The study was just published in the most prestigious medical journal in the world [1].
Whatever you think of the study, this is rather significant. If you told me even 2 years ago there would be a randomised trial of magic mushrooms in NEJM, I would not have believed it for even a second.
One point not to miss is that they screened 1000 patients to come up with the study population of 59.
Nevertheless, I consider the study result quite promising, considering patients only had 2 doses of psilocybin.
Due to the stigma of psychedelics, there has been a long gap in research, which may have started with 1962 "Good Friday Experiment"
> Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences, providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences. One of the participants in the experiment was religious scholar Huston Smith, who would become an author of several textbooks on comparative religion. He later described his experience as "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced".
>they screened 1000 patients to come up with the study population of 59
Note that while not ideal this is completely normal for any early stage drug trial. Most drugs get licenced based on data in which the trials would have excluded 90%+ of the typical clinical population. This is certainly true in depression where most drug trials will exclude patients with comorbid MH conditions, and often exclude them for "too many previous episodes". But it's also true in physical health (e.g. asthma).
I'm sure it's even harder when recruiting for an RCT in psychedelics though. A friend was working on clinical applications of MDMA about 15 years ago and a stipulation of the ethics board was that her participants had to have taken MDMA at least 3 times before, but not more than 10 times. Not easy to recruit for that study!
2 doses of psilocybin, vs 6 weeks of SSRI's..! They also seem to cite a big difference in lasting happiness, altough that wasnt the focus of the study.
And some folks have a really tough time coming off SSRIs too, with bad withdrawal symptoms (extreme anxiety, panic attacks, tremor, hallucinations, memory loss, confusion...) even when tapering over several weeks.
The definition of treatment resistant depression is one of the filters that narrows down the list. A subject must have tried at least two different antidepressants for a certain length of time and within the last few years, in addition to therapy. So, someone who has taken antidepressants for years doesn't automatically qualify.
This is crazy. It's like cart manufacturers lobbied government that anyone who want to buy a car would first have to use a horse and a cart and only be allowed to buy a car if the cart and a horse causes significant problem.
Am I the only one seeing corruption here?
"One point not to miss is that they screened 1000 patients to come up with the study population of 59."
I'd be curious how many 10,000s if not 100,000s of people pharmaceutical companies go through, along with changing/crafting their selection criteria to keep out people/symptoms they know have more/strong "side"/harmful effects with, until they get acceptable looking results; propaganda using truth - "Misleading with true fact" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lls_2tfWcUI
I have a friend who has experienced magic mushrooms recreationally about half a dozen times in her 20s. After each trip she reported feeling clear headed and more mindful - she described it as though her mind's harddrive had been defragmented.
Fast forward 10 years and that same friend felt low during lockdown over the past 12 months. After reading up online she decided to try microdosing mushrooms rather than the mainstream route her doctor would prescribe - anti depressants.
She has been taking a tiny dose every other day and feels immeasurably better. More optimistic about the future. More energy. More focus. Less sad.
To say it's frustrating to read these official press releases about the positive impact of mushrooms nearly 20 years after she discovered them for the first time is the understatement of a lifetime.
I'm convinced we'll look back at this era as a form of prohibition on drugs that governments threw down as a wide blanket and ultimately society was worse off for.
I know a lot of people whose minds were ruined by psychedelics. It’s something you will see when you spend time in those communities. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s common.
This type of empty fear mongering comment is unhelpful at best. It's a McDonalds of a comment. What's a lot of people? Why are psychedelics so special compared to anything else (sugar, Facebook, gambling). "It doesn't happen to everyone, but it's common" - what does this even mean? "Common" based on what criterion? How should our behaviour as a society change based on your comment?
This is why research is needed. My gut feeling is that the root cause is overdosing. Just search "How often can I do shrooms" on Quora and you get the gamut from "1 or 2 times per year", to "microdosing everyday, macrodose every weekend, and hero dose every month".
Why is this being downvoted? Studies are great, but let's not act like drugs are suddenly safe to use in all cases. I'm sure the studies didn't conclude that.
Be pro-shrooms but don't act like they're safe in every case. Education is required before partaking in anything, let alone shrooms.
How many is a lot? I've been around a lot of people that do psychedelics, and have done them myself quite a bit. No issues to report.
It is a crime that they've been locked away for so long due to Nixon and scare mongers. So many people in jail because of it. Legalize it already, sheesh.
