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Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

nytimes.com

251–260 of 317 posts

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#251
post #195

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

Not sure if this is where GP got them, but these are techniques straight out of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, one of the most broadly successful evidence-based clinical therapy frameworks.

Don't undersell the value of learning how to rest. It is more complex and has far more healing power than the understated phrasing implies. A lot of important processes in the body only take place when the parasympathetic nervous system is active (including proper digestion, which is where all of our neurotransmitters come from either directly or by way of precursor molecules). This is likely a big part of why chronic stress is so strongly correlated with poor health.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#252

Here's hoping more accurate dosing will be a side effect of this. Going by rough weight of a plant that includes a lot of water always seemed kind of sketchy to me. I've heard of tinctures made by dissolving them in alcohol, but I don't think even those are measured objectively. No idea what sort of titration/measurement you'd do to determine the mg amount of psilocybin, or if that's even well documented.

> water Weights you read are dry weights. > tincture Tinctures at least homogenize. So a “0.05g” dose of a tincture is consistent within the batch, and more consistent between batches. This is how medicine worked up to the 19th century.

Potency can still vary drastically from batch to batch (and even within the same batch), let alone between distinct strains. Standardization and accurate testing are still quite important when we are talking therapeutic use.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#253

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…

At least "natural" psilocybin can't be compared with opiods at all, other that both are controlled substances. Psilocybin is not addictive, it's way to exhausting and also physiologically not possible. However, there is still a lot of potential for harm. The biggest one is triggering latent psychosis and other psychological issues followed by possibly dangerous actions under the influence of high doses. I also believ…

> Psilocybin is not addictive

This is what was said about THC until it was legal and now we know there are physical withdrawal side effects in a decent percentage of people. So I don’t trust advocates pushing this narrative at all

> I also believe the "recreational" potential is low

Laughable. Most people doing magic mushrooms are doing so recreationally. That’s what it’s known for, that’s why there has to be entire talks given about the mental health benefits. Because it’s widely used exclusively as a recreational drug

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dancing, having parties, questioning authority, having a good time, etc etc

I love psychedelics, but this list shouldn’t include psychotic breaks or detachment from reality. I say this from first (second?) hand experience of friends I’m close with. Not that I disagree with the contents of your list, but the effects of psychedelics are not always positive.

> I love psychedelics, but this list shouldn’t include psychotic breaks or detachment from reality.

Well great because it doesn’t!

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#255
post #9

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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.

The last time we hung out before all this went down, we had a few drinks then she broke out the acid, saying we would just microdose and it would be mostly like a really strong cup of coffee. Of course we ended up doing another microdose, which I'd estimate ended up at about 1/4 of a serious acid trip.

I assume stuff like that happens a lot in her Phish group. Other times we've hung out at a party she's broken acid/e/shrooms out and I'm thinking, "We're not 25 anymore, we don't have to do this."

At the time I kind of admired her for still being willing to go to those deeply introspective trippy places, whereas I'd rather just get a nice buzz and not plumb the depths of my soul. But now I'm thinking it's probably a good thing to hang that stuff up after a while, or at least not keep doing it regularly.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#256
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you. I have saved all of this for if this thing comes roaring back. Right now things seem more or less okay.

Another contributing factor in all this is she lost her job, which gave her a lot of satisfaction. She has savings, so she's not hurting for money. But sitting around all day in her head and getting depressed isn't good.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#257
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While nobody should do this, the interaction risk between an SSRI and a classical psychedelic is low. The primary concerns are serotonin syndrome, which requires a dose far outside the level that a responsible practitioner would administer. That said, this does mean that if an error is made, the consequence is far more severe (ie: miligrams as opposed to micrograms in dosing LSD). I have heard second-hand reports of…

Ayahuasca is a classical psychedelic and the interaction risk with SSRIs is extremely high.

Ayahuasca contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors compounds too, those are the cause of the interaction. Dimethyltryptamine itself does not carry the same interaction risk. It's a mix of monoamine oxidase inhibitors and dimethyltryptamine to prevent the stomach acid decomposing active drug.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It seems like you forgot the word "ideation" is in the original claim you're disputing, based on your description. Yes it is true that SSRIs can cause suicidal _ideation_. And the first step to suicide is suicidal ideation.

I have noticed ssri withdrawal causes suicidal ideation but not enough to go through with it. It's like it causes the thoughts but not the action from thoughts.

That’s excellent to hear that for you personally, the ideation did not become reality. However, suicide starts with ideation, so any suicidal ideation must be taken as a potential precursor to suicidal, even if in the end it might not actually progress.

You can only know how bad it was in retrospect.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to have professional babysitters who have had training and experience talking people through rough patches, maybe some first aid training too.

very true. That said, a good friend (or more) who has experience with psychedelics can also really help.

Personally I wouldn't trust someone who has never done them before. I mean I don't know what a "professional" babysitter's training entails, but in my experience people who have never done psychedelics tend to accidentally do arbitrary things that set off a bad trip at a much higher rate than those who have done psychedelics. People who have done them before tend to be able to see how things might lead to a bad trip.

I solved a bad trip one time by turning the TV off in the other room. It was almost inaudible to me, but it was playing WWE and it was just... negative. Turned it off and everything was fine, but the other babysitter (someone who'd never done psychedelics) couldn't be convinced that the TV was the issue because they couldn't see how negativity could cause a bad trip.

This is all probably just bias on my part. No reason a professional psychologist couldn't make these connections too.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#260
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“psychiatric epidemiologist“ I was with you up to this. What even is a “psychiatric epidemiologist” I had to look it up, “It is a subfield of the more general epidemiology. It has roots in sociological studies of the early 20th century. However, while sociological exposures are still widely studied in psychiatric epidemiology, the field has since expanded to the study of a wide area of environmental risk factors, suc…

Good rebuttal. The person who did the peer-reviewed statistical research is wrong because Wikipedia describes their discipline as related to sociology.

No, I’m just saying that for me personally, if I wanted advice about taking psychiatric medication, I would prefer a clinicians view over the view of a epidemiological researcher, _even if they have the exact same level of training as medical doctors_. I don’t know about the researchers in question, maybe they too are practitioners. If they are, you should qualify that they aren’t merely epidemiologists. Epidemiology as a field has a problem with replication not unlike psychology or nutrition research.
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