9 ms·

Psychedelics and Psychotherapy

133 points by Hooke 12y ago

d357r0y3r 12y ago
The possibility that excites me the most is the effect of MDMA on sociopathic individuals. Maybe it won't lead us to a "cure" for sociopathy, but it can at least tell us more about the brain and how it gets wired up.
- throwawaytime 12y ago
  This presupposes there's something wrong with sociopathy. Note that most sociopaths are living in society without causing harm to others, so who are we to say their state of being is inherently wrong or that we should be vested with authority to change them? If they're voluntarily seeking help, then that's different, of course. How often does that happen? (Genuine question. I have no idea, and I'd love to find out.)
  - Zigurd 12y ago
    > without causing harm to others Not all of them all the time, of course. And some of them never. But the same could be said of pedophiles. Whatever you may think of the DSM, sociopathy is listed as a disorder. It is associated with violent crime and crimes against humanity. Or, look at it this way: Let's say you're not a sociopath and a taking MDMA is just a pleasant experience. Wouldn't it be worthwhile to administer it prophylactically? Or in vocations, like policing, where there's a large risk of developing sociopathy. Might make your next flight less dicey.
    - electronvolt 12y ago
      If you replaced your argument for treating potential sociopaths with "treating potential gay people", do you see why that's a kind of dangerous approach to psychiatric diseases? It's pretty dicey to just say "it's a disorder in the DSM associated with (negative things) and therefore we should push for administration of treatment to otherwise healthy/happy people." It isn't too long ago now that being gay was also in the DSM. Respected scientists claimed all sorts of "harm" that the "gay lifestyle" caused to people in it and outside of it. I suppose my question is: your logic would you suggest that it is worthwhile or valuable to administer prophylactic treatment to every DSM disorder, for those considered "at risk." You assert that MDMA is "just a pleasant experience", but I'd counterclaim that no drug is always just a pleasant experience, and you always need to consider the side effects (which for MDMA read like the side effects of many legal psychiatric drugs that affect the seratonin/dopamine/norepinephrine system). Keeping in mind that psychiatric disorders are some of the few disorders where the consent of the patient still isn't absolutely legally necessary to administer treatment, that means that you are arguing that these should be at least considered for administration to actively unwilling patients. Given the difficulty of diagnosing these illnesses in the first place and the possibility of misdiagnosis (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment), I think it's important to be careful of the arguments made for treatments. Treatments often are applied to involuntary patients (who may be considered incapable), and both the DSM and psychology (as a science) are not some be-all, end-all bible of things that can be stated to be definitively negative or harmful or unwanted which exist outside of the culture they're formed in.
      - Zigurd 12y ago
        You missed my point: In the use of MDMA, is there a downside to misdiagnosis? Let's say MDMA was effective treating alcoholism, but had no therapeutic effect, nor any harmful effect, on anyone else. Lots of people take it recreationally. We can certainly find out if that population is suffering any negative consequences. I take your point about the dubiousness of some parts of the DSM. But what's your theory about sociopaths? Are you seriously suggesting sociopathy will be redeemed in some way?
    - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
      To be fair, in the DSM-V pedophilia was replaced with pedophilic disorder which requires either significant distress or actually acting to harm. The attraction, in and of itself, is not considered a disorder. (Granted, must of the population, even among psychologist/psychiatrist, have differing feelings about this.) That being said, if we could replace the attraction with a more statistically normal one tomorrow, I would say to do so because it would make the world a better place.
  - d357r0y3r 12y ago
    Sociopaths generally don't make very good parents or partners. Most of them don't directly harm people, sure, but I'm making a value judgment that empathy is a positive trait.
    - throwawaytime 12y ago
