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"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 n

"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
    This smells like a just-so theory…
    - eurasiantiger 4y ago
      This smells drug-naive.
- teeray 4y ago
  If the brain is a filter, the trip is all about increasing the bandwidth
zionic 4y ago
>long-term positive changes. Proponents frequently mention things like this, yet _no one_ who publicly admits to psych use is someone I want to be. All the people I've ever met, and friends who didn't but started down that road, aren't "all there" anymore. They'll preach day and night about the "benefits", but from the outside looking in it's obviously a coping mechanism.
- recyclelater 4y ago
  I publicly, to my peer group at least, state I have enjoyed benefits of psychedelic drugs every five or ten years, I am pretty sure I have my shit together compared to most people. That being said i know the people you are talking about, but they in my experience use drugs much more frequently. Multiple times a year, and regularly also smoke weed etc. Obviously biased when talking about myself, but I think you can split your judgement into a frequency argument rather than a binary yes or no.
  - treeman79 4y ago
    35 years of dealing with friends and family addiction issues. They all believe it doesn’t affect them negativity, that people can’t tell. They are all wrong. We can see the changes in them. Good or bad. The ones that make an effort to get off for awhile are usually shocked when they realize how they were being affected. I have never seen positive long term affects in anyone of them. Even though they all claim otherwise. My 2 cents
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      > They all believe it doesn’t affect them negativity, that people can’t tell. > They are all wrong. We can see the changes in them. Good or bad. Well the post you replied to didn't address being able to tell. > The ones that make an effort to get off for awhile are usually shocked when they realize how they were being affected. 5 years is a while, surely? > I have never seen positive long term affects in anyone of them. Even though they all claim otherwise. Do they still claim that after 5 years of non-use?
TaupeRanger 4y ago
That is a claim that would require a study to confirm. No such study has been done to my knowledge.
- yababa_y 4y ago
  Studies have been done! Here is the latest one, for psilocybin. The mystical experiences are deeply related to therapeutic outcome https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.841648/full#h1 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.8416... Here is the first one I am aware of: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050654/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050654/. So 14 years of evidence backing up this claim.
  - joshuajill 4y ago
    These mystical experiences are part of the outcome, not an environmental variable. There maybe anecdotal or some other kind of evidence in the sense of what the effect of the supporting environment is on the long term.
    - yababa_y 4y ago
      this thread is all about the “trip” ie the mystical experience aspect, that presumably the “plasticity-specific” novel psychedeloids do not occasion because they are not considered part of the physiological outcome but merely a drug experience. that is what the comment I replied was countering: GP claimed more study was needed to say the trip IS the treatment, and I’m saying the research has been done.
  - TaupeRanger 4y ago
    No, none of these studies compares drugs that induce the supposed neuroplasticity effect without the trip to normal hallucinogenics. The claim was that the trip is what makes the drugs work, but we haven't investigated that question yet because the new drugs aren't available.
    - 4y ago

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
  This smells like a just-so theory…
  - eurasiantiger 4y ago
    This smells drug-naive.
teeray 4y ago
If the brain is a filter, the trip is all about increasing the bandwidth

zionic 4y ago

>long-term positive changes. Proponents frequently mention things like this, yet _no one_ who publicly admits to psych use is someone I want to be. All the people I've ever met, and friends who didn't but started down that road, aren't "all there" anymore. They'll preach day and night about the "benefits", but from the outside looking in it's obviously a coping mechanism.

recyclelater 4y ago
I publicly, to my peer group at least, state I have enjoyed benefits of psychedelic drugs every five or ten years, I am pretty sure I have my shit together compared to most people. That being said i know the people you are talking about, but they in my experience use drugs much more frequently. Multiple times a year, and regularly also smoke weed etc. Obviously biased when talking about myself, but I think you can split your judgement into a frequency argument rather than a binary yes or no.
- treeman79 4y ago
  35 years of dealing with friends and family addiction issues. They all believe it doesn’t affect them negativity, that people can’t tell. They are all wrong. We can see the changes in them. Good or bad. The ones that make an effort to get off for awhile are usually shocked when they realize how they were being affected. I have never seen positive long term affects in anyone of them. Even though they all claim otherwise. My 2 cents
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    > They all believe it doesn’t affect them negativity, that people can’t tell. > They are all wrong. We can see the changes in them. Good or bad. Well the post you replied to didn't address being able to tell. > The ones that make an effort to get off for awhile are usually shocked when they realize how they were being affected. 5 years is a while, surely? > I have never seen positive long term affects in anyone of them. Even though they all claim otherwise. Do they still claim that after 5 years of non-use?

TaupeRanger 4y ago

That is a claim that would require a study to confirm. No such study has been done to my knowledge.

yababa_y 4y ago
Studies have been done! Here is the latest one, for psilocybin. The mystical experiences are deeply related to therapeutic outcome https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.841648/full#h1 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2022.8416... Here is the first one I am aware of: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050654/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050654/. So 14 years of evidence backing up this claim.
- joshuajill 4y ago
  These mystical experiences are part of the outcome, not an environmental variable. There maybe anecdotal or some other kind of evidence in the sense of what the effect of the supporting environment is on the long term.
  - yababa_y 4y ago
    this thread is all about the “trip” ie the mystical experience aspect, that presumably the “plasticity-specific” novel psychedeloids do not occasion because they are not considered part of the physiological outcome but merely a drug experience. that is what the comment I replied was countering: GP claimed more study was needed to say the trip IS the treatment, and I’m saying the research has been done.
- TaupeRanger 4y ago
  No, none of these studies compares drugs that induce the supposed neuroplasticity effect without the trip to normal hallucinogenics. The claim was that the trip is what makes the drugs work, but we haven't investigated that question yet because the new drugs aren't available.
  - 4y ago