At least some of this could be the tendency of people with pre-existing mental illness to self-medicate. High smoking rates amongst people with schizophrenia is an example. Smoking seems to ameliorate some psychotic symptoms.
I have heard this too, but mostly because there where looking for something that is not there. Example: if finding your true yourself is like peeling of an onion, the can peel a lot, but at some point, the reach the core where there is nothing to peel anymore. I have never reach this state and it is not at all my goal. I think it has something to do with ego. Doing psychedelics makes ego less important. But if you do it too much, you lose your ego too. Living without ego is not possible in my opinion..
I know a bunch of people who went totally nuts with the aid of drugs; but I know even more people that never touched any drugs who went off the deep end with the aid of media, romantic relationships, religion, politics, etc.
I have zero experience with drugs, so I am wondering if there is a sugar/cigarette industry that put a lot of money into promoting it's products, then what will be different when drugs get legalized?
Won't we repeat the history where companies make billions from this products, put them into ads to spread the use and addict people, suppress research into bad side effects etc,.
Personally I think there are some good applications for mushrooms or marijuana but my instinct is that the greedy people would do what they do best, sucker people and make big money.
But psychedelics are very different. They're really, genuinely not addictive -- probably because they're not "fun." In fact, they're exhausting. You may feel a lot better after, the experience may be fascinating, but you're in absolutely no hurry to do it again. The whole thing lasts a few hours, but literally feels like months, with numerous epochs along the way.
It's not like the kind of hollow calories of a bag of Cheetos, it's more like a long, difficult workout. That's hard to productize in that way.
The nature of psychedelics makes it difficult to overuse them.
Your body will actually build a tolerance to them and they'll stop working if you use too regularly.
You also don't establish a physiological addiction like you do with drugs like nicotine and sugar.
Finally, the dosage required is absurdly small and would be extremely cheap to mass produce. You can grow mushrooms relatively easy in your damn closet. It's not like it's a patented designer drug.
Will people created patented designer psychedelics? Certainly. But it seems to me like it would be a similar kind of problem to people buying Fiji water when nearly the same stuff is flowing out the tap for damn near free.
Of course. And when multi billion dollar marketing budgets are put to work for weed and psychedelics, you can expect the same situation to occur as with tobacco or alcohol.
I’ve seen it suggested that a reasonable legalization framework would be to legalize all drugs but not allow advertising. This would logically include getting rid of alcohol and tobacco advertising too.
This is my experience too. I’ve been microdosing about 1.3mg on and off during lockdown. The effects are subtle and hard to describe but I’d say it’s like ‘opening your mind’ or reframing your point of view on things. Definitely different from other drugs which just pump you with serotonin
It temporarily breaks you out of your established mental framework. It's as if your raw consciousness viewing the world without any of the filters that we all use to tune out the noise. That's why the experience can be overwhelming and chaotic and it's useful to be in a safe place with a trip sitter.
I think the magic comes when you discover that something your default mindset was filtering out as noise is actually signal. With that insight, you can more easily make changes to your sober mindset.
I'm honestly surprised that you are able feel any effect from such a dose. Based on what i've heard from my friend's uncle's guardener's grandmother's neighbour, this could very much be just simple placebo effect. You know you are taking mushrooms, which have no effect, but you 'feel' better.
Reminds me of the documentary about Addreal and it's prevalence in tech and other high-functioning people. It quickly mentioned (anonymously) a SV tech person that switched to microdosing mushrooms rather than Addreal, and how that made everything better for her (but the documentary cut short on following up her case).
I thought you were going a different direction with that. I don't know if it was the same documentary, but the one I saw was focused on the medical and moral effects and questions around the use of Adderall in the tech population, college students, and children. The main gist I got from it was that people were using it without knowing the possible side effects, like liver issues or mood issues. And that many of the people in tech didn't actually need it but were using it to enhance performance, and found a doctor willing to write to script.
I used to think this but I think society has figured out something better. It has figured out that many people can use drugs effectively and many people are worthless on drugs.
So what it does is that it allows you to use as many drugs as possible when you're something like a high-income professional and sort of criminalizes drug use among working class people.
Your "test" for being a safe drug user is to have a lot to lose.
Drug use is rampant in SF for instance. And I know lots of drug users: cocaine, MDMA, psychedelics.
I used to think "why doesn't society just make you post a bond that lets you act in a slightly more unrestrained manner" and now I've realized society does! You just have to constantly be in a state of having too much to lose.
