Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity

Psychedelics Promote Structural and Functional Neural Plasticity
cell.com

Imagine your brain as a snowy hill. Each decision you make is like sledding down the hill, causing a slight indentation in the snow. The more times you make a decision, the deeper the groove, the faster you make the decision and the harder it is to try something different and escape the groove. Psychedelics is like fresh powder on the hill won't the grooves away so you can try new ways of thinking / new routes down the hill.

I was massively depressed and suicidal growing up (I had family problems, and two of my best friends killed them selves at 13 and 17).

I dropped out of high school.

I experimented with LSD and mushrooms around 17/18 years old.

And while I didn’t realize it then, my life massively changed for the better. Maybe I grew up. Maybe I took responsibility for my life. Or maybe... there was a synergistic effect that accompanied my psychedelic use. My religious family thinks it was all their prayer and god’s work... because it’s a miracle.

As I got older, the more I believe that it had a profound impact on my mind, and my ability to perceive the world and my sense of self differently, in an empowering way.

I now am an evangelist for psychedelic use. I share it with whomever I feel would benefit, educating them on the research, on the negative stigmas, and emphasizing how necessary it is to respect the substance and approach it with care and good intent.

I ended up attended a top 12 university. I worked hard.

Most of my friends at that university experimented with LSD. None of them are crazy. They all are doing amazing things. They’re all deep and insightful.

Psychedelics have gotten such a terrible reputation.

I believe it is immensely helpful for anxiety and depression.

I believe it needs to be adopted as a therapeutic alternative to current psychiatric therapies which are toxic and destructive and deadening by comparison. (I was on countless drugs growing up, dozens, prescribed by psychiatrists... they did nothing. Just made me more dead inside.)

I also believe psychedelics open the mind in ways that only radical life experiences can.

I think this mind expansion can be useful for learning, creating, and perceiving new ways of looking at the world.

I will add this: the shape of the hill stays the same, and mostly that fresh powder will melt back into those old ruts... the changes that these experiences bring seem, to me, more about knowing the ruts are there then they are about changing things in our lives.

The change comes from the awareness of what can be done, because formerly "natural" things that are "just what people do" start to seem like artificial, learned behaviors. That's a powerful thing to grok, and easier to comprehend at the level of our nervous system with these substances.

I haven't found these drugs to be super "fun" outside of the non-recreational ways of doing things, but the older I get the more I enjoy things that most folks find exceptionally boring. But I do find them very useful.

For people who people worry about the long term effects of these things; I feel like for most healthy adults, if they "start small" the actual long-lasting effects are pretty minor.

Here's an idea to consider for curious folks: if one or two psychedelic experiences could fundamentally alter your views on your life, you probably ought to consider the deep things in your life more often.