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Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

nytimes.com

51–60 of 317 posts

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#51
post #12

It comes at a price point many can't afford. There should be more options. As noted elsewhere, it is powerful medicine and not without risks. But we also need to remember that many other medications come with significant risk as well, including suicidal ideation. So yes, it's powerful and should be treated with respect, but many of those other medications don't require you to spend thousands of dollars to have a baby…

Thousands of dollars? Sounds like a scam to me. Just have a friend babysit you like everyone else.

It's justified in the context that's been set up -- certification requires a lot of time and the license is big bucks too. Add to that the length of a trip would be many hours.

Finding a friend to babysit is not always easy. I've got this crazy idea on setting up a cooperative to do something like that. Leverage existing guides from tripsitters.org and others. Develop protocol and legal indemnification, identify suitable locations (nature!), etc.

I'd love to chat this up with anybody who doesn't think it's crazy (and even those that do, to disabuse me of this notion). There's another spin on it too that I need to write out and find likeminded souls to explore...

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#52
post #9
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…

As far as the risks, I have a friend who's been "microdosing" acid and shrooms for a while, and recently had a legitimate psychotic break, thinking all of her life-long friends were in some kind of Truman Show-esque grand conspiracy against her. She ditched town and cut us all off for over a month. I can't say the drug use caused it, but I and the rest of her friends are of the opinion that it contributed (we all hav…

Well, it is a big simulation. She's discovered Plato's cave firsthand; no way could any brain handle the constant barrage from the senses. Once you start tripping you see that we are tripping all the time but we filter most of it out, thank goodness. Feeling like time is looping is pretty freaky regardless; once your mind starts short circuiting and you start heavily believing in symbols, patterns, alignment etc., it gets pretty scary.

I think the best you can do is be a calm friend and imagine you're dealing with a two year old without being condescending.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#53
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My wife had multiple talks with a psychiatrist about them to threat depression, and the experience of the psychiatrist was that it's the rare few that can stop taking them without issue. Hell, it's the rare few who find the right kind of antidepressant in one go, most of the time you need to try a few different kinds for a few months, with all the side effects that come with it.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#54
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…

[deleted]

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#55

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 version…

What does it mean when you say "Jesus saved me"? This is an earnest question, not instigative.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#56
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know that the microdosing also turned into macrodosing on a lot of occasions. It's pretty easy to slip into this. I don't have a good answer for solving this but criminalization is definitely a bad answer, so we will have to find a way to discourage such tendencies. It may be that it is mostly or entirely a cultural thing in which case public understanding of the drug is a prerequisite, so I'm glad more are star…

Could this be the manifestation of an overdose? I'm not a medical professional, but this got me curious what the "LD99" would be for avoiding this (not literally lethal, but long term dibilitation), or if it's statistically unclear?

More likely too frequent use. Psychedelics twist reality, doing them too often definitely leaves a mark. Eventually you have trouble telling what's real and what's not even when you're sober.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#57
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…

I don't think poor performance of SSRIs is really a common reason. People just love magic bullets and shortcuts. It's basically a variant of drinking bleach for COVID, except safer and more fun. (Not a prohibitionist, just against self-medication)

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#58

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.

Same experience with shrooms. I've done it a few times, but every time after doing it any interest in it was gone for years. It's heavy stuff.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#59

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 version…

> 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.

Brainwashing is real. Just make people really emotionally unstable and then hit them with an onslaught of social pressure with a vision.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#60
post #19
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…

Counterpoint: SSRIs were transformative for my depression. Side effects were minor and manageable (eg, Wellbutrin worked well to prevent any sexual dysfunction). I was on them for several years and had no problem tapering off. My understanding is that this is a pretty typical experience. Rhetoric like this was actively harmful in dissuading me for years from trying what ended up being by far the most effective treatm…

  Shrooms first and SSRI after
  Otherwise there may not be laughter
  As SSRIs will readily prevent
  Any and all trip-like event
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