Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#211

Post by Ntrails » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:03 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #90

cyberpip wrote: post #64

Lately, 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+Dan…

"[W]hy this[psychedelics] is not four-inch headlines on every newspaper on the planet" Psychedelics might reveal to you that the neat little reality that you thought you had all figured out is a lot stranger and different from from what you thought it was, that your understanding of it might be all wrong, and that your place in it might not be all that cozy and secure. The experience could put everything in to questi…

> Psychedelics might reveal to you that the neat little reality that you thought you had all figured out is a lot stranger and different from from what you thought it was, that your understanding of it might be all wrong, and that your place in it might not be all that cozy and secure.

Distorting perception doesn't reveal truth, it simply allows you to experience something "other" than reality. It's not that this is bad, but I don't accept that it offers enlightenment or wisdom.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#212

Post by dagaci » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:03 AM UTC

psyc wrote: post #177

cyberpip wrote: post #64

Lately, 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+Dan…

Psychedelics punch through the big illusion, as in maya. They give the game away. I feel people are subconsciously and collectively terrified of this.

The sudden lift of mood engendered by drugs should imprint the idea that "the depressive cycle can be easily dismissed and is not useful in anyway" when as you unwind, recalling that experience is a key to permanently removing negative cycles without drugs.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#213

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:10 AM UTC

yosito wrote: post #190

cyberpip wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Terence McKenna quote I'm reminded of! "The British enzymologist, J. B. S. Haldane in the 1920s, in an essay, said, "The universe may not only be stranger than we suppose; it may be stranger than we can suppose," and I suggest to you that as we look back over human history, every pinnacle of civilizationf whether it be Mayan or Greco-Roman or Song dynasty, has believed that it was in possession of an accurate…

Eh, I'm not saying we have a full picture of what's going on, but the scientific method is much more effective at helping us arrive at a real description of what is going on than any arbitrary religion of the past.

Mmm. I don't disagree, but I do think it's possible to overstate these things too. The scientific method is extremely effective at getting scientific answers to scientific questions.

Often though, we try to (or pretend we are applying this method to achieve unscientific questions (a la Karl Popper's criticisms of Scientism) or try to add up scientific answers in an unscientific way.

When we do that, we are using the (well earned and underappreciated) cultural authority of science in ways that do not promote truth seeking.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#214

Post by gepi79 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:21 AM UTC

simplemts wrote: post #209

gepi79 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not fall for the romantic tales of psychonauts to reach some kind of enlightenment. All these people suffer from psychosis. The human experience of the world (thoughts, vision, audition, pleasure, fear,...) is triggered by the nervous system (including the brain) that reacts on bio-chemistry. Changing the bio-chemistry changes the human experience but gives no super powers. Most likely your thoughts on drugs are l…

"Do not fall for the romantic tales of psychonauts to reach some kind of enlightenment. All these people suffer from psychosis." Nothing like a blanket statement in your first sentence to immediately discredit your argument. "All black people... All psychonauts... All Americans..." When you look at it yourself... doesn't it sound stupid to try to argue this way? There are now hundreds of studies showing numerous bene…

> "Nothing like a blanket statement in your first sentence to immediately discredit your argument."

My opinion is as valid as the opinion of psychonauts. Maybe more so because I do not rave about great insights about the universe or gods or aliens or chakra or kundalini or third eye or old souls; New Age stuff whose proponents are famous for the promotion of altered states (!) by meditation or yoga or drugs.

> "There are now hundreds of studies showing numerous benefits to psychedelics, from anxiety, depression, OCD, anxiety, Autism, etc.

> What more evidence and data do you need?"

All noteworthy (positive) studies are published by medical experts.

All medical experts warn against the casual use of psychedelics. They all promote a therapy that might include psychedelics under supervision of a medical expert.

Only people who suffer from psychosis defend their delusions as real and important.

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psychede...

http://www.taraspringett.com/kundalini/kundalini-psychosis/

https://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personalit...

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/how-doctors-tr...

What more evidence and data do you need?

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#215

Post by bencollier49 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:23 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #90

cyberpip wrote: post #64

Lately, 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+Dan…

"[W]hy this[psychedelics] is not four-inch headlines on every newspaper on the planet" Psychedelics might reveal to you that the neat little reality that you thought you had all figured out is a lot stranger and different from from what you thought it was, that your understanding of it might be all wrong, and that your place in it might not be all that cozy and secure. The experience could put everything in to questi…

Unfortunately, certain psychedelics have the effect of imbuing everything with significance, which results in apparently "earth shattering" revelations during an experience which later turn out to be dross. Unfortunately in some cases people carry on believing the dross.

It's like hearing a song or a joke in a dream which seems really beautiful or funny, and turns out to be utterly dull when you wake up and replay it.

