I don't understand the controversy. We know full well the natural world is full of substances with significant impact on our bodies. Many such substances can even on average be harmful, but when used correctly, they are beneficial. Opioids come to mind first and foremost. It's not controversial to give e.g. serious accident victims a shot of morphine.
Why are investigations into medicinal use of shrooms or marijuana controversial? Is it the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff?
I presume the main reason for the controversy is the prevailing dogma "Drugs are evil".
This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the
correctional system for years.
After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this".
Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach.
This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs:
I would argue it goes beyond "drugs are evil" for many people and is more of a vestige of the country's backwards puritanical past. It has little to do with medicine and is more closely related to the idea that pleasure is wrong and pulls one away from devotion to the church, tithing, etc. If presented with a hypothetical recreational drug with no side effects, people with this perspective will immediately say it should be banned, or that taking it would be morally wrong. As long as people can derive enjoyment, even as a side effect, they will oppose. This is the ideological appeal used by them pharma industry to, for example, highly process medicinal Marijuana products to ensure no one might inadvertently enjoy them.
Blaming puritanical opposition to fun seems like a 'just so' narrative that fits some of the apparent facts, but is contradicted by others. For instance, American culture glorifies caffeine, particularly coca cola which is portrayed in corporate propaganda as a 'fun' drink. When it comes to commercial products like that, there seems to be no hint of an anti-fun bias, ...except perhaps in the Mormons.
While anti-fun attitudes probably play some role, I think it mostly comes down to a pro-productivity mindset. Caffeine is generally understood to enhance productivity, and for that reason may as well be a revered god in the American pantheon. Alcohol is borderline; it's a known quantity that generally seems to leave productivity intact except in cases of alcoholism (alcoholism is consequently seen as shameful). Alcohol bans have been attempted, and are still intact today in remote regions of Alaska where the productivity impairment alcohol induces is seen as a particularly concerning matter. Cannabis remains maligned because it's seen as making people lazy and content, not because it might be fun. And amphetamines are legalized in circumstances where doctors say it will cure productivity impairing disorders.
The Prohibition was driven primarily by organizations like the Methodist Church and the Anti-Saloon League which were explicit about their religious convictions so it's hard to argue that it's just a "just so" story.
Prohibition was also advanced by suffragettes who were tired of being beaten by drunk men. The truth is multifaceted. As I said, anti-fun was probably part of it, but taking that kernel of truth as a simple narrative is misguided.
Furthermore anti-fun is not the sole religious motivation in play. Puritanism / American protestantism is also associated with the glorification of productivity that I describe above.
That fact provides a crucial context. It's easy to come away with the narrative that Prohibition failed so people just gave up. It also coincides with women achieving a lot more political and power, which gave them more options for getting away from abusive alcoholics. That played at least some part in the end of the drive to eliminate alcohol.
You bring another good angle, but you also seem to dismiss the OPs seemingly good angle as well. In my opinion, both of those are probably a part of it, there's a lot of people in a country, not everyone will justify their feelings the same way. It's very possible some are opposed due to puritanism, and some are due to impact on social productivity, and some on both, and some others on completely other basis.
We could have some survey based study that tries to ask respondent questions whose answer could maybe begin to give us a little understanding of how much each of these angle might be at play in a given population. That would already avoid a lot of this "I think" "You think" debate.
I think alcohol fits into the puritanical framework pretty well actually. hangovers are built-in retribution for people who consume to excess. I suspect puritan types find it particularly upsetting when drugs do not punish their users the next morning.
I suppose, though alcohol seems most fun when consumed in moderation, which avoids the hangover, avoids (major) productivity impairment, and is encouraged by our culture.
>I presume the main reason for the controversy is the prevailing dogma "Drugs are evil".
Eh, I think this is too dismissive of some pretty deep ethical and philosophical considerations. Effectively they are giving drugs that alter ones perception of reality and then judging their effectiveness on the patients perspective. But since they alter their perception of reality it's tough to rely on patient reports.
Anecdotally speaking, there's a lot of people in this world that think drugs make their lives better when an objective observer would pretty strongly disagree. That raises a lot of difficult questions. Most notably, do we give someone a drug that will make their life worse but also make them think their life is better.
It seems that as we live in a classically liberal society, we treat other adults' right to make what look to us like bad choices as absolute. Anything that changes our fellow man's perception of reality complicates the matter because we're no longer sure it's 'them' making the decision.
Did any of your anecdotal cases have terminal cancer? And did they take the drugs in a professional therapeutic context?
In a medical context, we can evaluate this as objectively as we evaluate painkillers or antidepressants. We can use our normal tests for anxiety and depression, run studies where we watch outcomes, etc. From what I've seen, the effects have been very positive for these patients.
My aunt died of cancer a couple of years ago. She took an unorthodox treatment of extremely high doses of marijuana, which her husband encouraged. It was frustrating for the rest of the family since it was impossible to have a coherent and meaningful conversation with her in her final months. My dad and I had some doubt about it, but the decision was entirely in the hands of her husband because she was too inebriated to think for herself. I’m not saying it was a wrong choice necessarily, but there are downsides.
Cancer is just a bad illness. I too have had the experience of trying to interact with family members in the terminal stages. Neither of them were using marijuana, and they were often not coherent (when they were even awake).
Not to diminish your grief, but your aunt might not have been any more available if she had been using other pain management methods. It's just a terrible, overwhelming thing to happen to the body, and it saps a huge amount of the sufferer's energy.
Unfortunately, there has been quite a few deaths in my family in the last decade, and most were on some form of pain management. They weren't always lucid, but none were as perpetually loopy as my aunt was in the last few months of her life. Someone in the forum accused me of being self-centered for simply mentioning this, but her incoherence did add to my, and particularly, my father's (her brother) grief.
How so? I was respectful of her decision -- although I suspect it was more her husband's decision -- but I wouldn't have made the same myself. It seemed like there was a lot she had to say, but couldn't in that state due to the drug. I suppose she thought she was making sense, but objectively wasn't.
You say you respect her decision, but then in the same breadth go on to say you think it wasn't her decision at all. You've written much in this thread to strangers on the internet about how you believe it was a wrong decision. You have a peculiar way of respecting others' opinions.
My aunt passed away a few years ago now. Her husband will never read this. The rest of the family agrees with me as far as I know. I don't see who I'm disrespecting by publicly and semi-anonymously questioning those decisions in retrospect.
Maybe cancer was giving her bigger challenges to deal with than making sense to you which lead to extreme measures like high drug doses (chemotherapy, marijuana, opioids).
To me it sounds like complaining that your friend with cancer is objectively a worse friend because he doesn't feel like playing Mario with you anymore after taking his cancer drugs or painkillers. He thought he was a good friend, but he objectively wasn't >:(.
Maybe there's reasoning behind the trade-offs they chose that involves more than you?
As I said, I respected her decision. But I question whether it was the right one because it left her unable to communicate despite an obvious desire to do so. I’ve had conversations with people on high doses of opiates, and while they were far from their full mental capacity, they were intelligible. My dad tried to convince her husband to use conventional painkillers, which I supported, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
So that's entirely different from what the article is talking about. Psychedelic treatments for terminal patients often involve a single large dose of psilocybin in a clinic, and that's the end of it. In the article, the first case study is like that, just one dose and three months later the patient still felt profoundly changed.
> Anecdotally speaking, there's a lot of people in this world that think drugs make their lives better when an objective observer would pretty strongly disagree.
what does it even mean to "objectively observe" whether drugs make someone's life better? we can look at a crack addict living in squalor and plainly see how their addiction inhibits material success. we can also imagine how deeply unhappy we would be to live in such circumstances. but if we want to know how that individual person experiences their own life, all we can do is ask them.
I agree that "objective observation" doesn’t mean much.
However there is no doubt people under destructive addiction are very well aware that their condition sucks. It doesn’t mean they can overcome the addiction and the urge of scoring.
I think the parent was related to behaviours such as "pot makes me more creative when playing music" or "cocaine makes me a better dancer" or "alcohol makes me funnier". All of which can be externally appreciated with a different opinion.
> However there is no doubt people under destructive addiction are very well aware that their condition sucks. It doesn’t mean they can overcome the addiction and the urge of scoring.
agreed, and most of them will freely admit this, as long as they trust you not to use that information "against" them.
> I think the parent was related to behaviours such as "pot makes me more creative when playing music" or "cocaine makes me a better dancer" or "alcohol makes me funnier". All of which can be externally appreciated with a different opinion.
I can also agree with this, as long as we are limiting the observation to extrinsic qualities.
maybe I read too much into GP's comment. I am wary of these sorts of statements, because they are often a jumping-off point to advocate for compulsory treatment of mental health issues.
This is the kind of post that appears when drugs come up. It's personal opinion, without any facts, strong on unfounded typically assertions and word-weaseling ("..when an objective observer...") and ignores what has been done over a thousand times before, with answers. Answering posts like these is a treadmill for everyone and an ascent for none.
Effectively they are giving drugs that alter ones perception of reality
Like over the self painkillers do? Personally I don't see the philosophical difference in alleviating physical pain from alleviating psychological pain.
Of course, if the psychological pain is caused by a condition that can be fixed the fixing the condition itself is of course better. But in many cases of depression and anxiety there is no clear root cause that could be fixed.
Anecdotally speaking, there's a lot of people in this world that think drugs make their lives better when an objective observer would pretty strongly disagree.
Substance abuse and addiction are a problem, sure.
But that is entirely a different thing from providing substances that reduce anxiety and depression.
Painkillers are temporary. The drugs we are talking about are meant to effect a permanent change on the user.
And pain killers, at least OTC ones, don't alter someone's psyche. We can, more or less, rely on their judgment that painkillers are helpful. You can't necessarily say the same for mind altering drugs.
> The drugs we are talking about are meant to effect a permanent change on the user.
You'd only say someones judgement about themselves is unreliable if they will contradict themselves later. But if it is a permanent change, then you are talking to the "new" person who is capable of judging this as well as anyone.
The problem is we are talking about something that is orthogonal to the effect. An example is more like getting prescribed anti-depressants for back pain. I hear it helps with the pain, but you are getting personality alteration as a side effect with it.
Like if im suffering pain, I don't want to get drug-induced quasi religious epiphanies from psychedelics. I Just want the pain managed. And what's really annoying about LSD is how it keeps getting promoted as a wonder drug here.
What happens when docs start prescribing it for back pain too?
It's not just about pain management - it's about accepting and making peace with dying. If there's a possibility that a drug can make this process easier for terminally ill patients, why would you object to its use by people who choose it?
