8 ms·

Funny to see so much admiration for psychedelics from universities such as MIT. Has there ever been any objective -strong emphasis- of the efficiency of LSD to

by aredox 3y ago

Funny to see so much admiration for psychedelics from universities such as MIT. Has there ever been any objective -strong emphasis- of the efficiency of LSD to improve cognition, creativity or consciousness? Because I definitely never see LSD listed in the category of "doping" substances. The main advocates are users themselves who think they had a revelation - but how much of it is self-delusion? I'd hasard it's a lot - if not all there is to it. (I would be fun to imagine a plant of fungus whose evolutionary niche would be to seduce animals/humans they need it - leading to it being cultivated)

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
piva00 3y ago
Research around substances like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, and so many others have been absolutely hampered by the War on Drugs the USA started. Hard to get objective results from something that couldn't be studied without putting researchers' careers to death.
- rabbits77 3y ago
  Ah, yes, the argument which ignores the fact that medical research also happens everywhere else in the world. If there was any medical value to any of this nonsense it’d already be well known in Europe, China, Russia, or India.
  - reactordev 3y ago
    [flagged]
  - piva00 3y ago
    The Single Convention on Narcotics [0] (heavily influenced by US's policies) and the later Convention on Psychotropic Substances [1] extended the same bullshit to all signatories, so no, no other countries could research either. I'd advise learning some history before berating me with bullshit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub... Edit: the repercussions of these conventions extend to this day even when countries attempt to legalise just cannabis, like Germany's case when moving forward with their legalisation which infringes on EU law against illicit drug trafficking [2], procedure 2001/0114/CNS is a direct side-effect of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances [3] started... By US's policies against drugs in the 60s-70s. It's a direct link creating issues to this day by puritan American values. Decades of potential research worldwide blocked because a politician in the US needed to get a weapon against minorities, fun, huh? [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32004F0757 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Against_Illicit_Traffic_in_Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Agai...
    - aredox 3y ago
      Counterpoint: the Netherlands.
      - piva00 3y ago
        The Netherlands has not legalised anything, cannabis is tolerated but under its laws it's illegal.
  - epiccoleman 3y ago
    This argument ignores the fact that medical research into the potential benefits of "this nonsense" has been under way in the US for over 20 years. Johns Hopkins has a dedicated research group in this area [1], and has published peer-reviewed research for various applications of these drugs. It's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space. (And it's probably fair to assess that the push of these substances into the black market helped create an environment where only "hippie-esque" bullshit could thrive). But the results seem pretty clear that there's real potential in these drugs to alleviate human suffering in many ways. Does that mean that these drugs unlock magical insights or enhance the intelligence of their users? Of course not, and no one serious is suggesting that they do. But there's been plenty of real research over the past two decades that makes dismissing the medical value of psychedelics as "nonsense" a fairly silly take. [1]: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/ https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/
    - piva00 3y ago
      > t's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space. And the bullshit stems exactly from it being a potential career death if someone attempted to research them in depth. Without factual and objective analysis the only knowledge left is a hodgepodge of anecdotes, except for the odd Alexander Shulgin or others more scientifically rigorous minded the reports came from users who are not a good cohort of people to objectively analyse their experiences. MAPS [0] is one of the few groups who against the odds continued to research it, lately they have been advancing research on using MDMA for PTSD, psylocibin, etc. If it wasn't a huge taboo for decades for serious researches to enter the field this type of research would be much more advanced today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_Association_for_Psychedelic_Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_Association_...
      - epiccoleman 3y ago
        I totally agree, in case that wasn't clear. I was just responding to the notion in the parent comment that the whole field is nonsense, and that if it weren't nonsense, research would have come out of other countries. (That notion seems suspect on its face, since those other countries have similarly strict drug laws, but that's not really my point - my point is that there's plenty of research in the field as of 2024, and it's not fair or accurate to dismiss it as nonsense).
  - 39 3y ago
    [flagged]
- aredox 3y ago
  Doping substances are also regulated. And yet amphetamine use is everywhere competitive pressure is. Also, I don't see any military adding LSD in the toolkit of military leaders. It has been tested as a disabling agent. But never found use as an enabling one, neither in the US nor in one of its enemies.
  - piva00 3y ago
    LSD (and other psychedelics) foster empathy, no military needs that in their fighting force, it's counter-productive for their goals...
    - aredox 3y ago
      I do t see it in widespread use in (peace) negotiations either, nor by therapists themselves - or any line of work where heightened empathy would be beneficial, such as acting.
      - mistermann 3y ago
        Maybe peace negotiators are actually just actors. That would explain much of the hilariously transparent BS stories coming out of the mouths of various politicians, that everyone can sometimes realize and acknowledge as such, but other times not.
pvg 3y ago
