28 ms·

Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

253 points by lxm 3y ago

paweladamczuk 3y ago
https://archive.is/1jl77 https://archive.is/1jl77
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  The captcha on that is ridiculous. I couldn't pass until changing to another network (from fixed residential to mobile). Tapped a checkbox a dozen times and solved a half dozen rounds identifying objects in photos before giving up. Android Chrome, PiHole, nothing else. If the PiHole is to blame (haven't checked yet), I guess it sort of makes sense that I can't expect to read TFA when offering neither tracking nor dollars in return.
  - xnx 3y ago
    There's a bit of a tiff between Cloudflare and Archive that causes this. Change your DNS to something else like Google's, 8.8.8.8, to work around.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      Can the set of what resolvers work be described in the inverse? What's blocked instead of what's allowed, or the nonstandard config that has hit-or-miss compatibility?
    - Etheryte 3y ago
      Alternative proposal, don't use Google DNS since they gather a gargantuan amount of data on you as is. Personally I use Mullvad (they also offer DNS over HTTPS/TLS), but there are many fine providers out there.
    - KennyBlanken 3y ago
      As a user, I don't give a shit? The service is unusable. Every time I try an archive.is link, I try the captchas 6 times and give up.
swalling 3y ago
What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psychiatric risks that can be severe and unpredictable, but they don't require prolonged, daily dosages to be effective.
- firecall 3y ago
  And what they never tell you, in my experience, is the horrible experience of trying to come off them!
  - petesergeant 3y ago
    I'm sorry your experience of coming off them was horrible, but that is not "the experience", and many people come off them without issue.
    - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
      My wife had multiple talks with a psychiatrist about them to threat depression, and the experience of the psychiatrist was that it's the rare few that can stop taking them without issue. Hell, it's the rare few who find the right kind of antidepressant in one go, most of the time you need to try a few different kinds for a few months, with all the side effects that come with it.
    - firecall 3y ago
      Totally, I'm sure many people have no issues :-) Here's a recent Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/17/i-stopped-sleeping-the-sometimes-difficult-path-off-antidepressants https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/17/i-stopped-sl... From the article: > Horowitz experienced a prolonged antidepressant withdrawal in 2015 that caused intense panic attacks and, he says, even left him contemplating suicide. This personal experience has led the training psychiatrist to become an advocate for reforming antidepressant deprescribing. > In June 2022 the UK health regulator, Nice, amended its guidance on how to support people coming off antidepressants, acknowledging the severity and length of withdrawal symptoms can vary. Nice encourages slow, staggered tapering over many months, if needed. > In Australia, the RANZCP guidelines continue to recommend tapering by halving and quartering the lowest dose over about two to six weeks, and acknowledged that while slower tapering might sometimes be needed, it mostly isn’t possible in Australia “as current preparations of antidepressants do not allow for the dose to be reduced by such small decrements”. There are well documented side effects of stopping SSRI usage that are not related to the original symptoms that the drug is prescribed to treat. But yes, we all have different experiences, and there are many types of SSRIs. :-)
debatem1 3y ago
I'm not a medical person. Is there a readable summary of the research on therapeutic uses of magic mushrooms for laypeople?
- hcks 3y ago
  There’s a bunch of fake studies that won’t replicate in 20 years when we’ll try to understand why we started frying peoples brain
  - beej71 3y ago
    Since millions of people have been taking mushrooms for thousands of years without this side effect, it seems unlikely we'll suddenly start finding fried brains.
- a2800276 3y ago
  Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" is probably the most serious, balanced popular fiction book on the topic.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  [dead]
- stephenitis 3y ago
  If you are a woman, there is a recent recent book called the psilocybin handbook for women by Jennifer Chesak, it's concise, and organized by topics and more importantly cites sources. It was useful for my wife and I gift it to any female friend who ventures into psychedelics.
pstuart 3y ago
It comes at a price point many can't afford. There should be more options. As noted elsewhere, it is powerful medicine and not without risks. But we also need to remember that many other medications come with significant risk as well, including suicidal ideation. So yes, it's powerful and should be treated with respect, but many of those other medications don't require you to spend thousands of dollars to have a baby sitter whilst taking it.
- BillyTheMage 3y ago
