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LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

nytimes.com

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Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#31

Post by Nursie »

benched wrote: post #28
Nursie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was just a convenient way to continue to suppress the counterculture while also looking tough and moral, because we all know how much our politicians love that. The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?

I guess if it is humble enough, that opinion isn't too harmful. I think many people would find it dismissive of their experience, especially since you have no justification for characterizing their experience for them. To presume to speak of "The LSD Experience" is anything but humble.

I'm not characterising their experience for them, it's far too variable and subjective to do that. I also didn't use the phrase "The LSD Experience" so I'm not sure why you felt the need to quote that.

What I will say is that some people seem to come back from it convinced that acid will change the face of humanity and society in some sort of miraculous way. But when pressed they can't say how. I don't think it's wrong to combine this with the fact that LSD can cause feelings of the profound over the most mundane or nonsensical things and come to the conclusion that they're probably off on one...

As I said - do you need acid to see the problems in our human society?

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#32

Post by lutusp »

A quote: "After about two months of weekly therapy, the eight participants who received full doses of LSD improved by about 20 percent on standard measures of anxiety, and the four subjects who took a much weaker dose got worse."

I hope no one thinks this is science. There's no control group, those who received the treatment under study knew who they were, and they were asked about their emotional state after the treatment ended. This is a classic case where the Placebo effect cannot be either eliminated or discounted.

This is not say that LSD has no beneficial effects in therapy. This is to say we have no idea, and this study provides no useful scientific data.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#33

Post by snake_plissken »

Nursie wrote: post #26
snake_plissken wrote: post #23

I've always found it incredibly amazing that psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, DMT etc) were outlawed in responses to forms of massive, peaceful "movements" in which taking psychedelics was something the members of the movement were known to do; that legislators and policy makers were so afraid of the affects these chemicals would have on society that they had to put the serious force of the law behind getting the…

I think it was just a convenient way to continue to suppress the counterculture while also looking tough and moral, because we all know how much our politicians love that. The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?

Oh yeah, of course it was a way to suppress the countercultures. But not all countercultures had or have drug use perceived as one of their defining characteristics.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#34

Post by sar9 »

debt wrote: post #14

I gotta say if you're an expert at something or at least consider yourself an expert at something: take LSD. LSD really dislodges how you view the world; it cleans out your mental system, like moving a fridge and cleaning all the crap that's been swept under there over the years. I would love if some of these prominent intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or any of the nobel prize winners did LSD. I saw a really intense m…

I wish more experienced DMT. It's like the ultimate Oculus Rift. The resolution, colors and sense of intelligence communicating with you is beyond anything any other psychedelic can produce. It is literally like opening a door to another dimension, one full of overwhelming love. Maybe it's just a biological trick but it is one of the most fascinating and unbelievable things in nature.

Not everyone should try it but I hope one day Sam Harris eventually does. His insight on it would be riveting.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#35

Post by dobbsbob »

EC1 wrote: post #15
GuiA wrote: post #9

I'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]…

Before entering the corporate work place I never touched anything. Once my one coworker started talking about it, the whole chain revealed itself, now it's super social to go smoke a joint with my bosses after work and have a beer, I love it. I wonder how much I'm actually destroying my health by smoking weed every day, drinking coffee, and having some alcohol at least in a minor capacity. I feel as if the emotional/…

When you stop smoking weed every day you have insanely vivid dreams for a few days, that's the only noticeable side effect I had. Weed can sap motivation if you let it too

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#36

Post by DanBC »

jonnathanson wrote: post #27
EC1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before entering the corporate work place I never touched anything. Once my one coworker started talking about it, the whole chain revealed itself, now it's super social to go smoke a joint with my bosses after work and have a beer, I love it. I wonder how much I'm actually destroying my health by smoking weed every day, drinking coffee, and having some alcohol at least in a minor capacity. I feel as if the emotional/…

Alcohol is probably much worse than weed or coffee over the long run. It's exceedingly hard to slowly poison your liver and brain over the course of a lifetime by smoking herb. It's easier than you think to do it drinking alcohol. I'm not a teetotaler by any means. I drink a couple of glasses of something pretty much every other day. But that's about the limit of what a healthy, adult male should be drinking. Any mor…

8 glasses of wine a week, at 250 ml per glass is 2 litres.

Weak 10% ABV wine would be 20 units. Normal 12.5% ABV would be 25 units. Strong 15% ABV wine would be 30 units.

UK advice is no more than 3 to 4 units per day for men, with a couple of days free of alcohol and no "saving up" of units for a binge. (The old advice was 21 units per week for men.)

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/alcohol/Pages/Alcoholhome.aspx

Drinking above that limit long term has some health consequences

http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/Effectsofalcohol.as...

Problem drinking has several definitions, but NICE recommend assisted withdrawal at 30 units per day. (15 to 20 per day if there are co morbid severe mental health problems).

I don't care if people use cannabis (and I am strongly in favour of legalisation) but I fucking hate the refusal of many cannabis users to even contemplate any negative effects of cannabis.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#37

Post by conradfr »

My mother suffered from cluster headaches recently (the worst pain you can endure in life they say).

Apparently mushrooms and LSD are unofficial treatments. When asked, her doctor encouraged her to use mushrooms ...

Apparently a non-psychedelic version of LSD could be made but it's difficult to justify spending millions in research with the official stance regarding drugs.

I'm glad change seems to come, albeit slowly ...

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#38

Post by munkle »

spinlock wrote: post #19

I had a friend in college -- really smart physics major -- drop acid one summer and lose the ability to do math. He needed to take a year off and finally finished his degree but was never on top of his game again. I'm not saying that always or even usually happens. But, acid is no joke and I just wanted to make sure that the inexperience reading this know that trips can go really wrong. Especially when you aren't usi…

It is true that LSD can mess you up if taken under certain circumstances, however, you shouldn't intimidate the inexperience. If all you ever heard about LSD is that it could mess you up, then there is a higher probably that it will harm you. Instead, I would recommend the following to all those who are inexperienced: Make sure you understand it's effects and try to find someone who has experience with LSD to guide you through your first trip.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#39

Post by benched »

Nursie wrote: post #31
benched wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if it is humble enough, that opinion isn't too harmful. I think many people would find it dismissive of their experience, especially since you have no justification for characterizing their experience for them. To presume to speak of "The LSD Experience" is anything but humble.

I'm not characterising their experience for them, it's far too variable and subjective to do that. I also didn't use the phrase "The LSD Experience" so I'm not sure why you felt the need to quote that. What I will say is that some people seem to come back from it convinced that acid will change the face of humanity and society in some sort of miraculous way. But when pressed they can't say how. I don't think it's wro…

You seem particularly motivated to discount the awakening effects of LSD. I never mentioned seeing problems in society, so as far as I'm concerned that's a strawman.

Are people wrong to feel profundity in the mundane? Is there another way to interpret the belief that LSD or access to altered states could change society?

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