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

Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 317 posts

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#21

Post by swell36 »

suzzer99 wrote: post #14
valec wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is she bipolar by any chance? if not, does she have a family history of bipolar or schizophrenia? or, does she have any cluster-b personality disorders?

She's not bipolar. I don't know family history other than her brother is an addict and her mom posts 20 political memes a day on FB that venture into conspiratorial stuff (but that describes a lot of people I know). The only signs we can come up with were a few times going back 20 years, either at a party (drugs) or a canoe trip (drugs) where she thought people were talking about her/plotting against her. I wasn't on…

I know someone who had a lesser but similar episode after taking shrooms for the first time. It was about a week of paranoid delusions (The Truman Show came up a few times). After he snapped out of it, he totally turned his life around; went from a very phlegmatic personality to totally type A, got his degree, and now owns several businesses. The human brain is just so complex.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#22

Post by Archio »

legitster wrote: post #17

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but th…

Do you understand what happened in the opioid crisis, and why people are mad at the Sacklers? They weren’t hapless naive actors that didn’t fully understand “the implications” of the drugs they were selling. The effects of opioid addiction were WELL known when oxycontin was introduced, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals deliberately misrepresented critical information about the drugs they sold and had salespeople lie in a wholesale fashion on a massive scale.

It’s reasonable to have suspicion about companies and regulators in this area, but the opioid crisis is such a different situation in context.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#23

Post by vore »

legitster wrote: post #17

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but th…

We do have some understanding of the safety profile of psilocybin, even if its Schedule I status makes it hard to research. At the very least, it doesn’t have physical dependency like opioids.

However, the lack of significant safety research does make it hard to determine the incidence of development of disorders like HPPD but, unlike opioids, I can’t imagine someone wanting to continue taking psilocybin after developing HPPD.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#24

Post by peddling-brink »

legitster wrote: post #17

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but th…

I dunno, The Good Earth was written in 1931 and didn’t exactly paint a great picture of opioids.

People have been using these drugs for a very long time. Their affects are fairly well known.

Opioids are addictive, mushrooms are not. That singular fact makes them very very different.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#25

Post by petesergeant »

swalling wrote: post #3

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psy…

> SSRIs, are pretty terrible ... you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer

Comments like this -- and there are an awful lot of them online -- dissuaded me for a very long time from taking SSRIs. And that was a terrible mistake: SSRIs have been a life-changing good for me. I am on a high dose of Lexapro, and in no way do I live in a gray fog, and my relationships are markedly better. My GAD is gone, completely.

A few years ago, a doctor tried to convince me that they were causing sleep apnea, so I came off them, slowly, over many months. I didn't have cessation symptoms. My anxiety slowly returned, in proportion to the dosage, my sleep apnea didn't improve, and I was glad to start them again.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#26

Post by grigri907 »

legitster wrote: post #17

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but th…

I too am fairly drug-averse. And after 40 years of avoiding all drugs but caffeine and alcohol, I dipped my toe into psilocybin and found not only was it profoundly therapeutic in terms of self-acceptence, self-love, and anxiety-reduction, I found after 3 or 4 uses, I had no further interest in it whatsoever. Is my experience universal? Of course not, but an anecdote to consider alongside yours.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#27

Post by legitster »

Archio wrote: post #22
legitster wrote: post #17

I'm a fairly drug-averse person. I have no qualms about other people using them, but it took us over 30 years to really understand the implications of legalized opioids. And that was after a lengthy and expensive FDA process. So respect to all of the early adopters who have nothing to lose and are willing to put their own sanity at risk. I just don't understand people who in one breath curse the Sackler family but th…

Do you understand what happened in the opioid crisis, and why people are mad at the Sacklers? They weren’t hapless naive actors that didn’t fully understand “the implications” of the drugs they were selling. The effects of opioid addiction were WELL known when oxycontin was introduced, and Purdue Pharmaceuticals deliberately misrepresented critical information about the drugs they sold and had salespeople lie in a wh…

From the article:

> Dr. Janis Phelps, director of the Center for Psychedelic Therapies and Research at the California Institute of Integral Studies, said she and other researchers had been wary of the decriminalization movement. Many in the field had worked for years to remain strictly scientific, hoping to avoid government crackdowns, and to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration time to fully review the effects of psilocybin before pressing ahead with efforts to make it legal.

> “I have changed my mind,” she said. While she remains concerned that bad actors could try to enter the industry strictly for profit, or try to take advantage of vulnerable people, she has come to believe that the open door in Oregon could advance the use of psychedelics in ways that methodical approaches cannot.

> Dr. Charles Nemeroff, the chair of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, said he continues to be wary. Psilocybin is powerful, with immediate effects lasting for hours, and uncertain outcomes for patients, he said, recalling one patient of his who has experienced protracted psychosis, losing partial connection to reality, after taking doses of mushrooms. The treatments ruined her life, said Dr. Nemeroff, who said he worried about the lack of required medical oversight in Oregon’s program.

Just like the Sacklers, people pursuing psilocybin are fully aware of all of these warnings and problems. And just like Purdue, anyone selling psilocybin right now are willfully misrepresenting the evidence and ignoring medical opinion. Again, Purdue did all of the things they did because they believed they were ultimately helping treat people's suffering.

I am fully aware that time may tell and the concerns may be unfounded. And I get that we are dealing with a completely different drug/mechanism. But one is right and one is wrong only through the benefit of hindsight.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#28

Post by acchow »

swalling wrote: post #3

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psy…

> SSRIs, are pretty terrible

They're terrible for some people, but they work well for others. I don't think they should automatically be disregarded.

> In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation

Is this actually true? My understanding is that people in severe depression can have suicidal ideation but not actually be able to put in the effort/energy needed to go through with it. SSRIs initially give you a little more boost in energy before the mood-lifting effects kick in. During that middle phase, we observer higher suicide rates because you've now enabled them to have effort to follow through with their suicidal ideas.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#29

Post by petesergeant »

firecall wrote: post #5
swalling wrote: post #3

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psy…

And what they never tell you, in my experience, is the horrible experience of trying to come off them!

I'm sorry your experience of coming off them was horrible, but that is not "the experience", and many people come off them without issue.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#30

Post by explaininjs »

Been there, done that. Have the postcard. I got to experience the even more fun version where you feel like your death is imminent, you watch your surroundings stop rendering chunk by chunk, and your long term friend is telling you it is indeed all a simulation that everyone but me knew about, and I really was dying (more accurately: going "offline" for an upgrade, and my "spirit" wouldn't be persisted across versions).

She later apologized and said she thought I was joking. We don't talk anymore.

As for recovery, Jesus saved me. He can save your friend too, if she lets Him.

It is interesting to observe, retrospectively, how the brain can adopt a new set of axioms and coerce every one of the "senses" into supporting those axioms - no matter how detached from "our typical understanding of reality" (whatever that means) they are.

Post reply on HN