Personally, I use shrooms frequently (I have some in my fridge right now) and LSD less frequently and MDMA rarely. All of these have been amazing eye opening experiences and I am a much better person for them. Thank God.
This is one of the travesties of drug enforcement and has compounded inequality in America. The imprisonment of the poor for nonviolent drug offenses continues today. That a wealthy drug user would laud this as a good outcome of drug policy is honestly flabbergasting, but perhaps shouldn’t be.
One way to approach is that a microdose for you is any dose that has no notable psychoactive effect.
Practically, microdosing is often in the 20 - 100 mg range, and the lower threshold of a 'normal' psychoactive dose would be 600 - 800 mg (depending on the individual, eg. their weight, of course).
I think the people behind drug prohibition need reckoning. They have caused untold suffering, especially by preventing people from accessing medication they needed.
There is no justification for drug prohibition to continue. If anyone thinks otherwise, then it only means they have not educated themselves enough about the topic, they profit from the current status quo or simply they take pleasure in causing suffering to other people.
Yes the market should be regulated. Some substances can be more dangerous than others so there should be adequate restrictions and support plus raised tax could help with mental health services and education to ensure people can make informed decisions and also receive help if they get it wrong.
Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, and Fentanyl should never be legal. They are too addicting.
Possession in a small amount should be decriminalized using a stick (drunk tank for a couple days) or carrot (state run rehab or classes) method.
Stop the prosecutions and jailing of the users. Mandate a class or whatever like they do for DUIs and provide a state run place to ween them off. Combined with a safe place to do drugs and safe needles.
>Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, and Fentanyl should never be legal. They are too addicting.
I know 10X as many people who threw away their lives working minimum wage and minimum responsibility jobs just so that they can afford enough marijuana to make themselves happy with living without ambition.
Not that I think marijuana should be illegal but if we are going to legalize one we should be consistent and legalize everything.
The problem with this is it's biased against poor people. Rich addicts can afford to only be users, but poor addicts are the ones that need to deal to support their habit. So if you jail dealers, you're disproportionately jailing poor people.
> Cocaine, Heroin, Meth, and Fentanyl should never be legal. They are too addicting.
Maybe for you, but why should you be the arbiter of what other people do? Make it legal and tax substances to the point that the revenue offsets the potential negatives.
I was not able to speak to my father, let alone staying in the same room were he was, for about 26 years (~18yr old till recently ~44yr).
The background for this was my choice of leaving an ultra orthodox jewish community and going on my own.
I recently tried that (after 3 years of hesitation) and the magic happened. It affected my structure of feelings in several ways indeed, but in the context of this one, I would say that, at least for me, it was not like "I forgive you", "you owe me, but I let go". Not at all, in my case, it simply earased the "load", the hard feelings, completely.
Beyond the magic psychadelic affects, the trip is an emotional journey that one takes, a journey that you come back with compassion, understanding and rock solid outlook over the world.
“The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environment.”
I had a very bad trip, my last trip, and it took me years to recover. That was > 2 decades ago.
It's my opinion that we need to recognize that these substances have the power to modify us in extremely powerful, unknown ways. And we need to create a safe environment (how? I do not know, probably regulation, but after seeing how California is handling "legal weed," I am not holding my breath) for people to use these substances in a safe way.
> What's your take on allowing a substance to change you so much?
In the end, it was still positive. But I wouldn't recommend the path that I walked with psychedelics to anyone, regardless of where it brought me. If I had been better educated, more informed, purchasing from a reputable source, etc... I imagine that things would've been vastly different for me than they were.
To me, I don't think it's so much about "change" as having your normal day to day experience being clouded by so much emotional pain, conditioning, trauma, rationalization, etc. If you can take a step back from all that, you can understand your deeper feelings.
The substance turns your thought process inward. You think about the thoughts you are having, and the associations behind those thoughts much more deeply than you otherwise would. You think about ordinary, everyday things in a much deeper way. This is what changes you. You could do the same thing with meditation probably.
In my experience, »mushrooms rewire you« does not really do them justice: they mostly help you rewire yourself; more like changing habits (internal) rather than surgery (external).
Here’s a personal example: a couple of years ago I had a very rough breakup, but over the years came to terms with it. More than 3 years later, I internally »met« my ex in a psychedelic dream-like state, both were happy with our new lives, and we said goodbye to each other. It was calm and peaceful. It was also the first positive thought I’ve had about her, undiluted by lingering negativity. I was not rewired, but it allowed me to think a thought I did not think I could ever have, and changed my outlook on the whole situation.