There's an undercurrent of corporatism that powers the status quo. It's not that all drugs are evil, it's that the _wrong_ drugs are evil. The ones you can make on your own have an air of illegitimacy about them, while those that are manufactured and administered by professionals are "ok".
If there were a real war on drugs, pharma companies would be the nuclear superpowers.
Drug are "evil" in the sense that they could put at risk the money interested groups make off of the prohibition. When someone says "drugs are evil", just add "to you" to reveal the true intent.
I believe there is some sort of nonsequitur on the proposed argument.
You can stop the war on drugs and keep the "drugs are evil" narrative. It's called decriminalization. Stop bothering people for possessing, producing or using drugs, do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal. This could be done progressively without loss of face by government. Oh wait, that's what the article is about!
Drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals are dangerous, and utmost caution should be had if using. If you can brew your own beer or grow your own cannabis, you probably have learnt a thing or two about caution. Either that or a professional cautious-person (doctor) will do the administration.
Decriminalisation keeps many of the worst aspects of the war on drugs in place. Aspects that are damaging and immoral in that they cause far more harm than they prevent.
Even drugs like heroin should be fully legalised. Subject to prescription, maybe. But the harm from a clean, consistent heroin supply is vastly lower than the harm caused by the manufacture and smuggling alone, and decriminalisation of possession does not address that. Decriminalisation also does not address the cost issue which is a major problem with many drugs. A medical grade supply for a typical heroin user costs in the $10-$20 range (we know because e.g. the UK NHS buys heroin for hospital use; if you're given diamorphine for post-op pain, that's heroin).
But the biggest problem with the "drugs are evil" narrative is that it has damages serious discourse about which drugs are lower or higher risk.
LSD and psilocybin for example are certainly vastly lower risk than e.g. heroin and cocaine.
In fact, there's a famous case of a group of patients checking in after having snorted what they thought was cocaine, but which turned out to be LSD. Their blood levels suggest they would have ingested hundreds to thousands of normal recreational doses. They all walked out of there with no lasting harm.
In terms of other drugs, some drugs exists largely for time-limited circumvention of drug laws or because they're easier to create or smuggle, and would see their demands crash if less dangerous alternatives were legalised.
As someone who's studied the topic quite heavily, here's my issue with no-holds-barred legalization (I consider "legal" to mean "can manufacture and distribute" in this regard, like tobacco). Drugs that couple very tightly to the VTA (brain's behavior-reward circuit) actually can lead to lasting changes after few or single exposures. This is amplified by rapid absorption routes - injection, insufflation and inhalation. The main players here are heroin (DEA sched 1), meth (2), cocaine (2), GHB/Xyrem (3), some benzos (4), tobacco (legal), and analogs therein. It's hard to have a casual habit with these drugs, as they manipulate the brain's behavioral calculus itself.
Note that the DEA schedules are all over the board. The current schedule system has barely any correlation with harm (see work by David Nutt).
But we are also in a weird place where access to two of the most destructive drugs in real measurable effects - alcohol and tobacco - are legal.
At bare minimum we need to overhaul the schedule system, legalize drugs with low/moderate addiction potential (weed, psychedelics, ketamine, phenethylamines, the Shulginoids), and legalize everything in personal possession quantities, and for scientific/medical research.
High-addiction drugs should probably be medically gated in some way.
The problem with this thinking is that these drugs are not medically gated today.
In fact, the "gating" of heroin through law enforcement is so poor that the difficulty and cost in scoring oxy once people face medical gating due to drug seeking behaviour is now one of the larger recruiting avenues to heroin use.
It's easier and cheaper for people to get heroin as a substitute than it is to continue to use a safer, cleaner supply of oxy.
If you want to medically gate these in a manner that does not increase harm it needs to be at the kind of level that e.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is restricted in places like the UK (limits on quantity in a single purchase, but nothing that stops you popping to the next pharmacy over and buying more, or coming back the following day) or that e.g. some non-prescription drugs are sold (under the counter, pre-requisite information given out by a pharmacist and possibly some basic questions).
You can maybe push it to a non-aggressive push towards treatment, but if you start denying access you're right back to creating a black market you'll have no control over.
The exact threshold probably needs to differ per drug, but it the level of gating we're currently at even for legal prescription drugs like oxy is actively harmful.
> The main players here are heroin (DEA sched 1), meth (2), cocaine (2), GHB/Xyrem (3), some benzos (4), tobacco (legal), and analogs therein. It's hard to have a casual habit with these drugs, as they manipulate the brain's behavioral calculus itself.
Caffeine, possibly. I have a pretty strong caffeine addiction myself. But the harm level of caffeine vs alcohol, tobacco, or anything else harder, is far far less.
Sugar, no, it doesn't bind to transduction receptors in the same way (it is rewarding, but not like "drugs" are).
I see your point, and I think is valid. But I disagree.
I think the harm of legalization is only slightly below the war on drugs. Legalization means another vector of government control in my life, most likely outsourced to big pharma.
All the issues you are pointing can be solved by decriminalization are solved by individual responsibility and boils down to answering the question: Can you trust your source? If you can't answer the question you probably need help through a government sponsored damage control program.
To be precise, I used MDMA couple of times in my youth. My source sent every batch to a lab, we knew exactly what we were taking. Then he retired, and my MDMA use with him, cause I have no trusted source.
No amount of government control will substitute for cautious and responsible use. It might even hinder it, see alcohol, see tobacco, see opioid epidemic in the US.
The evidence is strongly that you can't trust your source.
But lack of legalisation also leaves drug cartels and murderous supply lines, high prices and reason to carry out crime to finance those high prices intact.
do as you want with those trafficking, and keep them illegal.
If you keep them illegal then you lose control. If they are made available from your local chemist then you can legislate for quality and strength.
Keeping them illegal also has a massive unwanted side effect in terms of encouraging criminal gangs and violence. All that would go away if customers could just stroll down to their local Boots and buy a packet of spliffs.
Yes, no government control is exactly the point of no legalization.
Violence and gangs and ridiculous prices are a symptom of criminalization. If in order to produce and consume you face several years prison, gangsters happen. If nobody cares if you produce, your neighbor might start producing, he might have a surplus and accept some cheese in exchange.
I’m pretty glad that the government is involved (in a regulatory/oversight fashion) in the chain of events that results in me having a bottle of $0.02 vitamin D3 pills in my cabinet.
I know they’re safe; I know what’s in them; a year’s supply costs less than a meal in an inexpensive restaurant.
I don’t care if someone wants to make their own, but it seems like harm is minimized if these chemical substances that alter your body are treated similarly to other such substances.
> I’m pretty glad that the government is involved (in a regulatory/oversight fashion) in the chain of events that results in me having a bottle of $0.02 vitamin D3 pills in my cabinet.
it works pretty well in the case of supplements. there's no guarantee the supplement actually helps with your issue, but at least you can be confident that the bottle contains what it says it does.
the problem with legalization of recreational drugs is that the government can't seem to resist slapping on a huge tax and/or imposing arbitrary restrictions on the supply side. it is my understanding that there is still a thriving black market in most legal/medical states in the US, due to the high price and varying quality of the legal/medical buds. this is despite most MMJ practices being the weed equivalents of pill mills. it's kind of absurd that a legal supply chain can't compete with an illicit one on price/quality.
> If you can brew your own beer or grow your own cannabis, you probably have learnt a thing or two about caution
The idea that selling drugs is something special misses and should remain illegal seems to only partially consider the implications of what that means.
One side of safety concerns is consumption safety. An at home production facility is of lower quality, exemplified by many more cases of methanol poisoning during the US Prohibition era [0]. Another is production safety, cooking methamphetamines is real chemistry —- I would much prefer to have a factory doing that rather than my residential neighbours. Finally, we have access, growing plants indoors is non-trivial and processing them into something resembling a finished product also so. Given this, I’m convinced that limiting illegality to trafficking doesn’t stop the war on drugs, because it has always been about trafficking — the hard part is moving the product and selling it to people. If the “do as you want” resolves to making trafficking legal, then it seems the drugs are simply legal.
This doesn't really address their point that opioids are somehow accepted in the public eye as a legitimate medicine but other drugs with both recreational and medical uses are not
On the other hand, knowing first-hand of some screwed up lives plus collateral damage, some drugs might just be evil. Thing is, it's hard to tell in the beginning where things are going so people might lump them all in together.
>knowing first-hand of some screwed up lives plus collateral damage, some drugs might just be evil.
Criminalization and stigmatization cause more harm in the long-term than drugs do.
Are all drugs as innocous as cannabis or psilocybin? Gosh no.
Does criminalization and stigmization of drug use make the problem 10,000x worse? Very.
Imagine if the US followed Oregon's lead and decriminalized all personal use. Drug users can seek out help and get harm reduction (eg: needle exchanges, advice, etc) and get them participating in the medical system where we can help them out of addiction, no families will be destroyed because of a little weed (or heck, meth), we save a bunch of money on drug enforcement, we could close private prisons, etc.
I am not saying utopia, but maybe we should look at drug use as something besides a personal moral failing. No one wakes up and decides to be a drug addict... no one _wants_ to be an addict.
This idea that drug users are burn-outs who chose that life is absurd.
Most people I know simply conflate which drug does what. Even formal education against drug [ab]use is filled with anecdotes that are often no more than urban legends.
The super human PCP user. The window-jumping LSD user.
The problem is that in many western cultures suffering is being regarded as a virtue and happiness as a great sin especially if achieved by using substances rather than through other actions.
You can glaringly see that where people with chronic pain are denied access to medicinal cannabis, for example here in the UK. You can only receive treatment through a private medical clinic which costs hundreds and sometimes thousands per month, so it is only reserved for the wealthy.
NHS says there is no evidence it works, so they will not refund any treatment and in the meantime thousands have to resort to asking gangs for supply. If it doesn't work then why people take it? Do they fake chronic pain to get high?
Not trying to undermine the other part, which is true and I wish more countries would move faster. But this may be part of the problem officially. Yes, people routinely seek regulated drugs from doctors by faking symptoms. Enough to create systems where you can register people receiving prescriptions so that other doctors know not to prescribe multiple overlapping doses.
Are there any data what "routinely" means? It took me a couple of years of going from doctor to doctor and being treated as one of those drug seekers to get help. It was extremely painful experience and I had to go through it just so that a drug seeker won't get drugs prescribed if they could just get them on the street with much less effort? It makes no sense to me.
There are probably good societal reasons to discourage the use of mind-altering substances. It’s a bit of a tragedy of the commons in the worst case, you don’t want half the people you interact with to be on a mushroom trip throughout the day; that would be incredibly unproductive.
