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Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

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Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#241

Post by carapace »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #225
carapace wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an anti-drug puritan. (That would be so so hypocritical.) I think the criminalization of e.g. MDMA and the others is deeply foolish and has done a lot of harm. (To make an understatement. Frankly, I think you should be able to get clean liquid acid or MDMA at the local pharmacy. Why not? "Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do with my brain chemistry if I'm not hurting anyone?", eh?) I don't want to take…

Agreed! (I want to note that I was replying to this specifically: “ I'm just against using them in therapy. It's irresponsible.” It was a rather crystallized statement, but we clearly see nuances here :) I take it that we both fully agree that drugs must not overshadow therapy, and that there are great temptations for shortcuts.)

You're totally right, I went a little overboard there, sorry.

Well met! :-)

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#242

Post by defterGoose »

carapace wrote: post #164

Set and setting. The drug just rattles your cage. I quoted Leary on 'set and setting' the other day on an LSD history thread and mentioned Leonard Orr used to get great results with nothing more exotic than oxygen, so rather than repeat that ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21264919 ) I'll say this: If you have a modality of therapy that works, it will work without the drug (which, at best, serves as an amplifi…

>a little 'shroom tea can be great fun.

You go out of your way to say you're not against drugs per se, but based on this statement and I can say that your attitude towards psychedelics is probably antithetical to their therapeutic potential. Having used mushrooms only once (admittedly in a larger-than-probably-responsible dose), I can say that viewing the trip as a recreational experience is misguided at best and damaging or dangerous at worst.

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#243

Post by foobar_ »

From what I can say from experience - Psychedelics make you aware of the internal sensation of the body a lot. So smoking actually gives you a negative feeling as opposed to the usual feeling. This negative reinforcement is really useful for kicking the habit.

Same with alcohol or even meat products in particular. You can feel becoming stupid eating those. I think microdosing for 30 days is an effective way of kicking off habits or forming new healthy habits.

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#244

Post by mikelyons »

avodonosov wrote: post #139
mikelyons wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comments like this are effective against growing your understanding of reality. Unless I misunderstood and you were meaning to say that psychedelic experiences can cause you to face your own death and have glimpses of enlightenment, then yes, but the metaphor will be lost on most people.

You should ease up on mushrooms. To come up with such an interpretation... I mean literally, guillotine heals headache 100%, but that's not a sufficient reason to practice it. The same with psychedelic mushrooms, even if they work against smoking, it's not necceserily a sufficient reason to use them.

How do you know that decapitation "heals" a headache? That sounds clever ... you're not bad or wrong for this, it's extremely common and I am guilty of it myself. But I'm pointing to the fact that you don't know that.

"even if they work against smoking, it's not necceserily (sic) a sufficient reason to use them"

This I can respect and agree with ^

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#245

Post by _lacroix »

carapace wrote: post #196
anon192831 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just hitting the vacuum tube. If one just trips for the sake of tripping, then there is not much to be gained except for several hours of happy serotonin hits in the brain. However, what we know about psychs is that there is a huge release of BDNF (brain derived neurotrophic factor) and a shutdown of the DMN. The BDNF enables a ton of new neural connections to be built. It's like you have about 6-8 hours of…

> So it makes sense to prepare for several weeks to receive therapy and to outline goals and memories to revisit to process them during this heightened period. Then when the drug wears off, you're still left with the new neural connectivity and perspectives and the other benefits that were derived from the session. The you're describing sounds great . All I'm saying is, a sweat lodge (for example) can take the place…

Yes, I would be very curious as to your sources for this. I did medically supervised psychedelic treatment; I found the setting rather unpleasant because it took place in a doctor's office and one of the many anxieties I was treating was a lifelong phobia of germs and anything medical. This was a far cry from a sweat lodge or from recreational psychedelic experiences I've had with friends in nature etc. I did not enjoy all of my trips and some were hardly even reflective experiences because they caused me so much anxiety in the moment, yet I got massive psychological benefits from them nonetheless.

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#246

Post by RandomTisk »

avodonosov wrote: post #229
RandomTisk wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a challenge for you: Without google or other external sources, what do YOU think are the top 2 or 3 downsides of using them? Do you even know?

