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Shifting views about psychedelic drugs require a new category for them

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

#101

Post by photochemsyn »

jokowueu wrote: post #33
photochemsyn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as the cover photo, I don't think ketamine (a replacement for PCP) and MDMA (an analogue of drugs like Adderall (amphetamine class)) qualify as psychedelics. It makes more sense to classify psychedelics as 5-HT2A partial agonists, meaning LSD, psilocybin, DMT and analogs like bufotenin, and mescaline, from a pharmacological perspective. See: (LSD, mescaline, psilocybin) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/article…

What a weird thing to gatekeep. What you have mentioned are called classic psychadelics . Something being a psychadelic has nothing to do with it's pathways. Let's take a look at the definition . Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or psychedelic "trips") and/or an apparent expansion of consciousness This f…

Prolonged fasting and meditation can generate non-ordinary mental states (which you could call psychedelic trips if you like) but the mechanism and the effects are not the same. When it comes to psychoactive compounds, classification matters a lot, at least from a pharmacological perspective. For example, MDMA dependency is a lot more likely than LSD dependency from an abuse perspective as it hits the dopamine reward circuitry in the brain, and this is generally true of all the tryptamine-class psychedelics.

As far as ketamine, it's an organochlorine compound whose regular use is associated with liver and urinary toxicity, I can't believe anyone who knows about this would want to take it regularly or recreationally.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine

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

#102

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #38
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…

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves. While I agree with everything else you said, this bit concerns me. I'm certainly in favor of using these tools to help anyone who needs help. But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?" These psychedelics can help res…

> These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms

My experience with psychedelic-assisted insight is not consistent with this. You have the right trip, identify some root-causes that you've been overlooking, and then sober-you has the rest of your life to do something with that new awareness.

They're not painkillers. If anything, they're the opposite. There are all of these rumors about LSD causing back pain because people who have been ignoring back pain trip and are suddenly aware of it again. Such an experience caused me to upgrade my chair and start practicing yoga, for instance.

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

#103

Post by ecshafer »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #84
chiefalchemist wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves. While I agree with everything else you said, this bit concerns me. I'm certainly in favor of using these tools to help anyone who needs help. But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?" These psychedelics can help res…

Oh I think people are unhappy because of an abusive political system designed to funnel all wealth to the top while everyone else works themselves to death. Collective action is absolutely the real solution, but psychedelics can help people locked in the mindset that things can’t change to consider a better world. There are simple things, like the fact that we are isolated. This according to Noam Chomsky is an intent…

The reverse seems much much more likely. The abusive political system pushes drug legalization as an opiate of the masses so they are more content to deal with the abusive political system. A weekend of legal drug use to make the pain go away and disrupt solidarity.

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

#104

Post by taneq »

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.

In my (admittedly limited) experience there's quite an overlap in expertise between the better-informed illicit experimenters and the left side of the bell curve for psychiatric professionals.

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

#105

Post by taneq »

jimbob45 wrote: post #16
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...

Do you have any data on the level of criminality of those on psychedelics versus a control group?

I'd imagine technically it's 100% if you're in a district where possession is criminalized.

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

#106

Post by krispyfi »

seabird wrote: post #100
anigbrowl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

25i-NBOMe isn't "truly dangerous". It's only dangerous if mistaken for LSD and dosed carelessly, so rather than scheduling it more strictly, there should be strict requirements for accurate labeling and consistent dosing, like every other drug.

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

#108

Post by seabird »

krispyfi wrote: post #106
seabird wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

25i-NBOMe isn't "truly dangerous". It's only dangerous if mistaken for LSD and dosed carelessly, so rather than scheduling it more strictly, there should be strict requirements for accurate labeling and consistent dosing, like every other drug.

It is straight up dangerous. 5x a common dose of can kill you. Nobody that can actually execute on properly dosing it will expose themselves to the liability of doing so.

Drugs are cool and interesting, go ahead and do them, but trying to pretend that something like 25i-NBOMe is something that Joe Average will safely deal with is, frankly, pretty fucking stupid. This conversation is constantly approached with this idea that everybody is a reasonable, informed person that is fully educated on the risks, but that's just not how this works.

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

#109

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

ecshafer wrote: post #103
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I think people are unhappy because of an abusive political system designed to funnel all wealth to the top while everyone else works themselves to death. Collective action is absolutely the real solution, but psychedelics can help people locked in the mindset that things can’t change to consider a better world. There are simple things, like the fact that we are isolated. This according to Noam Chomsky is an intent…

The reverse seems much much more likely. The abusive political system pushes drug legalization as an opiate of the masses so they are more content to deal with the abusive political system. A weekend of legal drug use to make the pain go away and disrupt solidarity.

Opiates are quite a different animal. A weekend of psychedelics with your friends is not going to help you ignore anything.

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

#110

Post by the6thwonder »

jokoon wrote: post #56

Whatever you do please don't advocate to replace ssri with psychedelics. Listen to a doctor or psychiatrist, just like it was for vaccines. And avoid personal anecdote, they have little value compared to what a doctor says. Thanks in advance.

> avoid personal anecdote, they have little value compared to what a doctor says.

Doctors are like engineers. There is a body of science and research for their field. They were once trained on part of it. But day to day each individual doctor is a practitioners. What they say is often just their own anecdotes. Research on a topic may exist but it's up to personal interest and work style whether they read it.

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