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The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

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Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#21

Post by heap_perms »

NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

"Talk about missing the forest from the trees. The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. "

I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#22

Post by mkoryak »

NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

sounds like you had a good trip.

If you had a bad trip, you might feel differently about it.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#23

Post by danaris »

NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

> Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me.

And I personally know people for whom the exact opposite is the case. I'm very much looking forward to the rise of psychedelic therapy.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#24

Post by heap_perms »

labrador wrote: post #2

It's sad that the only way to legalize is to force people to see a qualified therapist and take patented psychedelics in order to benefit from the experience, but that's what the normies want. I've taken them with a therapist and it was meh because the doctor/patient relationship became weird under the influence. On the other hand I've had peak experiences by myself alone in a redwood forest on a fresh clear morning.

I think utopia would be to have both. That would mean legalization, and free distribution, but you can still take it in a therapy setting if you want to.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#25

Post by NickC25 »

turdit wrote: post #19
NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

the word you were looking for was probably “psychoactive” not “neuroplastic”

Perhaps.

The whole point of the article is that psychedelics increase neuroplasticity within the brain, and that pharma companies are trying to synthesize a molecule that does exactly that, but without the hallucinations.

Here's the article in question - perhaps there's something I missed that you might understand better than I do: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/15/opinion/hallucinations-ps...

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#26

Post by TylerE »

labrador wrote: post #6
game-of-throws wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really what "normies" want? Or is it just what drug companies/lobbyists want?

In America we live in a democracy (last I checked) so it's the mainstream public who decides in the end. The people in various western states were the first to decide that marijuana should be legal. So by normies I mean mainstream voters who worry about their children having uncontrolled access to psychedelics. Normies believe rules are made to be followed and laws are there for a reason.

Legalization would decrease underage availability, if anything.

To quote an older friend who grew up in a dry county in Alabama: “The bootleggers didn’t care how old you were which was a good thing because I liked to drink and when I was 16 I looked 13”

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#27

Post by sharklazer »

mkoryak wrote: post #22
NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

sounds like you had a good trip. If you had a bad trip, you might feel differently about it.

I’ve had several bad trips in my life. I think they are the most impactful and clarifying. Uncomfortable for sure. Good trips let me know I’m comfortable with myself. Bad trips usually lead to uncovering or bringing to the front things that need to be addressed in my life.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#28

Post by mysore »

kodah wrote: post #10

I recently did LSD. It wasn't my first encounter with psychedelics but none have done what LSD did. I have a good bit of trauma that I'd attempted to work through throughout my life. The thing is, many of those things are settled. I cannot change them, I've course corrected my life away from my actions being influenced by these things, and on the exterior I think most people would find me well adapted. I was pretty m…

mdma is generally even more powerful for healing trauma.

Or rather MDMA can accelerate healing by released "stored unprocessed memories"

LSD can help you by showing you a possibility of whats possible by dissolving the prision of identity and seeing the world from a non-local perspective.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#29

Post by sianemo »

mkoryak wrote: post #22
NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

sounds like you had a good trip. If you had a bad trip, you might feel differently about it.

I have had good trips and bad trips on a variety of highly psychedelic substances, and I've had a lot of those trips. Trying to engineer the trip out of the drug to get a desired psychoactive result free from pesky side effects like not being as grounded to reality for a while is absolutely missing the forest for the trees. Not to say that it can't produce some benefit but it's leaving a lot of unexplored potential on the table, largely in deference to failed puritanical ideals about recreational drug use.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#30

Post by sharklazer »

heap_perms wrote: post #21
NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

" Talk about missing the forest from the trees. The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. " I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.

My belief is that the “trip” is us being able to observe more about our brains than we typically access. My personal experience indicates to me that the “trip” is removing filtering processes the brain uses to remove noise and irrelevant information to the task at hand. When in a “trip” then, it’s more like we are seeing what our brain sees—the things that appear auditorilly and visually are due to neural circuits overfitting and subsequently not being able to filter the misreads and “extra data”.

I’ve always thought of it like a self-diagnostic mode/tool where we get exposed to debug data that our brain normally would filter out.

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