Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 209 posts

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#91

Post by resolutebat »

emptysongglass wrote: post #58
otherme123 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some studies, and LSD is quite safe. Way safer than alcohol, for example. But being on a very tight Schedule I (like MDMA, also quite safe), worse even than morphine, good luck researching the risks. It's a catch 22: we don't know the risks, so we ban studies about the substance. We don't have studies about the risks, so we cannot unban it. When LSD was liberally consumed (1960's), there were almost no deat…

MDMA is not quite safe. We have decades of research to prove otherwise now. r/DrugNerds have been putting out study after study pointing this out. The protocols required and safety measures for how often to dose are not what folks are going to be doing generally. It is neurotoxic. LSD on the other hand, yes quite safe (and even good) for your brain , unless you're prone to mental illness or currently suffering from m…

MDMA is also addictive, because it makes you feel good (it's not called "ecstasy" for nothing), and builds tolerance rapidly, so you need to keep increasing the dose. No, it's nowhere near as dangerous as meth/heroin/cocaine, but I have seen people spiral into pretty dangerous usage patterns, including switching to harder drugs when ecstasy isn't cutting it any more and they're stuck in a multi-day depressive withdrawal slump.

For all practical purposes, none of this applies to LSD, since trips are much more intense and unpredictable. Although there is a small subset of psychonauts who adopt an extreme sports mindset and intentionally push the envelope by taking larger and larger doses.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#92

Post by vorpalhex »

jagaerglad wrote: post #22
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #19

About two months ago I was at a festival with friends and a I had a psychedelic experience. What’s funny is earlier that day I had just told my friends “I know this sounds boring but I don’t like dancing that much.” Then while I was tripping I found that I was really enjoying the dancing. I felt like I was tapping in to a part of myself that had been dormant for a long time. I felt really confident and cool and sexy…

I have been struggling a lot with dating. Despite being a quite social, and often popular guy to be around, there has been some block/hump that always stood in the way of dating. Funnily enough it struck me some weeks ago that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain to be able to show my interest romatically to others. What I'm scared of is the possibility of it having some other undesired effe…

> that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain

Do you really need the permission of drugs to do what you want?

You already have your outcome. You know where you are. To what end do you need the drugs?

Let's say you do this trip.. and it turns out the thing blocking you from dating is that you were molested at a young age. Those memories come flooding back to you at 2am while you're sweating like a pig and vomiting repeatedly.

Is that the right outcome? Is that the outcome you want?

Worse yet, what if there is no deep seated reason why you're afraid of intimacy and dependence? What if you are just scared of it for no reason?

There is no secret enlightenment to be had. There is only you and your fear blocking the door, and the fear isn't real.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#93

Post by vorpalhex »

nemo44x wrote: post #64
golergka wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?" Because that's the default.. People haven't evolved to be happy; we have evolved to barely survive to have kids and care for them so that a few become adults. Being happy is the exception, you should ask how anyone manages that.

I sort of agree with this. We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying will make us happy. These will bring pleasure but they don’t create meaningful happiness. As if pleasure and happiness are the same thing. But they are often conflated. I can’t tell or teach people “how to be happy”. I’m not even sure that’s possible or if it’s something everyone can do or would really want to. But I do know tha…

Happiness is a state of mind, and is a (mental, emotional) place, and that place is easier to occupy if your life is setup to make it easier. A few good friends, a romantic partner, meaningful work, kids is sort of the usual and probably pretty safe recipe. It's possible to have these things and be miserable, and it's possible to have none of them and be blissfully happy.

Aristotle wrote a pretty solid book on the topic.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#94

Post by kodah »

benbreen wrote: post #2

I'm the author of the OP. Happy to talk more about the history of psychedelics. I also wanted to flag that if anyone is interested in some of the historical sources I cite here (such as the Jesuit talking about ayahuasca in the 18th century) I go into more detail in this journal article, which is open access: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/a...

Would it not be more efficient to challenge the evidence behind current scheduling, much less the standards used in scheduling? Trying to work around a system built by corrupt people is a bit like ignoring pests eating your garden and just making a new garden hoping they won't infest that too.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#95

Post by indrora »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #72
bozhark wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, they don’t cause undesirable mental conditions that persist for the rest of your life. Your “trip” is about 6-8 hours on a typical 3.5g dose.