(It was a dose on the low-medium end, and I haven’t attempted repeating it, nor do I plan to.)
I think people should be generally afraid of any substance that can I give long term personality changes with just a few doses, sometimes even with a doctor's help.
I see this argument a lot, and I think it is more hollow than it appears. I am certainly not the same person now that I was 10 years ago. Indeed, I am different than the person I was 1 year ago. Life happens, people change. Directing this change with psilocybin seems like a reasonable choice. Sometimes it may misfire, and you will be a bit worse off; but sometimes humans get depressed, angry, or otherwise negative for lots of other reasons.
I watched a movie once that made me deeply depressed for weeks. Thin may have permanently changed my personality too. Should we ban movies because they make people feel and think things that they haven't felt and thought before? (That's as close as I'll get to cancel culture uproar in this post)
I calculate a 99.99% chance you have never tried any such substance and therefore know not what you're talking about. The "long term personality changes" are for the vast majority transformational in a positive way, as in doing away with pathological stuff forever.
I encourage you to take a moment to get acquainted with what is being done clinically ( which to be honest is not what I was referring to ) ;
Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #145
I see articles about curing depression from time to time and I have hope but not much. I have lived most of my life as a depressed kid. The most jolting realization that I had as an adult was that around sixth grade I was contemplating suicide without knowing what that word meant. Since then, life has been like a long, slow death march. If you asked most of my friends they'd likely tell you that I'm really happy, funny, quirky, and eccentric but inside I battle the demons of my own mind. I've let those demons shape my understanding of the world before and each day they don't these days is a choice. I've used cognitive behavioral therapy as a tool to do battle against them, I take daily melatonin, and I take long vacations but those things are coping mechanisms. The days I am hit with depression that wants to keep me anchored to my bed are the days I really go to war. I have to keep my mouth shut more because whatever I say on those days will almost assuredly be tainted with tinges of, I hate myself and am discontented with the world tones. I have to pressure myself to focus. When the day is over I throw myself on the couch and hope that tomorrow that veil is lifted.
As someone who also struggled with depression from an early age, taking mushrooms cured it.
I haven't taken them in over a decade and I did get in a funk during the pandemic, but the difference between the day before taking mushrooms and the days after are like night and day.
I would bet money that it would help you. If you decide to try them out, all you need is 3.5 grams and someone experienced to take them with you or at least sit with you. Oh, and put on some Shpongle.
The 1 mg dose wasn't daily, it was 3 weeks apart. From the study:
Patients were assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive two separate doses of 25 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily placebo (psilocybin group) or two separate doses of 1 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily oral escitalopram (escitalopram group); all the patients received psychological support.
I feel like there will also people that have way too many prejudices towards these kinds of "drugs" because that's simply how we learned it. "Don't take drugs kids".
These studies are very helpful especially when shared over general media, but the consumption has to be supervised and controlled to not have overdoses and ruin the whole reputation again. It should be treated like any other anti-depressant, since they are just "drugs" in the end
We need to change the message from "don't take drugs" to "if you choose to take drugs, take them responsibly".
Start with low doses, don't mix (alcohol,benzo,opiates), and remember that unless taken therapeutically, drugs should be an occasional party thing and not an escapism for life.
It's also totally fine to not do drugs. I'm going sober (except a beer or two) for an indefinite period of time, just because that's what I feel like.
Maybe I'll go on a mushroom trip for new years eve, who knows, but drugs shouldn't define your life.
> We need to change the message from "don't take drugs" to "if you choose to take drugs, take them responsibly".
The phrase for this is “harm reduction” and it has been around for a few decades in the pro-drug communities.
The challenge is that harm reduction material is largely targeted at avoiding overdoses or fatal combinations as you mentioned, which can give users a false sense of confidence about their ability to avoid addiction.
I’ve watched a couple close acquaintances slowly decline over time due to what they thought was responsible drug use. You can do all the right things and still end up addicted to and dependent upon addictive drugs. Fortunately they were both able to afford rehabilitation programs that got them back on track.
I visited one of them in the rehab program. The price tag was high so selection bias was obviously at play, but it was interesting to see that every person there was also an adult professional who thought they were smart enough and self-educated enough about drugs to avoid succumbing to addiction, which was clearly not the case.
