they can both be very intense.
    • TaylorAlexander 4y ago
      Shrooms bring up a lot of emotions for me, while LSD felt more cerebral. I found the LSD easier to deal with. But then, I have less experience with it.
  • ActorNightly 4y ago
    You likely did a starter dose of LSD. Also, it doesn't depend on stomach processing to activate, which means its not diet dependent - shrooms very much are. Plenty of people make a mistake of taking shrooms after eating a meal, not getting anything after an hour, taking more thinking their shrooms are weak, and then when it hits they are taken for quite a ride. The right way to dose shrooms IMO is not eating 4 hours prior, ground up fine (and optionally put into gel capsules if you can't stand the taste), and taken with OJ. This gives you a very strong and peaky trip at minimal doses, but the peak lasts for 2-3 hours, whereas LSD is generally a whole day affair event at lower dosages. Its also worth while imo to grow your own shrooms. There is this philosophical meta element of taking charge and creating your own medicine which then you take can better your own life, which can be a very positive thought during the trip.
• WalterSear 4y ago
  > The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. IMHE, it's not, at least in regards to (racemic) ketamine and depression. The benefit doesn't appear until ~24 hours later, and the effect scales with dosage, but not trip intensity or outcome. I found taking it almost unpleasant at times, but the subsequent effects uniformly profound. Unfortunately, I developed a rare health issue, or I'd still be taking it.
  • debenedictis 4y ago
    I too developed a rare health issue, OABSS. "In our study, OABSS (overactive bladder symptom score) significantly increased with the combined use of ketamine and marijuana (P = 0.016). Cannabinoids are the active components of marijuana, and select cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2, have been identified in the human detrusor and urothelium." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6510790/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6510790/
• 14 4y ago
  Where does one buy LSD this day and age. Doesn’t seem very popular in my neck of the woods and have not heard anyone having it since I was in high school 20 years ago.
  • Fargoan 4y ago
    There's an international network of computers used for communication and commerce. You can find it on this network. "1P-LSD - PsychonautWiki" https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/1P-LSD https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/1P-LSD
  • nick__m 4y ago
    It's been at least decade since I did LSD or it's derivatives but I still read about them and I known that if you live in Canada a search for indole lysergamine and ALD-52[1] should lead you to a shop! 1) https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/ALD-52 https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/ALD-52
  • kaoD 4y ago
    I recommend staying away from street dealers. There was a huge influx of NBOx compounds sold as LSD blotters since 2017 (apparently there was a global LSD shortage around that year, and IIRC they're cheaper to produce?) Their safety profile is not well-understood but it looks like it's riskier than the (very safe) LSD due to their vasoconstriction effects, and fatal doses aren't that high compared to active doses, unlike LSD which has a huge buffer. Also people tend to describe their trips as being subjectively less pleasant. And please, if you have to resort to dealers, invest in a cheap testing kit. You might be lucky and find a nearby non-profit that can not only do a cheap reactive test, but also a purity test. Stay safe out there. EDIT: Sibling comments also mention compounds like 1P-LSD sold online. I'd still test those even if bought from reputable vendors. Anyways, their safety profiles aren't really that well understood either. They're suspected to be just metabolized into LSD and therefore pretty safe, but they're very new (~2015) and after all they're research chemicals (or rather, not-yet-researched chemicals). In comparison LSD had been known for decades and it's pretty well understood. I guess this is what prohibition leads to...
  • m4jor 4y ago
• scythe 4y ago
  >the liability of visual or auditory hallucinations. The visual/audio effects aren't what gets you on a trip, though. It's the headspace, the distortion of "automatic self-recognition", and to some extent, the role of the crucial 5-ht2a receptor in the sleep-wake cycle: all 5-ht2a antagonists are soporific, and almost all psychedelics produce insomnia as a side effect. A bad trip leading to worse after-effects practically always proceeds through a sleepless night.
• jokowueu 4y ago
  i have tried all the psychadelics that dont provide "trips" . all of them were complete failures yet they show effects on mice for some reason but when did that ever matter. The only interesting one that was impressive was tabernanthalog but even though it didn't produce a twitch response in mice it clearly had a psychadelic effect
  • elevaet 4y ago
    How did you end up getting to test tabernanthalog and these other novel compounds?
    • jokowueu 4y ago
      I belong to a group where we group our money together to either get the required precursors to make them or hire chemists over seas . It's quite easy but larger quantities are required to bring down the cost There are a lot of other substances as well just recently we were able to procure very cheap rapamycin for people with autoimmune issues If you are interested in joining or just look around reply to me here
      • kennyloginz 4y ago
        How do I join? ( serious question)
        • jokowueu 4y ago
          https://chat.nootropicsrebirth.com/ https://chat.nootropicsrebirth.com/ After a group buy the admin has his own site where he sells it as well. We had another chemist but he was in Ukraine and is missing currently . He had a huge selection of compounds on his own site . Admin site : nootropicsfrontline.com
          • elevaet 4y ago
            Holy smokes, talk about exotic stuff. Very cool to see this kind of pioneering is going on. Be careful!
• s1artibartfast 4y ago
  Seems pretty testable. Co administer the LSD with something to knock out the individual, and ideally prevent them from dreaming. You could determine if the benifit(s) arise from the the process, experience, and dis/associations of the trip or simply the subconscious biochemical fuckery.
• ngold 4y ago
  Couldn't agree more. One of my best trips was in a closet reading Peters principle.
• user90323432 4y ago
  The problem is that Pharma companies can't patent and sell a full spectrum product. They can only make the big bucks by getting a certain compound approved after going through the full FDA process on that one particular compound. It's the same thing we saw with kratom. The FDA had multiple attempts over the last 7 years to ban it, while kratom is basically as harmless as coffee. It took a massive grassroots effort to stop the ban. Then shortly after it comes out that GlaxoSmithKline, who the FDA head (Scott Gottlieb) at the time of the attempted ban sat on the board for just a year prior, was trying to bring synthetic 7-hydroxy-mitragynine (7hm is thought to be a main active ingredient in kratom) to market, which it has a patent on. Follow the money people
• carapace 4y ago
  The thing that bothers me is that anyone who thinks they should decide for other people what (non-poisonous) chemicals they should put in their body is obviously so crazy that their opinion should be excluded from serious consideration on the matter. (This goes double if the person hasn't ever even tried the chemical(s) in question!) Anti-drug hysteria has caused far more human destruction than all the bad trips and psychotic episodes put together. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people in prison right now for illegal drugs. In some cases they had their lives ruined over nothing worse than a few grams of weed.
• braindead_in 4y ago
  Bad trips are not caused by the drug, they're caused by set and setting. You just have to let go and accept whatever's happening to enjoy the trip. Unfortunately, letting go is easier said than done. The Ego is very good at self preservation and it invariably prevents the letting go process.
• LocalH 4y ago
  You could say... missing the mycelium from the flowers
• yndoendo 4y ago
  Good book about the subject matter is [0] How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan. Set and setting are what create the good or bad experience. The therapist prepares the person for the journey while walking them out of any bad paths while on the journey. Layout and design of where the journey takes places must be soothing and relaxing. Fun fact. Fungi growing closer to humans has higher potency in psilocybin than ones growing deeper in nature. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36613747-how-to-change-your-mind?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=LKPhGCj5Ic&rank=1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36613747-how-to-change-y... Edit: wording