11 ms·

When America first dropped acid

146 points by jseliger 3y ago

Deprogrammer9 3y ago
paywall blocked
- degenerate 3y ago
  Better than commenting "paywall blocked" is to provide an archive link: https://archive.is/vH7vF https://archive.is/vH7vF
  - spacebacon 3y ago
    I liked “like magic it is unlocked” better ;)
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    they messed up by blocking icloud relay in an ill guided vpn spam prevention implementation, archive.is useless
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      And yet when I click the link, I can read the article.
      - yieldcrv 3y ago
        Oh it’s not an infinite recaptcha loop anymore, ok glad the implementation is a little better
        h2odragon 3y ago
        That was a DNS problem with cloudflare. It bit Mozilla users harder because Mozilla uses "DNS over HTTPS" to cloudflare itself, ignoring your system DNS. There's a setting to change that but you have to enter "DNS" in the "setting search" to get it.
      - spacebacon 3y ago
        I too can click the link and read the article. It’s only useless if I close my eyes.
- latchkey 3y ago
  https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
lemonberry 3y ago
I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of mushrooms a few times each summer. Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for everyone though. Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has popped up around it. I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those that need them.
- ericmcer 3y ago
  The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    > The effects of low doses of _______ make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong It's human nature to think that more is better. If a little works, why not use more. There's a definite bit of experimenting that should be done to see when more become less effective. As a user, that's just part of the journey. Then we have the marketing/sales view point where they just want those numbers higher, but it actually makes to product less but not in a way the marketing cannot overcome it. I feel this way about the microbrewery movement with high alcohol and hops=>IPA usage.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      melatonin is one where 1 mg works and 10 mg doesn't.
  - peebeebee 3y ago
    It’s not the same though. A high dose can lead to life altering insights. A low dose will just be a fun time. Alcohol in higher doses isn’t therapeutic. More than 4 beers and any therapeutic effect alchohol could’ve had is now also gone. :)
graublau 3y ago
America was introduced to LSD via CIA's MK-ULTRA program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra 'to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more being and non-threatening directions' - FBI internal memo
- spacebacon 3y ago
  In hindsight counter culture (LSD being a component of this) does seem to have been the response to heightened tensions pushing us towards authoritarianism. Still relevant today.
- Wonnk13 3y ago
  I think the name of the book is Poisoner in Chief, it's a great history of how Gottlieb ran that program and its impacts on society.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ethanbond 3y ago
  I don't think your first claim is true. It was "introduced" by psychiatrists and various philosophical zealots. MKULTRA attempted to research it to see if it could be used for the purpose you describe. Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some cultural tremors.
  - bhk 3y ago
    "The LSD movement was started by the CIA. I wouldn't be here now without the foresight of CIA scientists." -- Timothy Leary Subproject 6 of MK-ULTRA involved funding Eli Lilly to develop its own synthesis of LSD. The CIA embarked on this to ensure an adequate supply after finding that Sandoz had produced only 40 grams total of LSD. After Lilly succeeded, the CIA became the main customer, and via various other subprojects funded and supplied researchers that experimented with LSD. In particular, many counterculture figures first encountered LSD as subjects of CIA-backed experiments, including Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Grateful dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Timothy Leary himself was one step removed, being introduced to psychedelics by a fellow Harvard researcher whose research into magic mushrooms was CIA-funded. [this is all discussed in Kinzer's "Poisoner in Chief"] Without the CIA it might have taken decades longer.
thinkingtoilet 3y ago
I'm curious to see how many people have access to mushrooms these days. For my 20s and 30s it seemed impossible to get, now all of a sudden I can get them no problem. I have a friend who is not into drugs at all but grows them, weighs them, and has a pill making machine to make pills so he can accurately micro-dose to address severe depression. I have other friends who love drugs and can get the literally anytime they want. It's shocking that they are so available now compared to even 5 years ago. Anyone else experiencing this?
- newsclues 3y ago
  I smoke weed so it’s always been easy to find acid or shrooms, but now people openly advertise it (I’m Canadian)
- Wonnk13 3y ago
  So I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and now there's a real fire under my ass to do a heroic dose. I talked to my therapist about it and he was like yea, here's this website where you can order some chocolate bars. My jaw hit the floor. I thought he was referencing the darkweb, but nope just a typical site in Canada I think. I'm still incredibly new to it all and would love to grow my own at one point. I'd also love to know where ahem folks are sourcing their stuff.
  - quchen 3y ago
    Germany: Spores are legal in Austria (maybe also Netherlands?). Then search Uncle Ben's Tek online. You can also grow legal mushrooms like this, King Oysters in my case. It's a wonderful project teaching you a lot. Start to finish it's about 20 hours of work spanning 2 months.
    - RamblingCTO 3y ago
      Spores are illegal in Germany. But just buy a growkit from the Netherlands, if you're terminally ill in Germany, chances are that law enforcement won't even start processing before you're dead. PS: awesome tip!
ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