objective -strong emphasis- Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? Plus the claims are typically not about 'efficiency', just that ideas people have had under the influence of LSD have inspired, in some part, their real subsequent work - from all sorts of art to code. There are piles of examples of this. Don Hopkins a few years ago with a deep dive into Bill Atkinson, Hypercard, LSD and lots of other interesting stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783040
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? Presumably all the same labs that already test cognition and creativity? (I don't know which of the bajillion different meanings of "consciousness" is being used here, but my guess is that that it's one of the vaguer ones that nobody is testing).
  - failrate 3y ago
    Set and setting in a lab experiment is usually not ideal.
- aredox 3y ago
  >Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? From competitive pressure in the creative industry? My work isn't good because I think it is. And if LSD did give access to a deeper, higher reality, you'd think LSD users would produce more impactful work.
  - piva00 3y ago
    Not every human experience is supposed to be based on performance, the moment you get away with performance as the utmost objective you will find some freedom. LSD and other psychedelics give you insights, ways to see things without the noise of your ego always in front of it, and those experiences are valuable to oneself, not necessarily to be more productive, more creative, etc. Many artists used LSD, many other artists are teetotalers, each one has their own experiences to draw from to create their art, it's the sum of the self experience that creates impactful work. You are looking at this as if life is some sort of competitive sport and people are only trying to gain an edge by taking mind-altering substances, that's not how life works nor a good way to approach those substances. You can't min-max life, as much as you try, that's the illusion of control living in your mind speaking.
rhplus 3y ago
fun to imagine a plant of fungus whose evolutionary niche would be to seduce animals/humans they need it There are numerous ongoing studies into the effects of psilocybin on terminally ill patients, the idea being that the psychedelic effects helps people face death calmly. Every time I think about that, I'm always tickled by the idea that perhaps these fungi have evolved a way to farm their own food. https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10106897/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10106897/ Edit: Michael Pollan's book has a Netflix adaptation that addresses palliative mushroom therapy, among other uses: https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847 https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847
- swayvil 3y ago
  A friend of mine had a conversation with "Mr Mushroom" (while wandering a field one drizzly evening, tripping). Sir Mushroom offered that he's a wizard from a thousand universes away. He travels everywhere, guiding people by the hand, introducing them to the larger world.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  > perhaps these fungi have evolved a way to farm their own food Aren't H sapiens just God's way of taking billions of prokaryotes on a trip to the moon?
ccppurcell 3y ago
There's good evidence that psychedelics can increase neuroplasticity, you can web search those keywords. It would be surprising if it didn't at least sometimes help with cognition. On the other hand, a colleague who works in the field said to me "who says plasticity is good?" I've yet to ask him to clarify this; it challenges my assumptions but he is way more knowledgeable than I. There are also studies into psychedelics and creativity (as in problem solving, rather than painting) which again you could look up. The one I'm thinking of in particular was before the war on drugs and rather flawed methodology. But there have been more recent studies.
- basil-rash 3y ago
  There is no guarantee that when you break down and reform something, the end result is in any way “better”. This is especially true for reality.
  - highstep 3y ago
    that's the thing about resetting to default settings... sometimes your custom preferences were useful and they'll some time to reconfigure
  - ahazred8ta 3y ago
    "He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." — Gandalf speaking to Saruman
  - hackable_sand 3y ago
    [flagged]
- enonimal 3y ago
  > "Who says plasticity is good" In Machine Learning, we might think of this idea as "setting your Learning Rate too high"
  - basil-rash 3y ago
    In ML, this will bump you into a nearby optima at random. That optima may or may not be better than your prior. And if it’s worse, there’s a good chance it’ll be very difficult to get back to where you were without external checkpoints to revert to. The brain is the same, but no checkpoints.
drooby 3y ago
Curious, have you ever tried a psychedelic?
- aredox 3y ago
  Nope. I was an avid reader of PK Dick - and the coda to _A Scanner Darkly_ was a clear warning that drugs weren't like doping, a trade where your lose your health but gain performance above normal, but a lose-lose proposition - a _miroir aux alouettes_. Another artist I am extremely fond of, Mœbius (Jean Giraud), also had a very bad time after a failed psychedelic initiation (but my memory may be wrong, as I can't find it in writing on the web - was it in a biographical documentary or am I mixing him with someone else?). Like Jodorowsky, I never felt I needed drugs - even to enjoy his work, PKD's work or other usually associated with psychedelic use or culture (Aldiss, Lem, Herbert,Zelazny, Bester). When I listen to weird electrical like Aphex Twin or Bicep and people in the comments talk how they seem to need drugs to feel the music kick, I seriously wonder why - I felt there was little to gain for a great risk to take (either from impurities in the substance, or the substance itself - the risk of a bad trip). In short: I'm abnormal enough? I am clearly more creative than baseline (but less disciplined to really exploit it - and there isn't a drug with the right profile to make one more disciplined yet critical enough to stay on course). As a sci-fi reader, of course I am very interested in other dimensions, breakthroughs, alien thinking and superpowers. And LSD and others have that mystique - but seem very disappointing in reality, compared to those expectations.
  - fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
    In short: You found some famous people you like that support your position, and overstated the risk of "drugs"
  - Klonoar 3y ago