Not saying anything against its medical applications, only justifying the general antithesis against mind-altering substances in everyday life.
Is that not that a generally true sentiment for dieting? Sugar, carbs, saturated fats, and excessive calorie consumption all taste and feel better than the alternatives, but are the cause of problems in 99% of people’s diets.
Some of it is basically racist propaganda that entered the public consciousness and became "true".
Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil.
Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)
I don’t know, I have met plenty of people that revolve their lives around their favorite drug and talk about them like a kind of religion. Most of them are rather low grade, but as i take it, it is a characteristic of hallucinogenic drugs not just a passed fad.
On the personal level, that's the same with startup life, programming, gaming, veganism, cars, PC/Alt-right, environmentalism, body building, nerdery, sex, drink, sports, the stock market, politics, religion, and tons of other things besides, all the way to D&D.
But that doesn't mean psychedelics are especially prone to that.
It just might be the same thing as everything someone is doing more then others. Like building legos in your lego cave, going golfing every week etc. etc.
Yes the experience of LSD is shattering your own reality but for me, i'm very conscious to not promote it in something everyone needs to experience.
Having a flashback on the toilet 4 weeks later and thinking 'does it ever go away, am i imprisoned now, did i break my brain' for 10 minutes, is something difficult to handle.
Also while doing it and experiencing once, i'm fine with doing it every decade once, still not promoting it to everyone.
Giving LSD to someone on their death bed without prior experience? Holy shit no.
Eh, if I were slowly dying over the course of weeks, and I were given 50/50 odds: "this wild ameliorate your mortality salience, or break your brain and make you crazy" I'd still take that. Heck, if you're worried about being crazy, you are probably less worried about death.
Actually I've struggled with bipolar disorder for two decades so I'm rather well acquainted with suffering caused by distorted perceptions of reality. Maybe that's why it's less daunting of a proposition to me :)
But yes you're completely right, the actual odds of an adverse psychologic reaction are much lower. My point was moreso that dealing with terminal illness can lead to its own kind of detachment from reality and all sorts of stress.
We can observe the behaviour in many types of interests.
This being HN, the obvious example is programming language zealotry. Other common examples are sports and cars. We see people walking down the street covered in car brand livery and think approximately nothing of it, and some of them will bang on about their chosen interest endlessly.
I tend to think it's more like a flaw in human psychology. Or maybe a strength of our inquisitive nature that sort of gets hijacked by an almost neurotic obsession.
hallucinogenics, for those that have a positive experience, are so foreign and outside the bounds of normal life, while making you feel like you have new insight into your own life, that people just want other people to have that experience. kind of like the first time you see the ocean or the grand canyon or a sequoia.
It's incredibly creepy, like people insisting you join their religious or sexual cult. It's definitely beyond "hey the grand canyon is cool to look at" or "motorcycles are fun" and is way out there next to "wild eyed moonies handing out flowers at the airport." I'm always creeped out by HN threads on the subject, along with the ones on depression and the collection of fruit salad antidepressants/speed some people need to get through the day.
Mind you I have had positive experiences with psychedelics; I wouldn't push them on anyone, and think it both creepy and unwise to do so.
i think there’s a difference between “pushing” and talking about one’s experiences and recommending the experience. additionally, “creepy” is an aspect of a person, not a hallucinogenic. lastly, you are correct - “It's definitely beyond "hey the grand canyon is cool to look at" or "motorcycles are fun." It’s not that those experiences are only “fun” or “cool”, it’s that it’s a novel experience you couldn’t have expected or predicted before having it, which leaves you with a sense of something like awe. when I describe hallucinogenics to people, it’s with an explicit “you do you.” Hallucinogenics are a self directed experience, though you aren’t in control. It’s more like the mindset of someone who’s cool with whitewater rafting versus someone whose not. on a class 5 rapid, the river is always in control, and as a rafter, you have to accept that to have a positive experience. so, if you feel like you shouldn’t do hallucinogenics, you are correct, you should stay the hell away from them.
Privately doesn't mean secretly in this context, and the CIA did not exist in 1936. I don't know who precisely funded the film, but I've never seen anything that calls into doubt its purported source of funding.
Right. So these are some very good reasons to be _careful_ about any research you do with this stuff. But to ban it, say no, never, crazy stuff, is incomprehensible to me.
I completely agree to you: a terminally ill person should be given whatever substance they want and even advised to take whatever a drug if it can make their last moments happier. Even if it's addictive or harms health - they don't need to maintain healthy living and society integration any more so why not?
I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.
I highly recommend The Emperor Wears No Clothes by the late Jack Herer for a comprehensive insight into the history and reasons for drug prohibition.
It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well.
An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon.
It's almost like asking "why are sex scandals controversial." You could come up with all sorts of arguments for or against the controversy in any specific case... but it kinda doesn't matter. When something is controversial, people argue for and against it by definition. Sex scandals have always been. Some of the oldest writing we have is basic law codes. Sex just seems to always attract controversy, even if taboos differ between cultures.
Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo.
So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold.
Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative.
If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped.
The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.
I think a lot of the controversy dates back to the anti-war and civil rights movements. Psychedelics were outlawed to tackle the first, opioids to address the latter. Now there were "legitimate" charges to ring them up for instead of civil disobedience.
Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.
To be honest it is more harmful than beneficial, these drugs can have a short term side effect of racing thoughts, distorted reality, increased heart rate, paranoia, etc, these effects are well known but people like riding rollercoasters. Long term harmful side effects include onset of schizophrenia, bipolar and psychosis, lung cancer, etc. More people are using drugs like shrooms and weed recreationally than medicinally and at an age where the brain isn’t fully developed. Considered yourself lucky not being exposed to anyone with problems caused by these substances.
Are these long term side effects as common with a single dose of psilocybin? Or are they mainly the result of stronger psychedelics given over multiple doses.
Chronic mental illness, for those predisposed, can be brought on by a variety of stressors, of which bad trips can be one. You can look up the stress-diathesis model (1). Of course stone cold sober people can also be at risk of chronic mental illness from stressors; Look at mental health in followers of the LDS church, who abstain from alcohol, tobacco and caffeine. (2)
That means that people who are more predisposed to mental illness or under stress should be cautious around drugs (whether legally available or not), just like people with diabetes should be cautious about their blood sugar. It doesn't mean that drugs can't have beneficial effects and be used safely.
Culture evolves slowly, often only changing dramatically across generations. Multiple generations in USA (which is a dominantly exported culture globally) have adopted the "drugs"-are-bad idea as a core belief (it's also worth noting that core beliefs tend not to be very nuanced or discerning, as in this case there's very little ability to discern between different types of "drug" substances).
Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing.
Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief.
Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.
There is multi-billion dollar industry to support. It's comprised of the Prison Industry, Police/Police Unions, Judicial System/Prosecutors/Administrators, etc.
As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?).
It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.
There is another multi-billion dollar industry who probably would rather people keep paying them for their antidepressants than growing some cheap shrooms in their yard.
I suspect that one of the reasons is the experience with medical marijuana in some states, in particular California. There getting a marijuana prescription was so easy that dispensaries became a large distribution channel for recreational users.
This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.
Agreed. Especially when the current common palliative treatment is to load them up with opiates such that they are asleep, high, or massively in pain and also constipated in the rare lucid moments.
> "They’re afraid that there’s more to reality than they have ever confronted. That there are doors that they’re afraid to go in, and they don’t want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don’t know. And that makes us a little out of their control."
The cynic in me believes the controversy is manufactured (“war on drugs”) rather than based on logic and due only to the fact that corporations make money on prescriptions, but not on things you can grow or forage on your own.
I think it's a left over from the eighties, as a response to the hippie areas romantic view of such drugs. I also believe that is why, for example, LSD is so stigmatized.
Imagine being a parent, never done LSD, not having a single clue what it can do and seeing your child becoming crazy, different, telling you things you can't comprehend and never had an desire to do so.
I can see why it is frightening to many 'normal' people who are just living their lives, wanting to have a house, family, job, holidays and perhaps partially overwhelmed by all of that already anyway.
I brought weed brownies to a birthday party for me and also for good friends to try if they wanted to. They live in 'rural' areas. Its common for them to drink alcohol, a lot. Drugs? no never no interest don't care.
While i already had ~5 year of experience with weed, they didn't even see it once. why would they? They have alcohol, it works for them, its common, easy and fun.
They had a really really hard time of even trying a brownie. They didn't even get why i would smoke weed if the effects are shallow. They didn't knew that you will not see halluzinations.
i think i'm over curious. This leads me to not being happy about what i have and looking for new. They are under curious and they are happy with that they have. Is that a problem? No its just different balanced.
I'd say a small dose of mushrooms (or LSD, but less experience there) is actually more likely to be a positive experience than weed edibles. Most people I know who have had bad experiences with drugs had it with edibles (or even just weed). Of course, due to the culture, weed is considered more "normal" in most countries than psychedelics, which is somewhat ironic in my experience.
To be clear, not implying that weed can't be wonderful or that you can't have a bad trip on psychedelics, just speaking from what I've experienced, seen and heard from others.
A psychedelic is in my opinion not an easy drug at all.
I don't think it is a normal experience for anyone, for the first time, to realize that what you see or what you believe can be influenced that easily.
While halos around light with lsd is nice to watch, its still a crazy thing. I never had visual impairment on that level from weed or alcohol.
Or when you see moving patterns on a wall, it does break one sence you as a human have a lot of trust for.
Our neighbor is an old lady who had cancer and apparently smells sometimes things which are not here. She doesn't want to be crazy and doesn't even accept that it can easily be nerve damage or whatever which makes her sometimes smell things which are not here.
Instead she thinks we and neighbors above her are trying to get her out of her flat. We are living in a very stable modern building, there is no realistic benefit of anyone to boot her out and walls are so thick, there is no noise issue at all. She still called the policies at least twice, had an expert here and was standing in our door twice angry and pissed of because we are creating that smell. It was 2 am in the morning and i was asleep.
Getting tired, not being able to walk well anymore, loosing concentration or forgetting things are apparently easy to understand and to accept as a human.
Playing the devils advocate, and I think this is a pretty strong point against shrooms: while opioids cause harm, their harm is incredibly mechanical (it’s just addiction) and can be managed well.
Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
I acknowledge you're playing devil's advocate, so don't take this too harshly, but the truism that "Shrooms play with your brain" is meaningless as an argument against shrooms—more so when contrasting it to "just an addiction". Where is an addiction anywhere but the brain?
