LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
nytimes.com
LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
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Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#2A friend of mine had very good results in work with micro-dosing - he took 1/10 of trip dose and was more focused and creative. He suffered no hallucinations or giggles.
EDIT: Just trying to give second good use of this substance. Easing the suffering of a terminally ill person is good. Enhancing creativity and focus in young person is also good.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#3A friend of mine had very good results in work with micro-dosing - he took 1/10 of trip dose and was more focused and creative. He suffered no hallucinations or giggles. EDIT: Just trying to give second good use of this substance. Easing the suffering of a terminally ill person is good. Enhancing creativity and focus in young person is also good.
Was this friend working in the laboratory then?
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#4A friend of mine had very good results in work with micro-dosing - he took 1/10 of trip dose and was more focused and creative. He suffered no hallucinations or giggles. EDIT: Just trying to give second good use of this substance. Easing the suffering of a terminally ill person is good. Enhancing creativity and focus in young person is also good.
To be fair, the article is about the polar opposite approach: Giving a full-bore hallucinogenic dose to people who are dying anyways so it really can't make their situation worse, and seeing if it helps them cope with the inevitable.
Which is very interesting. I always feel like the war on drugs is horribly unfair to people in end-of-life situations who really should have access to all the most destructive mind-altering chemicals to ease that.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#5One trip about 2 years ago made me realize that I should not worry about things I can't control, and changed me from the bitter, angry person I'd become to the life loving happy person I used to be when I was young, in an instant.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#6One trip about 2 years ago made me realize that I should not worry about things I can't control, and changed me from the bitter, angry person I'd become to the life loving happy person I used to be when I was young, in an instant.
About 20 years ago I had some bad shit going on in my life and did the same. It was the most horrible experience of my life. I thought I was shitting snakes and they were then eating me.
However I instantly stopped smoking, drinking and haven't touched anything since.
YMMV as they say.
Edit: perhaps its related but it was shortly after that I finally grokked Unix and C.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#7A friend of mine had very good results in work with micro-dosing - he took 1/10 of trip dose and was more focused and creative. He suffered no hallucinations or giggles. EDIT: Just trying to give second good use of this substance. Easing the suffering of a terminally ill person is good. Enhancing creativity and focus in young person is also good.
To be fair, the article is about the polar opposite approach: Giving a full-bore hallucinogenic dose to people who are dying anyways so it really can't make their situation worse , and seeing if it helps them cope with the inevitable. Which is very interesting. I always feel like the war on drugs is horribly unfair to people in end-of-life situations who really should have access to all the most destructive mind-alte…
Just to be fair, 'destructive' seems like a bad adjective to apply to LSD. It's way, way less toxic than alcohol, for example.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_caus... http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Drug_danger_and_depen...
'Mind altering' yes, I will grant you that. But most things you ingest are mind altering. For example, this chocolate chip cookie I am eating now will shortly make me feel a burst of energy, but then shortly afterwards, sleepy and fat.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#8One trip about 2 years ago made me realize that I should not worry about things I can't control, and changed me from the bitter, angry person I'd become to the life loving happy person I used to be when I was young, in an instant.
Scientifically speaking, are you saying that this would be the result for most people? Steve Jobs, for example, famously took LSD but he certainly cared about controlling most things in his life, and sweated the details.
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#9I'm glad the taboos around psychedelics research, especially as tools for therapy, are slowly falling down- there's some fascinating stuff in there.
To people who have never experienced drugs, grown up in a culture that demonizes them all indiscriminately, have a hard time wrapping their head around what they are/do exactly but are curious about them, I recommend this article by Sam Harris, a great neuroscientist[0]
For a slightly more in depth essay, Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception" [1] is a great book, albeit slightly dated.
There are also some extremely interesting synergies between the origins of the computer industry and the psychedelics/California counter culture era. John Markoff's "What the Dormouse Said" [2] is a fantastic read, although it requires knowing about computer history a little bit already. I learned from it that there was scientific research on LSD conducted in Menlo Park, a few blocks away from where I used to live.
There's also a great essay by Timothy Leary about parallels between psychedelics as tools for expanding the human mind and the computer as a tool to enhance the human brain in Brenda Laurel's book "Art of Human Computer Interaction Design". [3]
There's a great essay by Carl Sagan about his experiences using marijuana creatively/intellectually [4].
I had never tried any drugs before moving to California in my 20s, and had grown up in a fairly standard European culture of all drugs = the devil. Some changes occurred, and it turns out there's a really fascinating history and philosophy in there (especially w/ regards to parallels with computer history, as described in the aforementioned book).
[0]: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-...
[1]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Doors-Of-Perception-thINKing/dp/19...
[2]: http://www.amazon.com/What-Dormouse-Said-Counterculture-Pers...
[3]: http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Human-Computer-Interface-Desig...
Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy
#10A friend of mine had very good results in work with micro-dosing - he took 1/10 of trip dose and was more focused and creative. He suffered no hallucinations or giggles. EDIT: Just trying to give second good use of this substance. Easing the suffering of a terminally ill person is good. Enhancing creativity and focus in young person is also good.
I've never tried micro-dosing but those interested in the idea should check out Gwern's lengthy piece on the subject: