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Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

nytimes.com

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Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#161

Post by psiops »

codr7 wrote: post #119
hhjinks wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a flesh automaton created to house a polymer that is capable of propagating itself through time. For what end? Maybe it's emergent behavior from a structured universe, maybe life is meant to converge towards some higher end. Who knows.

Yeah, that's the thing, who knows? So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective? Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.

Ridiculing is one thing. Waging holy war, murdering, burning and dehumanizing is unfortunately a common reaction to differing viewpoints among religious folk.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#162

Post by kaibee »

codr7 wrote: post #119
hhjinks wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a flesh automaton created to house a polymer that is capable of propagating itself through time. For what end? Maybe it's emergent behavior from a structured universe, maybe life is meant to converge towards some higher end. Who knows.

Yeah, that's the thing, who knows? So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective? Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.

> Yeah, that's the thing, who knows?

> So who has any right to ridicule anyone else for having a different perspective?>

> Just choose whatever narrative that floats your boat and live and let live.

Sometimes the right answer is that there isn't enough information to choose, therefore making it 'objectively' correct.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#164

Post by arthem »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #83
elliotec wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm a big time psychedelic advocate, and relatively frequent consumer. Prozac actually saved my life. Psychedelics since have certainly enhanced it, but they could not accomplish what prozac did. I can go into more detail if interested.

Please do, I’m genuinely interested in your experience because, in my experience (!!) with family and acquaintances, I’ve only ever see Prozac as a part of a turn for the worse. I do acknowledge I might not be aware of cases where it was neutral or positive, however. What was your experience like? And do you still take it?

> I’ve only ever see Prozac as a part of a turn for the worse.

You might be interested in the book "Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty"[1] by Patrick Radden Keefe. Although it focuses on Oxycodone and other painkillers it touch on Prozac and other SSRI's. Quite the eye opener...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_Pain

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#165

Post by Eumenes »

davmre wrote: post #19
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…

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…

Are you on ADHD meds too? Just curious.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#166

Post by mistermann »

johnnyworker wrote: post #127
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty agnostic, but what are you answers to seemingly untraceable questions of life, meaning, and existence? I’m starting to come around to the view that ridicule of religiosity is quite often more vacuous than spirituality.

That God kinda-became human to "sacrifice" himself (with no loss, got up 3 days later to live forever, nothing was sacrificed) in order to forgive the sins of people, but only if they believe it, isn't spiritual, it's silly. You owe someone something, and someone else or that person pays it for you -- but if you don't believe that happened, it never happened. Great stuff. I don't need to have an answer for life, the…

> It smells way too much of humans.

It's a shame you can only experience your comment from your perspective.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#167

Post by richardbatty »

suzzer99 wrote: post #9
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…

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…

There are organisations that work with people who have had challanging psychedelic experiences, but without taking the psychiatric approach. One such project is: https://zendoproject.org/

You could also try contacting https://challengingpsychedelicexperiences.com/

There are also therapists who work with people before and after psychedelic experiences, called psychedelic integration therapists. They usually have legit mainstream psychotherapy qualifications.

There are also integration circles where people support each other. For example, https://acerintegration.com/ This was set up by a researcher in psychedelics. Not sure if it would be appropriate for someone experiencing psychosis though. You could also try contacting the researcher directly for recommendations: https://www.drrosalindwatts.com/

There are also forums where you could ask for advice, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/RationalPsychonaut/

They might be able to point you to other resources like this in your area.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#168

Post by mistermann »

zeroxfe wrote: post #146
hcks wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/ please stop deterring people from undertaking the medical treatment recommended by professionals 2/ there is increasing evidence that psychedelic therapies for mental illness were all based on hype and don’t actually perform any better or at all

You are correct about (1), but "citation needed" for (2). Psychedelic therapies are most definitely not based on hype -- there's real research being conducted by real doctors, and it's only becoming more prevalent. [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/psychiatry/research/psychede... [2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206443

Not to be a pedant, but if you examine the particular word choice in each of your competing propositions, you'll see that you both managed to find a way to be technically incorrect.

Let's hope language doesn't have something to do with how humans perceive reality! (Or, maybe I have that backwards.)

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#169

Post by lukas099 »

stef25 wrote: post #140

One issue is that SSRI treatment has to be stopped before starting psychedelic therapy (interactions). This means tapering off until you're not being treated anymore, which takes weeks if not months, can be difficult and put the patient in a less than ideal state of mind, possibly even worse than when they started off. And this is a very bad state of mind to be in when starting psychedelics. I wonder how people usual…

Maybe psychedelics will end up being indicated as a first line of defense, before SSRIs are prescribed.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#170

Post by explaininjs »

u32480932048 wrote: post #148
nmarinov wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate? I'm trying to imagine how it relates from your short summary[1] but I'm confused how Aphantasia plays into that. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37995645

I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic. Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence. (I'd say the seeing dead people thing was a simple, bad-faith comment, but I believe it was Thomas Aquinas who made the "if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see…

> I think they're saying, somewhat facetiously, that they don't see dead people because they're aphantastic.

Yes.

> Phenomenologically, I'm not sure people typically "see" Jesus (Holy Spirit, et al) as much as perceive their presence or influence.

Not quite. Jesus is unique in the Trinity as being the fleshly form of God that can indeed be associated with a clear image, that people (at least at some point in history) were expected to see and hear. Accordingly, I have heard some (but certainly not all) Christians speak of "seeing" Jesus in a phantastic sense (sometimes quite regularly - even constantly), and conversing with Him at length in this same sense. That is beyond my ability to reason about, so I do not.

> if you can't see it, it's because God didn't want you to see it

Indeed. Learning of my own aphantasia left me feeling profoundly broken, and it was in a sense the subject of that original "bad trip". It was unsettling to learn that "everyone else" has some seemingly magical power that I do not, and I had developed a fascination with finding a way to "fix myself".

I've since come to consider my nature to be God's intentional creation, so if there is some way I am different from others there is certainly a good reason for it – even though I might not know what that reason is.

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