161–170 of 324 posts
On the one hand, HN is terrified of brain-computer interfaces manipulating our brains and emotions, on the other hand, they're totally psyched about using mushrooms to do the same thing.
The background for this was my choice of leaving an ultra orthodox jewish community and going on my own.
I recently tried that (after 3 years of hesitation) and the magic happened. It affected my structure of feelings in several ways indeed, but in the context of this one, I would say that, at least for me, it was not like "I forgive you", "you owe me, but I let go". Not at all, in my case, it simply earased the "load", the hard feelings, completely.
Beyond the magic psychadelic affects, the trip is an emotional journey that one takes, a journey that you come back with compassion, understanding and rock solid outlook over the world.
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This type of empty fear mongering comment is unhelpful at best. It's a McDonalds of a comment. What's a lot of people? Why are psychedelics so special compared to anything else (sugar, Facebook, gambling). "It doesn't happen to everyone, but it's common" - what does this even mean? "Common" based on what criterion? How should our behaviour as a society change based on your comment?
Are you comparing psychedelics to sugar and social media? Unless psilocybin is thoroughly tested and validated as a treatment that is as safe as SSRI, I don't think it's really worthwhile to jump into the psilocybin train.
Should we also compare the risk of addiction/dependence? Oh, yes, lets do!
Hey, while we are at it, shall we also compare effectiveness? 2 doses vs 6 weeks? Oh, wait, that's what the study did.
I wonder how many different types of psilocybin they had to test to find the effect one for these particular patients. Because, you know, getting the "right" SSRI based coctail is actual quite hard, many people go through three or four different variants before finding the one which they think works.
Yes, I'll bet they had to compare at least as many types of psylocybin before they found the combo that worked. Right?
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I know a lot of people whose minds were ruined by psychedelics. It’s something you will see when you spend time in those communities. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s common.
This type of empty fear mongering comment is unhelpful at best. It's a McDonalds of a comment. What's a lot of people? Why are psychedelics so special compared to anything else (sugar, Facebook, gambling). "It doesn't happen to everyone, but it's common" - what does this even mean? "Common" based on what criterion? How should our behaviour as a society change based on your comment?
Be conservative with dosage, don't do multiple doses in the same session & don't use with other drugs
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I know a lot of people whose minds were ruined by psychedelics. It’s something you will see when you spend time in those communities. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it’s common.
This type of empty fear mongering comment is unhelpful at best. It's a McDonalds of a comment. What's a lot of people? Why are psychedelics so special compared to anything else (sugar, Facebook, gambling). "It doesn't happen to everyone, but it's common" - what does this even mean? "Common" based on what criterion? How should our behaviour as a society change based on your comment?
It seems the design of this study is questionable. Since they couldn't blind the psylocybin group from the effect, they gave 1mg daily to the SSRI group. Basically it's a study that compares psylocybin with SSRI + psylocybin micro dosing. They claim that the micro dose don't have an effect, but there is not a large body of evidence to support that claim.
Patients were assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive two separate doses of 25 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily placebo (psilocybin group) or two separate doses of 1 mg of psilocybin 3 weeks apart plus 6 weeks of daily oral escitalopram (escitalopram group); all the patients received psychological support.
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I get it - a drug is a drug - and like all drugs I am not saying that psychedelics are a cure all for all people. What I am saying is that it is depressing that we are only just seeing reports from formal sources that psychedelics could be useful for some people.
I'm pretty sure there were formal studies decades ago showing potential use and positive outcomes (I think Stamets books from the 90s reference some formal studies, but i could be wrong). But like a lot of medical research, it never progressed to a market state. I think that's especially true in this case due to the legal classification around it.
Here in Europe someone gave politicians the idea that they could control a virus. So now we have arbitrary sets of restrictions applied when case numbers of coronavirus go up. If case numbers go down again, they get relaxed. If they go up, add more restrictions are added until they go down. The restrictions are follow the case numbers, but we have convinced ourselves it is the other way around. It's a modern day witc…
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This is my experience too. I’ve been microdosing about 1.3mg on and off during lockdown. The effects are subtle and hard to describe but I’d say it’s like ‘opening your mind’ or reframing your point of view on things. Definitely different from other drugs which just pump you with serotonin
It temporarily breaks you out of your established mental framework. It's as if your raw consciousness viewing the world without any of the filters that we all use to tune out the noise. That's why the experience can be overwhelming and chaotic and it's useful to be in a safe place with a trip sitter. I think the magic comes when you discover that something your default mindset was filtering out as noise is actually s…
Regarding microdosing (as described by the OP) this begs the question: Are there perhaps unwanted side effects for running your brain on permanent "debug mode"?
I feel like there will also people that have way too many prejudices towards these kinds of "drugs" because that's simply how we learned it. "Don't take drugs kids". These studies are very helpful especially when shared over general media, but the consumption has to be supervised and controlled to not have overdoses and ruin the whole reputation again. It should be treated like any other anti-depressant, since they a…
At least on Internet forums, the trend seems to be the opposite. Many commenters are very pro-psychedelic but anti-medication these days.
It’s important to remember that psilocybin may be promising, but it’s still not a great long-term treatment option. Not only have they not been studied beyond a few doses, but we have a lot of anecdotal evidence that excessive and sustained consumption of psychedelics seems to lead people into increasingly weird thoughts.
It seems a little bit can open people’s minds in ways that make therapy more effective, but too much openness to new ideas can start to open the door to increasingly weird thoughts: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...
Of course we don’t have any controlled trials about long-term psychedelic use and likely won’t any time soon due to the ethical concerns, but it’s worth mentioning that these are not a magic bullet for sustained depression treatment. Traditional therapy is still the way to go.