  Thousands of dollars? Sounds like a scam to me. Just have a friend babysit you like everyone else.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    It's justified in the context that's been set up -- certification requires a lot of time and the license is big bucks too. Add to that the length of a trip would be many hours. Finding a friend to babysit is not always easy. I've got this crazy idea on setting up a cooperative to do something like that. Leverage existing guides from tripsitters.org and others. Develop protocol and legal indemnification, identify suitable locations (nature!), etc. I'd love to chat this up with anybody who doesn't think it's crazy (and even those that do, to disabuse me of this notion). There's another spin on it too that I need to write out and find likeminded souls to explore...
    - wfvr 3y ago
      I've been thinking of the same thing, and I think the ideal thing would be to use the psychedelics as a sacrament in the context of a weekend-long initiation ritual. Participants would travel into a remote forested location and go through activities and rituals that would give meaning to the psychedelic experience, as well as rituals and activities with the objective of integrating the psychedelic experience into their day-to-day lives. I have written out a bit of the experience, I can share it with you if you'd like. We're still in the planning phase.
      - 3y ago
legitster 3y ago
I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but then line up to try the first batch of industrialized psilocybin from Rose City Laboratories.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  I mean probably the early adopters here have already early adopted in the past.
- Archio 3y ago
  Do you understand what happened in the opioid crisis, and why people are mad at the Sacklers? They weren’t hapless naive actors that didn’t fully understand “the implications” of the drugs they were selling. The effects of opioid addiction were WELL known when oxycontin was introduced, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals deliberately misrepresented critical information about the drugs they sold and had salespeople lie in a wholesale fashion on a massive scale. It’s reasonable to have suspicion about companies and regulators in this area, but the opioid crisis is such a different situation in context.
  - legitster 3y ago
    From the article: > Dr. Janis Phelps, director of the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said she and other researchers had been wary of the decriminalization movement. Many in the field had worked for years to remain strictly scientific, hoping to avoid government crackdowns, and to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration time to fully review the effects of psilocybin before pressing ahead with efforts to make it legal. > “I have changed my mind,” she said. While she remains concerned that bad actors could try to enter the industry strictly for profit, or try to take advantage of vulnerable people, she has come to believe that the open door in Oregon could advance the use of psychedelics in ways that methodical approaches cannot. > Dr. Charles Nemeroff, the chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said he continues to be wary. Psilocybin is powerful, with immediate effects lasting for hours, and uncertain outcomes for patients, he said, recalling one patient of his who has experienced protracted psychosis, losing partial connection to reality, after taking doses of mushrooms. The treatments ruined her life, said Dr. Nemeroff, who said he worried about the lack of required medical oversight in Oregon’s program. Just like the Sacklers, people pursuing psilocybin are fully aware of all of these warnings and problems. And just like Purdue, anyone selling psilocybin right now are willfully misrepresenting the evidence and ignoring medical opinion. Again, Purdue did all of the things they did because they believed they were ultimately helping treat people's suffering. I am fully aware that time may tell and the concerns may be unfounded. And I get that we are dealing with a completely different drug/mechanism. But one is right and one is wrong only through the benefit of hindsight.
explaininjs 3y ago
Been there, done that. Have the postcard. I got to experience the even more fun version where you feel like your death is imminent, you watch your surroundings stop rendering chunk by chunk, and your long term friend is telling you it is indeed all a simulation that everyone but me knew about, and I really was dying (more accurately: going "offline" for an upgrade, and my "spirit" wouldn't be persisted across versions). She later apologized and said she thought I was joking. We don't talk anymore. As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him. It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are.
- simonvc 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    No. I am aphantastic.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - explaininjs 3y ago
      (which, not-so-coincidentally, played a major role in all the above)
      - nmarinov 3y ago
        Could you elaborate? I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645
        3y ago
jerrygoyal 3y ago
3000$ for treatment is way higher for most people to afford. I hope it will go down in the future.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  Wild considering a dose of magic mushrooms is $10-20.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Seems like it's in line with the standard US medical system inflation then. Here there are at least some additional things like the facility and the 'facilitator' that's supposed to help the trip achieve the medical goals, they're not just tossing you some dried mushrooms in a baggy and wishing you a good time.
