4 ms·

Good thing psychedelics aren't addictive.

eth0up 2y ago
On the anecdotal side of benefits and addiction, podcast host Shawn Ryan, former Navy Seal and CIA operative, states very clearly that his experience with DMT abruptly excavated him from a pit of addiction that included alcohol and heavy prescription drugs. He described the experience as vividly showing him all the poisonous aspects of what he'd been doing. The impression was powerful enough that he immediately dropped it all and hasn't foundered since. There are extensive reports of heavy addictions being virtually vaporized through DMT. Obviously some measure of openness and desire to change is important, but I personally do not think the potential here is debatable.
lioeters 2y ago
In fact there's widespread anecdotal evidence (and maybe "weak" science) that it's anti-addictive.
- kelnos 2y ago
  While ketamine can be used to treat addiction (of other substances), my understanding is that ketamine itself can also be quite addictive. Is that not the case?
  - advael 2y ago
    I think it's pretty silly to include ketamine as a psychadelic to be frank. Ketamine is legal as a horse tranquilizer, which is to say it's primarily a sedative and a CNS depressant. However, high doses can result in a dissociative euphoric state known colloquially as a "k-hole", which I guess some people view as a kind of "trip", the mechanism and psychoactive presentation are pretty different from what you get from e.g. LSD and Psilocybin. I think the only reason these are grouped together is that ketamine is also seeing a renewed interest in research into microdosing as a depression remedy, but this seems to be mediated by a metabolite of ketamine and may be more of a direct remedy for a chemical imbalance than something like therapeutic trips. In other words, the grouping isn't psychopharmacological, but the zeitgeist of this moment in public perception of these drugs, which has been shaped by fifty-four years of the nonsensical logic of the prohibition enacted by the Controlled Substances Act in the US, some of the trappings of which have also been adopted by other nations, as often happens in a world where US policy has outsized influence both through trade and at gunpoint Personally I'm skeptical of a lot of psychopharmacological interventions for complex disorders like clinical depression. SSRIs for example strike me as a series of remarkably irresponsible experiments with drugs that appear to permanently alter cognition on wide swaths of the population. I view psychadelics and possibly ketamine as not necessarily more effective overall, but far less dangerous in terms of unknown effects

On the anecdotal side of benefits and addiction, podcast host Shawn Ryan, former Navy Seal and CIA operative, states very clearly that his experience with DMT abruptly excavated him from a pit of addiction that included alcohol and heavy prescription drugs. He described the experience as vividly showing him all the poisonous aspects of what he'd been doing. The impression was powerful enough that he immediately dropped it all and hasn't foundered since. There are extensive reports of heavy addictions being virtually vaporized through DMT. Obviously some measure of openness and desire to change is important, but I personally do not think the potential here is debatable.

lioeters 2y ago

In fact there's widespread anecdotal evidence (and maybe "weak" science) that it's anti-addictive.

kelnos 2y ago
While ketamine can be used to treat addiction (of other substances), my understanding is that ketamine itself can also be quite addictive. Is that not the case?
- advael 2y ago
  I think it's pretty silly to include ketamine as a psychadelic to be frank. Ketamine is legal as a horse tranquilizer, which is to say it's primarily a sedative and a CNS depressant. However, high doses can result in a dissociative euphoric state known colloquially as a "k-hole", which I guess some people view as a kind of "trip", the mechanism and psychoactive presentation are pretty different from what you get from e.g. LSD and Psilocybin. I think the only reason these are grouped together is that ketamine is also seeing a renewed interest in research into microdosing as a depression remedy, but this seems to be mediated by a metabolite of ketamine and may be more of a direct remedy for a chemical imbalance than something like therapeutic trips. In other words, the grouping isn't psychopharmacological, but the zeitgeist of this moment in public perception of these drugs, which has been shaped by fifty-four years of the nonsensical logic of the prohibition enacted by the Controlled Substances Act in the US, some of the trappings of which have also been adopted by other nations, as often happens in a world where US policy has outsized influence both through trade and at gunpoint Personally I'm skeptical of a lot of psychopharmacological interventions for complex disorders like clinical depression. SSRIs for example strike me as a series of remarkably irresponsible experiments with drugs that appear to permanently alter cognition on wide swaths of the population. I view psychadelics and possibly ketamine as not necessarily more effective overall, but far less dangerous in terms of unknown effects