I don’t have any answers or solutions to the topic, but I do know that addiction is a risk that most addicts seem to downplay at the start of their experiences. Few people go into drug habits expecting to become dependent.
Perhaps more interesting is the uptick in people addicted to psychedelics, partially driven by the growing perception that they’re not addictive. It seems that these patients aren’t addicted in the traditional sense of becoming dependent, but they get hooked on the escapism aspect or the idea that they’re just one or two trips away from a major epiphany. Not all of the rewiring that takes place in these experiences is necessarily in a healthy direction. It can happen, so people should at least be aware of it.
Please don't! If all this research thought us anything, it's that powerful substances are emotional surgery. Not something to attempt in an unsafe environment.
> I feel like there will also people that have way too many prejudices towards these kinds of "drugs" because that's simply how we learned it. "Don't take drugs kids".
At least on Internet forums, the trend seems to be the opposite. Many commenters are very pro-psychedelic but anti-medication these days.
It’s important to remember that psilocybin may be promising, but it’s still not a great long-term treatment option. Not only have they not been studied beyond a few doses, but we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that excessive and sustained consumption of psychedelics seems to lead people into increasingly weird thoughts.
Of course we don’t have any controlled trials about long-term psychedelic use and likely won’t any time soon due to the ethical concerns, but it’s worth mentioning that these are not a magic bullet for sustained depression treatment. Traditional therapy is still the way to go.
> excessive and sustained consumption of psychedelics seems to lead people into increasingly weird thoughts
We have lots of _clinical_ evidence even that that’s the case for a lot of medication, which is why we don’t usually administer excessively and sustained, but carefully and controlled.
Readit News
Whatever you think of the study, this is rather significant. If you told me even 2 years ago there would be a randomised trial of magic mushrooms in NEJM, I would not have believed it for even a second.
One point not to miss is that they screened 1000 patients to come up with the study population of 59.
Nevertheless, I consider the study result quite promising, considering patients only had 2 doses of psilocybin.
[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994
> Almost all of the members of the experimental group reported experiencing profound religious experiences, providing empirical support for the notion that psychedelic drugs can facilitate religious experiences. One of the participants in the experiment was religious scholar Huston Smith, who would become an author of several textbooks on comparative religion. He later described his experience as "the most powerful cosmic homecoming I have ever experienced".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment
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In a lot of ways, that's completely depressing for how slowly we've come as a species.
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Note that while not ideal this is completely normal for any early stage drug trial. Most drugs get licenced based on data in which the trials would have excluded 90%+ of the typical clinical population. This is certainly true in depression where most drug trials will exclude patients with comorbid MH conditions, and often exclude them for "too many previous episodes". But it's also true in physical health (e.g. asthma).
I'm sure it's even harder when recruiting for an RCT in psychedelics though. A friend was working on clinical applications of MDMA about 15 years ago and a stipulation of the ethics board was that her participants had to have taken MDMA at least 3 times before, but not more than 10 times. Not easy to recruit for that study!
I'd be curious how many 10,000s if not 100,000s of people pharmaceutical companies go through, along with changing/crafting their selection criteria to keep out people/symptoms they know have more/strong "side"/harmful effects with, until they get acceptable looking results; propaganda using truth - "Misleading with true fact" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lls_2tfWcUI
Fast forward 10 years and that same friend felt low during lockdown over the past 12 months. After reading up online she decided to try microdosing mushrooms rather than the mainstream route her doctor would prescribe - anti depressants.
She has been taking a tiny dose every other day and feels immeasurably better. More optimistic about the future. More energy. More focus. Less sad.
To say it's frustrating to read these official press releases about the positive impact of mushrooms nearly 20 years after she discovered them for the first time is the understatement of a lifetime.
I'm convinced we'll look back at this era as a form of prohibition on drugs that governments threw down as a wide blanket and ultimately society was worse off for.
Be pro-shrooms but don't act like they're safe in every case. Education is required before partaking in anything, let alone shrooms.
It is a crime that they've been locked away for so long due to Nixon and scare mongers. So many people in jail because of it. Legalize it already, sheesh.
What I am saying is that it is depressing that we are only just seeing reports from formal sources that psychedelics could be useful for some people.
Dead Comment
Won't we repeat the history where companies make billions from this products, put them into ads to spread the use and addict people, suppress research into bad side effects etc,.
Personally I think there are some good applications for mushrooms or marijuana but my instinct is that the greedy people would do what they do best, sucker people and make big money.
