Possibly offtopic: whenever I hear about drugs for mental issues it seems to be always depression or anxiety. But is there anything out there for things like, say, addiction?
Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
191–200 of 276 posts
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#192Possibly offtopic: whenever I hear about drugs for mental issues it seems to be always depression or anxiety. But is there anything out there for things like, say, addiction?
Iboga is very interesting against opiate addiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabernanthe_iboga
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am worried that a lot of the drug-depression research is overlooking an important possibility: that the thing about ketamine/psilocybin/etc that is helping with depression is not some latent property of the molecule, but rather the actual transcendent experience of the trip. Ketamine dosed at levels used in a lot of the original depression studies won’t result in anything resembling a “trip”. Many of the more res…
This system of scientific gatekeeping and law enforcement is a direct projection of the barriers put in place between individuals and god by the catholic church. For millennia authorities have attempted to prevent people from having meaningful spiritual experiences directly, of their own accord, via access to substances that grow e.g. in their nearest cow fields. In this way, your psychiatrist friend is simply the ne…
Because for every functional self-dosing career professional, there's 10 self-dosing tent dwellers living in squalor in every major US city
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#194If any of this stuff actually worked we’d already be using it. Similarly how every medical problem hadn’t gone away in states that legalized marijuana.
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
This system of scientific gatekeeping and law enforcement is a direct projection of the barriers put in place between individuals and god by the catholic church. For millennia authorities have attempted to prevent people from having meaningful spiritual experiences directly, of their own accord, via access to substances that grow e.g. in their nearest cow fields. In this way, your psychiatrist friend is simply the ne…
Because for every functional self-dosing career professional, there's 10 self-dosing tent dwellers living in squalor in every major US city
Umm... that's much more likely to be opiates and meth, and the criminalization hasn't especially helped with those either.
Not to mention, the language you use is really cruel.
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#196I knew someone who used the "it cures depression!" line as an excuse to be addicted to it and go into K-holes 3x a day while it ruined their life.
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because for every functional self-dosing career professional, there's 10 self-dosing tent dwellers living in squalor in every major US city
Umm... that's much more likely to be opiates and meth, and the criminalization hasn't especially helped with those either. Not to mention, the language you use is really cruel.
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Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#198If any of this stuff actually worked we’d already be using it. Similarly how every medical problem hadn’t gone away in states that legalized marijuana.
This reminds me or the joke where an economist refuses to look down when told that there’s a $20 bill on the ground: “if there was really $20 on the ground, someone would have picked it up already”.
Seriously though, we’re just getting started studying it, how can we know whether or not this stuff works? There’s a lot of positive anecdotal evidence. We’re not talking about marijuana, and no one ever expected it to solve every medical problem. That particular substance has done a lot of good with people experiencing discomfort, like cancer patients and the elderly, including members of my family.
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because for every functional self-dosing career professional, there's 10 self-dosing tent dwellers living in squalor in every major US city
Umm... that's much more likely to be opiates and meth, and the criminalization hasn't especially helped with those either. Not to mention, the language you use is really cruel.
Likewise I think non-enforcement of drug laws tacitly permitting people to self-destruct in the streets is really cruel
Re: Ketamine's effect on depression may hinge on hope
#200From a pretty good essay written by someone who lived through the original "psychedelics will expand your mind" era of the 60s and 70s:
"“Enlightenment in a pill,” many have pointed out, is a quintessentially American concept. Who’s got time for all that prayer and study and meditation and practice when there’s an easier, faster way?
But there isn’t. Therein lies the great danger of LSD and its dopey cousin, marijuana. By offering a simulacrum of spiritual and intellectual growth – a very convincing simulacrum at times – it takes you everywhere except where you need to be, which is doing the long, hard work of learning to live."
I resonate with what he says because, like the author mentions later on, I also have many friends who went deep into the psychedelics journey while claiming it was 'freeing their minds', 'enlightening' them, or whatever other concept they liked to use, only to end up, a decade or two later, in either a regular struggling life like so many others, or a downright bad place. I'm probably wrong to generalize, as I'm sure it can help many, but the drugs still can't substitute the individual's effort and struggle to grow, and overcome, and the learning of how to live a meaningful life.