grammers 3y ago
They've had them in Holland decades ago. Tried them once, was the craziest movie experience I've ever had and didn't feel like repeating this ever again.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  I think this is an important distinction many people who are not familiar with the matter miss, psilocybin is not a party drug. I would say psilocybin is closer to say ayahuasca than it is to MDMA or other similar things. A good analogy I once heard is that on party drugs, you're figuratively behind the driver's wheel, whereas on psilocybin you're along for the drive and you'll see where it takes you.
  - aqme28 3y ago
    I think this is a misconception about psilocybin and drugs in general. Just like "the dose makes the poison," the dose determines how much control you have. Small doses of acid/mushrooms are very common among partying festivalgoers.
- earthboundkid 3y ago
  From a programmer's perspective, I think everyone should try them once. It's like commenting out a portion of the code to see the effects as part of debugging. It's neat to be like, "Oh, if you just turn off the image stabilization, the walls look like waves, and then the pattern matcher takes over and goes crazy."
extraduder_ire 3y ago
Here's hoping more accurate dosing will be a side effect of this. Going by rough weight of a plant that includes a lot of water always seemed kind of sketchy to me. I've heard of tinctures made by dissolving them in alcohol, but I don't think even those are measured objectively. No idea what sort of titration/measurement you'd do to determine the mg amount of psilocybin, or if that's even well documented.
- clbrmbr 3y ago
  > water Weights you read are dry weights. > tincture Tinctures at least homogenize. So a “0.05g” dose of a tincture is consistent within the batch, and more consistent between batches. This is how medicine worked up to the 19th century.
  - InSteady 3y ago
    Potency can still vary drastically from batch to batch (and even within the same batch), let alone between distinct strains. Standardization and accurate testing are still quite important when we are talking therapeutic use.
- aqme28 3y ago
  It's not the water weight, since they're always dried. Not every mushroom has the same % of active ingredients vs the rest of the dry weight. You could have one big weak shroom or a tiny potent one.
- k9unit 3y ago
  > Here's hoping more accurate dosing will be a side effect of this. Going by rough weight of a plant that includes a lot of water always seemed kind of sketchy to me. > I've heard of tinctures made by dissolving them in alcohol, but I don't think even those are measured objectively. No idea what sort of titration/measurement you'd do to determine the mg amount of psilocybin, or if that's even well documented. You could create a tincture and test it. And like the other person who replied said, the doses will be consistent. Personally I took magic mushrooms once. I've always been an anxious person. For at least 2 or 3 months after. My anxiety was gone like never before, I was not scared of anything or talking to anyone. I was the most free I ever was. Ive been wanting to take another dose soon, I think I should... 1g. I make full spectrum CBD oil for myself and family. It has a very real effect too. Much more powerful than most CBD products you can purchase, because it will contain more than pure CBD. Its the same process as a tincture with a few steps after. I turn 4 ounces (112g) into 60ml. ~300+ mg/g, take 0.05-0.1g. I think the benefits should be experienced without expectations, because they can vary. Helps with stress, anxiety, blood pressure, inflammation and some pain, arthritis, and others. There are some other compounds in this plant that can help with other things. CBG/A CBN, CBDA. A tiny bit of THC, which is naturally found in tiny amounts in most CBD containing plants, increases the effects of the others greatly. Too much THC alone has a negative impact if you continue long term use, at least on me. These compounds effect the endocannabinoid system, but have some off target activity which is why a variety of similar compounds can have a lot of different effects. Those other compounds can help with different issues-digestion, sleep. Keeping a decent amount of CBD/G(A) (by not cooking/heating it) is important too. I am a very scientific person, and I understand some people are weary of this type of medicine. But what is your alternative? Eat the pills by big pharma filled with lies to sell drugs and make money? Take an SSRI so you can kill your sex drive and feel like a zombie? Maybe that won't happen to you, and I understand that they help some or many people. But if you understood the potential negative effects, and that some of them can be permanent, would you still be okay with starting it yourself? Perhaps something that has grown in nature with us can be beneficial, we came from the same planet, we evolved together. We consider other plants and vegetables from this earth to be healthy for us, why? Coffee, tea, in moderation, are good for you too. Tea is more than just caffeine.
Delokoloololo 3y ago
I still don't think we as a society are allowed to completly ban any drugs. A society might be allowed to have safety mechanism in place but otherwise nothing else.
- Etheryte 3y ago