But psychedelics are very different. They're really, genuinely not addictive -- probably because they're not "fun." In fact, they're exhausting. You may feel a lot better after, the experience may be fascinating, but you're in absolutely no hurry to do it again. The whole thing lasts a few hours, but literally feels like months, with numerous epochs along the way.
It's not like the kind of hollow calories of a bag of Cheetos, it's more like a long, difficult workout. That's hard to productize in that way.
Your body will actually build a tolerance to them and they'll stop working if you use too regularly.
You also don't establish a physiological addiction like you do with drugs like nicotine and sugar.
Finally, the dosage required is absurdly small and would be extremely cheap to mass produce. You can grow mushrooms relatively easy in your damn closet. It's not like it's a patented designer drug.
Will people created patented designer psychedelics? Certainly. But it seems to me like it would be a similar kind of problem to people buying Fiji water when nearly the same stuff is flowing out the tap for damn near free.
I think the magic comes when you discover that something your default mindset was filtering out as noise is actually signal. With that insight, you can more easily make changes to your sober mindset.
So what it does is that it allows you to use as many drugs as possible when you're something like a high-income professional and sort of criminalizes drug use among working class people.
Your "test" for being a safe drug user is to have a lot to lose.
Drug use is rampant in SF for instance. And I know lots of drug users: cocaine, MDMA, psychedelics.
I used to think "why doesn't society just make you post a bond that lets you act in a slightly more unrestrained manner" and now I've realized society does! You just have to constantly be in a state of having too much to lose.
Personally, I use shrooms frequently (I have some in my fridge right now) and LSD less frequently and MDMA rarely. All of these have been amazing eye opening experiences and I am a much better person for them. Thank God.
All a coastal California perspective of course.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26324219
Practically, microdosing is often in the 20 - 100 mg range, and the lower threshold of a 'normal' psychoactive dose would be 600 - 800 mg (depending on the individual, eg. their weight, of course).
Reddit is a good source of anecdotal information:
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/7fv5oj/beginner...
https://www.reddit.com/r/microdosing/
This is also good:
https://www.thecut.com/2018/05/microdosing-guide-and-explain...
Possession in a small amount should be decriminalized using a stick (drunk tank for a couple days) or carrot (state run rehab or classes) method.
Stop the prosecutions and jailing of the users. Mandate a class or whatever like they do for DUIs and provide a state run place to ween them off. Combined with a safe place to do drugs and safe needles.
I know 10X as many people who threw away their lives working minimum wage and minimum responsibility jobs just so that they can afford enough marijuana to make themselves happy with living without ambition.
Not that I think marijuana should be illegal but if we are going to legalize one we should be consistent and legalize everything.
These drugs should be legal precisely because they are so dangerous. The key is adequate regulation appropriate for the potential danger.
Maybe for you, but why should you be the arbiter of what other people do? Make it legal and tax substances to the point that the revenue offsets the potential negatives.
The background for this was my choice of leaving an ultra orthodox jewish community and going on my own.
I recently tried that (after 3 years of hesitation) and the magic happened. It affected my structure of feelings in several ways indeed, but in the context of this one, I would say that, at least for me, it was not like "I forgive you", "you owe me, but I let go". Not at all, in my case, it simply earased the "load", the hard feelings, completely.
Beyond the magic psychadelic affects, the trip is an emotional journey that one takes, a journey that you come back with compassion, understanding and rock solid outlook over the world.
MDMA Solo ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25974701
“The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environment.”
It's my opinion that we need to recognize that these substances have the power to modify us in extremely powerful, unknown ways. And we need to create a safe environment (how? I do not know, probably regulation, but after seeing how California is handling "legal weed," I am not holding my breath) for people to use these substances in a safe way.
> What's your take on allowing a substance to change you so much?
In the end, it was still positive. But I wouldn't recommend the path that I walked with psychedelics to anyone, regardless of where it brought me. If I had been better educated, more informed, purchasing from a reputable source, etc... I imagine that things would've been vastly different for me than they were.
Here’s a personal example: a couple of years ago I had a very rough breakup, but over the years came to terms with it. More than 3 years later, I internally »met« my ex in a psychedelic dream-like state, both were happy with our new lives, and we said goodbye to each other. It was calm and peaceful. It was also the first positive thought I’ve had about her, undiluted by lingering negativity. I was not rewired, but it allowed me to think a thought I did not think I could ever have, and changed my outlook on the whole situation.