    For what it’s worth, your entire comment feels like something I would write - except I have taken these substances at decent levels. They’re novel experiences but I never found myself able to really care about it, nor do I think they left a lasting impression. Always made me wonder if I was missing something that everyone else gets. (The war on drugs is dumb as hell and I think they should be legal in so far as individual freedom is concerned)
CryptoNoNo 3y ago
LSD showed me that my logical worldview is breakable with just a little bit of chemistry. That revelation is real.
- aredox 3y ago
  Have you read _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales_? That was what made me realise how disconnected sensation can be from reality.
  - CryptoNoNo 3y ago
    I heard about it but didn't read it. But I knew about different effects of the brain before just that I thought I'm 'different'. LSD showed me very fast and very clear that this is not the case
chefandy 3y ago
Different aspects of cognition may be measurable to a useful extent, but the rest isn't that straightforward. Philosophers still argue about what consciousness even is at the most fundamental level, so quantifying that is not happening. Creativity is just as much about the volatile and fickle relationships among context, inspiration, stimuli, motivation, experience, emotional state at a very granular (likely imperceptible) level, etc. as it is about somewhat measurable things like abstract reasoning. You'd have to be able to look in two different dimensions– one where someone generated creative output having used a psychedelic and one generating the same creative output not having used it to see anything close to an accurate split, and even then, creativity is so subjective that it wouldn't prove much. Like many psychoactive substances, there are probably complex context-dependent trade-offs for the cognition, and when it comes to creative utility, they probably don't affect the process like someone would expect. Perception is relative; some senses may appear heightened (e.g. sense of taste with marijuana use,) when in reality, other competing stimuli are slightly muted. While that would be very consequential in quantitative cognitive measurements, the distinction is probably irrelevant in creative processes. If we didn't have an accurate way to measure sleep, someone would probably declare white noise machines bunk because noise interrupts sleep and they actually make your environment noisier. Of course, through engineering, generative AI will surely save us from this burden of terribly ambiguous and inconvenient humanity by amalgamating existing humanity and extrapolating/interpolating based on a handful of plain text, so that's... great?
- aredox 3y ago
  Creativity is difficult to measure in the lab, but if taking LSD was a game changer, you'd see a majority of creative workers taking LSD the same way Adderall & co are massively used (there and elsewhere - anywhere where staying more time awake and alert allows you to pull ahead). Yet I don't see it: most LSD usage works the same way as absinthe or opium used to be used: as a crutch for creatives suffering a dry spell, with the user feeling improvement - but the public, critics, "consumers" of the creative product not really seeing it. (Usually the crutch becomes an addiction, or the toxicity/impurities in the product take their toll, and you end up with a coda like at the end of PK Dick's _A Scanner Darkly_) What I find most specific to LSD though is that it seems to have produced a long list of LSD advocates, whose work consists only of waxing poetics about how "LSD gives you mental superpowers", and... Not much else. No actual "general" poetry, no Great Text, no theoretical breakthrough in philosophy nor science...)
sjm 3y ago
LSD was recently granted "breakthrough-therapy status" by the FDA after clinical trials show a single dose provides "immediate and lasting relief" from generalized anxiety [0]. I know you're asking about a slightly different effect, but IMHO they are related. I myself have experienced personal revelations through psychedelics that have had lasting effects and positive consequences in my life. My gut feeling is that any revelations or breakthroughs people have from psychedelics could also eventually occur through other means (therapy, meditation, etc.), but not as quick. It's like a shortcut to the sort of deep introspection needed to unwind the stories we have ingrained into ourselves. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/health/lsd-anxiety-fda-breakthrough-therapy-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/health/lsd-anxiety-fda-breakt...
LoganDark 3y ago
For me LSD is a recreational experience. I don't think it's improved my cognition, creativity or consciousness, and don't know if it's given me any revelations either. What I do know is that taking some every couple weeks makes me happy, and it's fun to talk to friends on it, because the way it makes me think feels satisfying. It just feels nice. I think the admiration for it is because it's only recently starting to be re-explored by scientists and researchers, and psychedelics are generally very interesting substances (at least in my opinion). On top of that, the culture and history behind them is also quite interesting. The fact that they're currently illegal in the US is quite unfortunate.
- heap_perms 3y ago
  Microdosing LSD does wonders to my thoughts. I'm not sure if one can call it "improved cognition" (what does that even mean)
  - aredox 3y ago
    Great for you, but it is with the self-reporting that I have a problem. Is it true or has the drug just altered your evaluation of yourself? If you read Oliver Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales_, you'd see that self-perception can be completely off the mark.
    - heap_perms 3y ago
      Yes, a substance like LSD can alter one's self-evaluation, but that doesn't negate the validity of the experience. LSD and similar substances offer a unique lens, a radical shift in perspective that can unveil new ideas, hidden patterns. If you get a the message, hang up the phone. In the end, all ideas have to be measured against all other ideas. But I suppose what you're aiming at here are objective, measurable results in a scientific context? Well, we have a huge hole in the research body of about 45 years, thanks to criminalization (it is very tedious to get a study approved on a schedule 1 drug). However, in recent years, it seems to be opening up. They call it the psychedelic renaissance. Numerous studies have explored both the subjective effects and the applications in mental health. One that strikes out to me involves testing on individuals attempting to quit smoking. After a year, 80% (!) of the participants successfully maintained their cessation from smoking. [1] This is after a single dose! Long rant, the point is, there are measurable, real-world impacts that these substances can have. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27441452/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27441452/
