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Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

bbc.co.uk

51–60 of 324 posts

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#51

I have a friend who has experienced magic mushrooms recreationally about half a dozen times in her 20s. After each trip she reported feeling clear headed and more mindful - she described it as though her mind's harddrive had been defragmented. Fast forward 10 years and that same friend felt low during lockdown over the past 12 months. After reading up online she decided to try microdosing mushrooms rather than the ma…

I have zero experience with drugs, so I am wondering if there is a sugar/cigarette industry that put a lot of money into promoting it's products, then what will be different when drugs get legalized? Won't we repeat the history where companies make billions from this products, put them into ads to spread the use and addict people, suppress research into bad side effects etc,. Personally I think there are some good ap…

The nature of psychedelics makes it difficult to overuse them.

Your body will actually build a tolerance to them and they'll stop working if you use too regularly.

You also don't establish a physiological addiction like you do with drugs like nicotine and sugar.

Finally, the dosage required is absurdly small and would be extremely cheap to mass produce. You can grow mushrooms relatively easy in your damn closet. It's not like it's a patented designer drug.

Will people created patented designer psychedelics? Certainly. But it seems to me like it would be a similar kind of problem to people buying Fiji water when nearly the same stuff is flowing out the tap for damn near free.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#52
I feel like there will also people that have way too many prejudices towards these kinds of "drugs" because that's simply how we learned it. "Don't take drugs kids".

These studies are very helpful especially when shared over general media, but the consumption has to be supervised and controlled to not have overdoses and ruin the whole reputation again. It should be treated like any other anti-depressant, since they are just "drugs" in the end

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#53

I don’t want to live in a world where the solution to depression (caused by governments, politicians, or general existence in the modern capitalist world) is a drug. Not a good idea. Instead, figure out why depression has increased so dramatically in the last ~century and address that.

But you don't mind the current state of affairs where everyone is being ingested with sugar and caffeine? Are those not drugs?

Office productivity is directly corrolated to the coffe machine. The moment that breaks down everything stops. Coincidence, or are we all addicted to a drug?

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#54
post #26

On the one hand, HN is terrified of brain-computer interfaces manipulating our brains and emotions, on the other hand, they're totally psyched about using mushrooms to do the same thing.

I can't realistically automate the brain manipulation of millions of people taking mushrooms in a short period of time from the comfort of my evil lair.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be looked back upon the same as alcohol prohibition.

Meaning the prohibition was misguided but the drug itself is dangerous?

Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/may/23/study-halluc...

Britain, drug harm score https://www.economist.com/img/b/600/916/90/sites/default/fil...

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#56
post #53

I don’t want to live in a world where the solution to depression (caused by governments, politicians, or general existence in the modern capitalist world) is a drug. Not a good idea. Instead, figure out why depression has increased so dramatically in the last ~century and address that.

But you don't mind the current state of affairs where everyone is being ingested with sugar and caffeine? Are those not drugs? Office productivity is directly corrolated to the coffe machine. The moment that breaks down everything stops. Coincidence, or are we all addicted to a drug?

Where did I say anything about caffeine and its acceptability?

Don’t read things into my comments that aren’t there.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not think huge quantities of people do it all the time right now? Because, well, they do. Further there were a lot of experiments with psychedelics in the 60s.

That’s not how medical research works.

Definitely, however it's also disingenuous to say that we have no idea what the long term consequences of shrooms are just because there hasn't been a formal study recently. There's tons of people doing it regularly - for millennia actually, studies from the before-times and a large incentive by the mainstream anti-drug folks to dramatize any adverse consequences.

Should there be studies? Sure. Are we pretty sure it's safe? Yep. Safe enough to legalize? Oh most definitely. Certainly until proven otherwise.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#58
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to live in a world where how you want the world to look affects my freedom to eat certain foods.

Nowhere did I say that prohibition is a good idea. The article isn’t about that, it’s about using drugs to “cure” depression.

In cases where depression is caused by whackadoodle brain chemistry, this might actually be a completely reasonable answer.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#59
Here in Europe someone gave politicians the idea that they could control a virus. So now we have arbitrary sets of restrictions applied when case numbers of coronavirus go up. If case numbers go down again, they get relaxed. If they go up, add more restrictions are added until they go down. The restrictions are follow the case numbers, but we have convinced ourselves it is the other way around. It's a modern day witchcraft.

Re: Psilocybin 'promising' for depression

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how medical research works.

Definitely, however it's also disingenuous to say that we have no idea what the long term consequences of shrooms are just because there hasn't been a formal study recently. There's tons of people doing it regularly - for millennia actually, studies from the before-times and a large incentive by the mainstream anti-drug folks to dramatize any adverse consequences. Should there be studies? Sure. Are we pretty sure it'…

The way to get people to agree with legalization is to follow rigorous medical study procedures, not handwave about it being obviously fine.

For the record I think they should be legalized.

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