  While I see where you're coming from, how do you address the healthcare gap? I agree with personal freedom of choice and choosing your own risk tolerance, but as a society we collectively pay for the healthcare costs of those who fall through the cracks and go too far. This problem isn't unique to drugs in any way, we face the same problem with e.g. excessive alcohol use, and there the problem is also largely unsolved.
  - Delokoloololo 3y ago
    It isn't fair to begin with. A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care. In worst case we just triage. But this would definitely be something the society would be allowed to regulate: The society can say 'you can take any drug you want but if you take x you become second in line' That would be transparent and fair but we don't even have this type of discussion. And while I get Ritalin from my doctor the other one is with one leg in prison for either speed or crystal. At the end of the day keeping this hidden is more of a problem than not. Educating people is critical but no one feels educated by police.
    - rootusrootus 3y ago
      > A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care. And the fat person may well have a lower lifetime total healthcare cost.
      - Delokoloololo 3y ago
        I was actually not trying to evaluate this. When I meant athletic person I actually thought about injuries.
  - 3y ago
stef25 3y ago
One issue is that SSRI treatment has to be stopped before starting psychedelic therapy (interactions). This means tapering off until you're not being treated anymore, which takes weeks if not months, can be difficult and put the patient in a less than ideal state of mind, possibly even worse than when they started off. And this is a very bad state of mind to be in when starting psychedelics. I wonder how people usually deal with that.
- icepat 3y ago
  While nobody should do this, the interaction risk between an SSRI and a classical psychedelic is low. The primary concerns are serotonin syndrome, which requires a dose far outside the level that a responsible practitioner would administer. That said, this does mean that if an error is made, the consequence is far more severe (ie: miligrams as opposed to micrograms in dosing LSD). I have heard second-hand reports of users who tapered their SSRI treatment, and on first exposure to psychedelics, had a severe negative response (to the point of re-traumatisation). So you're correct, this is exceptionally difficult to do correctly.
  - stef25 3y ago
    Yeah, which is why maybe these treatments are ok for people with relatively "mild" symptoms / disorders (like the guy in the article with "lingering ptsd"), people who aren't being aggressively treated with SSRIs. That's the sad thing about those pills I guess, it's that you stay on them or you get better.
    - icepat 3y ago
      In my experience with SSRI drugs, they mask the issue by blunting the emotional response itself. Much like removing a broken leg under aesthetic, rather than setting it and casting it.
  - travisjungroth 3y ago
    Ayahuasca is a classical psychedelic and the interaction risk with SSRIs is extremely high.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
asow92 3y ago
I'm not a very spiritual person, but mushrooms are as close to "talking to God" as I've been able to muster in my lifetime.
- cryptonector 3y ago
  I've heard this from people I know and trust. Idk why you got downvoted.
  - asow92 3y ago
    People get uncomfortable discussing such topics. I completely empathize with them. Downvotes don't affect the truth of my lived experience.
- droopyEyelids 3y ago
  In day-to-day life the concept of "God" is used nonsensically at best, and often maliciously, so it's natural to dismiss it as cynical bullshit. But taking those mushrooms, one can see that there is something real in that direction, just obscured by millennia of deceit and misdirection.
bentt 3y ago
This is one of the things I love about America. Each state can run their own experiments and everyone else can watch. We don't have to wonder what would happen now.
johnea 3y ago
Umm, maybe the NYT is uninformed, but psychedelic mushrooms have been in "the market" in Oregon for ever. Typical capitalist rag take on the situation: it doesn't exist until a rich guy makes money on it...
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
You take a heroic dose of mushrooms, apply eye covering, and lie down in a comfortable place. You listen to music, such as the John Hopkins Playlist. Then, you journey inward. You experience ego death. You confront fears. You feel a sense of connection and oneness with the world. When you recover, you are in a very malleable state and need to talk about your experience, your thoughts and feelings. This is a crucial step in using mushrooms for cognitive change. You can't just solve problems while high. You need to process the experience with someone qualified to help you work through what came to the surface. You're supposed to have initial therapy sessions leading up to the journey, sessions after, and two journies two weeks apart. Psychedelics can change your mind but do them with help in the right setting.
Denatonium 3y ago
I find it odd that most states legalize pot before they legalize/decriminalize shrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms are native to a lot more states than cannabis. It's an odd experience to walk down the streets of NJ and see a patch of Psilocybe Ovoideocystidiata growing in a mulch bed and to think, "Wow! A natural fungal felony with freewill and a means to reproduce, turning other people's mulch beds into felonies!"

