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Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#21

Post by exhumet »

inigyou wrote: post #8
jhoechtl wrote: post #3

We hear a lot of psilocybine lately, it cures altsheimer, people in coma awake miraculously. As long as we do not understand the workings, it reminds me of the days when radium or other nuclear substances were the cure for everything.

It's a drug that makes your neurons more susceptible to forming new connections. Of course it's going to be useful for a lot of brain treatment. In addition, it's highly illegal which means these things didn't get found out a lot sooner.

upside is that in most states you can just go buy the spores and they just so happen to conveniently have spawn bags right nearby. BUT DONT EVER COMBINE THE TWO AND WAIT A FEW MONTHS

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#22

Post by mikert89 »

an0malous wrote: post #11
inigyou wrote: post #2

Psychedelics open your brain up to rewiring in some way, and can be used under direction to treat a lot of things. But of course, people who didn't like the Vietnam War used them recreationally, which is why the US government made them globally illegal.

Psychedelics desolve the conceptual prison your mind is in, the government made them illegal because they build those prisons. Charitably, you could argue a functional society involves some amount of indoctrination into a set of shared beliefs and a large percentage of people losing that indoctrination would destroy society. Could the US function if everyone was a pacifist, anti-capitalist, hippie? I think that was a…

anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#23

Post by MSFT_Edging »

mosburger wrote: post #7
llm_nerd wrote: post #4

This feels like a case where Betteridge's law of headlines applies, or at least should be presumed. [Recreational Drug] solves [malady] is such a hopeful go to and has recurred countless times. I've partaken of 'shrooms a number of times: Fun times. I've even grown them (protip - not worth the trouble. It's amazing how something that grows in literal shit is suddenly the most fragile process imaginable when you try y…

Here's yet another anecdote of near-zero real value to add to the pile: I treated my severe treatment-resistant depression with ketamine infusions. It's obviously not the same as psilocybin, but I believe the current thinking is that psychoelics and dissociatives both have some positive effect on neuroplasticity, and that sorta checks out in my case. I'd say you need to combine it with some good cognitive behavioral…

People tend to view these things as "pop the drug, and you're cured" but if you really want to make the most of the neuroplasticity, you need to make a conscious plan ahead of time so that you can guide the trip and focus on the problems you're genuinely facing.

The drug won't magically give you the answer but you may reach some more profound general breakthroughs regarding your own behavior, patterns you fall into unconsciously, etc.

Similar to how addiction and associated behaviors are really only resolved when the person addicted decides to make the change, you can use these to influence into a similar state.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#24

Post by cachius »

jhoechtl wrote: post #3

We hear a lot of psilocybine lately, it cures altsheimer, people in coma awake miraculously. As long as we do not understand the workings, it reminds me of the days when radium or other nuclear substances were the cure for everything.

We hear a lot about LLMs lately, they solve reasoning, mimic empathy, and awaken consciousness miraculously. As long as we do not understand the workings of the mind and brain, it reminds me of the days when machine learning or Bitcoin were the cure for everything.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#25

Post by temp0826 »

mikert89 wrote: post #20

Psychedelics arent that far from turning your brain off and then turning it back on again but anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. clearly they are doing some kind of unraveling that doesnt fully bounce back

Why would you want your brain to ravel back up? I've worked at ayahuasca retreats and know many people who do it for a living (who are many of the most grounded people I know). Using these things in a therapeutic manner is a completely different thing than using them recreationally, might as well be a different substance. I'd guess those people who "permanently changed their brain" (whatever that means) were not in a context for actually healing.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#26

Post by Denatonium »

exhumet wrote: post #21
inigyou wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a drug that makes your neurons more susceptible to forming new connections. Of course it's going to be useful for a lot of brain treatment. In addition, it's highly illegal which means these things didn't get found out a lot sooner.

upside is that in most states you can just go buy the spores and they just so happen to conveniently have spawn bags right nearby. BUT DONT EVER COMBINE THE TWO AND WAIT A FEW MONTHS

Here on the east coast, you can just wait until May comes around and it rains a couple days in a row. Then, you can just go for a walk by your local river/creek and wade through the seas of Japanese knotweed, lesser celandine, and box elder maple while looking for mushrooms growing out of the wet woody debris. Between them and nearby mulch beds, SWIM has allegedly found psilocybe ovoideocystidiata pretty consistently for the past several years, in Minecraft. Just don't try and take any shortcuts with the identification. It's better to throw out questionable specimens than risk needing a liver transplant.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#27

Post by cachius »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15
jhoechtl wrote: post #3

We hear a lot of psilocybine lately, it cures altsheimer, people in coma awake miraculously. As long as we do not understand the workings, it reminds me of the days when radium or other nuclear substances were the cure for everything.

We don't fully understand the workings because it is (was?) classified as a drug, making research into it a lot more complicated. Thankfully there are charities and organizations that lobbied to make it more researchable.

Funny how 'drug' in English is a homonym for at the same time bad recreational substance and good one to cure illness.

In German it's Droge and Medikament

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#28

Post by mikert89 »

temp0826 wrote: post #25
mikert89 wrote: post #20

Psychedelics arent that far from turning your brain off and then turning it back on again but anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. clearly they are doing some kind of unraveling that doesnt fully bounce back

Why would you want your brain to ravel back up? I've worked at ayahuasca retreats and know many people who do it for a living (who are many of the most grounded people I know). Using these things in a therapeutic manner is a completely different thing than using them recreationally, might as well be a different substance. I'd guess those people who "permanently changed their brain" (whatever that means) were not in a…

I believe that the drugs cause structural changes to the brain that make it more difficult to function in the reward structure of society. You can claim through a philosophical lens that society is flawed and so this is okay, but ive seen it derail peoples lives, such that they are just living in some rural area with limited participation in real life

ive barely taken them, but i watched many people change over years of use.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#29

Post by gchamonlive »

bushwart wrote: post #16
an0malous wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychedelics desolve the conceptual prison your mind is in, the government made them illegal because they build those prisons. Charitably, you could argue a functional society involves some amount of indoctrination into a set of shared beliefs and a large percentage of people losing that indoctrination would destroy society. Could the US function if everyone was a pacifist, anti-capitalist, hippie? I think that was a…

Psychedelics can dissolve more than the mind's conceptual prisons, perhaps much more of the mind than one would like. How did the hippie-era stereotype of the burned out acid head disappear so quickly from popular culture?

Kary Mullis is known to have used a lot of it and discovered PCR while off psychedelics. There's also the famous Hoffman's bycicle day. The stereotype is just that, and might be a result of lack of mental stimulation rather than LSD abuse, which is possibly the safest drug in terms of toxicity.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#30

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

tokai wrote: post #13
joinjune wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug use changes the way you vote. The people who were running the country during the Vietnam war recognized this and, along with the people who owned industry/media, didn't want that kind of change to go mainstream.

That was not why they started the war on drugs, and we have that on record.

Whose record?
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