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Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

medscape.com

291–300 of 397 posts

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#291
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did 3 sessions of 8 grams in silent darkness for 3 weekends in a row and that basically "beat the devil out of me" as they say - it was very very difficult, and a lot of work, but well worth it.I've only felt the "brain haze" (I call it) once since then, I took a gram and went for a long walk in the forest, back to no haze. It's been about 7/8 months and I can feel the "haze" building in my mind again, so I plan to…

Totally agree. The variance between species can be dramatic! 2.5 grams of Golden teacher was a standard trip, vs 0.5 grams of PES Amazonian was enough to send my friend into a full blown “awakening” (physical responses and everything). It’s fascinating how they can hit different. Also important to keep in mind the same dose can hit someone different each time depending on surrounding life conditions. I’m a big believ…

> The variance between species can be dramatic! 2.5 grams of Golden teacher was a standard trip, vs 0.5 grams of PES Amazonian was enough to send my friend into a full blown “awakening” (physical responses and everything).

Hallucinogenic experiences are rarely the same. So you can use the same amount of the same batch 3 different times and have 3 totally different experiences.

Some people claim that you can control experiences by contolling "set and setting." I don't buy even that; all we can really say is that the experiences are not consistent between trips and we don't know why.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you take it in a controlled environment like the study suggests? Every time serious conversation of medical progress comes up, it's polluted by naysayers with anecdata about how they took it while raving beside a live volcano. We need to give psychedelics a fair chance, and sure after we can discount them. The article suggests at scale there is potential

In the pre-modern world people had a very different relationship to death and there wasn’t anything like anxiety as its experienced today. Psychedelics are essentially an attempt to bring someone back to a more “authentic” experience of life before technological controls settled in. Perhaps its better to take the chance? I think so, but I want others to recognize it as a genuine risk that is truly unpredictable and n…

> and there wasn’t anything like anxiety as its experienced today

You know that how exactly? We really do not have even remotely enough data to be able to make such boldly absurd claims.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#293
post #21

Psilocybin saved my life. I'm no longer suicidal, I'm no longer a practicing alcoholic, and outside of a few things here and there, I'm generally at peace with my life. I cannot express how grateful I am for psilocybin.

I'm want to try them. I figure growing them myself is the safest way to go. Got 10 bags of Uncle Ben's brown rice growing mycelium right now.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just consider, if it's so powerful in adjusting his brain, it's probably equally powerful in adjusting anybody's brain, and what if your brain doesn't need adjustment? there's no reason to think it's "idempotent" so to speak. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idempotence is the property of certain operations in mathematics and computer science whereby they can be applied multiple times without changing the result beyond…

I suspect there’s a lot of self selection at work already. The vast majority of people don’t jump straight into psilocybin and LSD, they progress to them by taking softer drugs like alcohol and cannabis. I think a lot of people who don’t need “adjustment” figure out drugs don’t do much for them and stop before they take the intense psychedelics, or they figure it out at lower doses and stop before they take the inten…

Are you saying the claim that psychedelics are effective treatment for depression, PTSD, addiction etc. are simply because those who try it suffer those conditions? What about the part where they say it works effectively? Because I don't think alcohol or cannabis are claimed to be an effective treatment for these conditions in the same way that psychedelics are. The idea that it works seems irrelevant to your conclusion.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#295

Ok like most of you I’ve taken psychedelic drugs. I’ve had bad experiences sure, but I’m fine now. The issue is that what people generally say, like, “oh sometimes you need to encounter your demons,” maybe that will be temporarily traumatizing—in general people recover from that. The real issues are…more complex. More complex than any diagnoses in the DSM can cover. The brain is very complicated, and everyone’s brain…

Yeah, maybe don't take "very high doses". I've not done that. And not had any seriously bad experiences. Maybe like everything else is all about moderation?

Very high doses used to be my jam. I have no real way to tell what the actual dosages were with LSD, but anywhere from 5-10 blotters was pretty typical for me, and had many positive experiences this way. Conversely, my 2 worst experiences were 2 tabs and 1.5, with the second being one of my least fond memories from my life.

I wrote out a lot more detail for this comment, but pruned to just attempt to make these points 1) generalization here is (generally) not very helpful and also 2) I've come to believe "set, setting, & dosage" are typically listed in that order because that is the order of importance.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My suspicion has always been the majority of adverse reactions have related to improper dosing. Anyone can have a horrible response with too high of a dose yet with self-medicating theres no sure way to know the amount of medicine you’ve ingested even if weighing.

Rigorously determining the proper effective and safe dose is part of the approval process.

Of course if it’s pharmaceutical.

People were alluding to the risks of self-medicating I was referring to that.

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#297
post #21

Psilocybin saved my life. I'm no longer suicidal, I'm no longer a practicing alcoholic, and outside of a few things here and there, I'm generally at peace with my life. I cannot express how grateful I am for psilocybin.

I'm want to try them. I figure growing them myself is the safest way to go. Got 10 bags of Uncle Ben's brown rice growing mycelium right now.

If you are in the sf bay area, you can just go get what seems to be a variety of high quality, and some tested and stamped (Netherlands) mushroom products at Church of the Zide Door

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people here are speaking from experience. I trust my own judgment over some knob in the FDA that is steeped in a culture of drug control.

> Many people here are speaking from experience. I trust my own judgment over some knob in the FDA that is steeped in a culture of drug control. Let me paraphrase this: Many people here are parroting stuff based on a sample size of 1, who lived to tell the tale. You trust your own judgement based on those people before the rigorous safety and effectiveness studies for the FDA, on a whim that the FDA approves or rejec…

Notice how you downgraded your confident claim of knowledge to a tentative question.

What's going on homie?

Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison

#299

Ok like most of you I’ve taken psychedelic drugs. I’ve had bad experiences sure, but I’m fine now. The issue is that what people generally say, like, “oh sometimes you need to encounter your demons,” maybe that will be temporarily traumatizing—in general people recover from that. The real issues are…more complex. More complex than any diagnoses in the DSM can cover. The brain is very complicated, and everyone’s brain…

> Ok like most of you I’ve taken psychedelic drugs. I would like to see some actual data because my assumption has always been that most people have never tried any. I personally have not had any. I have always subscribed to the slippery slope theory of vice.

I literally take psychedelics once every few months to keep myself healthy and avoiding the dopamine chasing that I otherwise slip into over time. Shockingly not all drugs are the same, or even that similar and the propaganda about drug use escalation is, I'm sorry, silly.
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