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Psychedelics and mental illness

stuartritchie.substack.com

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Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#111

Post by tsimionescu »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #66
slibhb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is entirely wrong. You can suffer from depression (and anxiety) and attribute it to other things, such as personality traits. Many people think "that's just me" with those that know them thinking the same. For less acute forms of depression such as dysthymia, that's common. People can think they're entirely normal and they're just not good at certain things. My post explicitly says the hypothetical man is happ…

I don’t know of any mental illness that isn’t accompanied by intense mental distress

The grand-parent comment was arguing that this distress can be objectively catalogued by someone other than the patient, and that the patient may themselves be unaware.

This does seem to be true for some forms of mental illness, depending on exactly how you define distress. For example, someone going through an episode of mania (such as in bipolard disorder) is typically subjectively extremely happy with their state.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#112

Post by mountainriver »

ada1981 wrote: post #19

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 au…

Yeah I have the same impression. The author wouldn't have even written the article if he had tried psychedelics, which are often reported as the most significant experience in peoples lives.

This is just reductionist thinking, which can be good to temper things and reduce harm, but the authors bias is pretty readable

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#113

Post by orangepurple »

zafka wrote: post #92
orangepurple wrote: post #25

Not mentioned anywhere, but probably the strongest effect of psychedelics, is that LSD absolutely kills the desire to drink alcohol for months.

As someone who quit drinking alcohol quite a long time ago ( which I am quite sure is why I am alive today) I agree that one of the "side affects" of LSD is that it helps one to come to the realization that they are killing themselves from a bad habit. I cannot say that it killed my desire to drink, and I did drink for a while after an experience with what might have been LSD. An interesting historic tidbit is that t…

Months after dosing with LSD drinking alcohol has the appeal of drinking department store paint thinner. It works. It's sad that people are scared to associate with it due to its demonization.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#114

Post by tsimionescu »

criticaltinker wrote: post #62
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychedelic enthusiasts can be even worse in this regard. When someone does have a bad trip, they tend to reach for every possible excuse to avoid blaming the drug. This ranges from criticizing their "set and setting" to blaming "triggering an underlying mental health issue". The latter is particularly concerning in the context of treating mental health issues, because by definition everyone in that category has some…

Listen, your comments on all these threads make it clear you’re seriously pessimistic about psychedelic medicine, and that’s perfectly ok. What bothers me is the incessant pushing of this agenda: > anyone ending up in a psychedelic research study is doing so because they think psychedelics are promising for mental health and they want to try it out > maybe the real reason psychedelics show efficacy in depression is t…

I am curious: is it actually possible, even in principle, to have a blind placebo controlled psychedelics study?

How can you not be aware of whether you have consumed a psychedelic substance or a sugar pill, assuming we are not discussing something like micro-dosing?

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#115

Post by tsimionescu »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #57
newbamboo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some psychedelics are more unpredictable than others, and incidentally these seem to be the ones that are hyped the most. LSD is much more predictable than mushrooms for instance, and is well researched partially because of that. The seems generally true for synthetic vs naturally occurring substances across the board, though there are plenty of horrible synthetic drugs like bath salts, synthetic weed. Advocates seem…

I agree LSD may be more predictable than mushrooms, but it is also a crazy intense 12 hour voyage that leaves one with at least two days of recovery time after. Vs 4 hours for mushrooms. Both are extremely "set and setting" sensitive. Take either on a bad mood day with bad weather, a dirty house, and stuff on your mind... and you won't have a good time.

> Take either on a bad mood day with bad weather, a dirty house, and stuff on your mind... and you won't have a good time.

That doesnt sound like the start of an apparently very promising candidate for treating depression and PTSD. Just goes to show how different experiences are, I guess...

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#116

Post by chiggsy »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #66
slibhb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is entirely wrong. You can suffer from depression (and anxiety) and attribute it to other things, such as personality traits. Many people think "that's just me" with those that know them thinking the same. For less acute forms of depression such as dysthymia, that's common. People can think they're entirely normal and they're just not good at certain things. My post explicitly says the hypothetical man is happ…

I don’t know of any mental illness that isn’t accompanied by intense mental distress

Mania.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#117

Post by cmrdporcupine »

tsimionescu wrote: post #115
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree LSD may be more predictable than mushrooms, but it is also a crazy intense 12 hour voyage that leaves one with at least two days of recovery time after. Vs 4 hours for mushrooms. Both are extremely "set and setting" sensitive. Take either on a bad mood day with bad weather, a dirty house, and stuff on your mind... and you won't have a good time.

> Take either on a bad mood day with bad weather, a dirty house, and stuff on your mind... and you won't have a good time. That doesnt sound like the start of an apparently very promising candidate for treating depression and PTSD. Just goes to show how different experiences are, I guess...

Yeah, that's because it isn't (imho a promising candidate).

It's an interesting experience, though.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#118

Post by stakkur »

As a counterpoint, I'd read Michael Pollan. Also, a fundamental problem with this article is the lumping of 'psychedelics' into a neat category so it can be critiqued. In the real world, the story of what's happening is diverse.

TL;DR: This is a dangerously biased dismissal of actual science and historical progress in understanding of various 'psychedelics', and it's exactly the kind of cherry-picking dismissal that's been fought against for decades.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#119

Post by hannob »

drooby wrote: post #70

I don’t fully understand the issue with blinding. How is it different than trying to double blind talk therapy. Obviously someone knows that they are getting talk therapy, likewise, people obviously know they are getting psychedelics. Yet we are still able to get experimental results supporting talk therapy and no one complains, right?

> Yet we are still able to get experimental results supporting talk therapy and no one complains, right?

Wrong. https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjebmspotlight/2020/10/07/seeing-is-b...

I think this is a problem that is generally recognized. Also the science on psychological interventions is generally quite messy.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#120

Post by tsimionescu »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #117
tsimionescu wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take either on a bad mood day with bad weather, a dirty house, and stuff on your mind... and you won't have a good time. That doesnt sound like the start of an apparently very promising candidate for treating depression and PTSD. Just goes to show how different experiences are, I guess...

Yeah, that's because it isn't (imho a promising candidate). It's an interesting experience, though.

Sure, I imagined as much. My point was that your experience (and others like yours) seems to differ significantly from the experience of, for example, the people penning these studies.

I personally have no experience with psychedelics (and no desire to get any), so I am just looking with a bit of wonder at the differences from the sidelines.

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