Recently read a description of 1960's ideology. The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened for a real duration of time. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. There werent many people actually out and about that were pushing those lines of thinking, the ideology died within a year or two, but mass media keeps it alive. Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that itself didnt last very long. We keep having this renewed consciousness of ideas, like a microphone blowing it into everyones ears. Even funnier is to think that an ideology that hates mass media (anti corporate 60s culture) may actually just be a product of mass media, much like mickey mouse.
- germinalphrase 3y ago
  Unless we are defining that “ideology” very narrowly, the sheer volume of cultural output (fashion, music, cinema, etc) would be a clear counterpoint.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
    How long did that period last? It died very fast, and was really only 5 years at maximum. Probably not much longer than the time that covid started until now. A flash in the pan.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      The lingering effects might very well last longer than the actual event itself though. Hell, the effects of LSD last much much longer than the drug itself lasts in the body. So to me, you're harping on the wrong thing. Sure, maybe the movement lasted a short time, but the mindset is still out there
    - moelf 3y ago
      1960s is only 10 years so if something went on in the public mind day on and day off for 5 years (like COVID did for 3 years), I think it's a good candidate for the decade-defining theme
photochemsyn 3y ago
Depending on how you define America, use of psychedelics goes back a bit further than the 20th century, or the arrival of Europeans. For example, here's a nice overview of the history of mescaline, the active ingredient in peyote cactus: https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2019/09/17/from-the-desert-to-the-laboratory-mike-jays-mescaline-a-global-history-of-the-first-psychedelic/ https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2019/09/17/from-the-dese...
latchkey 3y ago
I recently ran out of gummies. Thanks to things being legal now, I just went to the handy Eaze website to do an order. $70 of goods + $30 in taxes and fees. Is this what libertarians mean by "taxation is theft?"
- ijhuygft776 3y ago
  https://tor.taxi https://tor.taxi
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Too late, I just got my delivery. Thanks though!
dang 3y ago
This is the book of Hacker News's own https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=benbreen https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=benbreen! All: please let's discuss the specifics of this article—there's a lot there, and it will be much more interesting than the nth generic thread about psychedelics. Specifics beat generics on HN.
throwaway_ls 3y ago
I was suffering from really bad loneliness and depression. I caught wind that friends I wasn't particularly close with were having an LSD retreat. I was raised that all 'hard' drugs were bad and potentially addictive. But I decided to join them and to try it. It turned out to be an transformative experience for me. And it wasn't from the LSD itself, the dose was too low to impact my brain in a lasting way. But it's helped me connect with others better in a more 'intimate' setting and build more meaningful relationships. It's been over a year and I've done it a few times since and each time it's been a great experience with others. That's the TLDR of my experience.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  My experience was sadly the opposite and it greatly exacerbated my depression and invented the thought of suicide in my mind. It’s hard because there are many people online who get angry at any mention of negative outcomes, but I have to share my side of the story too. Thankfully it is slowly improving, but it has been quite a ride since then. Maybe exactly what I needed? But can’t say those 5 years weren’t absolute Hell
  - opportune 3y ago
    It also took me 5 years to recover from a bad trip - I believe it was so traumatic that it gave me some form of PTSD. I had actually tripped several times before and also tried other psychedelics. Completely agree that online you are met with skepticism and FUD at the mentions of these experiences, and also that maybe ultimately it did have some positives come of it (respect your body and mind and don’t be reckless? Develop mental resilience?). After that experience, I believe that for most people the benefits do not outweigh the risks until the drug is better studied clinically. The exceptions would be those who stand to experience exceptional quality of life improvements from a treatment-resistant depression breakthrough or cluster headache treatments (which AIUI are already pretty clinically established). That said, I am probably too curious about life and novel experiences to have ever heeded this kind of advice if it meant not satisfying my curiosity at least once. So if you’re dying of curiosity I get how it might be worth it anyway.
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Referenced in the article, Michael Pollen's 2018 "How to Change Your Mind" book is wonderfully written [1]. I read this right after reading Gabriel Maté's "Chasing the Scream" [tl;dr: addiction is a mental problem, not judicial]. Pollen's level-headed approach to the silly topic of entheogen exploration reminded me that I am just a simple chemical meatbag. Reading the article, I am reminded of my humanness. [1] Check out Pollen's "Botany of Desire" about plants (THC included) controlling humans. IMHO it's the author's best title.
enonimal 3y ago
[flagged]
benbreen 3y ago
Author of the book under review here. AMA! One thing I thought would be helpful is to link to the YouTube video described in the opening paragraph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs It's from a 1957 CBS documentary series called "Focus on Sanity" that featured interviews with Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, among others. I found it fascinating and my questions about it were actually one of the motive forces for why I wrote the book. I believe the recording was first brought to public attention by Don Lattin, whose books The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010) and Distilled Spirits (2012) are both great.
- galenmarchetti 3y ago
