Compass Pathways' Phase IIb psilocybin trial shows reduced depression symptoms

As someone with a lot of experience with psilocybin, there's all this mysticism around it. People act like you're injecting fentanyl. If someone doesn't have a license and training, you're going to instantaneously see flying demon dragons and go schizophrenic.

It's actually fairly tolerant over quite a large range and I know a lot of people who have used over the last year and they are all in spectacular shape.

It reminds me about all that nonsense on HN last year about how if you weren't tested and trained on wearing N95 masks, you wouldn't be able to use them effectively. People over-rate licensing.

For me the psychedelic trips have been an opportunity to focus on a subset of CBT (challenging negative thoughts + behavioural activation), while in the day-to-day CBT I've focused more on keeping in mind the cognitive-behavioural model as well as an index of cognitive distortions to test my flowing thoughts against. It's a bit challenging to try to hold on to your flowing thoughts when under the influence of noticeable doses of psychedelics, and that's why I focused more on specific points of trauma as well as noticeable reactions (literally looking at my face in the mirror at times). I've personally noticed two different moments post-trip: the first few hours to days where clarity of mind is much higher than my baseline and I can transform the work of the trip into something tangible in the long run (like a commitment to the gym), and the next few weeks where I sense an initially sharp and then gradual fading out of any "afterglow" from the trip, which is why I've come to see those trips as shock therapy even when I can extract something positive beyond the horizon of time of that "afterglow". I've also noticed that this whole system worked less and less well with the years, the window of time going from months to weeks to days, even as I spaced apart the psychedelic trips more and more (1/month -> 3-4/year -> 1/year or less).

I used to be a bit wary of inherent bias from researchers all too eager to share positive things with the world, but with the widening of the Overton window regarding psychedelics and the success of the cannabis market in many places in the world I've also started to be wary of financial interests in the subject. Nonetheless, I'm really looking forward to the new research coming out around psychedelics because there's just so much that we don't actually know properly with science to back it up - and more teams to work on the subject will offer more chances to figure out what's going on within that expansive world.

I appreciate that you find freedom in your personal belief system, and I'm happy for you. But you're definitely getting ahead of yourself if you think that whatever you're holding on to is a universal truth for all that is living. I've had that conversation countless times with people who've also gone through DMT breakthroughs: you're no less in a prison of your own mind when you think this way, you've only shifted your philosophical perspective into a place that anchors different beliefs in place. They appear entirely valid because you perceive less subjective suffering, but generalizing the idea that those beliefs are valid everywhere and for everyone is like believing that a singular value in a system of differential equations give the whole picture. There's a difference between solving your problems and solving everybody's problems, and thankfully the scientific work comes into place to bridge that gap (however slow the process might be).

I appreciate your intentions and I think there are nuggets of truth in what you write (re-integration helps you carry things further, meditation offers relief, a change of beliefs most often does lead to lasting results yes), however some people are allergic to blindly dogmatic thinking and I happen to be one of them. Your entire post could have been written to advocate for religion X, Y or Z btw, and people in each religion have just as valid of a claim as you do when it comes to their belief systems alleviating their suffering.

Mandating that one is bound to find the truth with a big T if one "does it right" is pretty much one of the things that as a guide for others through psychedelics I've never made the mistake of advocating for. Psychedelics are a journey, and like any journey you might come in with who you are and come out with different parts but the more you project rigid expectations the less you'll actually extract from the journey itself. Like any journey, two different people taking the same means of transportation and going to the same place, might extract two entirely different things.

It would do a lot of good to a subset of the psychonaut community to retain empathy and compassion when it comes to sharing about personal journeys.