71–80 of 115 posts
If I hadn't taken LSD, I never would've started my recovery from alcohol. Nothing in my life is as valuable to me as my sobriety is and has been, and I don't see myself ever making the painstaking effort to get sober without that trip. I don't want to turn this thread into a trip report, however I will share that my trip led my thoughts to my last actions, some bad decisions and some bad habits I had formed. Real tal…
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Yes, YouTube videos can be considered research, because that word itself does not imply peer review. You may have misunderstood how the word research is being used in this thread. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/research Definitions 1 "careful or dilligent search" and 3 "the collecting of information about a particular subject" are the forms that were being used in this thread. When @acetoxy suggested doin…
I don’t think watching YouTube videos qualifify as gathering information, even if it fits within the definition of the word research. Feel free to do it though, and I take no offense if you disagree with me, but I’d be careful trusting strangers on the internet, especially if you’re considering going to South America to do drugs.
I assume what you meant to say is that you personally wouldn't trust YouTube as a source of high quality or trustworthy information about drugs in South America, because it's demonstrably and absolutely true that YouTube videos contain information. Millions and millions of people successfully use YouTube to share and gather information on a wide variety of topics.
If you actually wanted to help someone who's trying to be careful, perhaps suggest some more trustworthy sources, or how to find them? What makes a book or person or pamphlet or phone call or any other source any more trustworthy than YouTube? Even if there were scientific research, what makes it trustworthy? Peer reviewed papers are proven wrong all the time. How does one go about being careful?
Bit of a meta comment, but I wonder why none of the ~30 posts here seem to actually be discussing the article. Something about the subject that motivates people to state personal opinions/experiences?
When the author said that Demeter was the goddess of corn, I nearly stopped reading. Facts: Demeter was a goddess of grain and harvest. Ergot (Claviceps species), and specifically ergot growing on rye (Secale cereale) has psychoactive properties; this ergot is liekly the source of psychedelic experience in the Elusinean Mysteries. Corn (Zea mays) was not introduced to Europe until the Columbian exchange; the fungus t…
If I hadn't taken LSD, I never would've started my recovery from alcohol. Nothing in my life is as valuable to me as my sobriety is and has been, and I don't see myself ever making the painstaking effort to get sober without that trip. I don't want to turn this thread into a trip report, however I will share that my trip led my thoughts to my last actions, some bad decisions and some bad habits I had formed. Real tal…
> There is a strong claim here that has never been tested: can psychedelics make you a better person? Never been tested !? Is this person on drugs or something !? Ahahahaha! But seriously, homo sapiens quite obviously happened from a collision of apes with psychedelics (most probably psilocybin mushrooms)... So without psychedelics there would never have been any people! Terrence McKenna very thoroughly explained thi…
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I know of one guy, a brilliant man, who after a period of a month taking shrooms practically every day had a personality shift that is easiest described as "like Rick" from "Rick & Morty" - he became convinced he was the smartest man in the universe, dangerously smart and people would kill him if they knew how incredibly smart he was. That attitude stayed with him, and destroyed him; about a decade later he died due…
I’m not going to bash on psychedelics, but there does seem to be a lot of selection bias around the positive benefits of them. Like your example they can, for some people, trigger an extreme expression of latent psychological problems. Of course the response is always to use them with guidance. Unfortunately here your options are often limited to pseudo-religious practitioners who will inadvertently prime you to have…
That would be the dream.
I personally got curious about it and talked it over with a good friend and we read a lot about LSD. After studying it a lot from the most credible possible sources and reading arguments for both sides, we decided to try it responsibly; a medium-high dose of 150ug, each on a bright lazy Saturday with the other one sober through the whole trip.
It was very fun and mind-opening and I think it's an experience pretty much everyone should have at least once in their lives. We have done it recreationally a few more times since then (and alone with lower doses and together with both tripping on lower doses) and it has been nothing but positive things; it's exhilarating to discover the world in new ways.
I think it would be fantastic if we could have professional guiders and spaces specifically designed for responsibly tripping. Not only is it fun, but I believe it would lead to a healthier culture as it's not unusual in my experience to see a lot of things wrong with our society and personal behavior when looking at them from a different perspective.