So sure, altered perceptions give the lie to some of our assumptions about the world, and can lead to some interesting insights, but they also add a lot of new assumptions which are not healthy, and certainly aren't adapted to functional life in the non-psychedelic world.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#216

Post by b6 » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 8:26 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #202

b6 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really not it at all. Have you heard the story "who knows what's good or bad"? Something happens, and we judge it good and feel good about it. Then something else happens, and we judge it bad and feel bad about it. And so on. Our feelings are put on a roller coaster according to our judgements. But we don't have enough information to judge anything good or bad. It always remains to be seen. Deeply internalizin…

There are plenty of things that are pretty unequivocally good or bad. When we anticipate one of these things happening, our emotions change accordingly and this helps to guide our actions in avoiding or encouraging the thing in question. That's what emotions are for . If you have any control over the course of events that affect you, you should experience an emotional response. Anything else just seems like learned h…

> There are plenty of things that are pretty unequivocally good or bad.

Could you name one? For maximum utility in this conversation, can you pick something likely to happen more than once in an ordinary life, some common case?

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#217

Post by aurbano » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 9:05 AM UTC

scythe wrote: post #105

jvandyke wrote: post #27

I recommend reading "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan if you're all interested in the history and details of psychedelics. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36613747-how-to-change-y... Based my reading of that, what these researchers are doing is not prescribing psychedelics to patients with mental disorders and giving the whole "take one time a day with food". What these researchers are finding is that t…

The trouble is that talk therapy is already too expensive for most patients, and unless you plan to have people tripping with a therapist who is a complete stranger ( not advised! ) you're going to need to charge for some preliminary sessions. If a typical therapist charges $100 per hour -- and that's optimistic, in fact I've never paid less than $125 -- then the cost of treatment quickly runs into four figures. That…

I've always been curious about talk therapy, and as someone who hasn't tried it - or knows someone who has - what would you say are the perceived benefits?

How does it compare to an intelligent friend/partner?

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#218

Post by MortenK » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 9:22 AM UTC

Rumudiez wrote: post #21

Alex3917 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people get hurt exercising all the time. Olympic weightlifting is actually one of the safest sports. But most people who lift are doing body building or more sport-specific training, which is where you see most of the injuries.

Olympic athletes are professionals. Anecdotally, my “yoked” coworkers frequently hurt themselves. Out of twenty people on my team, two hurt their backs so badly in the last month that they can’t sit or stand for more than an hour or two, among other minor injuries. Meanwhile, I commute by motorcycle exclusively five days a week and have never missed work due to or come to work with an injury. The safeness of any give…

Olympic weightlifting is just the name for a discipline which incorporates a specific set of barbell excercises. It's injury rate is indeed extremely low (From Hamill, B. “Relative Safeety of Weightlifting and Weight Training” Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 8(1):53-57, 1994 https://imgur.com/a/0jI0CzK).

Your typical gym-goer does all kinds of other stuff though, like crossfit and similar nonsense, which is highly injury prone.

The "classic" (i.e. Olympic) exercises, is a very safe sport.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#219

Post by tpm » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

s-shellfish wrote: post #182

psyc wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychedelics punch through the big illusion, as in maya. They give the game away. I feel people are subconsciously and collectively terrified of this.

Is it at all possible to explain this to a sober person? One who is neither consciously nor subconsciously afraid of having the illusion removed?

It is possible to explain this on a few different levels. Though obviously it will make more sense when you actually experience it.

For example, if you imagine the brain as a big Bayesian classifier, which is filtering and shaping the inputs through the prior "knowledge", then the psychedelics block the prior and let you experience the inputs in a different way from your sober, usual, daily experience. Now they don't completely block all the priors all the time, so you can consciously understand what's happening. Also, "inputs" don't come exclusively from the external world, they can be your thoughts, memories and so on. And without the priors blocking and shaping them, they re-surface (which is the basis of the name psychedelia) and show themselves in a new light. So you can process them again, in a better way, for example.

Re: Psychedelics could heal brain cells in people suffering from depression: study

#220

Post by tpm » Wed, Jun 13, 2018, 10:07 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #151

jvandyke wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure (you can look it up as well as anyone), but from what I've heard (again, Pollan's book), controlled, randomized trials are very difficult if not impossible with psychedelics. It's obvious to both the patient and the observer who has received a placebo and who has not. That's part of the problem with studying this class of drugs, what we have considered the gold standard for clinical trials isn't effectiv…

>Study using psilocybin for smoking cessation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27441452 N = 15. I understand that there are a lot of regulatory obstacles to performing large-scale clinical trials into psychedelics, but the overall quality of the research so far is indifferent. A great number of ineffective and mediocre interventions have been made to look miraculous by a handful of small open-label trials. The ho…

Those are pilot studies.

There is one psilocybin study by Compass Pathways starting this year in 8 EU countries with I think about 800 participants which if successful will pave the way for legal use of psilocybin therapy of depression. MAPS is doing another one for MDMA for PTSD, that's FDA Phase 3 in 14 international sites.