I would recommend reading up on persistent disassociative personality disorders and persistent visual artifacts from psychedelics. Both are rare but well documented side effects of psychedelic usage. I personally know someone who has suffered visual distortions post trip for 20 years and counting at this point.

they may be interested in this, if they weren't already: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4487243

There is a foundation looking to understand why/how this happens and what we can do to moderate/manage it: https://www.perception.foundation/

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#97

Post by andy_ppp »

My friend summed it up perfectly - “not exactly what you would call recreational is it?”. At some dose psychedelics reveal a huge amount of why we are the way we are to ourselves and give us more powers to change our reality than we had before. But with great power… people who see reality as very fixed or particularly have very black and white moral codes probably shouldn’t try them.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#98

Post by indrora »

jasonhansel wrote: post #67
coderintherye wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erowid is a great resource for these sorts of questions: https://erowid.org In fact they have an answer specific to your question on mushrooms: https://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=1606 In short, there is very little risk but whether or not someone should choose to take something should still be an informed choice. As far as risk to life, there's been few or no reported deaths purely due to ingesting psilocybin. How…

They are not doctors. I would not trust that website as a source of medical advice.

I was explicitly told to read up on several topics from Erowid by my psychiatrist upon starting an antidepressant. Her comment was: "I can't tell you what you'll experience, but if you're willing, here's some resources". I read the comments, including quite a bit of medical research that I would have been otherwise unaware of, and was prepared for some of the weirder effects that can come with it (the drug itself is a dopamine receptor augmenter).

The fact of the matter is that a lot of researchers depend on the folk knowledge that is stuffed into Erowid for their own research because it's one of the higest quality sources of information on the actual effects of various substances that people have been putting into their bodies. Much of the research on these substances cannot be funded easily (federal law in the US bans the use of federal funds to research LSD, marijuana, etc due to their classification by the DEA of "intractably bad for society, useless for medicine, and not worthy of academic study.") This means that researchers have to turn to these contemporaneous accounts.

Nobody calls Erowid "medical advice." It's the tripper's notebook, shared and amalgamated by many a substance user. It's the closest thing we have to a Merck Manual for things that alter your mind.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#99

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #77
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it? Being bought in means that we're afraid to talk to our families or neighbors about certain topics for fear of things getting too spicy in one way or another, it keeps us divided. Apply self care (psychedelic assisted or otherwise) for long enough that we're not afraid anymore and maybe you've achieved your mental healt…

>Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it? That's a complex question and I probably don't have the perfect answer. If I were to take a stab at it I would say the top causes are consumerism, politics, and trained helplessness are at the top of the list. As for who's selling it; basiclly everyone is. Individuals and companies want you to think that whatever they…

When the previous poster said:

> A crisis of unhappiness in this country

I think he was right to say "this country". I've been places where, by all objective measures, the people have it much worse, but I don't get the sense that they're unhappy the way that we are.

> As for who's selling it; basically everyone is

If that we're the case, it would be happening everywhere. We'd just call it the human condition. The contrast upon returning to the US wouldn't feel so stark.

I think there is a relatively small demographic who is selling the uniquely dissatisfying American worldview much more strongly than the rest of us are. And conscious or otherwise, they have their reasons.

If we start ignoring the programming en masse, I expect they'll switch to less subtle means of control.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I think everyone should trip at least once precisely because it helps you cast off habits of mind that aren't serving you. But when that capability is in everybody's toolkit... Well I think it's going to be a bumpy ride. Worth taking, but bumpy.

Re: Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

#100

Post by seabird »

anigbrowl wrote: post #89
seabird wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's not how controlled substances are grouped and regulated, and for good reason.

Then maybe it's the controlled substance administration that's wrong. Seriously, what level of hubris does it take to think that natural substances like psilocybin mushrooms which have existed for millions of years must be brought under the control of a polity's legislature? It's like declaring sharks or snakes illegal because they give some people nightmares. Future generations will laugh in disbelief at this idiocy…

I don't know what you're getting at here. We're not talking about values. We're talking about why the word "psychedelics" is a worthless term as far as the law is concerned.

From a values standpoint, I don't see how it would be idiotic to schedule truly dangerous drugs like 25i-NBOMe more strictly than psilocybin or LSD.

Post reply on HN