I tried Psychedelics for my depression, and my roommate has been self medicating similarly. I think they can help - but they're going to make the current opioid epidemic look like child's play. I have very carefully limited my intake - and I'm finding that I don't like a lot of what I've found. I'm definitely finding my roommate is becoming a worse person, and well on the way to all of the ugly things that we associate with drug use.
Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
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Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The general consensus is that this is an extremely small portion of the population, and that psychedelic use is only typically a premature trigger for a preexisting condition rather than a prime cause for these types of mental issues.
Do you have citations for the following? • extremely small portion • trigger for a pre-existing condition
I don't. I'm simply restating what seems to be general consensus amongst both users and mental health professionals. Actual data is hard to come by, since actual research has only recently begun to happen.
At this point though, any assertion that psychedelics cause anything more than a very slight increase in the background rates of diseases like schizophrenia would need a serious amount of evidence to back it up. Psychedelic use is common; something like 15—20% of the American population tries them in their life. And the general understanding of diseases like schizophrenia right now involves actual structural changes that simply aren't plausible consequences of infrequent psychedelic use. I won't speak toward long-term, frequent use, but by all the evidence I've personally seen, LSD in particular is extraordinarily safe for the population of people without a family history of schizophrenia.
I'd also like to point out that the original assertion—that psychedelics trigger psychotic breaks—itself doesn't come along with that much in the way of evidence. The original notion came about in the '70s when mental health professionals started seeing a higher proportion of their patents coming in after having tried psychedelics. I'm not sure if hard data was collected (or at least, I haven't been able to find any), but the most straightforward explanation for this is that this likely simply mirrored the increase in the background rate of people using psychedelics. If the background rate went from 1:10 to 2:10, then you'd expect that the number of people coming in with mental health issues will show a doubling in psychedelic usage rates. And in the fifty years since then, I've not seen much additional evidence for a causal link between the two.
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#63Or one could lift weights, which is even safer and has many positive ancillary effects. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abst...
The treatment effects of exercise are often overplayed.
Exercise might help prevent mental ill health, and it's important because mental health meds have severe impact on physical health, but it's probably not a great treatment option, even if you can get people to comply with the treatment.
Exercise is moderately better than nothing, but only if you include weak studies. As soon as you only include good studies the efficacy drops off.
http://www.cochrane.org/CD004366/DEPRESSN_exercise-for-depre...
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#64Lately, all this media attention to psychedelics reminds me of this Terence McKenna quote:
"[W]hy this[psychedelics] is not four-inch headlines on every newspaper on the planet I cannot understand because I don’t know what news you were waiting for, but this is the news that I was waiting for. It’s an incredible challenge to human understanding to try and make sense of this."
from https://www.asktmk.com/talks/Rap+Dancing+Into+the+Third+Mill...
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#65This is wildly speculative, as expected. Some mice grew dendrites. That doesn't mean anything about humans and doesn't come close to meaning anything about depression. It's not that simple.
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#66The possibilities for psychedelic drugs to treat and shed insight into mental health issues are exciting. But I think it's worth pointing out (especially if you are a recreational user or are considering it) that we don't understand the side effects very well. Low resolution, we know they don't kill you or lead to addiction (though they can cause problems in people with underlying mental health problems).
But I'm concerned about the subtler, not-obviously-harmful-but-not-necessarily-desirable ways in which they permanently alter the brain. Slate Star Codex has a few recent articles that are worth considering:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-of...
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychede...
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
It also takes a lot of commitment and time that not everyone has, and requires you to by physically capable of lifting weights which not everyone is. On a more nuanced note, different things work for different people, and gyms aren't the optimal mental healing environment for everyone. If you're gonna arrange everyone on a hypothetical comfort spectrum between gym and library, it seems reasonable that some people wou…
>It also takes a lot of commitment and time It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues. The latter part of your argument I personally have never ever once experienced, nor have anyone I known experience it outside of the gym at high school. People grunt when exerting effort, everyone wears headphones anyway. And even then, you don't…
>It's about half an hour a day, that's all you really need. True, if you can't spare half an hour, then you've got greater issues.
Unless you don't have a car, or live in a congested city, or live outside the city, in which case it can be half an hour of commuting time before you get your half hour of exercise. It's also ~$60 a month, which not everyone can spare. Your statement also assumes people aren't working two jobs, and aren't working shift work (or have access to a 24h gym, which not everyone does).
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over time people build up useful heuristics. There is a difference between questioning authority vs questioning why tuesdays exist and if maybe it's sunday for dogs.
>"questioning why tuesdays exist" I don't see a problem with this line of questioning. There is lots interesting to consider there. Just some stream of thought: What does tuesday mean anyway, why do we have weeks, why 7 days per week, what is the exact definition of day, could there be planets without "days", do dogs recognize a weekly cycle, would they if "freerunning" without human companionship, what about wolves…
> why do we have weeks, why 7 days per week
Because it is useful to divide up things into increments. 7 because there are 7 visible celestial bodies visible to the naked eye. Which the names derive from.
> What does tuesday mean anyway
Mars's day
> what is the exact definition of day
A singular rotation of the planet. Also known as a sidereal day. Or more simply put: sun goes up, sun goes down.
> could there be planets without "days"
Yes, these are known as tidally locked. Some planets have long days. Venus has a longer day than year (rotation of planet around parent star)
> I don't see a problem with this line of questioning. There is lots interesting to consider there.
Yes, but answers are also reasonably found. Don't just stop and think, but also seek. That's why we think differently about the person who is like "wow man, what even is Tuesday" and the person that discussed the historical reasoning and mythos that led to the naming of Tuesday and why having a seven day week is so pervasive throughout the world, leading back to ancients looking up at the sky (which was better than what most of us see, considering light pollution). Sometimes things are extraordinary and sometimes they are mundane.
There's a lot of usefulness into relying on historical knowledge. That's why we advanced so far. And by finding the breath of our current understandings you will find new and deeper questions.
Tldr: don't just question, find answers.
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Over time people build up useful heuristics. There is a difference between questioning authority vs questioning why tuesdays exist and if maybe it's sunday for dogs.
>"questioning why tuesdays exist" I don't see a problem with this line of questioning. There is lots interesting to consider there. Just some stream of thought: What does tuesday mean anyway, why do we have weeks, why 7 days per week, what is the exact definition of day, could there be planets without "days", do dogs recognize a weekly cycle, would they if "freerunning" without human companionship, what about wolves…
It’s incredibly mentally exhausting and you’ll miss several things that flag you as a comfortable human being in your own existence to others, thereby shortening your ability to function as a socially wholesome creature. (Note: I have an illness on the schizophrenia spectrum that works in a way requiring me to thoroughly examine fundamental aspects of reality. It is utterly exhausting.)
Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study
#70I’m really worried about the subset of the population with preexisting mental disorders such as manic depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and depression who will suffer a psychotic break from the use of these substances. Maybe I’m wrong, but from what I’ve heard and read it seems like there’s no way to know what will happen until you try it. A certain percentage of the population goes to hell in the most literal sens…
>"mental frailty...they begin to question everything" As opposed to blindly "believe everything"? I would say the ability to question everything is evidence of a strong independent adult mind. The ability to just believe everything you are told isn't really "frail" (which I associate with old age and wisdom), but still weak in a childlike sense.
Questioning everything is also child-like. It's more of a normal adult quality to learn what lines of questioning prove fruitful and what do not.