Of course opioids play with your brain. So do SSRI antidepressants for example, whose very name is based on their most commonly accepted mechanism of action. And it's not only strictly psychiatric drugs—ADHD medication also plays with your brain, influencing dopamine pathways. But then so do gambling, and physical exercise, and meditation! Heck, even social media plays with your brain.
The mere fact that something has an effect on the brain is not in itself an argument against it—let alone when it is being proposed as a psychotherapeutic tool.
Opioid addiction is a clear mechanical fact. We know exactly what one needs to do in order to overcome opioid addiction (or how to avoid it on that matter).
How does your reasoning hold up to the fact that our countries have no clue how to deal with large opioid addict populations that have become homeless yet there are no shroom addict homeless populations, in fact it's basically unheard of that shrooms have ruined anyone's life outside of perhaps rare cases and HN anecdotes?
You're comparing something that happens to anyone taking opioids long enough, to the worst thing that you can imagine to happen on shrooms, something that actually happens to ~nobody who has taken shrooms, and somehow trying to table that as an argument.
Meanwhile, I can walk through tent cities in Vancouver of people getting free opioid injections from the government because they've given up so hard on this ez addiction problem. And I'm supposed to somehow see how shrooms are actually worse.
You said you're playing devil's advocate, but you still have to try to make an argument. It just sounds like you're field-testing a half-baked supposition you came up with 30 seconds ago.
It is absolutely not as simple as clear mechincal fact. See for example the rat park experiment [1]. There is also the case of huge numbers of people addicted to morphine during the Vietnam War, who upon arriving back home to families and support networks and away from horrors of war were able to kick the habit quickly and without difficulty.
Chronic pain does affect the brain, which we already know has long term physiological and neurodegenerative effects. However, we don't have any evidence that psilocybin causes any lasting harm, especially against cognition.
Opiate harm is also not limited to addiction. Overdosing and liver toxicity from (abuse of) prescribed opiates is real and driven by their steep curve of tolerance. Opiate withdrawal for many can be harsh enough that it's worse than the pain being managed, leading to perverse outcomes like theft, violence, exploitation, and addictive cycles. Inhibitions are also altered under the influence and during withdrawal leading to riskier behaviors and accidents.
Those are the low-hanging rebuttals. We already know the societal cost of opiates far, far outweighs the damage of other recreational substances because of its availability, potential for harm, effects on interpersonal relationships and mental state, and propensity for addictive abuse. Psylocybin has mild potential for mental addiction but none of the cofactors for abuse or deleterious side effects on health.
What about people with HPPD? There are definitely people who have long lasting effects of these drugs. Negative and positive. I have depersonalisation/derealization and anxeity disorder after a bad LSD experience. Would it have been triggered without it? Maybe. But what I do know is that shortly after that experience these problems began. I think this overly positive reporting is harmful. I too used to think that drugs aren't that bad and it's all just propaganda but drugs do mess with your mind and if you value your mental health you should stay away from anything harder than alcohol imo.
I developed HPPD at 19 from a combination of a bad 2C-E trip, a bad reaction to an SSRI and cannabis. I stopped all drugs (including the SSRI) and confessed to my psychiatrist, who prescribed me clonazepam. Clonazepam reduced the intensity of the visuals, and after the summer ended I was mostly able to tune out the visual static and focus on my schoolwork. I stopped needing the clonazepam, finished learning to tune out the noise and got on with my life. I also had DP/DR, but that got better with focusing on work and community to rebuild my shattered ego and life.
It was unpleasant but I ultimately came out better than I went in. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but rebuilding worked for me and made me stronger.
> quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
Source needed. All the research I've seen suggest that psychedelics, nay many serotonergics, boost BDNF and neurogenesis.
However, they may artificially weaken links to fear circuitry in the brain - this is usually a feature.
James Farina has spent decades doing non-clinical research on long term effects of psychedelics. For what is worth, the effects seem to go the other direction.
Other than that, I think you are absolutely right tho, mushrooms can induce severe changes. I am not for legalization. And I believe your point is why most people under legal psychedelic treatment are terminal patients.
Anecdote: I have suffered from anxiety since I can remember. I had the opportunity to take psilocybe a few times (always took about quarter of a dose than my trip-mates, out of fear of a bad trip, and most of the times had just subtle perceptual distortions), and the following days/weeks always seemed unusually serene.
First time I took it, half a dose, I felt like a 12 year old child. It was a lot of fun.
Second time I took it, a full dose, I had a bad trip. But I was with my girlfriend, so it was never too bad. I also learned that I trust her completely emotionally. I relied on her a lot.
Third time I took it with a very close friend (15+ years of knowing, inspired each other to study psychology), a full dose again (I thought it would be fine by now), my trip was so bad that I had strong feelings of ending it all. Luckily enough my intelligence was waning fast as well, so I locked myself in a room. 10 minutes later I didn't know what was what, but I cried for 30 minutes and I didn't know why I cried. When I got out of the trip it did spur a soul search questioning myself, looking inward more deeply and that was beneficial but I was flying a bit too close to the sun for it to be worth it.
I should've gotten a trip sitter. I was naive at the time.
I think people underestimate the value of bad trips. Sure it can be hell and very unpleasant / traumatizing. But for me it really helped me realize all the stress and anxiety that was just sitting there for the past ~20 years. It had been there for so long that it was my "normal" and couldn't even see it.
I think psychedelics in general are great if you have anxiety / depression. I experienced the same thing with LSD as you, it really helps to change perspective and refocus on important things in your life
Well I think for some people it can last forever, if the trip was meaningful enough. The biggest thing for me was ego dissolution, and I think I'll keep that in mind for the rest of my life.
Of similar background, I've expected to feel something but honestly felt nothing. Maybe a little hot on the cheeks. Reading about it more afterwards, seems regular taking of SSRIs may prevent the effects of shrooms.
Did you take SSRIs or similar medicine at the time? Did you feel the same effect in the first time?
I recall one afternoon my friend and I picked and took some mushrooms (they grow in abundance at a certain time of year where I live), when I was perhaps 15 years old. We didn't take a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.
That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it wasn't like me, but I'd completely forgotten about it, and now had a single evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!
I sat down, and... it just flowed. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was good, really good! My mind felt amazing - like my consciousness had been expanded. I'd never felt such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.
By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I'd ever written, and about twice the target length.
A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of shocked - it was a masterpiece, dammit, and normally I pretty much got straight A's in English regardless! The teacher called me back after class - he told me what I submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at university level, or by a published author. He also asked who wrote it, because "it obviously wasn't you" - he didn't believe my insistence that I'd written it. He couldn't prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this ever again".
Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results with such drugs can be utterly incredible - also keep in mind the effect is not only while using the drug, but afterwards too. The first time I k-holed on ketamine (many years later), it felt like I somehow understood the universe itself, and my mind felt incredible for 2-3 weeks afterwards.
A cautionary tale though. Later as a 15/16 year old again, we took an insane amount of mushrooms one night after something terrible had happened. Hundreds of them. I kept finding myself in the corner of the same room, staring at a troll (an hallucination). It seemed like it had happened a hundred times, and was pretty frightening. It was like being trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I later spent several hours shivering uncontrollably on a bed. It was a long time ago, but I guess the whole thing lasted at least 12 hours. I've never touched mushrooms or any other hallucinogen since, and I doubt I ever will, even if as an adult I wouldn't be as irresponsible as I was as a kid.
Another aspect which is absolutely need to good is the company that you take the drugs in. Once, I took LSD with a couple of "friends" of mine, which turned out to be a sort of devil-worshiping ritual to indoctrinate me into their cult. Apparently all of them had went through this process where they played a niche genre of music called "darkpsy" which is absolutely horrendous to your ears.
From my experience of the event, I can say with complete confidence that when they were drugged and this ritual was done to them, they had no will-power to break away because the potency of the drug is quite high and the power of suggestibility is through the roof. You become the group on LSD. I think to perform such a evil thing another person, you absolutely need to have lost your soul and I'm pretty sure they were hard-core devil believers at that point.
The moment I started getting the "bad vibes" I just got the out of that house and had to trip alone by myself in a strange area for the next 12 hours. I had one of the worst experiences of my life for that 12 hours where I was rampantly paranoid about what went down and couldn't trust anyone for a week. Currently seeking therapy for this now.
Sorry that happened to you. Many years ago, I went through something loosely similar (actually it happened like 3 times in different ways). The gist is that I started to suspect there was 'another level' going on with a group of people, some kind of hidden ritual relating to some kind of secret power, and that it was at least partly nefarious/evil.
I've thought about this a lot since, and I think much of it was being a situation where boundaries and intentions were unclear, and having that crash headlong into the belief systems I'd been raised with. My mind was reaching for explanations for my sensory overload & the firehose of novel data coming in-- so the war between 'demons' and 'angels' I had been repeatedly taught was real as a kid was what it latched on to.
I have learned since then that this is one of many common adverse reactions to tripping in a bad situation. I strongly, strongly encourage therapy! Uncertainty in this area can lead to misguided forays into cults, conspiracy theories or even a psychotic break.
By the way, I had never heard of darkpsy, so I decided to check it out. It's definitely interesting to me sober (I like weird stuff), but I would absolutely not want to listen to this back in the days when I was tripping. What was done to you was cruel, whether it was really meant that way or not.
Totally agree. The time it all went wrong for me, the whole thing was a bad idea from the start. Something terrible had just happened in my friend's family, and we weren't going into it responsibly, and/or to have a fun experience - we just wanted to get fucked up, and took waaaay too much. Right before things went bad, we had an argument, and I ended up alone for a long time.
For anyone that's going to use mushrooms, LSD or any other hallucigen, I'd strongly recommend having a trip-sitter. This is someone who stays with you, remaining sober throughout proceedings), and can help guide the trip, and get you back on track if they start going wrong. Oh, and of course I'd recommend considering your tolerance level, and only taking a sensible amount.
I should have mentioned, there was some alcohol and a lot of cannabis too. But we took many times more mushrooms that were required for "tuning in" - an amount for several hours of madness at best.
Haha, that's an awesome story. To write something so off the scale. Like, you were an A-student! And you wrote something that was so unbelievably good, your teacher didn't believe it. That is pure gold.
So I have to ask. Do you still have that essay? And can I (email in profile), or we (HN), read it? I get it if you don't want to. Just asking if you're open to it :)
> He couldn't prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this ever again".
You should have gotten your A+… This seems really arbitrary and unfair. The teacher could not prove anything, but gave you a worse grade based on what? His personal opinion of your abilities? Dick move.