      Please define "good parent" and "good partner." Assume we have some sort of sociopath detector which works from birth. Assume further that we have a treatment for sociopathy. It sounds like you'd be in favor of using that treatment on people who are fine with their state of being and who don't want to be... modified. At one time in history, black people were considered mentally inferior or inherently violent. Most black people lived their lives without harming anyone at all. In the same way, most sociopaths currently live their lives without harming anyone. It's too easy to apply the sort of justifications that you're applying now to justify why people should be changed. How far should we take this? Should it be mandated by the state that a parent must treat their child for sociopathy in the same way vaccinations are mandatory? I am wholly in favor of the latter. But how can anyone be in favor of the former? Vaccinations don't change behavior, whereas making someone "not sociopathic" certainly would. People are people, and until they harm someone else, they should be allowed to live their lives.
      - d357r0y3r 12y ago
        I define a good parent as one that is able to care for a child physically and emotionally. A sociopath, at best, will be able to put food on the table, but they will never be able to show genuine affection. An emotionally neglected child is more likely to commit crimes or abuse others. I haven't suggested that there be some kind of mandated treatment for anti-social individuals, I just think we should try to have a better understanding of how a person can lack empathy. Yes, this is based on assumptions and value judgments, mostly on this weird notion I have of not wanting to be killed or harmed by people that don't particularly care if they hurt others. Like, I don't hate lions or grizzly bears. I don't even think they're evil. I still would like to avoid living in close proximity to them.
        12y ago
  - WhitneyLand 12y ago
    What are the primary reasons people don't hurt each other more? 1) Unfavorable risk/reward ratio (threat of punishment or nothing to gain) 2) They are not a sociopath You don't mind losing half the safety net right up front?
    - tbrownaw 12y ago
      I'm pretty sure there have been cases where laws were needed to counteract social pressures that pushed towards violence. Such as the origins of "an eye for an eye". Your item (2) seems to assume that social pressures are universally positive, or at least towards non-violence.
      - WhitneyLand 12y ago
        Not social pressures, rather having a conscious. The existence of empathy, compassion, etc has certainly helped the cause of mercy.
        tbrownaw 12y ago
        Your conscience will be vastly different depending on what culture you trained it in.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    >Note that most sociopaths are living in society without causing harm to others, I disagree. IMO sociopathic behavior is often harmful, just not always in a directly obvious way.
    - collyw 12y ago
      Unfortunately a lot of them seem to seek positions of power as well.
  - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    >so who are we to say their state of being is inherently wrong or that we should be vested with authority to change them? What level of risk are we willing to accept before we should be vested with the authority to make a change to reduce such risk?
evincarofautumn 12y ago
I used to suffer from pretty bad anxiety, particularly existential anxiety, and would sometimes have panic attacks. My doctor recommended SSRIs, but I declined due to the increased risk of suicide. Taking psilocybin mushrooms in a positive environment with my friends was perhaps the single most therapeutic and rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced. In the months since, my anxiety has evaporated, my panic attacks have stopped, and I’ve been taking better care of myself and my environment. For me, it has been a wonder-drug. Above all, I have a lasting sense of well being—that everything is going to be alright. And I think to deny that experience to people, particularly people who are grappling with death as I was, is simply inhumane.
- lsdaccounthn 12y ago
  I have a similar anecdote but LSD rather than psilocybin and depression rather than anxiety. Commented on it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996106
- marincounty 12y ago
  I can second SSRI's did absolutely nothing for my anxiety, nor dysthymic depression! I don't think I'm the kind of person who could handle any psychedelic type drug though.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    >I can second SSRI's did absolutely nothing for my anxiety, nor dysthymic depression! I concur. >I don't think I'm the kind of person who could handle any psychedelic type drug though. You might be surprised.
  - tim333 12y ago
