Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change • Hacker News Board

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#141

Post by dreamdu5t » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 5:23 PM UTC

lusr wrote: post #72

Tsagadai wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty common to read or hear about spiritual, religious or mystical experiences even from ardent atheists under hallucinogens. That evidence raises a very interesting philosophical question.

It is common to you . But who are you? And therein lies the rub. Anecdotal evidence isn't useful when it comes to research like this: I feel that the experimental design is flawed by not balancing out this very significant variable to be representative of the population at large (estimates vary, but the non-religious make up from 2-20% of the population depending who you ask and how you define the question). My exper…

Experiments with psychedelics are not really possible because psychedelics present the intellectual paradox: Experiments are based on observational evidence and psychedelics change the nature of observation itself.

The only thing you can do is questionnaires like the topic study.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#142

Post by sophacles » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

shabble wrote: post #127

sophacles wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been told it enhances the experience... Anyway, it doesn't follow that faster breakdown makes the trip end... could be that the very process of breaking down the active substance produces the effects desired, and the vitamin-C acts as a catalyst to "even out" the experience.

You might be confusing the OJ/vitamin C with the properties of grapefruit juice, which is well-established to alter the properties of various liver enzymes, particularly those which typically metabolise psychedelic / hallucinogenic drugs. Wikipedia has a brief blurb about it: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_drugs... Actually, it does mention orange juice as containing flavonoids which may have…

Fair enough, but doesn't Grapefruit Juice contain a high vitamin C content also?

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#143

Post by pjscott » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 6:11 PM UTC

pnathan wrote: post #115

I am not favorable to unregulated use of drugs. I've known a couple drug-users, and been around quite a few. For whatever reason, their lives were/are not good. Success (in any realm) did not seem to be theirs. There seemed to be an unwholesomeness that pervaded their lives. Now, that is anecdotal datum, and it is of course reasonable and plausible that an analytical and careful approach to the business produces a be…

Which drugs are you talking about? There's a wide range here; something like LSD is not as dangerous as, say, methamphetamine or tobacco.

Also, you're ignoring the possibility that the "unwholesomeness" of their lives, and general propensity for failure, caused their regular drug use, rather than vice versa.

It doesn't sound like you're being entirely honest in your reasoning here.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#144

Post by wellsaid » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 6:59 PM UTC

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…

(Posting from a throw-away account)

I'm someone dominated by anxiety and guilt and this is also my experience. Psychedelics are a fast and often cruel way to change one-self while meditation is safe, manageable and pleasant.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#145

Post by bait » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:12 PM UTC

veidr wrote: post #47

Many smart people I know try to work in a trip on mushrooms once a year or so. Many of them are folks who don't generally even smoke weed or drink regularly, which surprised me. I think it is a good idea, and I try to do it, too. But, I have a healthy respect for the potential downside of a psilocybin experience, too. Many years ago, I ate some shrooms before a concert at the L.A. Coliseum. There were some thuggish t…

"An hour later, I experienced a dark stadium full of bloody froth-mouthed humans, along with some other lizardish creatures, killing and eating each other, to the ear-splitting sound of huge metal sawblades grinding against each other, while I huddled in my seat unable to move."

Bear in mind that if you are a generally grounded and lucid person, it is entirely possible to experience things as extreme as this while never once thinking that it's really happening.

Sitting in the middle of a university campus watching it being torn apart by terrifying non-euclidian-shaped monsters from beyond the sky is really fucking cool as long as you never forget that it's just a drug experience. It's like being in the middle of the best action scifi movie ever.

Don't rely on this happening to you though ;)

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#146

Post by bait » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:15 PM UTC

khafra wrote: post #92

puredemo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that is definitely the wrong sort of environment to do them in. Camping with best friends is a better environment.

Those of us who feel a bit uncomfortable and nervous when camping with friends should just stick with the minds we have, then?

It is important that you have someone else there, preferably someone sober or at least more sober than you. You need a baseline to calibrate your sense of what is real and what isn't, so you don't get lost in your own head. This is very important.

When you are really experienced and no longer have any anxiety about what lurks inside your subconscious, only then is it advisable to trip alone.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#147

Post by bait » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:19 PM UTC

simon_weber wrote: post #137

rohit89 wrote: post #123

Is there some place where you can read the experiences of people ?

Check out erowid.

Bear in mind that the trip reports on erowid suffer a massive self selection bias.

Theyre not biased towards positive or negative experiences, just towards incredibly earnest depictions of the drug experience. People don't bother to write up the boring shit.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#148

Post by wellsaid » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:20 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #65

bherms wrote: post #9

Psilocybin use definitely changed me for the better. The first time I did it was one of the most eye-opening and impacting experiences in my life. Since my first trip, I've tried to work it into my life at least 1-2 times a year. Every time I feel like I learn something new and/or come out a better person by seeing certain aspects of life in a new light. It's something you only want to try in controlled environments…

(no hidden depression or anything lurking in the back of your mind) Which, by definition, could be rather hard to know about in advance :-(

That's why you should try meditation a go before you even think of psychedelics imho. Try to get what your subconscious mind is trying to tell you. There is a simple test for that: is there something you don't want to think about?

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#149

Post by tripzilch » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:24 PM UTC

gyardley wrote: post #118

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…

There's just one thing I'm going to say, which young people also should know - are you sure what you're buying is what you think it is? The one time I tried 'LSD', it wasn't.

that's LSD.

if it's shrooms, you can tell whether something looks like mushrooms right? that means there's three options:

1) it'll kill you 2) it'll do nothing or make you nauseous 3) it's the real thing

nobody's gonna sell you poisonous mushrooms or they'll be in big trouble and be out of clientele really fast.

shrooms that look like proper shrooms but do nothing, I don't know if they even exist.

in both (unlikely) cases, it's not harder or more expensive to obtain mushrooms that actually do what they're supposed to do, than to get poisonous or ineffective ones, so what would be the incentive to do that?? shrooms is shrooms. they're not even that hard to tell apart, if you got a book with pictures.

it's a whole different thing if you got a blotter (LSD) with a drop of god-knows-what impregnated on it. then you need to be careful and really know who you're buying from.

I don't think you'd got much to worry about.

Re: Single psilocybin dose may make lasting personality change

#150

Post by bait » Fri, Sep 30, 2011, 7:26 PM UTC

Radix wrote: post #140

khafra wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those of us who feel a bit uncomfortable and nervous when camping with friends should just stick with the minds we have, then?

No, the two implications are that 1. You should be somewhere you feel safe. Preferably with someone you feel safe. and 2. It is better to be outside in nature. (1) is always spoken of as being crucial and (2) is something that is oft repeated. I don't have any experience myself to say why (2) is so often suggested.

The whole being outside in nature thing is because of the character of the visual perceptual distortions that occur on psychedelics.

Basically it perturbs the brain's pattern recognition systems, and causes them to look much more strongly and insistently for patterns and regularities in the input. Therefore, to get the best effect, one should feed in highly irregular images, such as the messy, fractal-ish geometry of nature.

When you look at tree bark or grass or clouds on psilocybin, your brain tries furiously to see a pattern or regularity in it, and as a result your perception of it constantly shifts and rearranges.

When you stay indoors and look at manmade things with human-conceived geometric shapes, the patterns are already there and your brain sees them immediately. At best this is boring, and at worst it can cause you to become fixated in a way that is quite uncomfortable.

This isn't the most eloquently worded explanation but I'm sure most people here can tell what I'm talking about. Psychedelics have a lot to teach us about the workings of perceptual cognition as well as about more spiritual matters.