  What does your writing process look like when you set out to write an entire book? I know a lot of HN users have blogs, but the idea of writing a whole book seems daunting. Would love to hear the details of your experience and what it looked like particularly for Tripping on Utopia
  - benbreen 3y ago
    I wouldn't recommend my process to anyone, to be honest! I probably wrote a total of around 200k words over a four year period, of which I ended up cutting around 110k. I find it to be very true that you don't know what you actually want to say until you start writing things that aren't what you want to say. Then it's an iterative process of critiquing, rethinking, and starting over. I'm sure some people are able to start with a clear outline and then just plow through to the end, but I'm not one of them. In terms of research, I used to keep all my photographs of archival documents, PDFs of sources, etc in DEVONThink, but I switched over to using the standard Photos app on Macs. It has automatic OCR now so I'm able to search text that appears in photographs quite easily. I did a lot of oral history interviews to supplement the archival research. This book wouldn't have been possible up until recently because it's only in the past decade that so many historical archives have been digitizing their collections. I was able to visit the key archives in person, but with others, archivists were nice enough to send me scans of key documents. Super grateful to them.
matrix87 3y ago
I used to do psychedelics frequently and tried really hard to get something out of them. Up until the last time I dropped acid, I just got high and came down. The last time I ever did a psychedelic, I dropped acid and was reading this book called "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. There's a part of the book that talks about drug induced psychosis. There's some illustration of lightning hitting a tower. I remember turning the page, seeing it, then hearing this super loud thunder outside that shook the house I stopped doing them after that point because it was some kind of sign. When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God, after that experience I could
- dingnuts 3y ago
  >When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God, after that experience I could meanwhile, the experience of general anesthesia basically took away my ability to believe in God one in one out, I guess. It seems like I'd be happier if I'd gone the other way but one can't control what one believes
  - matrix87 3y ago
    I'm sorry. I didn't know that anesthesia could do that kind of thing
  - shwaj 3y ago
    I’m very curious to hear more, if you’re willing to share.
profsummergig 3y ago
I've never dropped acid. Net-net, what's best in your (whosoever is reading this) opinion? 1. To never drop acid. 2. To try it out a couple times and never do it again? 3. To add it as part of one's regimen as and when one needs it?
- progmetaldev 3y ago
  I think it can be very worthwhile, but I would wait until something internal calls you to use it. If you don't feel a draw to it, I would suggest not ever trying it. If you decide to use LSD, I would make sure to take it with others that have experience using it, and that you deeply trust. It's very easy to let go of your ego and spill every secret in your head, and you'll want to make sure you're around people that won't be judgmental of that. Personally, I think moderation is definitely key, and this is coming from someone that did not use moderation and ended up in a bad place because of abuse. I was psychologically addicted, and I believe it helped exacerbate latent anxiety. I was always somewhat anxious, but it made my anxiety clinical and negatively life affecting. I still think that it has its place, and can be extremely profound and positively life changing. Make sure you are in a good head space with people you trust, in surroundings that won't drastically change for the length of your experience.
- nyolfen 3y ago
  it is basically analogous to porn -- what porn serves for your sex drive, acid and psychedelics generally do for your desire for meaning and insight. occasionally you will hear of someone who finds it therapeutic for trauma or something, but for most people, even those who claim to have found great truths, it makes no material impact on the course of their lives, unless it is a negative one from emotional destabilization if they are vulnerable for whatever reason. it can still be fun and worth doing as a novelty but it is dangerously oversold imho.
  - mock-possum 3y ago
    I would generalize it a little further, and look at psychedelics’ effects as “merely” providing an intense emotional experience. when something feels really good or really bad, that memory stands out in your brain, and it’s hard to shake, for better or worse, it colours future experiences, shapes the way you interpret and react to them.. One huge negative experience can cast a long shadow - and so can one huge positive experience. A negative and a position don’t cancel one another out, but they each reduce the sum impact of the other - and if your goal is to use one intense emotional experience to change the weight of another, then psychedelics are absolutely a route to making that change. If you’re trying to cope with trauma, a powerful positive experience on psychedelics can help attenuate your memory of that pain - and if you’re trying to break a habit e.g. a psychological addiction, a negative experience on psychedelics can offset the effects of past positive reinforcement from indulging that addiction. Very similar to forcing yourself to drink until you’re sick, to make you averse to drinking. Carefully and purposefully seeking out experiences that shape your mind is an important part of being sentient, imo. You don’t have to use drugs to do it, but you’re really missing out if you don’t pursue the practice at all.
dmoy 3y ago
Dang I thought this was gonna be about tripping on LSD-like substances in rye bread in Salem before getting burned at the stake for witchcraft in the 17th century.
UberFly 3y ago
This thread has degenerated at warp speed into the kind of generics that dang steered against in the first post. Not surprised, but that was fast.
dirtyhippiefree 3y ago
Worth linking to the story of the FOIA that forced the CIA to release the documents for MKULTRA on its website in 2018: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/ken-keseys-acid-quest https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/ken-keseys...