    Word of warning for anyone experimenting. Magic mushrooms of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata type are fairly mild especially if you only take a few. LSD on the other hand tends to be pretty full on. Sometimes people sell regular mushrooms with LSD on rather than the proper type. Best to ask a drugy mate who's tried the stuff so you know what you're getting.
davidwaters 12y ago
I have a vivid and fond memory of one particular experience with psilocybin many years ago. I was not "tripping" or in any way lacking in function, but it was as if a switch had flipped and every ounce of self-consciousness, anxiety, and depression was replaced with feelings of contentment and goodwill towards everyone around me. That was the only day in my life where I was a true extrovert. Unfortunately I have never had that experience again, but it gives me hope that someday researchers will discover and refine whatever caused that transformation and this will lead to breakthrough therapies.
chisleu 12y ago
I used to have an unconventional hobby. I collected information. More correctly, I collected Ebooks, converted them to text format, and printed them. I had access to a free printer at school and would do 20-50 pages a day and take them home with me. The e-books were almost exclusively survivalist material, but I ran out of things to print and started printing educational manuals of all sorts. Math, Chemistry, Biology, etc, etc. I was doing this because I was scared the world as we know it was going to end at any time. I was constantly researching firearms, and survival gear. I was going to the doctor for sinus infections to get antibiotics that I didn't need, just in case. It was pretty borderline behavior. It continued until I discovered DMT. I smoked roughly 2 grams over the course of a few months and had some very tremendous experiences. Early on in the process, It was always a continuing experience, starting up where the last trip had let off. Long story short, I met "god", this multi-dimensional being that assured me that this state of life wasn't the end. It expressed to me that what comes after this is just as splendid and precious as the life I have now. I smoked DMT too much. 2 Grams is roughly 60-80 doses. I smoked until I arrived at too much of a peace with death. I didn't care if I lived or died. Not that I wanted to die, mind you, but it just didn't bother me anymore. When that thought crossed my mind, it was a shock. I got rid of what was left and never dosed again. I am very excited to see psychedelic research done. We stopped learning 50 years ago because uneducated old people were scared. It is time to grow up and let science do what science does. Almost all research done has been overwhelmingly positive. A smart man once said something like the war on drugs is a war on Americans. This is such good news.
tyho 12y ago
This is fantastic, it really is, but I am uncomfortable with the idea that there has to be something medically wrong with you in the first place for you to be able to benefit from psychedelics. Me and a group my friends take psychedelics regularly but not often. Every single one of us reports not only enjoying the experience but more importantly IMHO, we feel long lasting positive effects. Our favourite thing to do is a `candyflip' which is taking LSD and then MDMA a few hours afterwards. You can read about what the drugs do individually elsewhere, but I will attempt to describe the combination briefly here. One of the effects of LSD is that it makes your emotions very slippery, and what I mean by that is that you can very easily and quickly transition from feeling intense happiness to intense feelings of negativity and anxiety without apparent cause. I describe the MDMA as propping up the emotions you experience during the LSD trip so that they are entirely positive. It allows you to access and talk about memories that are usually repressed, in my case childhood bullying, without fear or dread^1. LSD on it's own can produce intense euphoria with the right set and setting, but it is certainly easier to achieve it with a little bit of MDMA ;-) . Since taking psychedelics I have noticed that I have become more open minded, more accepting of who I am and have a greater ability to appreciate the time I am living in now as opposed to waiting for 'life to get good'^2. One of the long term effects I have enjoyed the most is a greater ability to empathize with others, I am not only much more aware of my own mind, it's fallibility, emotions and thought processes, but when in a crowd, I can't help but feel awe at the hundreds of minds surrounding mine that are all equally complex as mine. Everyone has emotions, difficulties, hopes, dreams and desires as I do, this is something I had never really thought about before. Finally, I am now at peace with the idea that I will in all likelihood not be a silicon valley billionaire or even wealthy at all^3. I understand now that success is not just measured by economic and