Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Psychedelic Renaissance

philanthropy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 109 posts

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#31

Post by sharkweek »

h2odragon wrote: post #25
sharkweek wrote: post #20

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to e…

Trained therapist? Nah. Good, trusted friend. Someone who will be willing to clean up embarrassing bodily functions for you type of friend. You can't pay somebody to discover you, you're going to have to do that yourself. Having a companion is just to help keep things from getting messy.

Maybe not, but there are therapists who specialize in guided psychedelic trips who encourage exploration and fear facing. Seems like they'd know how to guide the discovery process.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#32

Post by tasty_freeze »

sharkweek wrote: post #20

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to e…

You are right to be cautious. Don't let people oversell the benefits and minimize the risk. Yes, Johns Hopkins and some other places have early promising results, but these subjects were given counseling before, during, and after their trip. I'm sure for some people a lightbulb goes off and suddenly they can see the problems in their life which had been invisible to them and the benefit is immediate. Most of the time the message isn't so clear, and the benefit comes from actual hard work and changes that come as the result of your insights.

For example, I know I'm getting older, time is limited, and I'm mortal. Taking LSD and looking in the mirror and really seeing myself more objectively, all the wrinkles and saggy skin, the meat of my body hanging off my bones, makes my aging far more tangible and immediate than I can normally conjure. The trick is afterward maintaining that feeling and using it to make decisions about health, prioritizing things that are important, and dropping things that won't matter to me in 20 years.

If I had anxiety issues or deep trauma to work through, I'd absolutely want to use psychedelics in concert with a trained professional to minimize the risk of having things go wrong and to get help in figuring out what the trip meant to me (or "integrating" in the parlance).

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#33

Post by blendo »

tlb wrote: post #2

The funding discussed here is for scientific studies. But it's not clear what important question is still open and needs further study. From what I've read [1, 2, 3, 4], the psychological benefits are well-established and powerful if used in the right mindset, and the health risks are also well-established and rare or minor if used carefully. So science seems to have answered the questions it can answer. The obstacle…

Here's one scientific question I'd like to see answered: If a patient is currently taking anti-depressants (or other meds) for the treatment of PTSD, depression, or addiction, and if a physician thinks a psychedelic treatment might help, how should they understand the interaction between the psych meds and the hallucinogen?

Since we're dealing with ill people, a larger amount of care is warranted.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#34

Post by schrodinger »

GreaterFool wrote: post #6
GreaterFool wrote: post #5

When did we forgo > Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ? "Modern" mentality seems to be that everything is illegal unless government specifically approves. Any substance that emerges and becomes popular enough gets banned immediately (unless there's a huge backlash; I can only recall one case like that, kratom. Don't know much about that substance though). Meanwhile invasive questionable medical treatments an…

Also, psychedelics make you face your inner demons. Perhaps not right away because the wonders of the experience can be captivating, for a while. But sooner or later they will. Many people I talked to tried something like LSD once or twice and while they enjoyed the fun part they didn't like what they've seen once the party was over and they were left alone with their own thoughts. This is where the benefits are but…

> Just imagine something like cannabis lounge where you could take mushrooms in safe setting and if you feel overwhelmed you could talk to a trained staff member.

You can do this in Amsterdam. I went to:

Kokopelli Warmoesstraat 12, 1012 JD Amsterdam, Netherlands +31 20 421 7000 https://goo.gl/maps/tFkvQJgtA3NNawqe9

And it’s a fantastic artistic environment where they’ll help you pick which strain of mushrooms (well, actually truffles, but same active ingredient) and offer a trip area in back in which to enjoy them while enjoying the nearby canals. Highly recommend Amsterdam, and not as a “party city,” but as a wonderfully tolerant and beautiful city.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#35

Post by User23 »

GreaterFool wrote: post #5

When did we forgo > Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ? "Modern" mentality seems to be that everything is illegal unless government specifically approves. Any substance that emerges and becomes popular enough gets banned immediately (unless there's a huge backlash; I can only recall one case like that, kratom. Don't know much about that substance though). Meanwhile invasive questionable medical treatments an…

> "Modern" mentality seems to be that everything is illegal unless government specifically approves

The Anglo-American legal tradition of everything being permitted unless explicitly prohibited was actually an huge abberation and always had been. Unfortunately there is nowhere left in the world where that tradition still holds.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#36