146 points by jseliger 3y ago

Deprogrammer9 3y ago

paywall blocked

degenerate 3y ago
Better than commenting "paywall blocked" is to provide an archive link: https://archive.is/vH7vF https://archive.is/vH7vF
- spacebacon 3y ago
  I liked “like magic it is unlocked” better ;)
- yieldcrv 3y ago
  they messed up by blocking icloud relay in an ill guided vpn spam prevention implementation, archive.is useless
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    And yet when I click the link, I can read the article.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      Oh it’s not an infinite recaptcha loop anymore, ok glad the implementation is a little better
      - h2odragon 3y ago
        That was a DNS problem with cloudflare. It bit Mozilla users harder because Mozilla uses "DNS over HTTPS" to cloudflare itself, ignoring your system DNS. There's a setting to change that but you have to enter "DNS" in the "setting search" to get it.
    - spacebacon 3y ago
      I too can click the link and read the article. It’s only useless if I close my eyes.
latchkey 3y ago
https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean

lemonberry 3y ago

I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of mushrooms a few times each summer. Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for everyone though. Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has popped up around it. I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those that need them.

ericmcer 3y ago
The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > The effects of low doses of _______ make me wonder if we have been going about it all wrong It's human nature to think that more is better. If a little works, why not use more. There's a definite bit of experimenting that should be done to see when more become less effective. As a user, that's just part of the journey. Then we have the marketing/sales view point where they just want those numbers higher, but it actually makes to product less but not in a way the marketing cannot overcome it. I feel this way about the microbrewery movement with high alcohol and hops=>IPA usage.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    melatonin is one where 1 mg works and 10 mg doesn't.
- peebeebee 3y ago
  It’s not the same though. A high dose can lead to life altering insights. A low dose will just be a fun time. Alcohol in higher doses isn’t therapeutic. More than 4 beers and any therapeutic effect alchohol could’ve had is now also gone. :)

graublau 3y ago

America was introduced to LSD via CIA's MK-ULTRA program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra 'to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more being and non-threatening directions' - FBI internal memo