253 points by lxm 3y ago

paweladamczuk 3y ago

https://archive.is/1jl77 https://archive.is/1jl77

hunter2_ 3y ago
The captcha on that is ridiculous. I couldn't pass until changing to another network (from fixed residential to mobile). Tapped a checkbox a dozen times and solved a half dozen rounds identifying objects in photos before giving up. Android Chrome, PiHole, nothing else. If the PiHole is to blame (haven't checked yet), I guess it sort of makes sense that I can't expect to read TFA when offering neither tracking nor dollars in return.
- xnx 3y ago
  There's a bit of a tiff between Cloudflare and Archive that causes this. Change your DNS to something else like Google's, 8.8.8.8, to work around.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    Can the set of what resolvers work be described in the inverse? What's blocked instead of what's allowed, or the nonstandard config that has hit-or-miss compatibility?
  - Etheryte 3y ago
    Alternative proposal, don't use Google DNS since they gather a gargantuan amount of data on you as is. Personally I use Mullvad (they also offer DNS over HTTPS/TLS), but there are many fine providers out there.
  - KennyBlanken 3y ago
    As a user, I don't give a shit? The service is unusable. Every time I try an archive.is link, I try the captchas 6 times and give up.

swalling 3y ago

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psychiatric risks that can be severe and unpredictable, but they don't require prolonged, daily dosages to be effective.

firecall 3y ago
And what they never tell you, in my experience, is the horrible experience of trying to come off them!
- petesergeant 3y ago
  I'm sorry your experience of coming off them was horrible, but that is not "the experience", and many people come off them without issue.
  - FranzFerdiNaN 3y ago
    My wife had multiple talks with a psychiatrist about them to threat depression, and the experience of the psychiatrist was that it's the rare few that can stop taking them without issue. Hell, it's the rare few who find the right kind of antidepressant in one go, most of the time you need to try a few different kinds for a few months, with all the side effects that come with it.
  - firecall 3y ago
    Totally, I'm sure many people have no issues :-) Here's a recent Guardian article: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/17/i-stopped-sleeping-the-sometimes-difficult-path-off-antidepressants https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/apr/17/i-stopped-sl... From the article: > Horowitz experienced a prolonged antidepressant withdrawal in 2015 that caused intense panic attacks and, he says, even left him contemplating suicide. This personal experience has led the training psychiatrist to become an advocate for reforming antidepressant deprescribing. > In June 2022 the UK health regulator, Nice, amended its guidance on how to support people coming off antidepressants, acknowledging the severity and length of withdrawal symptoms can vary. Nice encourages slow, staggered tapering over many months, if needed. > In Australia, the RANZCP guidelines continue to recommend tapering by halving and quartering the lowest dose over about two to six weeks, and acknowledged that while slower tapering might sometimes be needed, it mostly isn’t possible in Australia “as current preparations of antidepressants do not allow for the dose to be reduced by such small decrements”. There are well documented side effects of stopping SSRI usage that are not related to the original symptoms that the drug is prescribed to treat. But yes, we all have different experiences, and there are many types of SSRIs. :-)

debatem1 3y ago

I'm not a medical person. Is there a readable summary of the research on therapeutic uses of magic mushrooms for laypeople?

hcks 3y ago
There’s a bunch of fake studies that won’t replicate in 20 years when we’ll try to understand why we started frying peoples brain
- beej71 3y ago
  Since millions of people have been taking mushrooms for thousands of years without this side effect, it seems unlikely we'll suddenly start finding fried brains.
a2800276 3y ago
Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind" is probably the most serious, balanced popular fiction book on the topic.
rtkwe 3y ago
[dead]
stephenitis 3y ago
If you are a woman, there is a recent recent book called the psilocybin handbook for women by Jennifer Chesak, it's concise, and organized by topics and more importantly cites sources. It was useful for my wife and I gift it to any female friend who ventures into psychedelics.

pstuart 3y ago

It comes at a price point many can't afford. There should be more options. As noted elsewhere, it is powerful medicine and not without risks. But we also need to remember that many other medications come with significant risk as well, including suicidal ideation. So yes, it's powerful and should be treated with respect, but many of those other medications don't require you to spend thousands of dollars to have a baby sitter whilst taking it.

