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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

#201

Post by macNchz »

fsloth wrote: post #63
davmre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Fully agree SSRI:s probably saved my life. SSRI:s are supposed to be used as part of therapeutic regimen with therapy and regular checkups with doctor, not as over-the-counter remedy like aspirin. I’m guessing that using them detached from any therapeutic context increases the prevalence of negative experiences.

That certainly could be a factor in some people having bad experiences in America at least–as I understand it insurance coverage for mental health is often limited or bad, and appointments with doctors are hard to come by and often only last 15 minutes.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#202

Post by stephenitis »

debatem1 wrote: post #7

I'm not a medical person. Is there a readable summary of the research on therapeutic uses of magic mushrooms for laypeople?

If you are a woman, there is a recent recent book called the psilocybin handbook for women by Jennifer Chesak, it's concise, and organized by topics and more importantly cites sources.

It was useful for my wife and I gift it to any female friend who ventures into psychedelics.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#203

Post by 2devnull »

explaininjs wrote: post #30

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…

Yes, God may have created psychedelics for a reason, but why not cut out the middleman and just “go to the source.” What many in AA learn, the higher power is the only way. Everything else is a treadmill.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#204

Post by PawgerZ »

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…

> We know that the microdosing also turned into macrodosing on a lot of occasions

Do you know how frequent the macrodosing became? I have never seen or heard (anecdotal) of microdosing leading to a psychotic break. But frequent use (more than once every three weeks) of large quantities will almost certainly harm you in the long run.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#205

Post by 4star3star »

Podgajski wrote: post #137
davmre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Prozac is my fun drug. It makes me hypo manic with one 20mg dose. I have schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type So I am prone to being more sensitive to SSRI. This is mostly to do with my genetically odd 5HT2A receptors. Depression is no longer really a part of my life anymore after I found I was zinc deficient. But now I do tend towards the manic and have issues with psychosis still so I need to be careful with my s…

How do you get the right amount of zinc? Are there other minerals you're supposed to take with zinc? I know that sometimes balancing one thing causes another thing to go out of balance.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#206

Post by bmelton »

psiops wrote: post #161
codr7 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

religious folk and every other kind

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#207

Post by explaininjs »

kawhah wrote: post #189
explaininjs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider you are developing a genetic algorithm with the goal of creating a cohort of entities that have the ability to pursue light. Each generation, you initialize a set of start states based on the prior generation and let things play out according to your rules. In the end, you persist those that found the light by taking their information and carrying it on in some sense in the next generation. The information o…

If the goal is to evolve an entity which can pursue light independently, why compromise this goal by "relocat[ing] an entity that was very far from the light to be much closer to it"? And if the goal is just to allow as many entities as possible to enjoy the light, why not relocate them all to be close to it? Why not save all of them into the next generation?

You know that small difference in the initial conditions of an entity can play a large role in the path it follows, and you further know that an entity which is spawned into a position where the light is very faint is less likely to be able to pursue it. You sometimes put new creations in which you have much confidence into initial conditions where they are very unlikely to survive, as a means of testing them (perhaps there is another "level" they are taken to to train a new feature once this stage is mastered). If they do not end up being able to pursue the light in those initial conditions, you might indeed let their information perish. But you might instead want to see if they could find the light when moved somewhat closer to it, as a way of checking if their ability is entirely busted or simply not as sensitive as you thought it might be.

> And if the goal is just to allow as many entities as possible to enjoy the light, why not relocate them all to be close to it? Why not save all of them into the next generation?

I'm not sure that is the goal, but regardless your machine only has finite resources, but is changed with presenting an infinite environment. Sacrifices must be made.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#208

Post by justsocrateasin »

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…

This comment is dangerous and incorrect. Many people have exceptional responses on SSRIs - myself included. I went from having regular panic attacks to living a very normal life with absolutely zero side effects, just from taking the lowest dose of Zoloft (25mg generic sertraline). I don't live in a gray fog, my relationships do not suffer, and I have not had any suicidal ideation. You're cherry picking very rare/extreme instances and noting them to be commonplace.

It took me MONTHS to even consider SSRIs because of rhetoric like this that is online and pervasive in our culture.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#209

Post by 2devnull »

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…

That’s a really long response for something you feel is trivially silly. Maybe it’s cognitive dissonance?

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#210

Post by efields »

stef25 wrote: post #195
efields wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My own success with battling depression had so much to do with controlling the adhd that we've talked about tapering off the SSRI's. I wouldn't be surprised if they become dramatically less prescribed over time. Mindfulness, communication, learning how to rest and better time management techniques have more than likely done more for my mental health than the SSRIs. I'd love to taper off with them one day but we'll se…

> Mindfulness, communication, learning how to rest and better time management techniques Doubtful that these things will cure depression though

What does cure mean? You just stop feeling sad? What does that mean? What happens when you're sad again after your depression is cured? What may have lead to depression? What may prevent it from coming back?

What if certain things about your brain are gonna just be like that for life and you're the only one who has the burden of dealing with it? How will you?

What if what you're striving for in life is realistically _unattainable_ and something about your brain thinks it is so you try really hard to fight reality and get depressed? You have to unlearn bad habits your brain picked up over time that it merely thought were good survival skills at the moment.

SSRI or psychedelics alone will not fully help a person. They can be a step in the right direction. The body keeps the score.

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