Psychedelics and mental illness

The article makes a lot of good points. I'm a lover of psychedelics, I've apparently managed to be wired in a way that has made every single experience one that I don't regret (whether joyous, superficial, or intricate, unexpected), but I would never make the mistake of assuming my experience directly translates to other people's. Hype, cultists and people thinking in absolute only do a disservice to what we could extract from those experiences.

Serious research with people who are detached from the drugs is something we should all want, especially because we've only had a short time for detailed records of psychedelics experiences to exist at all and most experiences to this day aren't really observed scientifically at all. I believe that science is the best thing we've got to approach the unknown, psychedelics aren't a "godly exception".

I also remain aware that science doesn't always offer answers right away and we just keep on going anyway. It's been true for most technologies, for a lot of what goes in our food every day, for how we've structured society, etc. We accept that there's unknown risks, we try to mitigate what comes our way and prepare for what we can estimate, and we learn to live through what we didn't see. But we still eat the food, use the technologies, try social systems, and so on.

I think that attitude is also one to have with psychedelic experiences. That happens through testing what you have, guided experiences if and when there's a need or uncertainty, "set & setting" and discussing them beforehand, being gentle with dosage, making a sincere attempt at an inventory of the self before deciding on taking the psychs, and so on and so forth. And some people try some of it, some people don't, and that's OK as long as everyone strives to have an experience they can handle with what they know. Just like with everything else.

I agree. And I also think that for the same reasons, the psychiatry system, at least the parts that I was exposed to, is abysmal. They prescribe according to whatever scriptbook is en vogue at the jurisdiction and the substances themselves are very far from proven - and also the part where you're guided on the trip you're having can be almost completely missing. There's a huge room for improvement in this area.

"This is just an anecdotal account, but there’s an interview with the psychedelics researcher Manoj Doss, who says that he “only know[s] one psychedelic researcher who’s never done psychedelics”, and notes (in an encouragingly self-critical way) that this is a conflict of interest." - Yeah that's a good point to be honest

I think that some of the most interesting applications for psychedelics as medicine target treatments that aren't strictly mental health related. Ketamine is already approved for ischemic brain damage or stroke, like you better hope that's the first thing you get in the ambulance to prevent glutamate excitotoxicity from getting really nasty if you fall of a motorcycle or whatever - But DMT actually shows a lot of promise for recovery too, and I'm actually getting involved in a project tangent to that research right now. We're talking sub-psychedelic micordoses to build people's neurons back from brain damage, one of those things in modern medicine we're still generally hopeless about. Pretty interesting stuff! [1]

[1] https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/blog/could-t...

Well… yes? Any stressor can be severe enough to cause problems in other areas of your life. It can also reveal undiagnosed mental illnesses.

Not sure how this relates to the article.

I liked the article and tend to agree there is a lot of pressure to rush psychedleics to the mainstream.

This is from a person who used MDMA to heal bipolar / schizophrenia in an underground setting; ran an underground clinic for 3 years; took funding from Dr. Bronner to found a non-profit to decriminalize plant medicine; and was featured in a PBS documentary administering MDMA in an underground setting.

Also, the author obviously hasn't done psychedelics ;) and he states as such.

"I’d think about taking them if I had a relevant condition and the evidence they worked was convincing." You could argue that the relevant condition is that you are a living human, and we've evolved to be in relationship to altered states of consciousness.