jes5199 3y ago
people have been trying to measure those effects since the 1950s - Oscar Janiger, James Fadiman, were/are some of the big name researchers trying to quantify it. but it's remarkably hard to measure "creativity".
- aredox 3y ago
  I would at least have expected an observational data point - doping with LSD, the same way we see widespread doping in many professions (including creative ones) with amphetamines/Adderall. But no, I mostly see use by creatives "stuck in a rut", with a wide gap between what they perceive ("LSD helps me getting more creative", "I had a breakthrough", or the more extreme "it opened my mind to new realities") and objective reality (mediocre work). You don't see "the best works of this artist come from his LSD period". You see another type/style of work (... usually "psychedelic"). You dont see groundbreaking stuff in the general, universal term, despite all the stuff about "a higher plane of existence", "opening the mind", "being one with the universe".
  - int_19h 3y ago
    Have you considered that, when people reach for LSD while "stuck in a rut", their output should really be measured against that baseline? I mean, going from "I can't do anything" to "I can do mediocre work" is a fairly big improvement. That said, in general, I would agree that the long-term effects of LSD on one's abilities are not all that profound. What it does, mostly, is making you more aware of things (or rather connections between things), centered on yourself. Whether this actually leads to any improvement depends on what one does with this information, but, well... how many people drastically change their lifestyle after being told by a doctor that they should do so? Same applies here. As far as doing things during a trip, this can go either way. LSD takes one's "pattern matcher" up to 11, basically. This means that you can easily spot actual patterns that are there that would take you a lot of time in a normal state of mind, but it also means that you start seeing clear patterns in random noise. Since either manifest as intuition, the only reliable way to distinguish them is by rigorous methodical testing, which can be done, but during the trip it's basically swimming against the current, so generally, people don't. The quality of the output then depends on the input (i.e. on whether there was an actual pattern to find or not, and on how much random noise there was in the environment). It's no wonder, then, that this averages out to mediocre. But I do think that actual quantifiable improvements could be achieved with strict adherence to a "trip protocol" scientifically developed to optimize for that. Those wouldn't be fun trips, though! And, of course, you'd need to develop such a protocol first through study, which is difficult when it's such a tightly controlled substance.
empath-nirvana 3y ago
I think the right way to think of it is as an _experience_. It doesn't make you smarter or more creative, any more than going on a backpacking trip or reading a good book -- it just gives you a new way of seeing the world and your place in it temporarily. What you do with that experience is going to be highly personal. I know that people can become out-right messianic after an LSD trip, but people can be similarly evangelical about travel or books or, obviously, religious experiences. later edit: I actually do think it's more to it than that, for two reasons -- one is that while you're on acid, your brain tends to make wild connections between things that you wouldn't ordinarily do, but I don't think that's good or bad, necessarily -- it's like running an LLM on a very high temperature, it can be funny and interesting, but it's very hit and miss. The second is that I think it triggers a lot of self-reflection (to say the least) and can help you recognize and break out of negative personal patterns -- but that also tends to be what people think of as "bad trips".
- int_19h 3y ago
  I would add that it's not necessarily just self-reflection, but also reflection on other people around you, and on the world in general. This kind of stuff can also go places that, while more accurate than one's original perception, are not necessarily what one might like. And unlike negative personal patterns, this might not be something you can do anything about (the world stuff in particular). I still consider that valuable experience in its own right, but then I was never a proponent of "the less you know, the more soundly you sleep". Others may have a different subjective preference on that. As far as "messianic" stuff, I think it comes mostly from heightened empathy, which appears to be a fairly universal thing during a trip (even if it doesn't necessarily stick after).
  - aredox 3y ago
    Thanks. That sounds far more balanced than what one can find in psychedelic literature _à la_ Leary.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  > it's like running an LLM on a very high temperature I can second this, specifically. For me, LSD often triggers thoughts that can't be put into words - upon trying, out come sentences like this: "can have a haves and take a three sixteenth quarters. can have a what's very much like. can have an um somethings or others .... mmm much of somethings or others.... can havings a taken umpteenth very good time ...." Those are real sentences I typed up while on LSD, knowing that they were complete gibberish, but it's what came out of my brain when I tried to put the thoughts into words. The thoughts had some sort of meaning, but not in words, just indescribable concepts. Whatever part of my brain translates thoughts and concepts into words had never been trained on those types of thoughts before, so it came out as gibberish.
Sebb767 3y ago
> Because I definitely never see LSD listed in the category of "doping" substances. Are illegal substances usually listed there? I'd assume they'd only list otherwise legal substances.
- aredox 3y ago
  Yes they are - under the blanket "non approved substances. In the other sections, you'll find morphin, heroin, Cannabis derivatives, etc. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list

