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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?

#41

Post by inigyou »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #19
tokai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, Disenfranchise the hippies and the blacks by targeting those communities with heavy policing. Sorta like today where there's similar drug use levels between white and black populations, but one side is more heavily policed than the other.

Crack cocaine and cocaine are the same drug with a different delivery method but we all know exactly why one is punished more harshly. There's a federal policy that a given quantity of crack cocaine is to be treated as 10 times that quantity of regular cocaine, IIRC?

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#42

Post by Taronar »

bbayles wrote: post #32

Anecdata, but an acquaintance of mine struggled with lifelong anorexia. Severe enough that he was hospitalized a few times. With great effort he could cling to the bottom of the "normal BMI" range, but his life was generally ruled by the eating disorder - he couldn't have meals with people, he had to do various exercise rituals. He was an early participant in one of these psychedelic studies a few years ago. After th…

Science generally works on IF Then statements when it comes to treatment, IF you take this drug your blood pressure will increase, IF you exercise more your life expectancy will increase, with mental health issues there very few IF then treatments, there are only if maybe treatments, this is for a slew of reasons such as how we don't really understand it, symptoms can be caused by many different underlying issues, and legal risk of prescribing something that isn't proven effective. That being said, the IF maybe treatments are the only way to treat mental health, Psilocybin falls in this category.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#43

Post by Taronar »

jdietrich wrote: post #33

Sorry, but the answer is almost certainly no. We now have good quality data on psylocybin as a treatment for depression; at best, it's slightly more effective than existing treatments, at the cost of a small but significant increased risk side-effects (primarily severe acute anxiety and psychosis, possibly HPPD). We have less data on other psychedelics and other conditions, but none of it looks spectacular when you t…

This is a treatment that can help people. just because it didn't help you does not mean it's ineffective in totality which is the stance you seem to take.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#44

Post by reliablereason »

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

Clearly it impossible to observe brain chemistry by looking at a person.

Psychedelics does however have longterm behavioural effects that are statistically significant and to some extent observable.

Using a definition of brain chemistry that defines brain chemistry at an atomic level you may assert that a change in behavioural patterns reflect a change in brain chemistry. But with such a definition anything that a person experiences does that.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#46

Post by bossyTeacher »

mikert89 wrote: post #37
bossyTeacher wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Way to generalise. I also know people who drank water, went to sleep and never woke up. Ego dissolution is dosage dependent and you don't need to reach that point…

unfortunately, I think repeated psychedlic use has deterministic and predictable changes to peoples personalities. its not some "awakening", its a structural change in the brain. i watched many close friends fade away after too much use

Surely, that's dosage dependent and frequency dependent. One per week vs once every three months vs once per year. Low dose vs medium dose vs high dose.

Plus, these things are illegal which means that most of the time you are not getting the real but instead pharmacologically similar substances that might have secondary effects. This is way you can't reliably imply a correlation because it is a black market and often what you think you consumed is not what you actually consumed.

Unless you actually tested what your friends consumed, you don't know what it was.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#47

Post by salemh »

mikert89 wrote: post #22
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…

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

Co-signed here with psilocybin being dangerous based on direct personal experience, and seeing inumerable issues with party friends. Apologists of psylocybin will sometimes say 'its not as harsh and dangerous as LSD.' Ok, damaging effects of this drug are always apologized away and covered up.

The biggest problem with psilocibyn is people are told its benign, then they go on a 'trip', and sometimes in their come-down delusion completely destroy their lives: leave their families, leave their career, and tend to 'come to' (if they do) several months later.

Bad trips are supposedly 'experiences' (and now your in the realm of metaphysics), and going to jail or hurting yourself and others supposedly just should be washed over, or, you have permanent anxiety while sober now.

The psychadelic apologists make themselves unfalsifiable because they can help people stuck in a purely materiastic mindset - which our souls know is completely false.

Anyone in the party scene, or 'psychonaughts' (as I was, and did massive amounts of mushrooms for years, and had friends doing the same, sometimes 2-5x a week), the consequences of screwing with your brain chemistry cannot be avoided.

Joe Rogan has done immense damage with minimizing risks of monkeying with your brain chemistry. This also relates to weed, which is not the weed of forty years ago compressed bricks with seeds in it, but its incredibly intense.

You'll never hear so many excuses about their drug addiction then from weed smokers who spend hundreds a week, and can't miss a single day of smoking, toking, edibles, oils.

NA and AA would be better paths to start with these trauma's, then fix the underlying trauma itself - which is also a spiritual problem, and not material. We, wealthy-west should theoretically be the most 'happy', and not lead for the last 60 years in depression, suicide, psychologists and psychiatrists, etc. Its not true, which is why nothing is working.

Or to summarize, as the meme goes - something like 'these non spiritual normies taking psychadelics getting one-shot by a seven-dimensional demon, now leave their husband and career, wanting to 'teach about love' in the amazon.'

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#48

Post by cachius »

cachius wrote: post #27
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

TIL I learned about Janus words that have two opposite meanings depending on context, also known as contronyms or auto-antonyms:

Cleave: To split apart ('cleave the wood') or to adhere closely ('cleave to one's principles')

Sanction: To give official permission/approval or to impose a penalty/ban

Oversight: Watchful supervision or an unintentional mistake/omission

Dust: To remove fine particles ('dust the shelf') or to sprinkle them on ('dust the cake with sugar')

Bolt: To secure firmly in place or to run away suddenly

Clip: To fasten together ('clip the papers') or to cut off ('clip the coupon')

Fast: Moving quickly or fixed firmly in place ('stuck fast')

Left: Departed (verb) or remaining (adjective)

Screen: To display/show ('screen a movie') or to hide/conceal

Weather: To withstand or endure ('weather the storm') or to wear away/deteriorate over time

Peruse: To read carefully and thoroughly or to skim casually

Trim: To decorate/adorn ('trim the tree') or to cut away excess ('trim the hedges')

Rent: To pay for the use of something or to receive payment for allowing someone to use something

Table: In British English, to propose for discussion; in American English, to postpone or remove from discussion

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#49

Post by an0malous »

mikert89 wrote: post #22
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…

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

Sure but "somewhere worse" is usually defined relative to the current societal framework. Society requires almost every adult to participate in labor, if LSD made you want to sit around and make paintings all day instead of work we would consider it a negative even though it would be a positive within other conceivable societal frameworks. For example, if AI removes the need for labor then maybe it would be fine and even desirable for everyone to just be high and make paintings all day. The complete dissolution that some people experience is likewise terrible for society, because people with no ego are poor, unmotivated workers amongst other potential behavioral issues, but in a Tibetan monastery you might be considered a saint. Ramana Maharshi was supposedly found as a young boy living in a pit with flies and bugs eating away at his flesh, he was completely oblivious to even his personal wellbeing much less societal norms and expectations. He was and still is considered one of the greatest Vedic sages in recent history.

I'm not saying that everyone should go do LSD and I don't know the details or stories of the people you saw. Like I said, I understand the perspective of people who feel responsible for maintaining a social order. I'm just trying to point out how relative all of this is to societal frameworks.

Re: Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?

#50

Post by deburo »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #19
tokai wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah, Disenfranchise the hippies and the blacks by targeting those communities with heavy policing. Sorta like today where there's similar drug use levels between white and black populations, but one side is more heavily policed than the other.

Perhaps you'd like to dig down into the stats using AI to find out that the gap in policing isn't really due to race. Check by poverty level, and perhaps by geographic areas.
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