I think it's really a shame that it's not possible due to the substance being illegal (wrongly, IMHO).
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"Research". Fadiman is a quack, there is no research in to "sub-perceptual" dosing. It's the homeopathy of psychedelics. See https://www.gwern.net/LSD-microdosing#fadiman-comments The research actually being done is in "perceptual" low dose and high dose psilocybin/MDMA and so on, where are the results so far are promising.
"Research" because it cannot be done officially as LSD is illegal, so he relies on subjective reports of people who microdose, which cannot be precise and standardized, of course. Have you tried it? What I can recommend to you is to go and try it yourself, then tell me if it is homeopathy. Nothing can replace your own experience.
Microdosing is homeopathy because of the emphasis on "sub-perceptual" doses. There's no such thing, when it comes to psychedelics. You either perceive it, or it didn't work. Fadiman could do blind testing to try to prove me wrong, but he won't. Why not?
I'm sure there are lots of people who report "benefits" from microdosing, just like there are lots of people who report benefits from energy crystals and reiki.
Note that I'm not saying psychedelics are worthless for the things microdosing claims to help with, just that you need to actually take an active dose to get any of those benefits. 3ug of LSD is going to do jack shit.
ctrl+f ego... no hits? I've never done a psychedelic other than a very spiritual moment with salvia divinorum, but I have read up on them extensively, (they are often touted to help with ptsd), and the one major common factor is their ego-busting nature. Ego is a good thing in many ways, but due to societal and cultural strangeness, it is sometimes warped into overdrive (arrogance, etc) and sometimes too puny (low se…
> There is a strong claim here that has never been tested: can psychedelics make you a better person? Never been tested !? Is this person on drugs or something !? Ahahahaha! But seriously, homo sapiens quite obviously happened from a collision of apes with psychedelics (most probably psilocybin mushrooms)... So without psychedelics there would never have been any people! Terrence McKenna very thoroughly explained thi…
I really, really, don't want to write this because I'm a very drug friendly person. I personally don't do drugs except alcohol (I know how horrible it is, but I have anxiety problems) but I am ok with all sorts of drugs as long as there is scientific evidence it improves your life.
Having said that, your quote up there is wrong, I know at least one datapoint. In my freshman semester in Berkeley my roommates tripped with LSD (I was sober and their sitter). Everything went well. However, the second time we did the same thing unfortunately one of my roommates absolutely berzerk and did things I cannot even begin to write here without getting banned. It involved violence, nudity, disgusting human fluids, you name it... Cops were ultimately involved since we couldn't stop him and he was about to harm himself by harming strangers. He ended up fine because he didn't harm anyone, just embarassed himself deeply. In fact, he had no repercussions other than having to live with the fact that he did all that stuff.
Was this person insane in the first place? No, I lived 4 years of my life with this guy and he was one of the smartest, most intelligent people I've ever met. I don't know what it means to be "crazy" maybe he had psychological problems inside his head, but as far as we know he didn't have such problems. He went to a psychologist, but as far as we know, it was a fabrication to be prescribed Ritalin and Adderall. So, overall, it did not seem like he had any psychological problems.
His experience affected me really deeply. I never got to do drugs I wanted (LSD and psilocybin).
I don't want to give the message that "LSD is bad". No LSD is probably an awesome drug. But I really don't think "LSD can't make you crazy if you weren't in the first place". It's probably 1 in a million chance, but not impossible.
> There is a strong claim here that has never been tested: can psychedelics make you a better person? Never been tested !? Is this person on drugs or something !? Ahahahaha! But seriously, homo sapiens quite obviously happened from a collision of apes with psychedelics (most probably psilocybin mushrooms)... So without psychedelics there would never have been any people! Terrence McKenna very thoroughly explained thi…
This is untrue, and dangerously so.
> Iv met someone who cured acute autism with psilocybin.
This is incoherent. Autism is never acute, it's always chronic. Part of the diagnosis is "has this lasted since childhood?"