At the time I thought so too, but I wasn't about to tell him it really was me, that my consciousness was expanded and I now had a deeper understanding of human language and the universe :P
Have you thought about trying to find that teacher today and explaining him what actually happened back then with the mushrooms and the essay? Would make for an incredible story
I hadn't thought about that! I can only recall the teacher's nickname (which wasn't exactly complimentary), and I'm not in contact with anyone from those days, so I guess it's a non-starter. Plus, during my school years we were all taught that if you did any drugs at all, you'd end up a disgraced heroin user that would end up on the streets and die, and all the teachers seemed to fully buy-in to this notion.
Lots of people in public positions have to buy in to those theories ala 1984, especially teachers.
You should definitely try and get in contact with that teacher! Go to the school and ask around, try to cross reference the years you studied with the teachers around, they must keep records surely
And, of course, we have the excellent first-hand accounts of Alexander and Ann Shulgin in PiHKAL; which covers many psychedelic drugs and notes their effects at varying dosages. (It also covers synthesis.)
Electronic copies of the book used to be widely available online, but I can't vouch for any links that have turned up in a quick search a few minutes ago. Hard copies are still available, and are probably more complete and/or safer.
Unashamedly this happens to me. I really messed myself up meditating an hour a day for six months. It just became like a personal hell. Going into that room and turning off the lights somehow gave power to my fears and nightmares. I did however learn to let go of my ego a lot more, which I really enjoyed, and worked through a lot, but in the end it was deeply upsetting. I want to try it again sometime, but for now I've not gotten up the courage.
I think the issue is that we don't have meditation teachers. I've had issues with meditation as well, because I didn't know how to deal with certain challenges.
Nowadays, I know how to use meditation as a tool that purely benefits me. I use it sparingly, since I'm a bit lazy. But I've noticed that using it sparingly is erring on the safer side while still getting the benefits.
In my case, I notice the benefits after each session. My mind is calmer and I get less easily upset. In another meditation I'm more empathetic. In another meditation I'm more easily loving.
All effects last for about half a day to a day, but they have ripple effects (i.e. had a good day yesterday? Chances are your day will be great as well today).
Have you tried changing it up a bit? Pretty much any meditation instructions I've heard concentrated on what works for you. For example "you can close your eyes if you're ok with that", "find a comfortable position, you can lay down", etc. If going into a dark room doesn't feel right, you don't have to do that.
I would recommend unvarnished Buddhism, not mindfulness in a pill that is being taught by these crazy apps. Buddhism teaches mindfulness in the context of wisdom and morality, not just mindfulness. Moreover the word itself is a horrible translation of the Pali word “Sati” which means “remembering to be aware of the state of your mind”. The key is “remembering to be aware”, not just “awareness”.
You can become aware on your own by accident. In fact a lot of us do that. Remembering to be aware means there is a muscle memory that does automatic mental state check, there is an intention behind this state check.
Having had some bad depression and anxiety for over a year, I have tried to do some mindfulness, and I couldn't do it. It didn't have a good effect on me, although maybe I have not practiced it long enough.
However, zazen (zen meditation) saved my life. After a few months of dedicated practice my mental wellbeing was better than ever. I practiced a lot, and on top of doing formal zazen at some 1h - 2h per day, I tried to carry on the practice in physical daily activities like walking, in the gym, doing house work and so on. This is not to say it was easy, but I had nothing to lose basically. I didn't know if it would help me or worsen my condition, I just took a leap of faith. And like I said, just after a few months I have started to experience good effects, I was doing zazen like I had a gun to my head, I either solve these issues or my life is over. However after some 6 months, when my problems disappeared I got sloppy with the practice and the problems soon re-appeared, and when I re-started my practice, I was cocky and delusional about it.
It took me another year to figure this out, but since then things are pretty stable. If I ever get bad anxiety, I can eliminate in some 20 minutes, but it just happens less and less often. If I start feeling depressed, or have depressive thoughts - I have basically a hardwired reaction to cut that off - it's like what I was doing was automated (have shitty thoughts -> focus on zazen and stop thinking, absorb the pain). And that too, happens less and less often. And of course, I still do zazen 1h every day, and try to stay present and engaged in daily activities and cut any useless mind wandering. It's nowhere near perfect and I have a lot of work to do, but anxiety and depression is not something I have to bother with anymore, and I'm very thankful for that and feel like I don't have the right to complain about anything.
The reasoning for why it worked so well - I think - is pretty simple. The problems I had with depression and anxiety were problems with my physiology and nervous system alignment. Being a programmer, I spent a lot of time in the intellectual world, eventually I got locked in and imprisoned in my head. I didn't have a sharp perception of the outside, everything had to first go and be filtered by the thinking mind, I was in a fog and I was kinda dead in the body. And my thinking mind was running wild, I think I have had some sort of OCD as well. This was a pretty low level of existence and this state of things gives plenty of room to welcome anxiety and depression. I also started to get somewhat socially awkward, which further contributed to the depression and it was on overall downward spiral.
Now with zazen I could fight back. I could cool off the thinking mind effectively, and it didn't take long to start seeing beyond the fog. With this I also could develop basic focus abilities, so I could further train my physiology. Little by little, I could unlock more and more of "the nervous system real estate", took control and feel of my body, and that eventually improved my ability to feel emotions.
Be aware - there are risks. My practice wasn't all flowers, there is such a thing in zen called "makyo" which are hallucinary sesnsations. Like I said, I had nothing to lose, and just took my chances despite fear. I had experienced a bit of makyo, but it was nothing that bad. The important thing in zen practice is to have faith in the long-term view and allow short term pain. For me the most dangerous thing was trying to interpret zen intellectually, which I have did to some extent, and the result was that my practice was broken - I was thinking I was practicing rather than actually practicing - it also has caused a worse comeback of depression - trying to interpret some of the zen teachings intellectually contribute to that 'life pain' thing, at least it did for me. So there could be some risks of course, just like with any unconventional way to do things, but the journey, the lessons and the long term reward could be well worth it.
If you are interested, check "3 Pillars of Zen". There are detailed information on how to practice. Also be aware of some of the esoteric stuff and try to not take it too seriously. And the kind of zazen I would recommend is the : counting of breaths -> observing breaths -> shikantaza rather than zazen with a koan.
I'm going to say something against micro-dosing, but I'm not against it in any way. But for those trying to use this in a medicinal or therapeutic way, you'll want a full dose. Mushrooms would be 2-3 grams, LSD would be 200 mics, etc. THese are generic recommendations depending on variety or process method. Point is, you need a higher dose to be more thorough in making breakthroughs.
Yep. If psychedelics were to be given to terminally ill patients it's fair to assume it'd be under the guidance of someone who knows how to help things go well and in a comfortable environment. It probably wouldn't involve said person dropping a full dose and hitting a concert only to find the rest of the crowd are ogres and the music is stabbing them.
Magic spirit medicine of nature.. heals the heart. No surprise these patients lives are getting changed. Highly recommend those adventurous to try it, very rare that someone doesn’t have some trauma to heal from.
If anyone's looking for a good book on psychedelics, How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan made me think completely differently on them (the book isn't about changing your mind on psychedelics fyi)
For me it's summed up in one of the addict stories that I read somewhere, where the guy said the hallucinogenic "spirits" basically told him to get off hard drugs or they would kill him.
One of my past colleague smoked pot everyday and one night was franticly searching for his "dose" and he was getting extremely frustrated because he couldn't find it.
He told me that it got to a point where he got mad and literally blacked out! He found himself in a black void which he described as very disturbing and hellish because all he could feel was dread and the sound of screams.
He never touched any substances after that and was shook up when he told me that story.
To be plain, this sort of clear benefit and experience is what the DEA fights against. Because it is a federal law enforcement agency and not a medical entity, it's focus isn't on serving Americans but preserving the anointed order of the state.
While obvious, the ongoing harm done by ascribing medical responsibilities to an LEO doesn't capture the interest of elected officials. Unless the electorate forces their interest, that won't ever change.
Which psychedelics (shrooms, acid, peyote, salvia, ketamine, ayahuasca) would be best for endogenous, treatment-resistant depression? If there are any with a proven effect, do they have to be taken periodically?
I'd love to read your story. Did you write about it? The years of depression, traveling to the ayahuasca place, the sessions, the changes you made in your life afterwards.
Ketamine is not generally considered a psychedelic. It's a disassociative.
I don't think I've ever seen a study comparing this in the way you describe, but from piecing together other papers I recall seeing I would say probably psiloc(yb)in, possibly DMT ("ayahuasca"), with LSD and mescaline (peyote/san pedro) being qualitatively similar. All of these are primarily serotonergic.
I'd be surprised if Salvia does jack shit in that domain, regardless of how trippy the experience can be. It acts very differently.
kinda splitting hairs, but these words do have specific meanings. psychedelics and dissociatives of hallucinogens, a broader category of drugs. you definitely see weird stuff if you take enough ketamine, but the hallucinations have a very different character.
subjectively, I find psychedelics to have more of an "organic" feel and dissociatives to have a more "synthetic" feel, although I imagine others might describe it differently.
It can absolutely induce psychedelic experiences - in medical literature it's not generally (though this is not entirely consistent) classified as a psychedelic.
(Speaking for tryptamines as I’m not to sure about the others). It might require periodic doses until you actually resolve your trauma, which more often than not takes a lot of uncomfortable digging. It’s typical to spend at least a couple of weeks at an ayahuasca retreat, drinking several times throughout the stay. In my experience, unless you’re somewhat lucky, won’t have that life changing experience on your first session.
Yes I'd agree with that - although I've seen people take a turn on them but a rare occurrence and these people had underlying mental issues.
What I mean by my comment is media keeps repeating the same research about the benefis of psychedelics - it's beyond old news at this stage and I'm being generous with my ten year timespan it's closer to 15.
Why are investigations into medicinal use of shrooms or marijuana controversial? Is it the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff?
This dogma has been used to enact countless bills of legislation in most rich countries, which in turn have encumbered the justice and police system, which in turn have put thousands upon thousands of people into to the correctional system for years.
After all that busywork, lives destroyed and taxpayer money wasted, it is really hard to suddenly jump ship and say "Nah, you know what... after all these lives destroyed and billions of tax money spent ... you know, we were wrong, let's rethink this".
Drug abuse should be handled as a public health issue, not a criminal issue. And it takes time and effort to rebalance the current status quo to a more humane and sane approach.