social status. A normal person living in a normal house with a normal family could very well be more `successful' in my opinion that anybody else in the world, so long as they are happy, and content with their situation in a way that I am finding difficult to put into words. I am reaching here to describe such a person and the word that is coming to mind is enlightened. Unfortunately, if I had come across a post such as this a year ago, before trying psychedelics, I would have dismissed the author as a hippy, somebody who is making excuses for their own failure or even perhaps somebody with mental illness. Psychedelics are really something that must be experienced to be understood, we do not yet have the language to accurately describe to an outsider the happenings of ones own mind outside of a strict subset of feelings and emotions such as happy, hungry or sad. Prohibition is a terrible event that is forcing people to live without ever experiencing these things. Your brain is normally limited to the inputs it receives from your senses. Psychedelics allow you do disconnect from such a sober world and invent your own inputs to an extent and it is wonderful. To think that most people never get the opportunity to do that is painful to me. ^1: This is characteristic of MDMA in isolation as well. ^2: Of course this is anecdotal and is difficult to distinguish from a placebo effect. I can't imagine a double blind experiment that could prove this, when asked about long term effects, the active drug group are going to be very aware what group they were in, but the question you want to answer is not did you notice the drug, but did it have a long term effect on you. ^3: I come from a moderately wealthy background and there was a huge amount of indirect pressure to have a stable career and earn lots of money.
bunkydoo 12y ago
Well, another one of these posts. Let's beat this topic to death even more. But real talk, it would be cool if steps were taken forward to change the way these substances were treated legally and what-not.
- wavefunction 12y ago
  There are those ahead of you, and behind you, all of us a continuum of experience, lesser and greater, reaching towards the light. Remember not that you have already reached for the light, but that others right now are reaching for it, and guide them instead towards it instead of flipping the switch to "off."
  - nemo1618 12y ago
    "We're all just walking each other home." ― Ram Dass
    - bunkydoo 12y ago
      One love brother <3
rsuelzer 12y ago
I have always been fascinated by the intersection of technology and psychedelic use. As in, that I feel as if a higher percentage of those of us in the tech space have experimented with these drugs than in other fields. Although, this observation is purely anecdotal. I think that I read a good article about this intersection but I am having a hard time finding it. These comments remind me how out-of-touch society is about who actually uses psychedelics. My educated guess is everyone here who has admitted to their past or current use of psilocybin/lsd/etc is a highly intelligent and "productive" member of society. I wonder if a tipping point on the stigma around these drugs will be reached in our lifetime, of if the exploration of our own consciousness will continue to be forbidden.
- rsuelzer 12y ago
  This may have been the article I read: http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-silicon-valley/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-...
- ioseph 12y ago
  A fantastic book I'm reading at the moment on the parallel history of tech and psychedelic experimentation is: What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
- briandear 12y ago
  There's an excellent book by Timothy Leary he wrote right before he died about cyber culture and LSD; makes the same point. That book is what planted the seed for me: computers and their communities as shared consciousness. I can't remember the title but it connected rave culture hacker culture and such with a very convincing line of thought.
badusername 12y ago
Tangential to the conversation, but the website (Timeline) is new to me, and it is quite interesting. Does it seem to anyone else that the design is completely backwards? After reading a news article, I'd wanna learn about what has been happening recently with the issue, and dig a little deeper slowly. This forces a model where some small bit of news is followed by a wikipedia entry of sorts.
keane 12y ago
To take the opposing position, use of hallucinogens or other psychotropic agents will physically alter the brain and may cause real, permanent effects, e.g. HPPD¹. The consequences and danger are something I choose to avoid and I would encourage others to reconsider as well. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...

