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Not simultaneously I hope.. that sounds like it would be a rough ride
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.
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CBT, EMDR and SSRIs are effective, empirically-supported treatments for PTSD. For people who don't benefit from established treatments, psilocybin is just one of dozens of different potential treatments currently being researched.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?cond=Posttraumatic%20Stres...
Psilocybin might be an effective treatment for some patients with PTSD, but there's a dangerous hype bubble surrounding psychedelics that simply doesn't match up to the evidence. We need to be extremely careful about generalising from anecdotal reports and small unblinded trials. Psilocybin might be a huge advance, it might be only marginally more effective than current treatments, or the risks might substantially outweigh the benefits in real clinical populations - we just don't know yet.
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.
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Schizophrenics, as a rule, will have a psychotic break before they turn 45. Psychoactive substances, and high doses of psychedelics, will trigger breaks from reality earlier than they might otherwise happen. Stress, caffeine, trauma, or significant excitement can also be triggers, but psychedelic drug trips are a reliable trigger, and in conjunction with other effects, can spiral a "bad trip" into a much worse trauma.
Another 3 to 4% of the population have significant mental disorders, ranging from those we know, to those we can observe but don't have a good diagnostic criteria for. In these cases, it can be very detrimental to use psychoactive substances generally, and psychedelics in particular.
It's crucial to visit with a doctor to rule out the likelihood that you're in the roughly one in twenty people that might have a significant negative reaction to psychedelics. Some of the people in that camp might be safe from harm later in life. I know a person with significant family history of schizophrenia and earlier life indicators he was at risk, who then started using mushrooms in his 50s and seems very stable. He talked things over with his doctors before deciding to take the risk - apparently after you turn 45 it's incredibly rare, even with significant trauma and stressors, for schizophrenic breaks to occur, so if that's your main threat, it might be safe to engage in psychedelics when you're older.
If you're not in the high risk camp, you should still have at least one frank discussion with your doctor about pitfalls, and do a metric ton of personal research about any substance you intend to use. It can be a profound and wonderful departure from the norm, or a mildly unpleasant experience, or a stressful confrontation with your inner demons, depending on the dose and preparation.
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.
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've had similar experiences on mushrooms (and high doses of marijuana too, to a lesser extent). It feels like a mix of intense awe and the the satisfactory "click" of finally understanding something to me. I'm quite sure it's more of an emotional state than "fundamental truth", or anything like that, but it sure is powerful. Very easy to understand how mythology can build around the stuff.
Mythology, also procedure. If I am a member of a tribe that uses ceremonial ayhuasca at regular intervals, I will build my relationships around that cycle, so the feeling of awe and understanding corresponds with an actual personal breakthrough or meaningful group event. That's the 10x use case
It might be, or it might be a ritual that has no meaningful benefit. There's a huge amount of hype around psychedelics, but extremely limited evidence with a very high risk of bias.
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.
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And to the original commenter: Thank you for sharing your story, I am very sorry for your loss.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Around 1% of people have schizophrenia. This holds over a lifetime - there's a structural, unavoidable component to the person's neural wiring or physiology that will result in a schizophrenic break. Prior to the break, they may seem more or less normal, but after, they will experience deficits in cognition and perception, and may have significant barriers to living a normal life. Schizophrenics, as a rule, will have…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don’t need to be a doctor or therapist to let people know that some people can have very bad reactions and it’s not all roses. I see the same thing happening in people smoke marijuana where any claim that it can have harmful effects for some or with abuse is met with “yeah well what do you know, i read this other thing and i never had issues myself”.
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…
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It can also induce a psychological break and/or acute schizophrenia and/or lasting distortions of perception, so maybe cool it with the unwarranted medical advice
Cool it with your moral authority.
While the analogies are often useful, everyone reading HN comments should be very aware and very skeptical of just how often computer/tech people rely on computer/tech analogies to understand things that are fundamentally not computers/tech. It is very very easy for smart people with functionally specific jobs/hobbies/ways of thinking to see all reality through that narrow window. It often leads to important details…
I'm convinced this is actually a symptom of using psychedelics. Ironically, using quite a lot of anec-data, there definitely seems to be a correlation between use of psychedelics among myself/peers and how "suggestible" people are. I've seen a lot of folks go really deep in conspiracy theories (regardless of the political/social positioning), strong religious beliefs, or similar such lines-of-thought that require a "…