BillyTheMage 3y ago
Thousands of dollars? Sounds like a scam to me. Just have a friend babysit you like everyone else.
- pstuart 3y ago
  It's justified in the context that's been set up -- certification requires a lot of time and the license is big bucks too. Add to that the length of a trip would be many hours. Finding a friend to babysit is not always easy. I've got this crazy idea on setting up a cooperative to do something like that. Leverage existing guides from tripsitters.org and others. Develop protocol and legal indemnification, identify suitable locations (nature!), etc. I'd love to chat this up with anybody who doesn't think it's crazy (and even those that do, to disabuse me of this notion). There's another spin on it too that I need to write out and find likeminded souls to explore...
  - wfvr 3y ago
    I've been thinking of the same thing, and I think the ideal thing would be to use the psychedelics as a sacrament in the context of a weekend-long initiation ritual. Participants would travel into a remote forested location and go through activities and rituals that would give meaning to the psychedelic experience, as well as rituals and activities with the objective of integrating the psychedelic experience into their day-to-day lives. I have written out a bit of the experience, I can share it with you if you'd like. We're still in the planning phase.
    - 3y ago

legitster 3y ago

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but then line up to try the first batch of industrialized psilocybin from Rose City Laboratories.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
I mean probably the early adopters here have already early adopted in the past.
Archio 3y ago
Do you understand what happened in the opioid crisis, and why people are mad at the Sacklers? They weren’t hapless naive actors that didn’t fully understand “the implications” of the drugs they were selling. The effects of opioid addiction were WELL known when oxycontin was introduced, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals deliberately misrepresented critical information about the drugs they sold and had salespeople lie in a wholesale fashion on a massive scale. It’s reasonable to have suspicion about companies and regulators in this area, but the opioid crisis is such a different situation in context.
- legitster 3y ago
  From the article: > Dr. Janis Phelps, director of the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said she and other researchers had been wary of the decriminalization movement. Many in the field had worked for years to remain strictly scientific, hoping to avoid government crackdowns, and to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration time to fully review the effects of psilocybin before pressing ahead with efforts to make it legal. > “I have changed my mind,” she said. While she remains concerned that bad actors could try to enter the industry strictly for profit, or try to take advantage of vulnerable people, she has come to believe that the open door in Oregon could advance the use of psychedelics in ways that methodical approaches cannot. > Dr. Charles Nemeroff, the chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said he continues to be wary. Psilocybin is powerful, with immediate effects lasting for hours, and uncertain outcomes for patients, he said, recalling one patient of his who has experienced protracted psychosis, losing partial connection to reality, after taking doses of mushrooms. The treatments ruined her life, said Dr. Nemeroff, who said he worried about the lack of required medical oversight in Oregon’s program. Just like the Sacklers, people pursuing psilocybin are fully aware of all of these warnings and problems. And just like Purdue, anyone selling psilocybin right now are willfully misrepresenting the evidence and ignoring medical opinion. Again, Purdue did all of the things they did because they believed they were ultimately helping treat people's suffering. I am fully aware that time may tell and the concerns may be unfounded. And I get that we are dealing with a completely different drug/mechanism. But one is right and one is wrong only through the benefit of hindsight.

explaininjs 3y ago

Been there, done that. Have the postcard. I got to experience the even more fun version where you feel like your death is imminent, you watch your surroundings stop rendering chunk by chunk, and your long term friend is telling you it is indeed all a simulation that everyone but me knew about, and I really was dying (more accurately: going "offline" for an upgrade, and my "spirit" wouldn't be persisted across versions). She later apologized and said she thought I was joking. We don't talk anymore. As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him. It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are.

simonvc 3y ago
[flagged]
- explaininjs 3y ago
  No. I am aphantastic.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    (which, not-so-coincidentally, played a major role in all the above)
    - nmarinov 3y ago
      Could you elaborate? I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645
      - 3y ago

jerrygoyal 3y ago

3000$ for treatment is way higher for most people to afford. I hope it will go down in the future.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Wild considering a dose of magic mushrooms is $10-20.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Seems like it's in line with the standard US medical system inflation then. Here there are at least some additional things like the facility and the 'facilitator' that's supposed to help the trip achieve the medical goals, they're not just tossing you some dried mushrooms in a baggy and wishing you a good time.

grammers 3y ago

They've had them in Holland decades ago. Tried them once, was the craziest movie experience I've ever had and didn't feel like repeating this ever again.

