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The life-changing effects of hallucinations

bbc.com

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Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#101

Post by TinyRick »

nope96 wrote: post #89
standardUser wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the idea that you personally know 8 people who have suffered significant mental health issues after using hallucinogens to be absolutely shocking . I can't think of even a single person I have known where mushroom or LSD use resulted in any acute problems. And I do a lot of drugs! I frequent drug-friendly events and hang with drug-friendly people and I even used to sell hallucinogens a lifetime ago. It's not t…

> "I frequent drug-friendly events and hang with drug-friendly people" Adults or Children? My friends were all "gifted kids" who hung out in the same social circle, and did lots (and lots) of drugs (acid, DMT, mushrooms, coke, weed) from age 15-18. In all cases it was great until one time it was suddenly NOT great. Yes, I actually witnessed at least 3 "meltdowns" where someone started acting really, really scary-stra…

Sounds like they had some underlying issues if they were doing "lots" of hard drugs at age 15. Hallucinogens likely didn't cause their issues, just made them more apparent.

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#102

Post by cetahfh14615 »

BobbyJo wrote: post #100
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo there is no healthy situation that leads someone to any drugs past pot. At that point you enter a rabbithole

I'm curious as to what differentiates cannabis from other psychedelics such that you think there is a healthy path to it and not to anything else. I personally think turning to psychedelics as form of subjective exploration is perfectly healthy, despite the risks.

> I'm curious as to what differentiates cannabis from other psychedelics such that you think there is a healthy path to it and not to anything else.

Experience. Also you're more likely to come across it due to legality. When you cross the threshold of legality you're more likely to find yourself in bad company

> I personally think turning to psychedelics as form of subjective exploration is perfectly healthy, despite the risks.

Maybe it is, but if I had kids I wouldn't allow them to take that risk

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#103

Post by ptsneves »

cetahfh14615 wrote: post #93
joemi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of that's due to the hallucinogens themselves versus the situations that led them to the hallucinogens.

Imo there is no healthy situation that leads someone to any drugs past pot. At that point you enter a rabbithole

I would say it is human, as in humans are social animals, to do drugs socially. I think of alcohol or cigarettes and maybe pot as a rebel cult of teenagerhood.

To seek or try drugs that may change your whole life is not healthy because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough and something else needs to be on the other side: be it a nice trip, the most powerful high, or rush. The rejection of one’s existence is a concept that bothers me.

that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#104

Post by heed »

kodah wrote: post #10

I wouldn't call myself a psychonaut yet, but I do love hallucinations. One thing I think the article didn't touch on that I found profoundly interesting is depersonalization. I had a trip recently where I entirely left my conscious reality behind, temporarily, except by a very thin thread. Some context for those that don't follow the fractals, depersonalization isn't super common on things like mushrooms or LSD, but…

Also extremely important: try to figure out exactly what you are ingesting and how much. I can’t stress enough how important the dosage is when taking psychedelics - start low and work your way up to a dosage that you are comfortable with across a handful of sessions ideally.

Unfortunately for some substances it’s hard to determine exactly how much active material you’re getting (eg, LSD tabs, dried mushrooms), but again, start low.

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#105

Post by cetahfh14615 »

ptsneves wrote: post #103
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo there is no healthy situation that leads someone to any drugs past pot. At that point you enter a rabbithole

I would say it is human, as in humans are social animals, to do drugs socially. I think of alcohol or cigarettes and maybe pot as a rebel cult of teenagerhood. To seek or try drugs that may change your whole life is not healthy because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough and something else needs to be on the other side: be it a nice trip, the most powerful high, or rush. The reje…

> because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough

> that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.

Is it only drugs and religion though? And not just illegal drugs, but the legal ones as well?

Couldn't one argue that people seek out religion for emotional needs, and that emotional needs force people to reject themselves in favor of the community? Or is this a misguided take?

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#106

Post by agumonkey »

nope96 wrote: post #73
cetahfh14615 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on the girlfriend, best friend, and other friend? How did their experiences play out? What about it changed them?

They are in their 40's now. The girlfriend struggled with mental health and never really held a job. The guy on mushrooms went through years of therapy and anti-depressants, and seemed to have a normal life. The best friend still struggles with what he calls random "dissociation" and " depersonalization" episodes. He's a fairly self-destructive person that clearly has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personalit…

How is that girl approaching her quest for a cure ? she has hints of what could help ? or is she alone at sea ?

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#107

Post by AnthonBerg »

echelon_musk wrote: post #75
AnthonBerg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand the science, that clarity is in part the perceived experience of reduced inflammation in the central nervous system. Psychedelics are anti-inflammatory. (Profoundly so. The anti-inflammatory effect is orders of magnitude stronger than the effects on the mind, i.e. a dose orders of magnitude smaller than we can directly perceive has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. Which is fascinating as thes…

I wonder if the anti inflammatory effects explain the mechanism of why Ergotamine is prescribed for migraines and cluster headaches! [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotamine#Medical_uses (Many years ago I remember a reddit post of a college student who used his school's lab to convert Ergotamine tablets into LSD and lay blotter. The comments were mostly of people congratulating him for his skill and then tel…

I think it might be part of it! I also think it might be due to an effect on the Sigma-1 receptor. I can’t elucidate it further, I can only recall glimpses of insight from papers I was reading a while back. I only remember one title at the moment. Warning: EXTREMELY handwavy and speculative!

