4 ms·

Three interesting (I hope) comments: 1) There is so much cultural baggage around psychedelics at this point. We're still talking about the Marsh Chapel experim

by corry 3y ago

Three interesting (I hope) comments: 1) There is so much cultural baggage around psychedelics at this point. We're still talking about the Marsh Chapel experiment? We're still writing articles that MUST include a Leary reference? There is a HUGE wave of psychedelic research coming to fruition now and in the coming 2 - 3 years that will hopefully help change the conversation from hippies, the 1960s, and even religious/spiritual metaphor. 2) Without a more concrete understanding of consciousness (and the 'hard problem' of it), our understanding of psychedelics is built on shaky foundations. Sure, psychedelic research may help us discover new insights that help solve the consciousness crisis... but that seems like a very speculative hope. 3) I'm curious why N,N-DMT isn't being studied as much as psilocybin in this current wave of research. Much of the challenge with contemporary psychedelic therapy has to do with logistics - trips take too long to fit a clinical setting. DMT is over in 20 minutes, and while (I've heard) extremely intense, people seem to anecdotally benefit in similar ways to longer-acting psychedelics.

temp0826 3y ago
(Smoking) DMT is a huge wildcard. I've had a couple of good experiences but the vast majority left me very off-base and ungrounded, weirded out. I really don't think it has the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca.
giraffe_lady 3y ago
Clock time DMT is quick but in perceived time it is millennia. Whatever other effects you get are after you grapple with that The Jaunt shit on the way out.
MeImCounting 3y ago
Personally I think a big reason psychedelics are helpful to people is because of the process of an experience taking a full day, forcing you to integrate what youve experienced in a way that just wont ever be possible in a brief 20 minute experience. The trip is about the individual journey and not about some magical effect on the brain. This is just my opinion but I really think as we do more research we will find this to be the case
- horsethrow 3y ago
  Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I've done DMT once and magic mushrooms a few times. DMT is by far the crazier trip that will take me a year to properly integrate. Since I have to practice a few things, the DMT being that I met gave me homework, ha! I'm going for a "check up" in 8 months. Everyone has different experiences but when you subjectively feel your mind is at least 10 to 100 times faster (that even has some residu effect after the trip) then that's enough "time" to learn anything. Others may not have that experience. What I learned: - Feel free to feel free. No need to be so uptight. - If anything, _if anything_, it's about love. A good place to start is [1]. - Seeking for the truth is amazing. However, when you speak, be warm and loving while speaking the truth. A human is not an object. A human isn't only nourished by truth. Just like a well-balanced diet. It's nourished by more things. - You're blind to how many people love you. Also, they don't dare to say it given the culture you're in. - It doesn't matter whether the DMT being is real or not. It felt real at the time, but I knew it is probably an illusion going in. The DMT being laughed and told me it doesn't matter. What matters is the lessons that I get from this trip. Given that I'm an atheist, I can also apply this to religion. I don't need to believe in (a) god to understand religious vocabulary (concepts I can use) or to get inspiration from it. Obviously this applies to many more things. Gods and demons exist in the conceptual/symbolic realm (as more or less anything conceivable in a thought does). They're not real. But anything in our imagination has the capability of influencing us for real (self-fulfilling prophecies, etc.). My DMT trip lasted 30 seconds according to my trip sitter (who was sober). In those 30 seconds, I saw my life flashing by. Mushrooms on the other hand almost always gave me bad trips. They were insightful though. However, DMT was far more therapeutical for me. [1] https://ritanaomi.com/the-practice-of-metta-or-loving-kindness-meditation/ https://ritanaomi.com/the-practice-of-metta-or-loving-kindne...
  - sublinear 3y ago
    > You're blind to how many people love you. Also, they don't dare to say it given the culture you're in. You don't need any drugs to realize this. You just need better reasons to get out more.
  - UncleOxidant 3y ago
Affric 3y ago
Re: 1 The “war on drugs” ends, the counterculture of the 60s will loom large over discussion of psychedelics. Society’s attitude towards drugs forces people who in some way identify with something linked to the Psychedelic experience to define themselves against society to some extent. Rather than build on society’s current paradigm and fetishes they must tear them down to an extent. Much like Freud and psychology’s discourse only changing after much science, society’s discourse surrounding psychedelics will be free of Leary once the mysteries are revealed.
- jurynulifcation 3y ago
  I completely disagree that an enthusiasm or experience with psychedelics must lead to a definition-against, to some inherent tension with society. Are there bad laws in place currently? Yes. Laws that contribute to the state of modern-day slavery (our "justice" system) and limit our essential freedoms to our bodies are unjust, but it is those laws that are against our society. I do not think of myself as against society; rather, I think of myself as a progressive, working to remove the ill-conceived laws that should never have been instituted in a freedom-loving, rational society. The difference in this framing is that I understand bad laws happen. Bad laws do not make societies bad, though they can. I am not against my society, as an American citizen, because I recognize that America has processes and procedures for the remediation of bad laws. I believe it is the responsibility of citizens seeking change to take advantage of these processes, where possible, to dismantle the systems of power that have been constructed around these bad laws. Once the systems of power have been dismantled, and the populace sufficiently convinced of their wrongheadedness, the laws will evaporate and the healing can begin. But to accomplish this is a massive undertaking that requires disparate effort from unrelated parties, and most importantly a belief that it can happen.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I think it has to do with normalization. And this takes time. My parents would both probably connect people taking psychedelics with the Hippies, partly because they don't know better, partly because this is the picture they got in their rural alpine village describing psychedelics. Weed is slowly getting more normal, so that jokes they used to make died out a while ago. When we watched my brothers run the Amsterdam marathon they would even push us to try some with them. Meanwhile 20 years ago my father would have unironically put weed on the same level as heroin. He did not know better. Things like LSD are probably just further down the road for them, so it is a mixture of general acceptance within society, education about the substance and the commercialization of it.

