Live data from Hacker News

Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

nytimes.com

221–230 of 317 posts

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see where you're coming from, how do you address the healthcare gap? I agree with personal freedom of choice and choosing your own risk tolerance, but as a society we collectively pay for the healthcare costs of those who fall through the cracks and go too far. This problem isn't unique to drugs in any way, we face the same problem with e.g. excessive alcohol use, and there the problem is also largely unsolve…

It isn't fair to begin with. A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care. In worst case we just triage. But this would definitely be something the society would be allowed to regulate: The society can say 'you can take any drug you want but if you take x you become second in line' That would be transparent and fair but we don't even have this type of discussion. And while I get Ritalin from my d…

> A athletic person gets health care, a fat person gets health care.

And the fat person may well have a lower lifetime total healthcare cost.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#222

They've had them in Holland decades ago. Tried them once, was the craziest movie experience I've ever had and didn't feel like repeating this ever again.

From a programmer's perspective, I think everyone should try them once. It's like commenting out a portion of the code to see the effects as part of debugging. It's neat to be like, "Oh, if you just turn off the image stabilization, the walls look like waves, and then the pattern matcher takes over and goes crazy."

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#223
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: SSRIs were transformative for my depression. Side effects were minor and manageable (eg, Wellbutrin worked well to prevent any sexual dysfunction). I was on them for several years and had no problem tapering off. My understanding is that this is a pretty typical experience. Rhetoric like this was actively harmful in dissuading me for years from trying what ended up being by far the most effective treatm…

Same. I'm a big time psychedelic advocate, and relatively frequent consumer. Prozac actually saved my life. Psychedelics since have certainly enhanced it, but they could not accomplish what prozac did. I can go into more detail if interested.

SNRIs nearly killed me and SSRIs were not much better. LSD saved me. So there is some anecdata.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can fairly easily have a very difficult experience with pot too. I have way worse and stronger experiences with pot than with mushrooms/LSD. Cannabis is quite a powerful drug for many. A lot more powerful than most "hard drugs" like stimulants, empatogens, opioids or sedatives, which don't "mind fuck" at all unless you do them days on end or ridiculous dosages.

Comparing high dose THC to light-moderate dose shrooms/acid isn't a totally straight comparison. No one is getting ego-death and dimensional transcendence from ripping dabs of THC concentrate all night. Just lots of paranoia and distress.

Nothing wrong with experiences like what are called ego-death and dimensional transcendence if it doesn't involve paranoia or distress. Especially with dissociatives these are often the goal, and are quite pleasant.

The THC induced paranoia and distress are usually due to effects like time-dilation, memory impairment, depersonalization, thought loops etc, which I'd put into more or less same category as you get from psychedelics or dissociatives.

Plenty of bad trips with quite low doses of THC too: https://erowid.org/experiences/exp.php?ID=70884

I think the "hardness" of different drugs, especially in how strong the effect is, is mostly a cultural and legal artifact that doesn't really correlate that much with the actual experience.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#225
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing high dose THC to light-moderate dose shrooms/acid isn't a totally straight comparison. No one is getting ego-death and dimensional transcendence from ripping dabs of THC concentrate all night. Just lots of paranoia and distress.

'ego-death and dimensional transcendence' and 'lots of paranoia and distress' just sound like different framings of what could be remarkably similar psychic states.

Having been in both, they are worlds apart. Sure, those descriptors might be tossed around, but that's a short commming of English to properly convey experiences.

Its distressing to spill your coffee. It's also distressing to have your house burn down. The difference is large.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#226
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of the following is not believed by most Christians? > That God kinda-became human to "sacrifice" himself (with no loss, got up 3 days later to live forever, nothing was sacrificed) in order to forgive the sins of people, but only if they believe it

All of it? Specifically, the 'kind-of' - most Christians beleive Jesus was fully human/mortal. 'with no loss'- most Christians beleive Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice, not only his mortal life, bit also profound and incomphrensible suffering (don't forget the events in Gethsemane, not just at the hands of the Sanhedrin and the Romans). Also his sacrifice went far beyond forgiving sins of beleivers. It included the…

1. ok, so the word 'kinda' is not an essential part of the doctrine, got it.