Post by blotter_paper »

grawprog wrote: post #8
GreaterFool wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, psychedelics make you face your inner demons. Perhaps not right away because the wonders of the experience can be captivating, for a while. But sooner or later they will. Many people I talked to tried something like LSD once or twice and while they enjoyed the fun part they didn't like what they've seen once the party was over and they were left alone with their own thoughts. This is where the benefits are but…

>Just imagine something like cannabis lounge where you could take mushrooms in safe setting and if you feel overwhelmed you could talk to a trained staff member. Not necessarily a psychologist, just someone who can guide you through the experience. I really believe it could unleash incredible well-being for the society. I like idea of this, but I don't think I'd like to do mushrooms in a place like that. I tend to al…

Personally, I feel like non-tripping people are fine if they've been there before. It's frustrating when you have somebody who has never dosed asking you what it's like, and you have to suddenly explain color to this blind person who thinks you're a gibbering idiot (because you are, kind of).

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#37

Post by sharkweek »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #32
sharkweek wrote: post #20

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to e…

You are right to be cautious. Don't let people oversell the benefits and minimize the risk. Yes, Johns Hopkins and some other places have early promising results, but these subjects were given counseling before, during, and after their trip. I'm sure for some people a lightbulb goes off and suddenly they can see the problems in their life which had been invisible to them and the benefit is immediate. Most of the time…

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

There was a part in Pollan's book where he talks about how an experienced guide will remind you to face the things in your trip that are scaring you. And that running away is what turns a trip into a bad one.

My personality would naturally want to run away, where perhaps the point of the "scary thing" is to face it and deal with it in a suggestible state of consciousness. As an example, I have a lot of health-related OCD triggers. Perhaps it would be a positive experience to "see" these things during a trip and recognize that 1) I have no true control over them 2) sitting around and worrying about them won't do me any good.

I know that those two things are true, but my brain is pretty hard-wired to worry about whatever the current flavor of the week is.

ERP therapy has been great in sort of numbing the associated anxiety, but I'd love to push it a step further.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#38

Post by sharkweek »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #24
sharkweek wrote: post #20

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to e…

There are a few therapy modalities that can help, check them out and see if any resonate with you: core transformation (my fave), feeding your demons (buddhist), internal family systems, focusing (eugene gendlin), coherence therapy. All are predicated around the same few core concepts of having different parts of yourself that view the world in different ways, acknowledging and accepting that each of those parts has…

I'd be interested in some more reading on core transformation - do you happen to have any recommendations? Thanks!

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#39

Post by rosser »

njarboe wrote: post #18
zasz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's ahistorical and just wrong. The government saw an opportunity to selectively target its most dissident elements during the 60s and it went for it: https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-rich... "You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And…

It's too bad this quote was published by Dan Baum in Harper's 22 years after Ehrlichman might have said it and after Ehrlichman was not alive to confirm. I would say the quotes around the text are not really appropriate for this most important of historical memories. It is not like something recorded on the Nixon tapes. From the same CNN article we have the Ehrlichman children saying: "The 1994 alleged 'quote' we saw…

One can not be the kind of racist that raises their children to hate, while still being the kind that leverages the racism in the broader culture against social and political movements that run counter to your own.

I'm not sure which is worse: one directly teaches hatred; the other takes advantage of that taught hatred to pursue its own ends, at the cost of fomenting and entrenching it.

Re: A Psychedelic Renaissance

#40

Post by ajmurmann »

h2odragon wrote: post #25
sharkweek wrote: post #20

I would love to try a psychedelic trip with a trained therapist guiding me toward facing my fears. I’m generally a pretty anxious person (diagnosed with OCD, managed with ERP therapy), and I feel pretty confident that it would force me to face that part of me. I have no doubt that it’d be a beneficial experience. Buuuuut... part of me is super nervous about what I might also find. It’s like part of my mind wants to e…

Trained therapist? Nah. Good, trusted friend. Someone who will be willing to clean up embarrassing bodily functions for you type of friend. You can't pay somebody to discover you, you're going to have to do that yourself. Having a companion is just to help keep things from getting messy.

Not everyone has a good trusted friend who might be available for this.
Post reply on HN