spacebacon 3y ago
In hindsight counter culture (LSD being a component of this) does seem to have been the response to heightened tensions pushing us towards authoritarianism. Still relevant today.
Wonnk13 3y ago
I think the name of the book is Poisoner in Chief, it's a great history of how Gottlieb ran that program and its impacts on society.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ethanbond 3y ago
I don't think your first claim is true. It was "introduced" by psychiatrists and various philosophical zealots. MKULTRA attempted to research it to see if it could be used for the purpose you describe. Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some cultural tremors.
- bhk 3y ago
  "The LSD movement was started by the CIA. I wouldn't be here now without the foresight of CIA scientists." -- Timothy Leary Subproject 6 of MK-ULTRA involved funding Eli Lilly to develop its own synthesis of LSD. The CIA embarked on this to ensure an adequate supply after finding that Sandoz had produced only 40 grams total of LSD. After Lilly succeeded, the CIA became the main customer, and via various other subprojects funded and supplied researchers that experimented with LSD. In particular, many counterculture figures first encountered LSD as subjects of CIA-backed experiments, including Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Grateful dead lyricist Robert Hunter. Timothy Leary himself was one step removed, being introduced to psychedelics by a fellow Harvard researcher whose research into magic mushrooms was CIA-funded. [this is all discussed in Kinzer's "Poisoner in Chief"] Without the CIA it might have taken decades longer.

thinkingtoilet 3y ago

I'm curious to see how many people have access to mushrooms these days. For my 20s and 30s it seemed impossible to get, now all of a sudden I can get them no problem. I have a friend who is not into drugs at all but grows them, weighs them, and has a pill making machine to make pills so he can accurately micro-dose to address severe depression. I have other friends who love drugs and can get the literally anytime they want. It's shocking that they are so available now compared to even 5 years ago. Anyone else experiencing this?

newsclues 3y ago
I smoke weed so it’s always been easy to find acid or shrooms, but now people openly advertise it (I’m Canadian)
Wonnk13 3y ago
So I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and now there's a real fire under my ass to do a heroic dose. I talked to my therapist about it and he was like yea, here's this website where you can order some chocolate bars. My jaw hit the floor. I thought he was referencing the darkweb, but nope just a typical site in Canada I think. I'm still incredibly new to it all and would love to grow my own at one point. I'd also love to know where ahem folks are sourcing their stuff.
- quchen 3y ago
  Germany: Spores are legal in Austria (maybe also Netherlands?). Then search Uncle Ben's Tek online. You can also grow legal mushrooms like this, King Oysters in my case. It's a wonderful project teaching you a lot. Start to finish it's about 20 hours of work spanning 2 months.
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    Spores are illegal in Germany. But just buy a growkit from the Netherlands, if you're terminally ill in Germany, chances are that law enforcement won't even start processing before you're dead. PS: awesome tip!

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago

Recently read a description of 1960's ideology. The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened for a real duration of time. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid they were societally irrelevant. There werent many people actually out and about that were pushing those lines of thinking, the ideology died within a year or two, but mass media keeps it alive. Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that itself didnt last very long. We keep having this renewed consciousness of ideas, like a microphone blowing it into everyones ears. Even funnier is to think that an ideology that hates mass media (anti corporate 60s culture) may actually just be a product of mass media, much like mickey mouse.

germinalphrase 3y ago
Unless we are defining that “ideology” very narrowly, the sheer volume of cultural output (fashion, music, cinema, etc) would be a clear counterpoint.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
  How long did that period last? It died very fast, and was really only 5 years at maximum. Probably not much longer than the time that covid started until now. A flash in the pan.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    The lingering effects might very well last longer than the actual event itself though. Hell, the effects of LSD last much much longer than the drug itself lasts in the body. So to me, you're harping on the wrong thing. Sure, maybe the movement lasted a short time, but the mindset is still out there
  - moelf 3y ago
    1960s is only 10 years so if something went on in the public mind day on and day off for 5 years (like COVID did for 3 years), I think it's a good candidate for the decade-defining theme

photochemsyn 3y ago

Depending on how you define America, use of psychedelics goes back a bit further than the 20th century, or the arrival of Europeans. For example, here's a nice overview of the history of mescaline, the active ingredient in peyote cactus: https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2019/09/17/from-the-desert-to-the-laboratory-mike-jays-mescaline-a-global-history-of-the-first-psychedelic/ https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2019/09/17/from-the-dese...