133 points by Hooke 12y ago

The possibility that excites me the most is the effect of MDMA on sociopathic individuals. Maybe it won't lead us to a "cure" for sociopathy, but it can at least tell us more about the brain and how it gets wired up.

throwawaytime 12y ago
This presupposes there's something wrong with sociopathy. Note that most sociopaths are living in society without causing harm to others, so who are we to say their state of being is inherently wrong or that we should be vested with authority to change them? If they're voluntarily seeking help, then that's different, of course. How often does that happen? (Genuine question. I have no idea, and I'd love to find out.)
- Zigurd 12y ago
  > without causing harm to others Not all of them all the time, of course. And some of them never. But the same could be said of pedophiles. Whatever you may think of the DSM, sociopathy is listed as a disorder. It is associated with violent crime and crimes against humanity. Or, look at it this way: Let's say you're not a sociopath and a taking MDMA is just a pleasant experience. Wouldn't it be worthwhile to administer it prophylactically? Or in vocations, like policing, where there's a large risk of developing sociopathy. Might make your next flight less dicey.
  - electronvolt 12y ago
    If you replaced your argument for treating potential sociopaths with "treating potential gay people", do you see why that's a kind of dangerous approach to psychiatric diseases? It's pretty dicey to just say "it's a disorder in the DSM associated with (negative things) and therefore we should push for administration of treatment to otherwise healthy/happy people." It isn't too long ago now that being gay was also in the DSM. Respected scientists claimed all sorts of "harm" that the "gay lifestyle" caused to people in it and outside of it. I suppose my question is: your logic would you suggest that it is worthwhile or valuable to administer prophylactic treatment to every DSM disorder, for those considered "at risk." You assert that MDMA is "just a pleasant experience", but I'd counterclaim that no drug is always just a pleasant experience, and you always need to consider the side effects (which for MDMA read like the side effects of many legal psychiatric drugs that affect the seratonin/dopamine/norepinephrine system). Keeping in mind that psychiatric disorders are some of the few disorders where the consent of the patient still isn't absolutely legally necessary to administer treatment, that means that you are arguing that these should be at least considered for administration to actively unwilling patients. Given the difficulty of diagnosing these illnesses in the first place and the possibility of misdiagnosis (see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment), I think it's important to be careful of the arguments made for treatments. Treatments often are applied to involuntary patients (who may be considered incapable), and both the DSM and psychology (as a science) are not some be-all, end-all bible of things that can be stated to be definitively negative or harmful or unwanted which exist outside of the culture they're formed in.
    - Zigurd 12y ago
      You missed my point: In the use of MDMA, is there a downside to misdiagnosis? Let's say MDMA was effective treating alcoholism, but had no therapeutic effect, nor any harmful effect, on anyone else. Lots of people take it recreationally. We can certainly find out if that population is suffering any negative consequences. I take your point about the dubiousness of some parts of the DSM. But what's your theory about sociopaths? Are you seriously suggesting sociopathy will be redeemed in some way?
  - Lawtonfogle 12y ago
    To be fair, in the DSM-V pedophilia was replaced with pedophilic disorder which requires either significant distress or actually acting to harm. The attraction, in and of itself, is not considered a disorder. (Granted, must of the population, even among psychologist/psychiatrist, have differing feelings about this.) That being said, if we could replace the attraction with a more statistically normal one tomorrow, I would say to do so because it would make the world a better place.
- d357r0y3r 12y ago
  Sociopaths generally don't make very good parents or partners. Most of them don't directly harm people, sure, but I'm making a value judgment that empathy is a positive trait.
  - throwawaytime 12y ago
    Please define "good parent" and "good partner." Assume we have some sort of sociopath detector which works from birth. Assume further that we have a treatment for sociopathy. It sounds like you'd be in favor of using that treatment on people who are fine with their state of being and who don't want to be... modified. At one time in history, black people were considered mentally inferior or inherently violent. Most black people lived their lives without harming anyone at all. In the same way, most sociopaths currently live their lives without harming anyone. It's too easy to apply the sort of justifications that you're applying now to justify why people should be changed. How far should we take this? Should it be mandated by the state that a parent must treat their child for sociopathy in the same way vaccinations are mandatory? I am wholly in favor of the latter. But how can anyone be in favor of the former? Vaccinations don't change behavior, whereas making someone "not sociopathic" certainly would. People are people, and until they harm someone else, they should be allowed to live their lives.
    - d357r0y3r 12y ago
      I define a good parent as one that is able to care for a child physically and emotionally. A sociopath, at best, will be able to put food on the table, but they will never be able to show genuine affection. An emotionally neglected child is more likely to commit crimes or abuse others. I haven't suggested that there be some kind of mandated treatment for anti-social individuals, I just think we should try to have a better understanding of how a person can lack empathy. Yes, this is based on assumptions and value judgments, mostly on this weird notion I have of not wanting to be killed or harmed by people that don't particularly care if they hurt others. Like, I don't hate lions or grizzly bears. I don't even think they're evil. I still would like to avoid living in close proximity to them.
      - 12y ago
- WhitneyLand 12y ago
  What are the primary reasons people don't hurt each other more? 1) Unfavorable risk/reward ratio (threat of punishment or nothing to gain) 2) They are not a sociopath You don't mind losing half the safety net right up front?
  - tbrownaw 12y ago
    I'm pretty sure there have been cases where laws were needed to counteract social pressures that pushed towards violence. Such as the origins of "an eye for an eye". Your item (2) seems to assume that social pressures are universally positive, or at least towards non-violence.
    - WhitneyLand 12y ago
      Not social pressures, rather having a conscious. The existence of empathy, compassion, etc has certainly helped the cause of mercy.
      - tbrownaw 12y ago
        Your conscience will be vastly different depending on what culture you trained it in.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >Note that most sociopaths are living in society without causing harm to others, I disagree. IMO sociopathic behavior is often harmful, just not always in a directly obvious way.
  - collyw 12y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of them seem to seek positions of power as well.
- Lawtonfogle 12y ago
  >so who are we to say their state of being is inherently wrong or that we should be vested with authority to change them? What level of risk are we willing to accept before we should be vested with the authority to make a change to reduce such risk?

