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Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

medicalxpress.com

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Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#101

Post by Alex3917 »

lusr wrote: post #73
Alex3917 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"So they took a bunch of people prone to mystical experiences and found when you give them hallucinogenics that they have further mystical experiences?" The people they recruit aren't really much more prone to mystical experiences than anyone else, they're just trying to find volunteers who are psychologically stable and have a support network in case things go poorly.

How did you infer this?

There's only 20 or so people in the field, and they all help each other to get their studies approved. I think that Rick Strassman is the one who came up with this idea, and he writes about it a bit in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Then all the other investigators started doing this as well. Roland Griffiths may have also talked about this in one of his talks, I forget.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#102

Post by geargrinder »

astrofinch wrote: post #38
aheilbut wrote: post #18

I don't doubt it, but reading a book may make a lasting personality change too.

What book do you estimate has the greatest probability of causing lasting personality change?

The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham is in this category.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#103

Post by bmelton »

edtechre wrote: post #63
pyre wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know what actually makes a difference in life? Taking action makes a difference in life. People don't take action just for its own sake. They have motivations. Where do this motivations come from? Ultimately the mind. The mind can be influenced by books and general knowledge, as well as experiences. Do you contest that if one did the same thing twice (once on drugs, the other not) that those experiences would d…

You could claim the same about getting high off of glue since that affects the mind too. Seriously, what every day experience /doesn't/ affect your mind? My point stands on its own. Taking action makes a difference, dropping acid does nothing for anyone. End.

So everything's on the level, I should probably mention that I've downvoted just about everything you've said in this thread except this post, which strikes my curiosity.

Would you consider meditation equally as pointless as dropping acid? How about worshiping a God, or Gods? Sitting alone in a park? Writing a journal? Looking through a yearbook or perhaps a photo album? Are these things all pointless in your mind as well?

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#104

Post by r0s »

michaelochurch wrote: post #96

A few things I'm going to say. First, these drugs aren't "hallucinogens". They're psychedelics (mind-revealing). A hallucination is a false perception which the person believes to be real; visuals are perceptions that the person knows are not real, such as "light shows". Except at very high doses, these drugs don't produce hallucinations per se . Other drugs can, but LSD and psilocybin generally do not. Ok, that may…

Personally, I believe psychedelics produce emotional hallucinations as well as visual/auditory.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#105

Post by Alex3917 »

ScottAS wrote: post #100
michaelochurch wrote: post #96

A few things I'm going to say. First, these drugs aren't "hallucinogens". They're psychedelics (mind-revealing). A hallucination is a false perception which the person believes to be real; visuals are perceptions that the person knows are not real, such as "light shows". Except at very high doses, these drugs don't produce hallucinations per se . Other drugs can, but LSD and psilocybin generally do not. Ok, that may…

Actually, they are considered hallucinogens: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen .

There are a lot of different terms that researchers in the field use: psychedelic (mind manifesting), hallucinogen, psychotomimetic (psychosis mimicking), and entheogen (god manifesting) are the main ones. Normally which one you use depends on:

- who you're writing for - what aspect of the drug experience you're trying to emphasize

In Griffith's study he uses the term hallucinogen, most likely just to expedite IRB/FDA/DEA approval. In general though the preferred term seems to be entheogen now at least for conversational purposes, because people find it less objectionable than hallucinogen or psychedelic for obvious reasons, and it also tends to be a good conversation starter for people who haven't heard the term before. The downside is that while most atheists seem not to be bothered by the term, a few are. And it's not always appropriate, e.g. it wouldn't make sense when dosing rats with LSD or whatever.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#106

Post by shawn-butler »

GiraffeNecktie wrote: post #84
Angostura wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your perception, or do the people around you, able to give an unbiased opinion concur? Afterall I'm not entirely convinced that my heartfelt conviction of alchohol's beneficial effects on my singing are universally shared.

If I feel like my life has changed for the better, I don't have to validate it with other people. It's my life, not theirs.

This is where I find this train of thought becomes so unenlightened and bogs down in hedonism. There is no such thing as "your life" seperate or distinct from the lives of other people and certainly not something over which you can claim as a possession.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#107

Post by saturdaysaint »

edtechre wrote: post #28
edtechre wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of doing drugs to experience "enlightenment" (LOL), you could, I don't know... read a book and actually learn something of value.

I have no issue with whatever it is you posited after your masturbatory experience. It's just that I don't find your epiphany particularly deep, nor do I see how LSD was even necessary for you to arrive at your destination of nowhere. You know what actually makes a difference in life? Acquire knowledge, apply that knowledge, make connections and use all of that to HELP other people and change the world. Tripping on s…

masturbatory

Well, sexuality isn't the worst analogy one could make with drug use. Like sexual experience, psychedelic experience can be life alteringly profound and positive but is almost universally unprofound and vulgar when put into words. I enjoyed the parent's story both for it's entertainment and because I related to his experience.

I'm an avid reader, but experiences of these natures absolutely cannot be replicated with a book. I've never seen someone walk differently after reading a book the way someone walks different the day they've slept with a new lover. Likewise, it's impossible for prose to attempt to do what drugs and sexuality do - subtly suspend many of our basic assumptions simultaneously and thereby direct our attention to many fundamental blindspots in our thinking and experience.

Be careful - thinking that only well articulated sentences are the only valid form of intellectual stimulation is something of a logical fallacy common among brainy people.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#108

Post by charlieflowers »

dmm wrote: post #87
WA wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis is on: done right, with the right people. There is a reason why drugs are prohibited in many countries. People don't use them "correctly" and can become messed up pretty heavily. I took shrooms when I was 18. After an initial phase of a lot of hardly controllable laughter, I experienced the strongest fear that I ever had in my life. Basically, the fear to remain stuck on this trip - nothing unusual by th…

> There is a reason why drugs are prohibited in many countries. People don't use them "correctly" and can become messed up pretty heavily. Your ignorance of history is affecting your understanding of these circumstances.

Could you elaborate on that for the rest of us? I'd like to hear what you have to say.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#109

Post by r0s »

mseebach wrote: post #66
mistermann wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is a reason why drugs are prohibited in many countries. People don't use them "correctly" and can become messed up pretty heavily. There's another reason they're prohibited as well - users tend to think a lot about interpersonal relations, society, power structures, etc. Sorry to hear about your panic attacks, I've gone through the same thing as well, but likely a decade after I last took drugs of any kind. Th…

> There's another reason they're prohibited as well - users tend to think a lot about interpersonal relations, society, power structures, etc. Yes, drugs are prohibited because the government is afraid that it will be brought down by junkies thinking too much about power structures.

Obviously not, but the original Controlled Substances Act, the beginning of our modern War on Drugs, can be reasonably inferred as direct response to the anti-war movement.
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