latchkey 3y ago

I recently ran out of gummies. Thanks to things being legal now, I just went to the handy Eaze website to do an order. $70 of goods + $30 in taxes and fees. Is this what libertarians mean by "taxation is theft?"

ijhuygft776 3y ago
https://tor.taxi https://tor.taxi
- latchkey 3y ago
  Too late, I just got my delivery. Thanks though!

dang 3y ago

This is the book of Hacker News's own https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=benbreen https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=benbreen! All: please let's discuss the specifics of this article—there's a lot there, and it will be much more interesting than the nth generic thread about psychedelics. Specifics beat generics on HN.

throwaway_ls 3y ago

I was suffering from really bad loneliness and depression. I caught wind that friends I wasn't particularly close with were having an LSD retreat. I was raised that all 'hard' drugs were bad and potentially addictive. But I decided to join them and to try it. It turned out to be an transformative experience for me. And it wasn't from the LSD itself, the dose was too low to impact my brain in a lasting way. But it's helped me connect with others better in a more 'intimate' setting and build more meaningful relationships. It's been over a year and I've done it a few times since and each time it's been a great experience with others. That's the TLDR of my experience.

bowsamic 3y ago
My experience was sadly the opposite and it greatly exacerbated my depression and invented the thought of suicide in my mind. It’s hard because there are many people online who get angry at any mention of negative outcomes, but I have to share my side of the story too. Thankfully it is slowly improving, but it has been quite a ride since then. Maybe exactly what I needed? But can’t say those 5 years weren’t absolute Hell
- opportune 3y ago
  It also took me 5 years to recover from a bad trip - I believe it was so traumatic that it gave me some form of PTSD. I had actually tripped several times before and also tried other psychedelics. Completely agree that online you are met with skepticism and FUD at the mentions of these experiences, and also that maybe ultimately it did have some positives come of it (respect your body and mind and don’t be reckless? Develop mental resilience?). After that experience, I believe that for most people the benefits do not outweigh the risks until the drug is better studied clinically. The exceptions would be those who stand to experience exceptional quality of life improvements from a treatment-resistant depression breakthrough or cluster headache treatments (which AIUI are already pretty clinically established). That said, I am probably too curious about life and novel experiences to have ever heeded this kind of advice if it meant not satisfying my curiosity at least once. So if you’re dying of curiosity I get how it might be worth it anyway.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

Referenced in the article, Michael Pollen's 2018 "How to Change Your Mind" book is wonderfully written [1]. I read this right after reading Gabriel Maté's "Chasing the Scream" [tl;dr: addiction is a mental problem, not judicial]. Pollen's level-headed approach to the silly topic of entheogen exploration reminded me that I am just a simple chemical meatbag. Reading the article, I am reminded of my humanness. [1] Check out Pollen's "Botany of Desire" about plants (THC included) controlling humans. IMHO it's the author's best title.

enonimal 3y ago

[flagged]

benbreen 3y ago

Author of the book under review here. AMA! One thing I thought would be helpful is to link to the YouTube video described in the opening paragraph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs It's from a 1957 CBS documentary series called "Focus on Sanity" that featured interviews with Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard, among others. I found it fascinating and my questions about it were actually one of the motive forces for why I wrote the book. I believe the recording was first brought to public attention by Don Lattin, whose books The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010) and Distilled Spirits (2012) are both great.

galenmarchetti 3y ago
What does your writing process look like when you set out to write an entire book? I know a lot of HN users have blogs, but the idea of writing a whole book seems daunting. Would love to hear the details of your experience and what it looked like particularly for Tripping on Utopia
- benbreen 3y ago
  I wouldn't recommend my process to anyone, to be honest! I probably wrote a total of around 200k words over a four year period, of which I ended up cutting around 110k. I find it to be very true that you don't know what you actually want to say until you start writing things that aren't what you want to say. Then it's an iterative process of critiquing, rethinking, and starting over. I'm sure some people are able to start with a clear outline and then just plow through to the end, but I'm not one of them. In terms of research, I used to keep all my photographs of archival documents, PDFs of sources, etc in DEVONThink, but I switched over to using the standard Photos app on Macs. It has automatic OCR now so I'm able to search text that appears in photographs quite easily. I did a lot of oral history interviews to supplement the archival research. This book wouldn't have been possible up until recently because it's only in the past decade that so many historical archives have been digitizing their collections. I was able to visit the key archives in person, but with others, archivists were nice enough to send me scans of key documents. Super grateful to them.