Etheryte 3y ago
I think this is an important distinction many people who are not familiar with the matter miss, psilocybin is not a party drug. I would say psilocybin is closer to say ayahuasca than it is to MDMA or other similar things. A good analogy I once heard is that on party drugs, you're figuratively behind the driver's wheel, whereas on psilocybin you're along for the drive and you'll see where it takes you.
- aqme28 3y ago
  I think this is a misconception about psilocybin and drugs in general. Just like "the dose makes the poison," the dose determines how much control you have. Small doses of acid/mushrooms are very common among partying festivalgoers.
earthboundkid 3y ago
From a programmer's perspective, I think everyone should try them once. It's like commenting out a portion of the code to see the effects as part of debugging. It's neat to be like, "Oh, if you just turn off the image stabilization, the walls look like waves, and then the pattern matcher takes over and goes crazy."

extraduder_ire 3y ago

Here's hoping more accurate dosing will be a side effect of this. Going by rough weight of a plant that includes a lot of water always seemed kind of sketchy to me. I've heard of tinctures made by dissolving them in alcohol, but I don't think even those are measured objectively. No idea what sort of titration/measurement you'd do to determine the mg amount of psilocybin, or if that's even well documented.

clbrmbr 3y ago
> water Weights you read are dry weights. > tincture Tinctures at least homogenize. So a “0.05g” dose of a tincture is consistent within the batch, and more consistent between batches. This is how medicine worked up to the 19th century.
- InSteady 3y ago
  Potency can still vary drastically from batch to batch (and even within the same batch), let alone between distinct strains. Standardization and accurate testing are still quite important when we are talking therapeutic use.
aqme28 3y ago
It's not the water weight, since they're always dried. Not every mushroom has the same % of active ingredients vs the rest of the dry weight. You could have one big weak shroom or a tiny potent one.
k9unit 3y ago
> Here's hoping more accurate dosing will be a side effect of this. Going by rough weight of a plant that includes a lot of water always seemed kind of sketchy to me. > I've heard of tinctures made by dissolving them in alcohol, but I don't think even those are measured objectively. No idea what sort of titration/measurement you'd do to determine the mg amount of psilocybin, or if that's even well documented. You could create a tincture and test it. And like the other person who replied said, the doses will be consistent. Personally I took magic mushrooms once. I've always been an anxious person. For at least 2 or 3 months after. My anxiety was gone like never before, I was not scared of anything or talking to anyone. I was the most free I ever was. Ive been wanting to take another dose soon, I think I should... 1g. I make full spectrum CBD oil for myself and family. It has a very real effect too. Much more powerful than most CBD products you can purchase, because it will contain more than pure CBD. Its the same process as a tincture with a few steps after. I turn 4 ounces (112g) into 60ml. ~300+ mg/g, take 0.05-0.1g. I think the benefits should be experienced without expectations, because they can vary. Helps with stress, anxiety, blood pressure, inflammation and some pain, arthritis, and others. There are some other compounds in this plant that can help with other things. CBG/A CBN, CBDA. A tiny bit of THC, which is naturally found in tiny amounts in most CBD containing plants, increases the effects of the others greatly. Too much THC alone has a negative impact if you continue long term use, at least on me. These compounds effect the endocannabinoid system, but have some off target activity which is why a variety of similar compounds can have a lot of different effects. Those other compounds can help with different issues-digestion, sleep. Keeping a decent amount of CBD/G(A) (by not cooking/heating it) is important too. I am a very scientific person, and I understand some people are weary of this type of medicine. But what is your alternative? Eat the pills by big pharma filled with lies to sell drugs and make money? Take an SSRI so you can kill your sex drive and feel like a zombie? Maybe that won't happen to you, and I understand that they help some or many people. But if you understood the potential negative effects, and that some of them can be permanent, would you still be okay with starting it yourself? Perhaps something that has grown in nature with us can be beneficial, we came from the same planet, we evolved together. We consider other plants and vegetables from this earth to be healthy for us, why? Coffee, tea, in moderation, are good for you too. Tea is more than just caffeine.

Delokoloololo 3y ago

I still don't think we as a society are allowed to completly ban any drugs. A society might be allowed to have safety mechanism in place but otherwise nothing else.