2. 'profound and incomprehensible suffering' - what is Jesus supposed to have suffered which is different from many other humans who have been betrayed, tortured and killed? Whatever you think it is, it appears to be extra-biblical. The Gethsemane quote is just "my soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death". Allowing for loss in translation this is an expression of suffering well within human experience.

3. 'the vast majority do beleive that there are effects for everyone, regardless of belief in this life or the next' Sorry, no. The vast majority of modern Christians belong to churches for which 'sola fide' is not just an essential part of their theology, but the foundation of their existence.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#227
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the goal is to evolve an entity which can pursue light independently, why compromise this goal by "relocat[ing] an entity that was very far from the light to be much closer to it"? And if the goal is just to allow as many entities as possible to enjoy the light, why not relocate them all to be close to it? Why not save all of them into the next generation?

You know that small difference in the initial conditions of an entity can play a large role in the path it follows, and you further know that an entity which is spawned into a position where the light is very faint is less likely to be able to pursue it. You sometimes put new creations in which you have much confidence into initial conditions where they are very unlikely to survive, as a means of testing them (perhap…

You seem to have wandered off the justification of God's behavior as part of a coherent mission, and you are simply describing the characteristics of God which you believe in, but which many people with other beliefs have cogently described as illogical, cruel or anti-humanistic, in sci-fi terms.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I'm a big time psychedelic advocate, and relatively frequent consumer. Prozac actually saved my life. Psychedelics since have certainly enhanced it, but they could not accomplish what prozac did. I can go into more detail if interested.

Please do, I’m genuinely interested in your experience because, in my experience (!!) with family and acquaintances, I’ve only ever see Prozac as a part of a turn for the worse. I do acknowledge I might not be aware of cases where it was neutral or positive, however. What was your experience like? And do you still take it?

Ditto with family. One antidepressant led to another, and then to another, and on to deeper depression, suicide attempts and more. Finally landed through the prescription pill grapevine on Xanax, which by far, without any comparison whatsoever, was the most persistently destructive and frightening. Like dropping a nuclear bomb on the whole family, for years and years.

I don't mean to bring other classes of drugs in, only to note that it is _very common_ for someone to go in for one thing, find it doesn't work, and then to start tweaking / adding / combining in an attempt to find a solution, and that's where the real problems often live.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#229
post #9
post #3

What's missing from this article is that people are reaching for this because the standard medical treatment for these disorders, SSRIs, are pretty terrible. In the mild case, the common side effects are blunting of your emotions and sexual dysfunction. So you don't have panic attacks, but you live in a gray fog and your relationships suffer. In the worst case, they cause suicidal ideation. Psychedelics also have psy…

As far as the risks, I have a friend who's been "microdosing" acid and shrooms for a while, and recently had a legitimate psychotic break, thinking all of her life-long friends were in some kind of Truman Show-esque grand conspiracy against her. She ditched town and cut us all off for over a month. I can't say the drug use caused it, but I and the rest of her friends are of the opinion that it contributed (we all hav…

Honest Q: How much weed does she smoke? Because if she smokes a considerable amount then that is certainly more likely than the psychedelics to be a factor.

Re: Psychedelic Mushrooms Hit the Market in Oregon

#230
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that small difference in the initial conditions of an entity can play a large role in the path it follows, and you further know that an entity which is spawned into a position where the light is very faint is less likely to be able to pursue it. You sometimes put new creations in which you have much confidence into initial conditions where they are very unlikely to survive, as a means of testing them (perhap…

You seem to have wandered off the justification of God's behavior as part of a coherent mission, and you are simply describing the characteristics of God which you believe in, but which many people with other beliefs have cogently described as illogical, cruel or anti-humanistic, in sci-fi terms.

The mission remains to develop a cohort of light seeking entities. But this is all a metaphor. I cannot hope to comprehend, much less explain, the intricacies of the situation.

And if you have an argument to make, make it. Don't just say "other people made arguments, and trust me: they were really good".

Post reply on HN