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Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

nature.com

121–130 of 276 posts

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that in this case the issue was someone out of their mind high on shrooms had immediate access to a gun, not the “mentally ill person does drugs and dies” trope which is quite tired and I’m pretty sure not backed by any kind of science. I only posted my reply because comments like these add to the stigma of mental illness and may make people who are suffering less willing to try these types of treatmen…

This observation of fact is more interesting and nuanced than your initial defensive reaction

I appreciate that feedback, thanks.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The set and settings researchers typically use for usual psych studies are going to bias psychedelic results so much. Think that building you hated in undergrad's crusty unlit cinderblock basement with no windows but coated in cameras and microphones. Its so dystopian, you are literally a caged rat. I don't think you can perform this research in good faith without having experienced a proper trip yourself. It's just…

gleam -> glean

Too late to edit :(

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#123

PSA: My buddy shot himself in the head while we were on shrooms in our twenties. He thought he meant God, took a shower picked up a gun and shot himself in the head. While I've had trips since then and do get benefits from those experiences. People without experience should be careful, especially if you have a history of mental illness. He did have a history to some degree but not overtly.

A user named observationist made a response to this post, but they responded to a troll, whose comment was nuked which removed their very valuable comment (I was responding to them at the time so I happened to have both in cache). observationist https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=observationist original comment: Around 1% of people have schizophrenia. This holds over a lifetime - there's a structural, unavoidable c…

> Across studies that use household-based survey samples, clinical diagnostic interviews, and medical records, estimates of the prevalence of schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders in the U.S. range between 0.25% and 0.64%

From https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/schizophrenia

The NIH page sources these studies:

Kessler RC, Birnbaum H, Demler O, Falloon IR, Gagnon E, Guyer M, Howes MJ, Kendler KS, Shi L, Walters E, Wu EQ. The prevalence and correlates of nonaffective psychosis in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R). Biol Psychiatry. 2005 Oct 15;58(8):668-76. PMID: 16023620

Wu EQ, Shi L, Birnbaum H, Hudson T, Kessler R. Annual prevalence of diagnosed schizophrenia in the USA: a claims data analysis approach. Psychol Med. 2006 Nov;36(11):1535-40. PMID: 16907994

Desai, PR, Lawson, KA, Barner, JC, Rascati, KL. Estimating the direct and indirect costs for community-dwelling patients with schizophrenia. Journal of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, 2013 Jul;4(4):187-194. doi/10.1111/jphs.12027/epdf

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#124

PSA: My buddy shot himself in the head while we were on shrooms in our twenties. He thought he meant God, took a shower picked up a gun and shot himself in the head. While I've had trips since then and do get benefits from those experiences. People without experience should be careful, especially if you have a history of mental illness. He did have a history to some degree but not overtly.

Thanks for sharing. Not sure if the guidance to do shrooms in an appropriate setting and with an appropriate mindset ("set and setting") would have helped, but certainly that guidance is no joke! And we should absolutely continue research to learn more about the adverse effects. Obviously they help a lot of people, but must be done with care and seem not to be helpful for every person. We must learn more about these…

Whenever I read about shroom usage in ancient times, it almost always has some type of guidance and ceremony associated with it.

The laws have turned it into something taboo and then people often start consuming psychedelics in a weird and suspicious way to begin with...because it's not legal potentially leading to more and more bad trips.

Meditation is similar, often seemed to be associated with guidance from someone who know how to do it and had experience dealing with some of the potential negatives associated with it. I just read a book by Mingyur Rinpoche and I ended up having a severe existential crisis, that book shocked my being to it's core at the time.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the fact that nobody knows how to deal with negative correlations in functional connectivity takes away from the validity of the whole concept. People literally throw out negatively correlated voxels/ROI's. This, on top of the fact that functional connectivity is only related to physical connectivity in the abstract. (it's about the correlated time series activity in pixels over time, and isn't bound by any c…

any source that mentions throwing away negative correlations?

It’s commonly done in fMRI studies and I always got the impression it was less about not being able to understand negative relationships (e.g., it’s well understood that things like the default mode network is inversely related to active processing) and it’s more about not being clear how to use negative values as edge weights in graph theoretic analysis of networks

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#126

PSA: My buddy shot himself in the head while we were on shrooms in our twenties. He thought he meant God, took a shower picked up a gun and shot himself in the head. While I've had trips since then and do get benefits from those experiences. People without experience should be careful, especially if you have a history of mental illness. He did have a history to some degree but not overtly.

Similar thing. My good friend and early college roommate took his own life with a gun after having a bad trip. I wasn’t there for it, but the way he described it he felt ridiculed and deserted by his old high school friends during the trip. He was left alone to deal with these feelings. His mood post trip became increasingly abysmal. He became highly paranoid, and started questioning the loyalty of the people close t…

Access to weapons is also a problem. That could have been a transient event he would have recovered from.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#127
post #67

PSA: My buddy shot himself in the head while we were on shrooms in our twenties. He thought he meant God, took a shower picked up a gun and shot himself in the head. While I've had trips since then and do get benefits from those experiences. People without experience should be careful, especially if you have a history of mental illness. He did have a history to some degree but not overtly.

Thanks for that PSA. And here's to your lost friend! I have a lost one too, but due to a different cause. He took hard drugs he was dealing to pay off a house after a legislative decision basically eliminated his well paying job. We grew up very much do what it fucking takes kind of people. And we were tested in life more than once. I still draw from that time today, sometimes remembering and finding that which will…

Sorry about your friend.

When you say "hard drugs" are you referring to mushrooms? Where I'm from mushrooms aren't considered a hard drug, heroin and cocaine would be.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#128

I can't think of anything in the world I would enjoy doing less than completing "a simple auditory–visual matching task" while in an MRI scanner on shrooms.

Haha I wouldn't. People have made such a big deal out of this drug requiring set and setting but I've swum in the ocean, played soccer, watched movies and TV, played board games and all with great fun. Indoors and outdoors. It's fantastic.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sources?

Anecdotal, but I've tripped with two people who showed seizure like symptoms that they never had before or since. Couldn't find any data at the time. Tried to get them to submit experience reports on erowid so that there would be some data out there, but they didn't want to put anything about it in writing.

Are you sure shrooms? If chocolates or gummies the compound therein is not quite the same as recent news stories have noted.

Re: Psilocybin desynchronizes the human brain

#130
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar thing. My good friend and early college roommate took his own life with a gun after having a bad trip. I wasn’t there for it, but the way he described it he felt ridiculed and deserted by his old high school friends during the trip. He was left alone to deal with these feelings. His mood post trip became increasingly abysmal. He became highly paranoid, and started questioning the loyalty of the people close t…

Access to weapons is also a problem. That could have been a transient event he would have recovered from.

Yes, when I had a bad concussion from a car rollover, I had bouts of suicidal thought. I got rid of my double edge razor blades and kept my knives away. As my brain healed so did my mind. Better not to have terminal condition tools around if you don't need them.
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