This vox article discsusses the political history of war on drugs:
https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11325750/nixon-war-on-drugs
While anti-fun attitudes probably play some role, I think it mostly comes down to a pro-productivity mindset. Caffeine is generally understood to enhance productivity, and for that reason may as well be a revered god in the American pantheon. Alcohol is borderline; it's a known quantity that generally seems to leave productivity intact except in cases of alcoholism (alcoholism is consequently seen as shameful). Alcohol bans have been attempted, and are still intact today in remote regions of Alaska where the productivity impairment alcohol induces is seen as a particularly concerning matter. Cannabis remains maligned because it's seen as making people lazy and content, not because it might be fun. And amphetamines are legalized in circumstances where doctors say it will cure productivity impairing disorders.
Furthermore anti-fun is not the sole religious motivation in play. Puritanism / American protestantism is also associated with the glorification of productivity that I describe above.
We could have some survey based study that tries to ask respondent questions whose answer could maybe begin to give us a little understanding of how much each of these angle might be at play in a given population. That would already avoid a lot of this "I think" "You think" debate.
https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/
Eh, I think this is too dismissive of some pretty deep ethical and philosophical considerations. Effectively they are giving drugs that alter ones perception of reality and then judging their effectiveness on the patients perspective. But since they alter their perception of reality it's tough to rely on patient reports.
Anecdotally speaking, there's a lot of people in this world that think drugs make their lives better when an objective observer would pretty strongly disagree. That raises a lot of difficult questions. Most notably, do we give someone a drug that will make their life worse but also make them think their life is better.
Would that be a fair wording of your position?
In a medical context, we can evaluate this as objectively as we evaluate painkillers or antidepressants. We can use our normal tests for anxiety and depression, run studies where we watch outcomes, etc. From what I've seen, the effects have been very positive for these patients.
Not to diminish your grief, but your aunt might not have been any more available if she had been using other pain management methods. It's just a terrible, overwhelming thing to happen to the body, and it saps a huge amount of the sufferer's energy.
I sympathize completely, and I'm sorry for your loss.
To me it sounds like complaining that your friend with cancer is objectively a worse friend because he doesn't feel like playing Mario with you anymore after taking his cancer drugs or painkillers. He thought he was a good friend, but he objectively wasn't >:(.
Maybe there's reasoning behind the trade-offs they chose that involves more than you?
what does it even mean to "objectively observe" whether drugs make someone's life better? we can look at a crack addict living in squalor and plainly see how their addiction inhibits material success. we can also imagine how deeply unhappy we would be to live in such circumstances. but if we want to know how that individual person experiences their own life, all we can do is ask them.
However there is no doubt people under destructive addiction are very well aware that their condition sucks. It doesn’t mean they can overcome the addiction and the urge of scoring.
I think the parent was related to behaviours such as "pot makes me more creative when playing music" or "cocaine makes me a better dancer" or "alcohol makes me funnier". All of which can be externally appreciated with a different opinion.
agreed, and most of them will freely admit this, as long as they trust you not to use that information "against" them.
> I think the parent was related to behaviours such as "pot makes me more creative when playing music" or "cocaine makes me a better dancer" or "alcohol makes me funnier". All of which can be externally appreciated with a different opinion.
I can also agree with this, as long as we are limiting the observation to extrinsic qualities.
maybe I read too much into GP's comment. I am wary of these sorts of statements, because they are often a jumping-off point to advocate for compulsory treatment of mental health issues.
Like over the self painkillers do? Personally I don't see the philosophical difference in alleviating physical pain from alleviating psychological pain.
Of course, if the psychological pain is caused by a condition that can be fixed the fixing the condition itself is of course better. But in many cases of depression and anxiety there is no clear root cause that could be fixed.
Anecdotally speaking, there's a lot of people in this world that think drugs make their lives better when an objective observer would pretty strongly disagree.
Substance abuse and addiction are a problem, sure.
But that is entirely a different thing from providing substances that reduce anxiety and depression.
And pain killers, at least OTC ones, don't alter someone's psyche. We can, more or less, rely on their judgment that painkillers are helpful. You can't necessarily say the same for mind altering drugs.
You'd only say someones judgement about themselves is unreliable if they will contradict themselves later. But if it is a permanent change, then you are talking to the "new" person who is capable of judging this as well as anyone.
All things are bad if not taken in moderation.
My experience (personal and thus merely anecdotal) on mind altering drugs has been only positive.
My SSRI medication was very welcome when I needed it, and I am very happy they 'altered my mind' and helped through some very dark times.
If I was hit by depression again I would not mind trying a psilocybin based medical regimen.
Like if im suffering pain, I don't want to get drug-induced quasi religious epiphanies from psychedelics. I Just want the pain managed. And what's really annoying about LSD is how it keeps getting promoted as a wonder drug here.
What happens when docs start prescribing it for back pain too?
That's you buddy. Then don't take it. Others who have chronic back pain might be totally fine with this.
If there were a real war on drugs, pharma companies would be the nuclear superpowers.
Drugs, including alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals are dangerous, and utmost caution should be had if using. If you can brew your own beer or grow your own cannabis, you probably have learnt a thing or two about caution. Either that or a professional cautious-person (doctor) will do the administration.
Even drugs like heroin should be fully legalised. Subject to prescription, maybe. But the harm from a clean, consistent heroin supply is vastly lower than the harm caused by the manufacture and smuggling alone, and decriminalisation of possession does not address that. Decriminalisation also does not address the cost issue which is a major problem with many drugs. A medical grade supply for a typical heroin user costs in the $10-$20 range (we know because e.g. the UK NHS buys heroin for hospital use; if you're given diamorphine for post-op pain, that's heroin).
But the biggest problem with the "drugs are evil" narrative is that it has damages serious discourse about which drugs are lower or higher risk.
LSD and psilocybin for example are certainly vastly lower risk than e.g. heroin and cocaine.
In fact, there's a famous case of a group of patients checking in after having snorted what they thought was cocaine, but which turned out to be LSD. Their blood levels suggest they would have ingested hundreds to thousands of normal recreational doses. They all walked out of there with no lasting harm.
In terms of other drugs, some drugs exists largely for time-limited circumvention of drug laws or because they're easier to create or smuggle, and would see their demands crash if less dangerous alternatives were legalised.
Note that the DEA schedules are all over the board. The current schedule system has barely any correlation with harm (see work by David Nutt). But we are also in a weird place where access to two of the most destructive drugs in real measurable effects - alcohol and tobacco - are legal.
At bare minimum we need to overhaul the schedule system, legalize drugs with low/moderate addiction potential (weed, psychedelics, ketamine, phenethylamines, the Shulginoids), and legalize everything in personal possession quantities, and for scientific/medical research.
High-addiction drugs should probably be medically gated in some way.
In fact, the "gating" of heroin through law enforcement is so poor that the difficulty and cost in scoring oxy once people face medical gating due to drug seeking behaviour is now one of the larger recruiting avenues to heroin use.
It's easier and cheaper for people to get heroin as a substitute than it is to continue to use a safer, cleaner supply of oxy.
If you want to medically gate these in a manner that does not increase harm it needs to be at the kind of level that e.g. paracetamol/acetaminophen is restricted in places like the UK (limits on quantity in a single purchase, but nothing that stops you popping to the next pharmacy over and buying more, or coming back the following day) or that e.g. some non-prescription drugs are sold (under the counter, pre-requisite information given out by a pharmacist and possibly some basic questions).
You can maybe push it to a non-aggressive push towards treatment, but if you start denying access you're right back to creating a black market you'll have no control over.
The exact threshold probably needs to differ per drug, but it the level of gating we're currently at even for legal prescription drugs like oxy is actively harmful.
Would caffeine and sugar also fall in this list?
Sugar, no, it doesn't bind to transduction receptors in the same way (it is rewarding, but not like "drugs" are).
I think the harm of legalization is only slightly below the war on drugs. Legalization means another vector of government control in my life, most likely outsourced to big pharma.
All the issues you are pointing can be solved by decriminalization are solved by individual responsibility and boils down to answering the question: Can you trust your source? If you can't answer the question you probably need help through a government sponsored damage control program.
To be precise, I used MDMA couple of times in my youth. My source sent every batch to a lab, we knew exactly what we were taking. Then he retired, and my MDMA use with him, cause I have no trusted source.
No amount of government control will substitute for cautious and responsible use. It might even hinder it, see alcohol, see tobacco, see opioid epidemic in the US.
But lack of legalisation also leaves drug cartels and murderous supply lines, high prices and reason to carry out crime to finance those high prices intact.
If you keep them illegal then you lose control. If they are made available from your local chemist then you can legislate for quality and strength.
Keeping them illegal also has a massive unwanted side effect in terms of encouraging criminal gangs and violence. All that would go away if customers could just stroll down to their local Boots and buy a packet of spliffs.
Violence and gangs and ridiculous prices are a symptom of criminalization. If in order to produce and consume you face several years prison, gangsters happen. If nobody cares if you produce, your neighbor might start producing, he might have a surplus and accept some cheese in exchange.
I know they’re safe; I know what’s in them; a year’s supply costs less than a meal in an inexpensive restaurant.
I don’t care if someone wants to make their own, but it seems like harm is minimized if these chemical substances that alter your body are treated similarly to other such substances.
it works pretty well in the case of supplements. there's no guarantee the supplement actually helps with your issue, but at least you can be confident that the bottle contains what it says it does.
the problem with legalization of recreational drugs is that the government can't seem to resist slapping on a huge tax and/or imposing arbitrary restrictions on the supply side. it is my understanding that there is still a thriving black market in most legal/medical states in the US, due to the high price and varying quality of the legal/medical buds. this is despite most MMJ practices being the weed equivalents of pill mills. it's kind of absurd that a legal supply chain can't compete with an illicit one on price/quality.
The idea that selling drugs is something special misses and should remain illegal seems to only partially consider the implications of what that means.
One side of safety concerns is consumption safety. An at home production facility is of lower quality, exemplified by many more cases of methanol poisoning during the US Prohibition era [0]. Another is production safety, cooking methamphetamines is real chemistry —- I would much prefer to have a factory doing that rather than my residential neighbours. Finally, we have access, growing plants indoors is non-trivial and processing them into something resembling a finished product also so. Given this, I’m convinced that limiting illegality to trafficking doesn’t stop the war on drugs, because it has always been about trafficking — the hard part is moving the product and selling it to people. If the “do as you want” resolves to making trafficking legal, then it seems the drugs are simply legal.
[0] https://gardenandgun.com/articles/will-drinking-moonshine-ma... (The actual source is apparently a book the writer references)
Criminalization and stigmatization cause more harm in the long-term than drugs do.
Are all drugs as innocous as cannabis or psilocybin? Gosh no.
Does criminalization and stigmization of drug use make the problem 10,000x worse? Very.