(It was a dose on the low-medium end, and I haven’t attempted repeating it, nor do I plan to.)
I watched a movie once that made me deeply depressed for weeks. Thin may have permanently changed my personality too. Should we ban movies because they make people feel and think things that they haven't felt and thought before? (That's as close as I'll get to cancel culture uproar in this post)
I encourage you to take a moment to get acquainted with what is being done clinically ( which to be honest is not what I was referring to ) ;
Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics | Lex Fridman Podcast #145
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICj8p5jPd3Y
Matthew W. Johnson is a professor and psychedelics researcher at Johns Hopkins.
I could accept your statement with "afraid" switched for "prudent" but even then, it turns out Psilocybin is your friend.
Make a careful, informed decision. But there is no need to be ‘afraid’.
I haven't taken them in over a decade and I did get in a funk during the pandemic, but the difference between the day before taking mushrooms and the days after are like night and day.
I would bet money that it would help you. If you decide to try them out, all you need is 3.5 grams and someone experienced to take them with you or at least sit with you. Oh, and put on some Shpongle.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Toxicity
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index
Since they couldn't blind the psylocybin group from the effect, they gave 1mg daily to the SSRI group.
Basically it's a study that compares psylocybin with SSRI + psylocybin micro dosing.
They claim that the micro dose don't have an effect, but there is not a large body of evidence to support that claim.
Patients were assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive two separate doses of 25 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily placebo (psilocybin group) or two separate doses of 1 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily oral escitalopram (escitalopram group); all the patients received psychological support.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2032994
These studies are very helpful especially when shared over general media, but the consumption has to be supervised and controlled to not have overdoses and ruin the whole reputation again. It should be treated like any other anti-depressant, since they are just "drugs" in the end
Start with low doses, don't mix (alcohol,benzo,opiates), and remember that unless taken therapeutically, drugs should be an occasional party thing and not an escapism for life.
It's also totally fine to not do drugs. I'm going sober (except a beer or two) for an indefinite period of time, just because that's what I feel like.
Maybe I'll go on a mushroom trip for new years eve, who knows, but drugs shouldn't define your life.
The phrase for this is “harm reduction” and it has been around for a few decades in the pro-drug communities.
The challenge is that harm reduction material is largely targeted at avoiding overdoses or fatal combinations as you mentioned, which can give users a false sense of confidence about their ability to avoid addiction.
I’ve watched a couple close acquaintances slowly decline over time due to what they thought was responsible drug use. You can do all the right things and still end up addicted to and dependent upon addictive drugs. Fortunately they were both able to afford rehabilitation programs that got them back on track.
I visited one of them in the rehab program. The price tag was high so selection bias was obviously at play, but it was interesting to see that every person there was also an adult professional who thought they were smart enough and self-educated enough about drugs to avoid succumbing to addiction, which was clearly not the case.
I don’t have any answers or solutions to the topic, but I do know that addiction is a risk that most addicts seem to downplay at the start of their experiences. Few people go into drug habits expecting to become dependent.
Perhaps more interesting is the uptick in people addicted to psychedelics, partially driven by the growing perception that they’re not addictive. It seems that these patients aren’t addicted in the traditional sense of becoming dependent, but they get hooked on the escapism aspect or the idea that they’re just one or two trips away from a major epiphany. Not all of the rewiring that takes place in these experiences is necessarily in a healthy direction. It can happen, so people should at least be aware of it.
Please don't! If all this research thought us anything, it's that powerful substances are emotional surgery. Not something to attempt in an unsafe environment.
At least on Internet forums, the trend seems to be the opposite. Many commenters are very pro-psychedelic but anti-medication these days.
It’s important to remember that psilocybin may be promising, but it’s still not a great long-term treatment option. Not only have they not been studied beyond a few doses, but we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that excessive and sustained consumption of psychedelics seems to lead people into increasingly weird thoughts.
It seems a little bit can open people’s minds in ways that make therapy more effective, but too much openness to new ideas can start to open the door to increasingly weird thoughts: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...
Of course we don’t have any controlled trials about long-term psychedelic use and likely won’t any time soon due to the ethical concerns, but it’s worth mentioning that these are not a magic bullet for sustained depression treatment. Traditional therapy is still the way to go.
We have lots of _clinical_ evidence even that that’s the case for a lot of medication, which is why we don’t usually administer excessively and sustained, but carefully and controlled.