evincarofautumn 12y ago

I used to suffer from pretty bad anxiety, particularly existential anxiety, and would sometimes have panic attacks. My doctor recommended SSRIs, but I declined due to the increased risk of suicide. Taking psilocybin mushrooms in a positive environment with my friends was perhaps the single most therapeutic and rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced. In the months since, my anxiety has evaporated, my panic attacks have stopped, and I’ve been taking better care of myself and my environment. For me, it has been a wonder-drug. Above all, I have a lasting sense of well being—that everything is going to be alright. And I think to deny that experience to people, particularly people who are grappling with death as I was, is simply inhumane.

lsdaccounthn 12y ago
I have a similar anecdote but LSD rather than psilocybin and depression rather than anxiety. Commented on it at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996106 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8996106
marincounty 12y ago
I can second SSRI's did absolutely nothing for my anxiety, nor dysthymic depression! I don't think I'm the kind of person who could handle any psychedelic type drug though.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >I can second SSRI's did absolutely nothing for my anxiety, nor dysthymic depression! I concur. >I don't think I'm the kind of person who could handle any psychedelic type drug though. You might be surprised.
- tim333 12y ago
  Word of warning for anyone experimenting. Magic mushrooms of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_semilanceata type are fairly mild especially if you only take a few. LSD on the other hand tends to be pretty full on. Sometimes people sell regular mushrooms with LSD on rather than the proper type. Best to ask a drugy mate who's tried the stuff so you know what you're getting.

davidwaters 12y ago

I have a vivid and fond memory of one particular experience with psilocybin many years ago. I was not "tripping" or in any way lacking in function, but it was as if a switch had flipped and every ounce of self-consciousness, anxiety, and depression was replaced with feelings of contentment and goodwill towards everyone around me. That was the only day in my life where I was a true extrovert. Unfortunately I have never had that experience again, but it gives me hope that someday researchers will discover and refine whatever caused that transformation and this will lead to breakthrough therapies.

chisleu 12y ago

I used to have an unconventional hobby. I collected information. More correctly, I collected Ebooks, converted them to text format, and printed them. I had access to a free printer at school and would do 20-50 pages a day and take them home with me. The e-books were almost exclusively survivalist material, but I ran out of things to print and started printing educational manuals of all sorts. Math, Chemistry, Biology, etc, etc. I was doing this because I was scared the world as we know it was going to end at any time. I was constantly researching firearms, and survival gear. I was going to the doctor for sinus infections to get antibiotics that I didn't need, just in case. It was pretty borderline behavior. It continued until I discovered DMT. I smoked roughly 2 grams over the course of a few months and had some very tremendous experiences. Early on in the process, It was always a continuing experience, starting up where the last trip had let off. Long story short, I met "god", this multi-dimensional being that assured me that this state of life wasn't the end. It expressed to me that what comes after this is just as splendid and precious as the life I have now. I smoked DMT too much. 2 Grams is roughly 60-80 doses. I smoked until I arrived at too much of a peace with death. I didn't care if I lived or died. Not that I wanted to die, mind you, but it just didn't bother me anymore. When that thought crossed my mind, it was a shock. I got rid of what was left and never dosed again. I am very excited to see psychedelic research done. We stopped learning 50 years ago because uneducated old people were scared. It is time to grow up and let science do what science does. Almost all research done has been overwhelmingly positive. A smart man once said something like the war on drugs is a war on Americans. This is such good news.