I know cases of very tragic results of psychedelic use. So if you think to enlight me on childish bullshit like "the war on drugs is a conspiracy against us, in reality, drugs are very good for people" - if I was some 25 years younger I could consider that, but not today. If you believe there are no downsides, FYI, around a century ago heroin was marketed as a "no downsides" cough suppressant. With time (very soon) t…

Let's be careful here, and use precise words. Yes, they are powerful, and they are to be feared, but they are not what you think they are. They're on Schedule 1 because the people banning them had an extremely narrow view on what they were capable of, as you seem to, about what they're good for.

Schedule 1 says something to effect of "No medicinal value". That is a lie, as much as 2+2=5. It's becoming increasingly clear through (slow) research and many anecdotal reports that the knee-jerk reaction most people (including myself) had to natural mushrooms is just flat out wrong. Every month we get more results about people having the worst parts of their lives changed, almost miraculously, almost as if God created a substance for healing and called it good, and for Humans to use. And then Luddites come along "drug bad always, God wrong about creating and calling it good, man ban drug it hurt man once in some circumstance" and the same Luddites leave a swath of suffering in their ignorant wake.

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#247

Post by tudelo »

carapace wrote: post #199
monktastic1 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hypnosis is so effective for quitting smoking, how do you explain that studies fail to find much effect? E.g., this 2019 meta-analysis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31198991 From the conclusion: "If a benefit is present, current evidence suggests the benefit is small at most." The effect size and certainty with mushrooms seem much greater.

Yeah, I have no idea what those folks were doing. I know I can get the result because I did, back in the day. I'm not a licensed hypnotherapist but I went through an exploratory phase in my 20's which included experimentation with hypnosis. It was easy to develop "profound" hypnotic phenomenon like arm catalepsy (your arm is basically asleep, if you feel it with your other hand it feels like someone else's arm, etc.)…

You seem to have a supreme self confidence that most people do not. So you think that you 'hypnotized' the person to gradually stop smoking over a month from a sort session? You have some 'magical' powers. Sorry for the skepticism...

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#249

Post by Smithalicious »

UglyToad wrote: post #38
SamBam wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my political position it’s personally insulting that institutions such as the DEA and FDA tell me what I can and cannot put into my body. I'm of two minds about that. While I agree that I ought to have full autonomy over my own body, at the same time the state has a vested interest in not allowing its population to fall victim to life-destroying drugs, especially when those drugs target the most vulnerable mem…

You might be interested to learn that heroin is actually quite a safe drug and safer to self-administer than paracetamol [0]. While you're right that the state has a duty to protect its citizens the war on drugs, all drugs, has the opposite effect. Drugs are a public health problem not a criminal one. People are taking things like heroin primarily due to other factors in their life, which the state should address. Fo…

> the negative impacts of heroin all arise from its criminalisation

This is a really, really simplistic view. Heroin will build up tolerance and withdrawals can kill you, or are at least extremely unpleasant. It's only safe as long as you have access to an ever increasing supply of heroin.

I think your example is kind of unfortunate because a lot of drugs are actually quite safe, but not the very addictive, tolerance-building, terrible withdrawal kind (opioids, benzos, alcohol). Magic mushrooms are, of course, none of those three things.

Re: Magic Mushrooms Can Help Smokers Kick the Habit

#250

Post by carapace »

harshreality wrote: post #231
carapace wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an anti-drug puritan. (That would be so so hypocritical.) I think the criminalization of e.g. MDMA and the others is deeply foolish and has done a lot of harm. (To make an understatement. Frankly, I think you should be able to get clean liquid acid or MDMA at the local pharmacy. Why not? "Who the fuck are you to tell me what to do with my brain chemistry if I'm not hurting anyone?", eh?) I don't want to take…

But a lot of the time psychoactive drugs can remove psychological barriers that would otherwise prevent constructive participation in therapy. Not everyone needs it, but judging from how many people are in more-or-less-perpetual therapy, I think you might be undervaluing psychoactive drugs in that context.

> I think you might be undervaluing psychoactive drugs in that context.

I can only assure you I'm not. Your brain can already make all the psychoactive drugs you need.

These chemicals (LSD, Psilcybin) are like electroshock therapy, just a little more subtle. There are more precise and/or delicate modalities that are effective. I don't think it's too controversial to believe that we should concentrate on the precise and delicate therapy, eh?

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