by aredox 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

piva00 3y ago

Research around substances like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, and so many others have been absolutely hampered by the War on Drugs the USA started. Hard to get objective results from something that couldn't be studied without putting researchers' careers to death.

rabbits77 3y ago
Ah, yes, the argument which ignores the fact that medical research also happens everywhere else in the world. If there was any medical value to any of this nonsense it’d already be well known in Europe, China, Russia, or India.
- reactordev 3y ago
  [flagged]
- piva00 3y ago
  The Single Convention on Narcotics [0] (heavily influenced by US's policies) and the later Convention on Psychotropic Substances [1] extended the same bullshit to all signatories, so no, no other countries could research either. I'd advise learning some history before berating me with bullshit. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_Psychotropic_Sub... Edit: the repercussions of these conventions extend to this day even when countries attempt to legalise just cannabis, like Germany's case when moving forward with their legalisation which infringes on EU law against illicit drug trafficking [2], procedure 2001/0114/CNS is a direct side-effect of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances [3] started... By US's policies against drugs in the 60s-70s. It's a direct link creating issues to this day by puritan American values. Decades of potential research worldwide blocked because a politician in the US needed to get a weapon against minorities, fun, huh? [2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A32004F0757 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex%3A... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Against_Illicit_Traffic_in_Narcotic_Drugs_and_Psychotropic_Substances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Agai...
  - aredox 3y ago
    Counterpoint: the Netherlands.
    - piva00 3y ago
      The Netherlands has not legalised anything, cannabis is tolerated but under its laws it's illegal.
- epiccoleman 3y ago
  This argument ignores the fact that medical research into the potential benefits of "this nonsense" has been under way in the US for over 20 years. Johns Hopkins has a dedicated research group in this area [1], and has published peer-reviewed research for various applications of these drugs. It's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space. (And it's probably fair to assess that the push of these substances into the black market helped create an environment where only "hippie-esque" bullshit could thrive). But the results seem pretty clear that there's real potential in these drugs to alleviate human suffering in many ways. Does that mean that these drugs unlock magical insights or enhance the intelligence of their users? Of course not, and no one serious is suggesting that they do. But there's been plenty of real research over the past two decades that makes dismissing the medical value of psychedelics as "nonsense" a fairly silly take. [1]: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/ https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/
  - piva00 3y ago
    > t's easy to become cynical about psychedelics, because there's a ton of bullshit in the space. And the bullshit stems exactly from it being a potential career death if someone attempted to research them in depth. Without factual and objective analysis the only knowledge left is a hodgepodge of anecdotes, except for the odd Alexander Shulgin or others more scientifically rigorous minded the reports came from users who are not a good cohort of people to objectively analyse their experiences. MAPS [0] is one of the few groups who against the odds continued to research it, lately they have been advancing research on using MDMA for PTSD, psylocibin, etc. If it wasn't a huge taboo for decades for serious researches to enter the field this type of research would be much more advanced today. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_Association_for_Psychedelic_Studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multidisciplinary_Association_...
    - epiccoleman 3y ago
      I totally agree, in case that wasn't clear. I was just responding to the notion in the parent comment that the whole field is nonsense, and that if it weren't nonsense, research would have come out of other countries. (That notion seems suspect on its face, since those other countries have similarly strict drug laws, but that's not really my point - my point is that there's plenty of research in the field as of 2024, and it's not fair or accurate to dismiss it as nonsense).
- 39 3y ago
  [flagged]
aredox 3y ago
Doping substances are also regulated. And yet amphetamine use is everywhere competitive pressure is. Also, I don't see any military adding LSD in the toolkit of military leaders. It has been tested as a disabling agent. But never found use as an enabling one, neither in the US nor in one of its enemies.
- piva00 3y ago
  LSD (and other psychedelics) foster empathy, no military needs that in their fighting force, it's counter-productive for their goals...
  - aredox 3y ago
    I do t see it in widespread use in (peace) negotiations either, nor by therapists themselves - or any line of work where heightened empathy would be beneficial, such as acting.
    - mistermann 3y ago
      Maybe peace negotiators are actually just actors. That would explain much of the hilariously transparent BS stories coming out of the mouths of various politicians, that everyone can sometimes realize and acknowledge as such, but other times not.