Imagine if the US followed Oregon's lead and decriminalized all personal use. Drug users can seek out help and get harm reduction (eg: needle exchanges, advice, etc) and get them participating in the medical system where we can help them out of addiction, no families will be destroyed because of a little weed (or heck, meth), we save a bunch of money on drug enforcement, we could close private prisons, etc.
I am not saying utopia, but maybe we should look at drug use as something besides a personal moral failing. No one wakes up and decides to be a drug addict... no one _wants_ to be an addict.
This idea that drug users are burn-outs who chose that life is absurd.
And drugs don't exist in a vacuum, you can't take the individual out of the equation and expect meaningful answers.
The super human PCP user. The window-jumping LSD user.
Not trying to undermine the other part, which is true and I wish more countries would move faster. But this may be part of the problem officially. Yes, people routinely seek regulated drugs from doctors by faking symptoms. Enough to create systems where you can register people receiving prescriptions so that other doctors know not to prescribe multiple overlapping doses.
Not saying anything against its medical applications, only justifying the general antithesis against mind-altering substances in everyday life.
Hallucinogens though... aren't just drugs that change something a little. They can give people profound religious experiences. Some people become an unsettling kind of prophet for a religion of the drug. In the 60s-ish era there were people that wanted to change the world with the drugs with plans to dose populations and leaders to effect major changes. They are very powerful things and with them minds can be rewritten... any sufficiently powerful tool is dangerous. Some early signals and bad actors (basically parts the drug culture that separated from the early scientists studying the drugs) scared the shit out of many in the established society and the propaganda machine turned on and turned them and drugs in general into an evil.
Sort of a knee-jerk stupid reaction that had some basis in real issues but was distorted and exaggerated by people who didn't know much of anything and just got on the bandwagon. (remind you of any other societal issues?)
Like 0.01%?
For every McKenna, Timophy Leary, etc, there were millions doing LSD in the 60s.
And the "prophets" were mostly a fashion of the era too.
When that died, in the 80s, and 90s and so on, you still had LSD, and shrooms, and Ecstasy, and others, but no "prophets".
But that doesn't mean psychedelics are especially prone to that.
Yes the experience of LSD is shattering your own reality but for me, i'm very conscious to not promote it in something everyone needs to experience.
Having a flashback on the toilet 4 weeks later and thinking 'does it ever go away, am i imprisoned now, did i break my brain' for 10 minutes, is something difficult to handle.
Also while doing it and experiencing once, i'm fine with doing it every decade once, still not promoting it to everyone.
Giving LSD to someone on their death bed without prior experience? Holy shit no.
Lying in a hospital bed and tripping for the first time might just a little bit crazy.
NOT! Saying it should be illegal, i think the current laws are braindead.
But yes you're completely right, the actual odds of an adverse psychologic reaction are much lower. My point was moreso that dealing with terminal illness can lead to its own kind of detachment from reality and all sorts of stress.
We can observe the behaviour in many types of interests.
This being HN, the obvious example is programming language zealotry. Other common examples are sports and cars. We see people walking down the street covered in car brand livery and think approximately nothing of it, and some of them will bang on about their chosen interest endlessly.
I tend to think it's more like a flaw in human psychology. Or maybe a strength of our inquisitive nature that sort of gets hijacked by an almost neurotic obsession.
Mind you I have had positive experiences with psychedelics; I wouldn't push them on anyone, and think it both creepy and unwise to do so.
https://mashable.com/2016/04/18/anti-weed-film-posters/
As an example of how forbidding something can make it attractive, it was re-cut into an "exploitation" film...
this means we have no clue who paid right? as in: it could still be tax money through the CIA or smth.
I wouldn't even limit this to patients which are actually going to die soon and have no choice. Any patient eligible for euthanasia should be allowed to take any substance they want. It is absurd to let a person die but forbid them to take a shot of a substance "because it can harm their health" or whatever. I would even suggest them to take psychedelics - this may (or may not - a proper setting can be important) bring peace of mind and even sense of meaning in both dying and living, they pretty much may even change their mind.
It doesn't touch just on the social implications like fueling police states and for-profit prisons while enabling a new form of slave labor, but also largely on the economic and industrial factors which came into play as well.
An old edition available for free online on Herer's website, and there is a link to a more recently updated edition on Amazon.
https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/
Mid altering substances are taboo, have been throughout modern times. Shrooms & grass are established recreationally, so controversy. Enough controversy to trump the normal medical exception from the taboo.
So yes, basically. It is really the picture of a sick old lady smokin' a massive spliff. That's the problem. Smoking spliffs is taboo. If old ladies do it, the taboo can't hold.
Taboos have two parts: the thing that's taboo and the ways a culture maintains it.... ie the controversy. Taboos dissipate unless they're forcefully guarded. Someone does a thing. No one makes a big deal. Someone else does the thing. It quickly becomes normative.
If you're old enough, think of the homosexuality taboo. How important it was (when I was a kid) to make sure no one thought you were a homo. Now it isn't, at least in my surrounds. We enforced the taboo on each other. When we stopped. It stopped.
The old lady with a spliff is like the supreme court of literal common law.
Result: fewer challenges to the status quo when fundamental change at near-revolutionary levels seemed a real risk for those in power. Turns out society's elite were a bunch of squares.
That means that people who are more predisposed to mental illness or under stress should be cautious around drugs (whether legally available or not), just like people with diabetes should be cautious about their blood sugar. It doesn't mean that drugs can't have beneficial effects and be used safely.
(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model (2) https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/05/mental-illness-1/
Culture evolution slows further when large institutions (primarily "the state" here) adopt the same beliefs and make them concrete (by being codified in many laws in this case). This particular effect worsens when the core belief is that some thing is bad and can be outlawed/fought because you get droves of self-righteous politicians who want to make a name for themselves piling on against this Bad Thing.
Those processes need to be reversed and unwound to move past the erroneous core belief.
Bad ideas do die, but they almost always survive much longer than they "should" because of a litany of flaws in human nature/culture/information-flow.
As crime has fallen and society has become less violent, Politicians have to look for ways to keep the steady flow of Meat into the Prisons since they don't fill themselves and billions of dollars at stake, 10's of thousands of jobs, generous campaign donations, etc. So these Politicians have to make the door as wide as possible to keep the game going, Marijuana, psychedelics, etc, keep that door wide. Throwing kids in jail for being late, missing school, having a joint or prosecuting sick or dying patients who need help (that Morphine shot costs how much in the Hospital?).
It's a game being played on the American People and year after year they keep voting/electing the same people who are running the game.
This process provided arguments to opponents of medical marijuana, who claimed that it is just a “pretext for stoners”. As a supporter of both medical use of marijuana and derived substances, and of legalization of recreational use, I think that a clearer separation between the two would benefit all users and provide a better legal environment.
- Ken Kesey, 1966
I can see why it is frightening to many 'normal' people who are just living their lives, wanting to have a house, family, job, holidays and perhaps partially overwhelmed by all of that already anyway.
I brought weed brownies to a birthday party for me and also for good friends to try if they wanted to. They live in 'rural' areas. Its common for them to drink alcohol, a lot. Drugs? no never no interest don't care.
While i already had ~5 year of experience with weed, they didn't even see it once. why would they? They have alcohol, it works for them, its common, easy and fun.
They had a really really hard time of even trying a brownie. They didn't even get why i would smoke weed if the effects are shallow. They didn't knew that you will not see halluzinations.
i think i'm over curious. This leads me to not being happy about what i have and looking for new. They are under curious and they are happy with that they have. Is that a problem? No its just different balanced.
To be clear, not implying that weed can't be wonderful or that you can't have a bad trip on psychedelics, just speaking from what I've experienced, seen and heard from others.
A psychedelic is in my opinion not an easy drug at all.
I don't think it is a normal experience for anyone, for the first time, to realize that what you see or what you believe can be influenced that easily.
While halos around light with lsd is nice to watch, its still a crazy thing. I never had visual impairment on that level from weed or alcohol.
Or when you see moving patterns on a wall, it does break one sence you as a human have a lot of trust for.
Our neighbor is an old lady who had cancer and apparently smells sometimes things which are not here. She doesn't want to be crazy and doesn't even accept that it can easily be nerve damage or whatever which makes her sometimes smell things which are not here.
Instead she thinks we and neighbors above her are trying to get her out of her flat. We are living in a very stable modern building, there is no realistic benefit of anyone to boot her out and walls are so thick, there is no noise issue at all. She still called the policies at least twice, had an expert here and was standing in our door twice angry and pissed of because we are creating that smell. It was 2 am in the morning and i was asleep.
Getting tired, not being able to walk well anymore, loosing concentration or forgetting things are apparently easy to understand and to accept as a human.
Shrooms play with your brain. We barely know how that works and quite frankly a lot of the research into managing the depressive episodes with shrooms may just be that you become more stupid and therefore less prone to thinking in the first place.
Of course opioids play with your brain. So do SSRI antidepressants for example, whose very name is based on their most commonly accepted mechanism of action. And it's not only strictly psychiatric drugs—ADHD medication also plays with your brain, influencing dopamine pathways. But then so do gambling, and physical exercise, and meditation! Heck, even social media plays with your brain.
The mere fact that something has an effect on the brain is not in itself an argument against it—let alone when it is being proposed as a psychotherapeutic tool.
You're comparing something that happens to anyone taking opioids long enough, to the worst thing that you can imagine to happen on shrooms, something that actually happens to ~nobody who has taken shrooms, and somehow trying to table that as an argument.
Meanwhile, I can walk through tent cities in Vancouver of people getting free opioid injections from the government because they've given up so hard on this ez addiction problem. And I'm supposed to somehow see how shrooms are actually worse.
You said you're playing devil's advocate, but you still have to try to make an argument. It just sounds like you're field-testing a half-baked supposition you came up with 30 seconds ago.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park
Opiate harm is also not limited to addiction. Overdosing and liver toxicity from (abuse of) prescribed opiates is real and driven by their steep curve of tolerance. Opiate withdrawal for many can be harsh enough that it's worse than the pain being managed, leading to perverse outcomes like theft, violence, exploitation, and addictive cycles. Inhibitions are also altered under the influence and during withdrawal leading to riskier behaviors and accidents.
Those are the low-hanging rebuttals. We already know the societal cost of opiates far, far outweighs the damage of other recreational substances because of its availability, potential for harm, effects on interpersonal relationships and mental state, and propensity for addictive abuse. Psylocybin has mild potential for mental addiction but none of the cofactors for abuse or deleterious side effects on health.