matrix87 3y ago

I used to do psychedelics frequently and tried really hard to get something out of them. Up until the last time I dropped acid, I just got high and came down. The last time I ever did a psychedelic, I dropped acid and was reading this book called "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. There's a part of the book that talks about drug induced psychosis. There's some illustration of lightning hitting a tower. I remember turning the page, seeing it, then hearing this super loud thunder outside that shook the house I stopped doing them after that point because it was some kind of sign. When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God, after that experience I could

dingnuts 3y ago
>When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God, after that experience I could meanwhile, the experience of general anesthesia basically took away my ability to believe in God one in one out, I guess. It seems like I'd be happier if I'd gone the other way but one can't control what one believes
- matrix87 3y ago
  I'm sorry. I didn't know that anesthesia could do that kind of thing
- shwaj 3y ago
  I’m very curious to hear more, if you’re willing to share.

profsummergig 3y ago

I've never dropped acid. Net-net, what's best in your (whosoever is reading this) opinion? 1. To never drop acid. 2. To try it out a couple times and never do it again? 3. To add it as part of one's regimen as and when one needs it?

progmetaldev 3y ago
I think it can be very worthwhile, but I would wait until something internal calls you to use it. If you don't feel a draw to it, I would suggest not ever trying it. If you decide to use LSD, I would make sure to take it with others that have experience using it, and that you deeply trust. It's very easy to let go of your ego and spill every secret in your head, and you'll want to make sure you're around people that won't be judgmental of that. Personally, I think moderation is definitely key, and this is coming from someone that did not use moderation and ended up in a bad place because of abuse. I was psychologically addicted, and I believe it helped exacerbate latent anxiety. I was always somewhat anxious, but it made my anxiety clinical and negatively life affecting. I still think that it has its place, and can be extremely profound and positively life changing. Make sure you are in a good head space with people you trust, in surroundings that won't drastically change for the length of your experience.
nyolfen 3y ago
it is basically analogous to porn -- what porn serves for your sex drive, acid and psychedelics generally do for your desire for meaning and insight. occasionally you will hear of someone who finds it therapeutic for trauma or something, but for most people, even those who claim to have found great truths, it makes no material impact on the course of their lives, unless it is a negative one from emotional destabilization if they are vulnerable for whatever reason. it can still be fun and worth doing as a novelty but it is dangerously oversold imho.
- mock-possum 3y ago
  I would generalize it a little further, and look at psychedelics’ effects as “merely” providing an intense emotional experience. when something feels really good or really bad, that memory stands out in your brain, and it’s hard to shake, for better or worse, it colours future experiences, shapes the way you interpret and react to them.. One huge negative experience can cast a long shadow - and so can one huge positive experience. A negative and a position don’t cancel one another out, but they each reduce the sum impact of the other - and if your goal is to use one intense emotional experience to change the weight of another, then psychedelics are absolutely a route to making that change. If you’re trying to cope with trauma, a powerful positive experience on psychedelics can help attenuate your memory of that pain - and if you’re trying to break a habit e.g. a psychological addiction, a negative experience on psychedelics can offset the effects of past positive reinforcement from indulging that addiction. Very similar to forcing yourself to drink until you’re sick, to make you averse to drinking. Carefully and purposefully seeking out experiences that shape your mind is an important part of being sentient, imo. You don’t have to use drugs to do it, but you’re really missing out if you don’t pursue the practice at all.

dmoy 3y ago

Dang I thought this was gonna be about tripping on LSD-like substances in rye bread in Salem before getting burned at the stake for witchcraft in the 17th century.

UberFly 3y ago

This thread has degenerated at warp speed into the kind of generics that dang steered against in the first post. Not surprised, but that was fast.

dirtyhippiefree 3y ago

Worth linking to the story of the FOIA that forced the CIA to release the documents for MKULTRA on its website in 2018: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/ken-keseys-acid-quest https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/ken-keseys...