pvg 3y ago

objective -strong emphasis- Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? Plus the claims are typically not about 'efficiency', just that ideas people have had under the influence of LSD have inspired, in some part, their real subsequent work - from all sorts of art to code. There are piles of examples of this. Don Hopkins a few years ago with a deep dive into Bill Atkinson, Hypercard, LSD and lots of other interesting stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21783040

ben_w 3y ago
> Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? Presumably all the same labs that already test cognition and creativity? (I don't know which of the bajillion different meanings of "consciousness" is being used here, but my guess is that that it's one of the vaguer ones that nobody is testing).
- failrate 3y ago
  Set and setting in a lab experiment is usually not ideal.
aredox 3y ago
>Where would this come from, other than self-reporting? From competitive pressure in the creative industry? My work isn't good because I think it is. And if LSD did give access to a deeper, higher reality, you'd think LSD users would produce more impactful work.
- piva00 3y ago
  Not every human experience is supposed to be based on performance, the moment you get away with performance as the utmost objective you will find some freedom. LSD and other psychedelics give you insights, ways to see things without the noise of your ego always in front of it, and those experiences are valuable to oneself, not necessarily to be more productive, more creative, etc. Many artists used LSD, many other artists are teetotalers, each one has their own experiences to draw from to create their art, it's the sum of the self experience that creates impactful work. You are looking at this as if life is some sort of competitive sport and people are only trying to gain an edge by taking mind-altering substances, that's not how life works nor a good way to approach those substances. You can't min-max life, as much as you try, that's the illusion of control living in your mind speaking.

rhplus 3y ago

fun to imagine a plant of fungus whose evolutionary niche would be to seduce animals/humans they need it There are numerous ongoing studies into the effects of psilocybin on terminally ill patients, the idea being that the psychedelic effects helps people face death calmly. Every time I think about that, I'm always tickled by the idea that perhaps these fungi have evolved a way to farm their own food. https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10106897/ https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10106897/ Edit: Michael Pollan's book has a Netflix adaptation that addresses palliative mushroom therapy, among other uses: https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847 https://www.netflix.com/title/80229847

swayvil 3y ago
A friend of mine had a conversation with "Mr Mushroom" (while wandering a field one drizzly evening, tripping). Sir Mushroom offered that he's a wizard from a thousand universes away. He travels everywhere, guiding people by the hand, introducing them to the larger world.
082349872349872 3y ago
> perhaps these fungi have evolved a way to farm their own food Aren't H sapiens just God's way of taking billions of prokaryotes on a trip to the moon?

ccppurcell 3y ago

There's good evidence that psychedelics can increase neuroplasticity, you can web search those keywords. It would be surprising if it didn't at least sometimes help with cognition. On the other hand, a colleague who works in the field said to me "who says plasticity is good?" I've yet to ask him to clarify this; it challenges my assumptions but he is way more knowledgeable than I. There are also studies into psychedelics and creativity (as in problem solving, rather than painting) which again you could look up. The one I'm thinking of in particular was before the war on drugs and rather flawed methodology. But there have been more recent studies.

basil-rash 3y ago
There is no guarantee that when you break down and reform something, the end result is in any way “better”. This is especially true for reality.
- highstep 3y ago
  that's the thing about resetting to default settings... sometimes your custom preferences were useful and they'll some time to reconfigure
- ahazred8ta 3y ago
  "He who breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom." — Gandalf speaking to Saruman
- hackable_sand 3y ago
  [flagged]
enonimal 3y ago
> "Who says plasticity is good" In Machine Learning, we might think of this idea as "setting your Learning Rate too high"
- basil-rash 3y ago
  In ML, this will bump you into a nearby optima at random. That optima may or may not be better than your prior. And if it’s worse, there’s a good chance it’ll be very difficult to get back to where you were without external checkpoints to revert to. The brain is the same, but no checkpoints.

drooby 3y ago

Curious, have you ever tried a psychedelic?

aredox 3y ago
Nope. I was an avid reader of PK Dick - and the coda to _A Scanner Darkly_ was a clear warning that drugs weren't like doping, a trade where your lose your health but gain performance above normal, but a lose-lose proposition - a _miroir aux alouettes_. Another artist I am extremely fond of, Mœbius (Jean Giraud), also had a very bad time after a failed psychedelic initiation (but my memory may be wrong, as I can't find it in writing on the web - was it in a biographical documentary or am I mixing him with someone else?). Like Jodorowsky, I never felt I needed drugs - even to enjoy his work, PKD's work or other usually associated with psychedelic use or culture (Aldiss, Lem, Herbert,Zelazny, Bester). When I listen to weird electrical like Aphex Twin or Bicep and people in the comments talk how they seem to need drugs to feel the music kick, I seriously wonder why - I felt there was little to gain for a great risk to take (either from impurities in the substance, or the substance itself - the risk of a bad trip). In short: I'm abnormal enough? I am clearly more creative than baseline (but less disciplined to really exploit it - and there isn't a drug with the right profile to make one more disciplined yet critical enough to stay on course). As a sci-fi reader, of course I am very interested in other dimensions, breakthroughs, alien thinking and superpowers. And LSD and others have that mystique - but seem very disappointing in reality, compared to those expectations.
- fkyoureadthedoc 3y ago
  In short: You found some famous people you like that support your position, and overstated the risk of "drugs"
- Klonoar 3y ago
  For what it’s worth, your entire comment feels like something I would write - except I have taken these substances at decent levels. They’re novel experiences but I never found myself able to really care about it, nor do I think they left a lasting impression. Always made me wonder if I was missing something that everyone else gets. (The war on drugs is dumb as hell and I think they should be legal in so far as individual freedom is concerned)