tyho 12y ago

This is fantastic, it really is, but I am uncomfortable with the idea that there has to be something medically wrong with you in the first place for you to be able to benefit from psychedelics. Me and a group my friends take psychedelics regularly but not often. Every single one of us reports not only enjoying the experience but more importantly IMHO, we feel long lasting positive effects. Our favourite thing to do is a `candyflip' which is taking LSD and then MDMA a few hours afterwards. You can read about what the drugs do individually elsewhere, but I will attempt to describe the combination briefly here. One of the effects of LSD is that it makes your emotions very slippery, and what I mean by that is that you can very easily and quickly transition from feeling intense happiness to intense feelings of negativity and anxiety without apparent cause. I describe the MDMA as propping up the emotions you experience during the LSD trip so that they are entirely positive. It allows you to access and talk about memories that are usually repressed, in my case childhood bullying, without fear or dread^1. LSD on it's own can produce intense euphoria with the right set and setting, but it is certainly easier to achieve it with a little bit of MDMA ;-) . Since taking psychedelics I have noticed that I have become more open minded, more accepting of who I am and have a greater ability to appreciate the time I am living in now as opposed to waiting for 'life to get good'^2. One of the long term effects I have enjoyed the most is a greater ability to empathize with others, I am not only much more aware of my own mind, it's fallibility, emotions and thought processes, but when in a crowd, I can't help but feel awe at the hundreds of minds surrounding mine that are all equally complex as mine. Everyone has emotions, difficulties, hopes, dreams and desires as I do, this is something I had never really thought about before. Finally, I am now at peace with the idea that I will in all likelihood not be a silicon valley billionaire or even wealthy at all^3. I understand now that success is not just measured by economic and social status. A normal person living in a normal house with a normal family could very well be more `successful' in my opinion that anybody else in the world, so long as they are happy, and content with their situation in a way that I am finding difficult to put into words. I am reaching here to describe such a person and the word that is coming to mind is enlightened. Unfortunately, if I had come across a post such as this a year ago, before trying psychedelics, I would have dismissed the author as a hippy, somebody who is making excuses for their own failure or even perhaps somebody with mental illness. Psychedelics are really something that must be experienced to be understood, we do not yet have the language to accurately describe to an outsider the happenings of ones own mind outside of a strict subset of feelings and emotions such as happy, hungry or sad. Prohibition is a terrible event that is forcing people to live without ever experiencing these things. Your brain is normally limited to the inputs it receives from your senses. Psychedelics allow you do disconnect from such a sober world and invent your own inputs to an extent and it is wonderful. To think that most people never get the opportunity to do that is painful to me. ^1: This is characteristic of MDMA in isolation as well. ^2: Of course this is anecdotal and is difficult to distinguish from a placebo effect. I can't imagine a double blind experiment that could prove this, when asked about long term effects, the active drug group are going to be very aware what group they were in, but the question you want to answer is not did you notice the drug, but did it have a long term effect on you. ^3: I come from a moderately wealthy background and there was a huge amount of indirect pressure to have a stable career and earn lots of money.

bunkydoo 12y ago

Well, another one of these posts. Let's beat this topic to death even more. But real talk, it would be cool if steps were taken forward to change the way these substances were treated legally and what-not.

wavefunction 12y ago
There are those ahead of you, and behind you, all of us a continuum of experience, lesser and greater, reaching towards the light. Remember not that you have already reached for the light, but that others right now are reaching for it, and guide them instead towards it instead of flipping the switch to "off."
- nemo1618 12y ago
  "We're all just walking each other home." ― Ram Dass
  - bunkydoo 12y ago
    One love brother <3

rsuelzer 12y ago

I have always been fascinated by the intersection of technology and psychedelic use. As in, that I feel as if a higher percentage of those of us in the tech space have experimented with these drugs than in other fields. Although, this observation is purely anecdotal. I think that I read a good article about this intersection but I am having a hard time finding it. These comments remind me how out-of-touch society is about who actually uses psychedelics. My educated guess is everyone here who has admitted to their past or current use of psilocybin/lsd/etc is a highly intelligent and "productive" member of society. I wonder if a tipping point on the stigma around these drugs will be reached in our lifetime, of if the exploration of our own consciousness will continue to be forbidden.

rsuelzer 12y ago
This may have been the article I read: http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-silicon-valley/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/25/technology/lsd-psychedelics-...
ioseph 12y ago
A fantastic book I'm reading at the moment on the parallel history of tech and psychedelic experimentation is: What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
briandear 12y ago
There's an excellent book by Timothy Leary he wrote right before he died about cyber culture and LSD; makes the same point. That book is what planted the seed for me: computers and their communities as shared consciousness. I can't remember the title but it connected rave culture hacker culture and such with a very convincing line of thought.

badusername 12y ago

Tangential to the conversation, but the website (Timeline) is new to me, and it is quite interesting. Does it seem to anyone else that the design is completely backwards? After reading a news article, I'd wanna learn about what has been happening recently with the issue, and dig a little deeper slowly. This forces a model where some small bit of news is followed by a wikipedia entry of sorts.

keane 12y ago

To take the opposing position, use of hallucinogens or other psychotropic agents will physically alter the brain and may cause real, permanent effects, e.g. HPPD¹. The consequences and danger are something I choose to avoid and I would encourage others to reconsider as well. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...