Chronic activation of sigma-1 receptor evokes nociceptive activation of trigeminal nucleus caudalis in rats – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbb.2014.06.023

My extremely speculative guess wrapped in hunch clad in doubt is that, well, as a premise, 5-HT2A activation due to psychedelics causes downregulation of that same receptor (5-HT2A). This is known and accepted afaik. And: The 5-HT2A receptor seems to be intimately related to the Sigma-1 receptor – and the Sigma-1 receptor is inside cells – so potentially it is the downregulation of the “outside” 5-HT2A receptor that then allows the Sigma-1 receptor set to get a bit of a break?

Edit: Thing is, word on the street for literally decades has been that LSD and psilocybin help with migraine and cluster headaches. Finally there has been a study on it, which confirms the effect (to a certain degree; it’s a small preliminary study): Exploratory Controlled Study of the Migraine-Suppressing Effects of Psilocybin (2020) – https://doi.org/10.1007/s13311-020-00962-y

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#108

Post by kodah »

mistermann wrote: post #44
kodah wrote: post #10

I wouldn't call myself a psychonaut yet, but I do love hallucinations. One thing I think the article didn't touch on that I found profoundly interesting is depersonalization. I had a trip recently where I entirely left my conscious reality behind, temporarily, except by a very thin thread. Some context for those that don't follow the fractals, depersonalization isn't super common on things like mushrooms or LSD, but…

Now that you have been through it, do you think you would be able to reasonably emulate the cognitive aspect of the experience, leaving aside all of the ~emotional/experiential aspects of it? --------- EDIT: I've exceeded my three posts per day limit but am keenly interested in this topic, so will reply here hoping you will see it (if not, I will re-post as a reply tomorrow): > Like, can I observe myself more readily…

Responding to the edit: I don't think I could emulate it, but maybe someone with a different mind could.

Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Another thing is that while I am very process oriented and use process to deal with things like emotions, I am still a very emotional human being. It would be tough to separate myself from that trait without some metaphorical grease.

LSD removes a lot of the inhibitions you have with respect to `self` or `this` in programming terms. Observations occur without judgement of yourself or others; it's just a pure observation. In fact, I might say that you actually learn to appreciate things differently. The nice thing is that those things don't stay; you have to choose to copy over the attitudes and incentives you found in your trip to make them stay. Thus, change is pretty incremental.

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#109

Post by mistermann »

throwaway284234 wrote: post #63
mistermann wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be assuming that your ("the") normal conscious experience is base reality, as opposed to simply a much more common hallucination, which is what it can be revealed to be with a relatively small amount of investigation. Also, there is a distinction between the words that we use to conceptualize and communicate about reality, but consciousness (presumably due to evolution) tends to filter such things out.

Yeah normal consciousness is normal, of course. That's not an assumption that I make, that just a basic fact.

>> You may be assuming that your ("the") normal conscious experience is base reality

> Yeah normal consciousness is normal, of course. That's not an assumption that I make, that just a basic fact.

To me, this is fascinating: I clearly compared normal consciousness to base reality but you decided(?) to reply as if I had said "normal consciousness is normal". To me, this is an excellent demonstration of the very thing I am talking about...both the phenomenon itself, but also this part: "...which is what it can be revealed to be with a relatively small amount of investigation" - more precisely: compare how people describe (their) reality, to the objective, shared reality that is literally printed on this web page.

Unfortunately, it is child's play for the subconscious to filter this sort of thing out before it reaches the "conscious awareness" stage of the pipeline (and then it still has to contend with ego, pride, cultural norms, post-hoc rationalization, etc) which may make this local maximum extremely difficult for humanity to break out of.

Re: The life-changing effects of hallucinations

#110

Post by mistermann »

kodah wrote: post #108
mistermann wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that you have been through it, do you think you would be able to reasonably emulate the cognitive aspect of the experience, leaving aside all of the ~emotional/experiential aspects of it? --------- EDIT: I've exceeded my three posts per day limit but am keenly interested in this topic, so will reply here hoping you will see it (if not, I will re-post as a reply tomorrow): > Like, can I observe myself more readily…

Responding to the edit: I don't think I could emulate it, but maybe someone with a different mind could. Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Anoth…

> Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Another thing is that while I am very process oriented and use process to deal with things like emotions, I am still a very emotional human being. It would be tough to separate myself from that trait without some metaphorical grease.

What if you used a piece of paper to keep track of computation, or even better: custom written software? And then on top of it, used some techniques to remove time from interfering with computation (something which can also be experienced on psychedelics)?

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