Psychedelics and mental illness
stuartritchie.substack.com
Psychedelics and mental illness
1–10 of 165 posts
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#2I know a lot of cannabis fans (and count myself as one). Very, very few of them acknowledge that cannabis affects people inconsistently; one person's reaction to it can be very different than others. This is inconvenient for calling it a "medicine" so let's just ignore it.
Psychedelics are even worse. The same dose of the same drug can produce wildly vary effects in the same person depending on factors we have trouble nailing down. "Set and setting" and the Erowid wisdom are all very well, but they are barely enough to describe the area and edges of the therapeutic window in a general way. Your trip, today, is still going to be an experiment.
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#3Do you think a disturbed work life balance could be a reason for mental illness as well?
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#4I know a lot of cannabis fans (and count myself as one). Very, very few of them acknowledge that cannabis affects people inconsistently; one person's reaction to it can be very different than others. This is inconvenient for calling it a "medicine" so let's just ignore it. Psychedelics are even worse. The same dose of the same drug can produce wildly vary effects in the same person depending on factors we have troubl…
And we lack actual shamanic centers where we can do this stuff safely, where the dose is exact and you know what you're getting, and you can have guides to help you through the trip if things start feeling sketchy. And we could even have people on standby to administer anti-psychotic medicine in-case you have adverse reactions and need to calm down quickly before you do something stupid. The illegality of these substances is illegal in itself!
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#5I know a lot of cannabis fans (and count myself as one). Very, very few of them acknowledge that cannabis affects people inconsistently; one person's reaction to it can be very different than others. This is inconvenient for calling it a "medicine" so let's just ignore it. Psychedelics are even worse. The same dose of the same drug can produce wildly vary effects in the same person depending on factors we have troubl…
As they say: everyone’s endocannabinoid system is different. They also say everyone’s brain is wired differently. Completely agree that every first use whether it is THC or psilocybin is at the end personal experimentation with non zero risk.
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#6https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Mushrooms.shtml
Neat list of mushroom trip experiences.
Ranging from schizophrenic horror unimagined to unenglishable religious experiences.
I've had both experiences in the same trip. I'd hate to be on my deathbed and have a bad trip tho.
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#7The author says
> Quite a few psychedelic drugs are naturally-occurring, and have been used for hundreds of years (this doesn’t include synthetic ones like LSD, obviously).
LSD occurs naturally in the Ergot mushroom: > The ergot fungus contains a number of highly poisonous and psychoactive alkaloids, including lysergic acid (LSD), which was synthesized from the ergot fungus in 1938 by chemist, Albert Hoffmann [1]
What the author means is that it's synthetically made these days. Psilocybin can also be synthetically made these days.
psychedelics are the best hope humanity treating refractory mental illness. I know at least 5 people personally that have embarked on psychedelic voyages to treat their demons. Some of them are renowned psychiatrists.
[1] https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/ethnobotany/Mind_and_Spiri....
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#8https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Mushrooms.shtml Neat list of mushroom trip experiences. Ranging from schizophrenic horror unimagined to unenglishable religious experiences. I've had both experiences in the same trip. I'd hate to be on my deathbed and have a bad trip tho.
> deathbed and have a bad trip
Reminds me of a recent report that human sacrifice victims in the Inca empire were given ayahuasca and coca:
Ritual drug use during Inca human sacrifices on Ampato mountain (Peru): Results of a toxicological analysis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S23524...
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#9The author says > Quite a few psychedelic drugs are naturally-occurring, and have been used for hundreds of years (this doesn’t include synthetic ones like LSD, obviously). LSD occurs naturally in the Ergot mushroom: > The ergot fungus contains a number of highly poisonous and psychoactive alkaloids, including lysergic acid (LSD), which was synthesized from the ergot fungus in 1938 by chemist, Albert Hoffmann [1] Wha…
The US Forest Service is just wrong on this. Ergot does not contain LSD, although it contains very similar psychoactive alkaloids. Ergot cannot be called a mushroom, it is a fungus that grows on wheat, rye or other grains/grasses.
Re: Psychedelics and mental illness
#10I concur with the core message -- that the current research on psychedelics is not strong. Some of the problem is that the research itself was not designed with an eye on earning FDA approval. This was hard to do because we'll never have a true double-blind psychedelic trial for psychedelics like we can have for SSRIs. Spravato recently showed a path for FDA approval, because ketamine treatment for depression closely mirrors protocols for psychedelics.