Usually MDMA has the backlash of lowering the amount of serotonin release in your brain the days after you take it, which makes you feel down. The so-called tuesday blues. So how come these people in these treatments aren't getting more depressed after their few hours of excitement?
Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
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Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#42Usually MDMA has the backlash of lowering the amount of serotonin release in your brain the days after you take it, which makes you feel down. The so-called tuesday blues. So how come these people in these treatments aren't getting more depressed after their few hours of excitement?
Perhaps they are. The question is whether these treatments (combined with talk therapy) lead to positive long-term mental health outcomes.
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#43Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#44Very nice, on reddit people suggested they donate the interest alone like University endowments do They could buy a bunch of masternodes because those are dividend producing assets in the cryptocurrency space The yields should be pretty good
Saving lives, changing lives, moving science forward - all better than 6-10% returns. Kind of the whole point of charities is that the work they do is a better return than the market. Otherwise, every charity would be an endowment and they would just consume the 6-10% annual returns for their work.
A lot of charities do like 5% nonprofit stuff and 95% for profit
Despite ideals it makes your rebuttal moot
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#45This is fantastic. I recently helped a few of the NGOs selected by Pineapple get their tech together to accept the funds. It gave me a chance to learn more (as much is public) about the fund and love hearing about bolder moves like this to make such an impact. Being close to the NGOs that did receive the funds, I can say first hand just how much of a difference this macro-funding is making for real orgs that care so…
Thanks Jim! Let me know if there's anything I can do to make things easier for the NGOs! Some days, I still wake up and I'm a little bit astonished about the impact that my bitcoins can have. I certainly would've never predicted this when I first got into bitcoin.
Thanks for all that you are doing with the donations. It really shows great integrity which is in rare supply these days.
I know it's a long shot and some people are gonna rag on me-- but I want to ask, are you/the fund, at all interested in experimental digital physics? I've had this project on the backburner for a while, have been reading textbooks on automata, partial differential equations, and particle physics to get to a place where I can better engineer model universes.
The gist of the project in a few words, is to create a simple 2d universe with enough information dynamics to allow for universal computation and most importantly, evolution. Conway's "Game of Life" is turing complete, aka universal, as are many automata and digital simulations. However, these models were not designed with evolution in mind..nor simple principles like the duality between mass and energy-- or analogously in a simple digital realm, storage and movement.
This universe that we reside in might be complex and hardly simulatable in all its glory with our current computational powers. However, if we strip out EM, the weak force, the strong force, maybe even gravity..go down to 2 spatial dimensions, we still might be able to produce a universe in which computers form, and evolution takes hold to produce intelligent forms. Now, I am not asserting that intelligence of our caliber will form or if it is even probable. But I think this endeavor is worth some salt.
I've written a blog post[1] more about the proposal but it mostly reiterates what I mentioned here. There is also the movie which is amateur but still informative and entertaining.[2]
My email is in my profile in case you are at all interested in pursuing the proposal.
Cheers.
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Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the very safe side: Not more often than every 6 weeks. Ideally not more than 15 doses in lifetime (that's what MAPS guidelines say). Stop once you are sad beyond the 'blue Tuesday' (not everyone has a blue Tuesday, but after repeated use it usually starts to happen and gets worse). There is quite some literature, sadly not nicely structured and concentrated in one place as far as I know.
I belive what you're saying isn't true and neither can I find a direct link to a MAPS guideline saying anything about the 15 doses in a lifetime. In my experience I had blue mondays way worse on my first 3 times, and then I've got to the point where I am no longer blue on the days after. That would be my 6 times over a 5 year period.
I would have to search for that, but limiting your total cumulative dose makes sense in light of research showing adverse brain changes in longtime and/or heavy users.
The 6 weeks number is more a rule of thumb. For some it's longer, for others shorter. In the beginning, it may not matter, but if you browse drug forums for a while, you'll see the pattern 'don't do it too often' emerge.
6 times over a 5 year period looks quite safe. I have some friends who have used MDMA more than that and some of them started to have longer 'sad' or 'depressed' periods, sometimes stretching into months. Again, it would be great if there was an authoritative manual for all of this, but I don't think something like that exists.
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#47This is fantastic news. MDMA and psychedelics when taken in the right setting with the right support people can be incredibly healing. Right now it's primarily focused on PTSD and other traumas, but it can be a powerful experience for improving relationships or personal growth as well.
Yes there are also clinical trials underway with couples therapy comorbid with I think anxiety? or depression? (there needs to be a disease associated with it iirc it just can't be couples therapy)
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#48From the press release:
"If this funding challenge is met in gifts, grants, and multi-year pledges, MAPS will have raised sufficient funds to complete its Phase 3 trials."
That statement is huge. The idea that MAPS has successfully taken a compound through the entire FDA approval process using only donations is kinda amazing. They received breakthrough status with the FDA, they are starting phase 3 trials, and the only thing holding them back is an amount of money that would be a drop in the bucket for a big pharma company.
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#49This is fantastic. I recently helped a few of the NGOs selected by Pineapple get their tech together to accept the funds. It gave me a chance to learn more (as much is public) about the fund and love hearing about bolder moves like this to make such an impact. Being close to the NGOs that did receive the funds, I can say first hand just how much of a difference this macro-funding is making for real orgs that care so…
Thanks Jim! Let me know if there's anything I can do to make things easier for the NGOs! Some days, I still wake up and I'm a little bit astonished about the impact that my bitcoins can have. I certainly would've never predicted this when I first got into bitcoin.
Yes! Just sent you an email. Cheers.
Re: Pineapple Fund Offers $4M Matching Grant to MAPS for MDMA Research
#50Usually MDMA has the backlash of lowering the amount of serotonin release in your brain the days after you take it, which makes you feel down. The so-called tuesday blues. So how come these people in these treatments aren't getting more depressed after their few hours of excitement?
I've read up a bit on the research, and it sounds like a next-day or 48-hour "blues period" is par for the course after an MDMA session. They mitigate this problem by making sure that your schedule is clear of obligations the next day and warning the patient about it ahead of time.
The impact of MDMA in these trials is that it's not "a few hours of excitement": the drug often helps the patient make large, permanent breakthroughs in their trauma or self-image that wouldn't be possible without the "life preserver" of the substance. Going through the trauma and reorienting oneself to it in a new, healthy way seems much more possible (to many people anyway, certainly those with full-on diagnosable PTSD) with the help of MDMA.