Etheryte 3y ago
While I see where you're coming from, how do you address the healthcare gap? I agree with personal freedom of choice and choosing your own risk tolerance, but as a society we collectively pay for the healthcare costs of those who fall through the cracks and go too far. This problem isn't unique to drugs in any way, we face the same problem with e.g. excessive alcohol use, and there the problem is also largely unsolved.
- Delokoloololo 3y ago
  It isn't fair to begin with. A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care. In worst case we just triage. But this would definitely be something the society would be allowed to regulate: The society can say 'you can take any drug you want but if you take x you become second in line' That would be transparent and fair but we don't even have this type of discussion. And while I get Ritalin from my doctor the other one is with one leg in prison for either speed or crystal. At the end of the day keeping this hidden is more of a problem than not. Educating people is critical but no one feels educated by police.
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    > A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care. And the fat person may well have a lower lifetime total healthcare cost.
    - Delokoloololo 3y ago
      I was actually not trying to evaluate this. When I meant athletic person I actually thought about injuries.
- 3y ago

stef25 3y ago

One issue is that SSRI treatment has to be stopped before starting psychedelic therapy (interactions). This means tapering off until you're not being treated anymore, which takes weeks if not months, can be difficult and put the patient in a less than ideal state of mind, possibly even worse than when they started off. And this is a very bad state of mind to be in when starting psychedelics. I wonder how people usually deal with that.

icepat 3y ago
While nobody should do this, the interaction risk between an SSRI and a classical psychedelic is low. The primary concerns are serotonin syndrome, which requires a dose far outside the level that a responsible practitioner would administer. That said, this does mean that if an error is made, the consequence is far more severe (ie: miligrams as opposed to micrograms in dosing LSD). I have heard second-hand reports of users who tapered their SSRI treatment, and on first exposure to psychedelics, had a severe negative response (to the point of re-traumatisation). So you're correct, this is exceptionally difficult to do correctly.
- stef25 3y ago
  Yeah, which is why maybe these treatments are ok for people with relatively "mild" symptoms / disorders (like the guy in the article with "lingering ptsd"), people who aren't being aggressively treated with SSRIs. That's the sad thing about those pills I guess, it's that you stay on them or you get better.
  - icepat 3y ago
    In my experience with SSRI drugs, they mask the issue by blunting the emotional response itself. Much like removing a broken leg under aesthetic, rather than setting it and casting it.
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  Ayahuasca is a classical psychedelic and the interaction risk with SSRIs is extremely high.

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asow92 3y ago

I'm not a very spiritual person, but mushrooms are as close to "talking to God" as I've been able to muster in my lifetime.

cryptonector 3y ago
I've heard this from people I know and trust. Idk why you got downvoted.
- asow92 3y ago
  People get uncomfortable discussing such topics. I completely empathize with them. Downvotes don't affect the truth of my lived experience.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
In day-to-day life the concept of "God" is used nonsensically at best, and often maliciously, so it's natural to dismiss it as cynical bullshit. But taking those mushrooms, one can see that there is something real in that direction, just obscured by millennia of deceit and misdirection.

bentt 3y ago

This is one of the things I love about America. Each state can run their own experiments and everyone else can watch. We don't have to wonder what would happen now.

johnea 3y ago

Umm, maybe the NYT is uninformed, but psychedelic mushrooms have been in "the market" in Oregon for ever. Typical capitalist rag take on the situation: it doesn't exist until a rich guy makes money on it...

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

You take a heroic dose of mushrooms, apply eye covering, and lie down in a comfortable place. You listen to music, such as the John Hopkins Playlist. Then, you journey inward. You experience ego death. You confront fears. You feel a sense of connection and oneness with the world. When you recover, you are in a very malleable state and need to talk about your experience, your thoughts and feelings. This is a crucial step in using mushrooms for cognitive change. You can't just solve problems while high. You need to process the experience with someone qualified to help you work through what came to the surface. You're supposed to have initial therapy sessions leading up to the journey, sessions after, and two journies two weeks apart. Psychedelics can change your mind but do them with help in the right setting.

Denatonium 3y ago

I find it odd that most states legalize pot before they legalize/decriminalize shrooms. Psilocybin mushrooms are native to a lot more states than cannabis. It's an odd experience to walk down the streets of NJ and see a patch of Psilocybe Ovoideocystidiata growing in a mulch bed and to think, "Wow! A natural fungal felony with freewill and a means to reproduce, turning other people's mulch beds into felonies!"