by corry 3y ago

temp0826 3y ago

(Smoking) DMT is a huge wildcard. I've had a couple of good experiences but the vast majority left me very off-base and ungrounded, weirded out. I really don't think it has the therapeutic potential of ayahuasca.

giraffe_lady 3y ago

Clock time DMT is quick but in perceived time it is millennia. Whatever other effects you get are after you grapple with that The Jaunt shit on the way out.

MeImCounting 3y ago

Personally I think a big reason psychedelics are helpful to people is because of the process of an experience taking a full day, forcing you to integrate what youve experienced in a way that just wont ever be possible in a brief 20 minute experience. The trip is about the individual journey and not about some magical effect on the brain. This is just my opinion but I really think as we do more research we will find this to be the case

horsethrow 3y ago
Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I've done DMT once and magic mushrooms a few times. DMT is by far the crazier trip that will take me a year to properly integrate. Since I have to practice a few things, the DMT being that I met gave me homework, ha! I'm going for a "check up" in 8 months. Everyone has different experiences but when you subjectively feel your mind is at least 10 to 100 times faster (that even has some residu effect after the trip) then that's enough "time" to learn anything. Others may not have that experience. What I learned: - Feel free to feel free. No need to be so uptight. - If anything, _if anything_, it's about love. A good place to start is [1]. - Seeking for the truth is amazing. However, when you speak, be warm and loving while speaking the truth. A human is not an object. A human isn't only nourished by truth. Just like a well-balanced diet. It's nourished by more things. - You're blind to how many people love you. Also, they don't dare to say it given the culture you're in. - It doesn't matter whether the DMT being is real or not. It felt real at the time, but I knew it is probably an illusion going in. The DMT being laughed and told me it doesn't matter. What matters is the lessons that I get from this trip. Given that I'm an atheist, I can also apply this to religion. I don't need to believe in (a) god to understand religious vocabulary (concepts I can use) or to get inspiration from it. Obviously this applies to many more things. Gods and demons exist in the conceptual/symbolic realm (as more or less anything conceivable in a thought does). They're not real. But anything in our imagination has the capability of influencing us for real (self-fulfilling prophecies, etc.). My DMT trip lasted 30 seconds according to my trip sitter (who was sober). In those 30 seconds, I saw my life flashing by. Mushrooms on the other hand almost always gave me bad trips. They were insightful though. However, DMT was far more therapeutical for me. [1] https://ritanaomi.com/the-practice-of-metta-or-loving-kindness-meditation/ https://ritanaomi.com/the-practice-of-metta-or-loving-kindne...
- sublinear 3y ago
  > You're blind to how many people love you. Also, they don't dare to say it given the culture you're in. You don't need any drugs to realize this. You just need better reasons to get out more.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago

Affric 3y ago

Re: 1 The “war on drugs” ends, the counterculture of the 60s will loom large over discussion of psychedelics. Society’s attitude towards drugs forces people who in some way identify with something linked to the Psychedelic experience to define themselves against society to some extent. Rather than build on society’s current paradigm and fetishes they must tear them down to an extent. Much like Freud and psychology’s discourse only changing after much science, society’s discourse surrounding psychedelics will be free of Leary once the mysteries are revealed.

jurynulifcation 3y ago
I completely disagree that an enthusiasm or experience with psychedelics must lead to a definition-against, to some inherent tension with society. Are there bad laws in place currently? Yes. Laws that contribute to the state of modern-day slavery (our "justice" system) and limit our essential freedoms to our bodies are unjust, but it is those laws that are against our society. I do not think of myself as against society; rather, I think of myself as a progressive, working to remove the ill-conceived laws that should never have been instituted in a freedom-loving, rational society. The difference in this framing is that I understand bad laws happen. Bad laws do not make societies bad, though they can. I am not against my society, as an American citizen, because I recognize that America has processes and procedures for the remediation of bad laws. I believe it is the responsibility of citizens seeking change to take advantage of these processes, where possible, to dismantle the systems of power that have been constructed around these bad laws. Once the systems of power have been dismantled, and the populace sufficiently convinced of their wrongheadedness, the laws will evaporate and the healing can begin. But to accomplish this is a massive undertaking that requires disparate effort from unrelated parties, and most importantly a belief that it can happen.
- atoav 3y ago
  I think it has to do with normalization. And this takes time. My parents would both probably connect people taking psychedelics with the Hippies, partly because they don't know better, partly because this is the picture they got in their rural alpine village describing psychedelics. Weed is slowly getting more normal, so that jokes they used to make died out a while ago. When we watched my brothers run the Amsterdam marathon they would even push us to try some with them. Meanwhile 20 years ago my father would have unironically put weed on the same level as heroin. He did not know better. Things like LSD are probably just further down the road for them, so it is a mixture of general acceptance within society, education about the substance and the commercialization of it.