CryptoNoNo 3y ago

LSD showed me that my logical worldview is breakable with just a little bit of chemistry. That revelation is real.

aredox 3y ago
Have you read _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales_? That was what made me realise how disconnected sensation can be from reality.
- CryptoNoNo 3y ago
  I heard about it but didn't read it. But I knew about different effects of the brain before just that I thought I'm 'different'. LSD showed me very fast and very clear that this is not the case

chefandy 3y ago

Different aspects of cognition may be measurable to a useful extent, but the rest isn't that straightforward. Philosophers still argue about what consciousness even is at the most fundamental level, so quantifying that is not happening. Creativity is just as much about the volatile and fickle relationships among context, inspiration, stimuli, motivation, experience, emotional state at a very granular (likely imperceptible) level, etc. as it is about somewhat measurable things like abstract reasoning. You'd have to be able to look in two different dimensions– one where someone generated creative output having used a psychedelic and one generating the same creative output not having used it to see anything close to an accurate split, and even then, creativity is so subjective that it wouldn't prove much. Like many psychoactive substances, there are probably complex context-dependent trade-offs for the cognition, and when it comes to creative utility, they probably don't affect the process like someone would expect. Perception is relative; some senses may appear heightened (e.g. sense of taste with marijuana use,) when in reality, other competing stimuli are slightly muted. While that would be very consequential in quantitative cognitive measurements, the distinction is probably irrelevant in creative processes. If we didn't have an accurate way to measure sleep, someone would probably declare white noise machines bunk because noise interrupts sleep and they actually make your environment noisier. Of course, through engineering, generative AI will surely save us from this burden of terribly ambiguous and inconvenient humanity by amalgamating existing humanity and extrapolating/interpolating based on a handful of plain text, so that's... great?

aredox 3y ago
Creativity is difficult to measure in the lab, but if taking LSD was a game changer, you'd see a majority of creative workers taking LSD the same way Adderall & co are massively used (there and elsewhere - anywhere where staying more time awake and alert allows you to pull ahead). Yet I don't see it: most LSD usage works the same way as absinthe or opium used to be used: as a crutch for creatives suffering a dry spell, with the user feeling improvement - but the public, critics, "consumers" of the creative product not really seeing it. (Usually the crutch becomes an addiction, or the toxicity/impurities in the product take their toll, and you end up with a coda like at the end of PK Dick's _A Scanner Darkly_) What I find most specific to LSD though is that it seems to have produced a long list of LSD advocates, whose work consists only of waxing poetics about how "LSD gives you mental superpowers", and... Not much else. No actual "general" poetry, no Great Text, no theoretical breakthrough in philosophy nor science...)

sjm 3y ago

LSD was recently granted "breakthrough-therapy status" by the FDA after clinical trials show a single dose provides "immediate and lasting relief" from generalized anxiety [0]. I know you're asking about a slightly different effect, but IMHO they are related. I myself have experienced personal revelations through psychedelics that have had lasting effects and positive consequences in my life. My gut feeling is that any revelations or breakthroughs people have from psychedelics could also eventually occur through other means (therapy, meditation, etc.), but not as quick. It's like a shortcut to the sort of deep introspection needed to unwind the stories we have ingrained into ourselves. [0]: https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/health/lsd-anxiety-fda-breakthrough-therapy-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/health/lsd-anxiety-fda-breakt...

LoganDark 3y ago

For me LSD is a recreational experience. I don't think it's improved my cognition, creativity or consciousness, and don't know if it's given me any revelations either. What I do know is that taking some every couple weeks makes me happy, and it's fun to talk to friends on it, because the way it makes me think feels satisfying. It just feels nice. I think the admiration for it is because it's only recently starting to be re-explored by scientists and researchers, and psychedelics are generally very interesting substances (at least in my opinion). On top of that, the culture and history behind them is also quite interesting. The fact that they're currently illegal in the US is quite unfortunate.

heap_perms 3y ago
Microdosing LSD does wonders to my thoughts. I'm not sure if one can call it "improved cognition" (what does that even mean)
- aredox 3y ago
  Great for you, but it is with the self-reporting that I have a problem. Is it true or has the drug just altered your evaluation of yourself? If you read Oliver Sacks' _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales_, you'd see that self-perception can be completely off the mark.
  - heap_perms 3y ago
    Yes, a substance like LSD can alter one's self-evaluation, but that doesn't negate the validity of the experience. LSD and similar substances offer a unique lens, a radical shift in perspective that can unveil new ideas, hidden patterns. If you get a the message, hang up the phone. In the end, all ideas have to be measured against all other ideas. But I suppose what you're aiming at here are objective, measurable results in a scientific context? Well, we have a huge hole in the research body of about 45 years, thanks to criminalization (it is very tedious to get a study approved on a schedule 1 drug). However, in recent years, it seems to be opening up. They call it the psychedelic renaissance. Numerous studies have explored both the subjective effects and the applications in mental health. One that strikes out to me involves testing on individuals attempting to quit smoking. After a year, 80% (!) of the participants successfully maintained their cessation from smoking. [1] This is after a single dose! Long rant, the point is, there are measurable, real-world impacts that these substances can have. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27441452/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27441452/

jes5199 3y ago

people have been trying to measure those effects since the 1950s - Oscar Janiger, James Fadiman, were/are some of the big name researchers trying to quantify it. but it's remarkably hard to measure "creativity".