It was unpleasant but I ultimately came out better than I went in. Maybe it doesn't work for you, but rebuilding worked for me and made me stronger.
Source needed. All the research I've seen suggest that psychedelics, nay many serotonergics, boost BDNF and neurogenesis.
However, they may artificially weaken links to fear circuitry in the brain - this is usually a feature.
Other than that, I think you are absolutely right tho, mushrooms can induce severe changes. I am not for legalization. And I believe your point is why most people under legal psychedelic treatment are terminal patients.
First time I took it, half a dose, I felt like a 12 year old child. It was a lot of fun.
Second time I took it, a full dose, I had a bad trip. But I was with my girlfriend, so it was never too bad. I also learned that I trust her completely emotionally. I relied on her a lot.
Third time I took it with a very close friend (15+ years of knowing, inspired each other to study psychology), a full dose again (I thought it would be fine by now), my trip was so bad that I had strong feelings of ending it all. Luckily enough my intelligence was waning fast as well, so I locked myself in a room. 10 minutes later I didn't know what was what, but I cried for 30 minutes and I didn't know why I cried. When I got out of the trip it did spur a soul search questioning myself, looking inward more deeply and that was beneficial but I was flying a bit too close to the sun for it to be worth it.
I should've gotten a trip sitter. I was naive at the time.
Did you take SSRIs or similar medicine at the time? Did you feel the same effect in the first time?
I recall one afternoon my friend and I picked and took some mushrooms (they grow in abundance at a certain time of year where I live), when I was perhaps 15 years old. We didn't take a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.
That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it wasn't like me, but I'd completely forgotten about it, and now had a single evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!
I sat down, and... it just flowed. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas, characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was good, really good! My mind felt amazing - like my consciousness had been expanded. I'd never felt such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.
By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I'd ever written, and about twice the target length.
A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of shocked - it was a masterpiece, dammit, and normally I pretty much got straight A's in English regardless! The teacher called me back after class - he told me what I submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at university level, or by a published author. He also asked who wrote it, because "it obviously wasn't you" - he didn't believe my insistence that I'd written it. He couldn't prove anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this ever again".
Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results with such drugs can be utterly incredible - also keep in mind the effect is not only while using the drug, but afterwards too. The first time I k-holed on ketamine (many years later), it felt like I somehow understood the universe itself, and my mind felt incredible for 2-3 weeks afterwards.
A cautionary tale though. Later as a 15/16 year old again, we took an insane amount of mushrooms one night after something terrible had happened. Hundreds of them. I kept finding myself in the corner of the same room, staring at a troll (an hallucination). It seemed like it had happened a hundred times, and was pretty frightening. It was like being trapped in a never-ending nightmare. I later spent several hours shivering uncontrollably on a bed. It was a long time ago, but I guess the whole thing lasted at least 12 hours. I've never touched mushrooms or any other hallucinogen since, and I doubt I ever will, even if as an adult I wouldn't be as irresponsible as I was as a kid.
From my experience of the event, I can say with complete confidence that when they were drugged and this ritual was done to them, they had no will-power to break away because the potency of the drug is quite high and the power of suggestibility is through the roof. You become the group on LSD. I think to perform such a evil thing another person, you absolutely need to have lost your soul and I'm pretty sure they were hard-core devil believers at that point.
The moment I started getting the "bad vibes" I just got the out of that house and had to trip alone by myself in a strange area for the next 12 hours. I had one of the worst experiences of my life for that 12 hours where I was rampantly paranoid about what went down and couldn't trust anyone for a week. Currently seeking therapy for this now.
I've thought about this a lot since, and I think much of it was being a situation where boundaries and intentions were unclear, and having that crash headlong into the belief systems I'd been raised with. My mind was reaching for explanations for my sensory overload & the firehose of novel data coming in-- so the war between 'demons' and 'angels' I had been repeatedly taught was real as a kid was what it latched on to.
I have learned since then that this is one of many common adverse reactions to tripping in a bad situation. I strongly, strongly encourage therapy! Uncertainty in this area can lead to misguided forays into cults, conspiracy theories or even a psychotic break.
By the way, I had never heard of darkpsy, so I decided to check it out. It's definitely interesting to me sober (I like weird stuff), but I would absolutely not want to listen to this back in the days when I was tripping. What was done to you was cruel, whether it was really meant that way or not.
For anyone that's going to use mushrooms, LSD or any other hallucigen, I'd strongly recommend having a trip-sitter. This is someone who stays with you, remaining sober throughout proceedings), and can help guide the trip, and get you back on track if they start going wrong. Oh, and of course I'd recommend considering your tolerance level, and only taking a sensible amount.
Mushrooms are the opposite of “fucked up” they’re “tuning in”.
So I have to ask. Do you still have that essay? And can I (email in profile), or we (HN), read it? I get it if you don't want to. Just asking if you're open to it :)
I think your story isn't properly finished ;-)
You should have gotten your A+… This seems really arbitrary and unfair. The teacher could not prove anything, but gave you a worse grade based on what? His personal opinion of your abilities? Dick move.
You should definitely try and get in contact with that teacher! Go to the school and ask around, try to cross reference the years you studied with the teachers around, they must keep records surely
Widipedia article here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PiHKAL
Electronic copies of the book used to be widely available online, but I can't vouch for any links that have turned up in a quick search a few minutes ago. Hard copies are still available, and are probably more complete and/or safer.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2251840-mindfulness-and....
Nowadays, I know how to use meditation as a tool that purely benefits me. I use it sparingly, since I'm a bit lazy. But I've noticed that using it sparingly is erring on the safer side while still getting the benefits.
In my case, I notice the benefits after each session. My mind is calmer and I get less easily upset. In another meditation I'm more empathetic. In another meditation I'm more easily loving.
All effects last for about half a day to a day, but they have ripple effects (i.e. had a good day yesterday? Chances are your day will be great as well today).
However, zazen (zen meditation) saved my life. After a few months of dedicated practice my mental wellbeing was better than ever. I practiced a lot, and on top of doing formal zazen at some 1h - 2h per day, I tried to carry on the practice in physical daily activities like walking, in the gym, doing house work and so on. This is not to say it was easy, but I had nothing to lose basically. I didn't know if it would help me or worsen my condition, I just took a leap of faith. And like I said, just after a few months I have started to experience good effects, I was doing zazen like I had a gun to my head, I either solve these issues or my life is over. However after some 6 months, when my problems disappeared I got sloppy with the practice and the problems soon re-appeared, and when I re-started my practice, I was cocky and delusional about it.
It took me another year to figure this out, but since then things are pretty stable. If I ever get bad anxiety, I can eliminate in some 20 minutes, but it just happens less and less often. If I start feeling depressed, or have depressive thoughts - I have basically a hardwired reaction to cut that off - it's like what I was doing was automated (have shitty thoughts -> focus on zazen and stop thinking, absorb the pain). And that too, happens less and less often. And of course, I still do zazen 1h every day, and try to stay present and engaged in daily activities and cut any useless mind wandering. It's nowhere near perfect and I have a lot of work to do, but anxiety and depression is not something I have to bother with anymore, and I'm very thankful for that and feel like I don't have the right to complain about anything.
The reasoning for why it worked so well - I think - is pretty simple. The problems I had with depression and anxiety were problems with my physiology and nervous system alignment. Being a programmer, I spent a lot of time in the intellectual world, eventually I got locked in and imprisoned in my head. I didn't have a sharp perception of the outside, everything had to first go and be filtered by the thinking mind, I was in a fog and I was kinda dead in the body. And my thinking mind was running wild, I think I have had some sort of OCD as well. This was a pretty low level of existence and this state of things gives plenty of room to welcome anxiety and depression. I also started to get somewhat socially awkward, which further contributed to the depression and it was on overall downward spiral.
Now with zazen I could fight back. I could cool off the thinking mind effectively, and it didn't take long to start seeing beyond the fog. With this I also could develop basic focus abilities, so I could further train my physiology. Little by little, I could unlock more and more of "the nervous system real estate", took control and feel of my body, and that eventually improved my ability to feel emotions.
Be aware - there are risks. My practice wasn't all flowers, there is such a thing in zen called "makyo" which are hallucinary sesnsations. Like I said, I had nothing to lose, and just took my chances despite fear. I had experienced a bit of makyo, but it was nothing that bad. The important thing in zen practice is to have faith in the long-term view and allow short term pain. For me the most dangerous thing was trying to interpret zen intellectually, which I have did to some extent, and the result was that my practice was broken - I was thinking I was practicing rather than actually practicing - it also has caused a worse comeback of depression - trying to interpret some of the zen teachings intellectually contribute to that 'life pain' thing, at least it did for me. So there could be some risks of course, just like with any unconventional way to do things, but the journey, the lessons and the long term reward could be well worth it.
If you are interested, check "3 Pillars of Zen". There are detailed information on how to practice. Also be aware of some of the esoteric stuff and try to not take it too seriously. And the kind of zazen I would recommend is the : counting of breaths -> observing breaths -> shikantaza rather than zazen with a koan.
https://quotes.dilanka.com/post/159729327755/a-man-moved-nea...
:)
He's been sober since.
He told me that it got to a point where he got mad and literally blacked out! He found himself in a black void which he described as very disturbing and hellish because all he could feel was dread and the sound of screams.
He never touched any substances after that and was shook up when he told me that story.
"Chet", if you are reading this, I hope you are well.
https://www.notion.so/quant/Johns-Hopkins-Playlist-for-Psilo...
It’s good, and there are a lot of other interesting trip playlists on Spotify too.
While obvious, the ongoing harm done by ascribing medical responsibilities to an LEO doesn't capture the interest of elected officials. Unless the electorate forces their interest, that won't ever change.
And it’s positioned kind of like the “All the News That’s Fit to Print.”
I went from years of depression to zero depression in the first profound session. And I'm not a religious guy.
I highly recommend.
I don't think I've ever seen a study comparing this in the way you describe, but from piecing together other papers I recall seeing I would say probably psiloc(yb)in, possibly DMT ("ayahuasca"), with LSD and mescaline (peyote/san pedro) being qualitatively similar. All of these are primarily serotonergic.
I'd be surprised if Salvia does jack shit in that domain, regardless of how trippy the experience can be. It acts very differently.
Yeah, I don't think people who say that have done a high enough dosage. :P
subjectively, I find psychedelics to have more of an "organic" feel and dissociatives to have a more "synthetic" feel, although I imagine others might describe it differently.
What I mean by my comment is media keeps repeating the same research about the benefis of psychedelics - it's beyond old news at this stage and I'm being generous with my ten year timespan it's closer to 15.