aredox 3y ago
I would at least have expected an observational data point - doping with LSD, the same way we see widespread doping in many professions (including creative ones) with amphetamines/Adderall. But no, I mostly see use by creatives "stuck in a rut", with a wide gap between what they perceive ("LSD helps me getting more creative", "I had a breakthrough", or the more extreme "it opened my mind to new realities") and objective reality (mediocre work). You don't see "the best works of this artist come from his LSD period". You see another type/style of work (... usually "psychedelic"). You dont see groundbreaking stuff in the general, universal term, despite all the stuff about "a higher plane of existence", "opening the mind", "being one with the universe".
- int_19h 3y ago
  Have you considered that, when people reach for LSD while "stuck in a rut", their output should really be measured against that baseline? I mean, going from "I can't do anything" to "I can do mediocre work" is a fairly big improvement. That said, in general, I would agree that the long-term effects of LSD on one's abilities are not all that profound. What it does, mostly, is making you more aware of things (or rather connections between things), centered on yourself. Whether this actually leads to any improvement depends on what one does with this information, but, well... how many people drastically change their lifestyle after being told by a doctor that they should do so? Same applies here. As far as doing things during a trip, this can go either way. LSD takes one's "pattern matcher" up to 11, basically. This means that you can easily spot actual patterns that are there that would take you a lot of time in a normal state of mind, but it also means that you start seeing clear patterns in random noise. Since either manifest as intuition, the only reliable way to distinguish them is by rigorous methodical testing, which can be done, but during the trip it's basically swimming against the current, so generally, people don't. The quality of the output then depends on the input (i.e. on whether there was an actual pattern to find or not, and on how much random noise there was in the environment). It's no wonder, then, that this averages out to mediocre. But I do think that actual quantifiable improvements could be achieved with strict adherence to a "trip protocol" scientifically developed to optimize for that. Those wouldn't be fun trips, though! And, of course, you'd need to develop such a protocol first through study, which is difficult when it's such a tightly controlled substance.

empath-nirvana 3y ago

I think the right way to think of it is as an _experience_. It doesn't make you smarter or more creative, any more than going on a backpacking trip or reading a good book -- it just gives you a new way of seeing the world and your place in it temporarily. What you do with that experience is going to be highly personal. I know that people can become out-right messianic after an LSD trip, but people can be similarly evangelical about travel or books or, obviously, religious experiences. later edit: I actually do think it's more to it than that, for two reasons -- one is that while you're on acid, your brain tends to make wild connections between things that you wouldn't ordinarily do, but I don't think that's good or bad, necessarily -- it's like running an LLM on a very high temperature, it can be funny and interesting, but it's very hit and miss. The second is that I think it triggers a lot of self-reflection (to say the least) and can help you recognize and break out of negative personal patterns -- but that also tends to be what people think of as "bad trips".

int_19h 3y ago
I would add that it's not necessarily just self-reflection, but also reflection on other people around you, and on the world in general. This kind of stuff can also go places that, while more accurate than one's original perception, are not necessarily what one might like. And unlike negative personal patterns, this might not be something you can do anything about (the world stuff in particular). I still consider that valuable experience in its own right, but then I was never a proponent of "the less you know, the more soundly you sleep". Others may have a different subjective preference on that. As far as "messianic" stuff, I think it comes mostly from heightened empathy, which appears to be a fairly universal thing during a trip (even if it doesn't necessarily stick after).
- aredox 3y ago
  Thanks. That sounds far more balanced than what one can find in psychedelic literature _à la_ Leary.
LoganDark 3y ago
> it's like running an LLM on a very high temperature I can second this, specifically. For me, LSD often triggers thoughts that can't be put into words - upon trying, out come sentences like this: "can have a haves and take a three sixteenth quarters. can have a what's very much like. can have an um somethings or others .... mmm much of somethings or others.... can havings a taken umpteenth very good time ...." Those are real sentences I typed up while on LSD, knowing that they were complete gibberish, but it's what came out of my brain when I tried to put the thoughts into words. The thoughts had some sort of meaning, but not in words, just indescribable concepts. Whatever part of my brain translates thoughts and concepts into words had never been trained on those types of thoughts before, so it came out as gibberish.

Sebb767 3y ago

> Because I definitely never see LSD listed in the category of "doping" substances. Are illegal substances usually listed there? I'd assume they'd only list otherwise legal substances.

aredox 3y ago
Yes they are - under the blanket "non approved substances. In the other sections, you'll find morphin, heroin, Cannabis derivatives, etc. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list