311–320 of 397 posts
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I don't want people self-medicating with psilocybin, just like I don't want people self-medicating with SSRIs. Which is more dangerous?
Definitely psilocybin. For instance, if you take psilocybin and then spend some time in a cow slaughterhouse house, you might go crazy. The same wouldn’t be true of SSRIs.
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If that's true, I'm confused how this is a "double-blind, randomized, controlled trial"? Also, what's up with drug studies always having such a low sample size? Is it really that hard to find people who'd volunteer to get free drugs?
TBH there's no way to have a double blind trial of drugs like psilocybin (Scott Alexander has written a little bit about this [1] with respect to controlled trials for MDMA), for any reasonable dose size of psilocybin. Both the patient and the person administering the drug will become very aware, very quickly, if they're in the psilocybin group. 1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/05/is-pharma-research-wor...
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That's not clear cut. There clearly exist plenty of combinations of "situation + physician" where this is not the best thing to do. To claim otherwise may as well be religious dogma.
At the very least, consulting with one or more physicians gives more data points than you would otherwise have. If your goal is to know more, having other opinions is pretty fundamental.
I'm not a nut screaming "It's all a scam, don't participate in modern healthcare!". Just noting that it's complicated, and the idea that going to a physician is always the best option should receive more scrutiny, because it's not black and white.
2021: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
2022: https://www.jwatch.org/na55225/2022/08/16/antidepressants-wo...
2023: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
In any case, I believe that ADHD, Depression and many other “umbrella” psychiatric diagnoses are being overdiagnosed, much like “hysteria” was for hundreds of years (eg 1 in 4 middle-aged women is on antidepressants now, and the opioid epidemic in men was largely exacerbated by the pharma industry, as has the overdiagnosis of ADHD prescribing amphetamines to kids).
To be fair, the actual incidence of phychiatric conditions from ADHD to autism to depression has increased, as well as autoimmune disorders, diabetes etc. although not as much as the pharma industry wants us to believe. It could very well be the result of upstream changes in nutrition (eg wild increases in sugars like fructose across the board, antibiotic overuse on factory farms, buildup of microplastics everywhere etc.), and to a large degree society (including loneliness, dating, relationships, work, etc) and medicating them downstream (eg with amphetamines or opioids) is just a bandaid.
Late stage capitalism has had a direct role in exacerbating this. For example, the tech industry (which many on HN are involved in) has redefined dating, relationships, job searches, political discourse, and much more. All of these affect how people interact. A seminal book even back in 2001 was “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam, who noticed Americans aren’t attending communal activities like they used to. Corporations have co-opted many movements (like women’s lib) to make people work harder, neglect their kids, eat unhealthy food, become obese, develop diabetes, lose sleep, and now be part of the gig economy etc.
I like to show this Cadillac commercial from 2014 as a great example of the corporate brainwashing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
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That's not clear cut. There clearly exist plenty of combinations of "situation + physician" where this is not the best thing to do. To claim otherwise may as well be religious dogma.
I'm sorry, but how is trusting a person who dedicated 10+ years of their life studying/practicing this, and relying on rigorous safety and effectiveness research of drugs religious dogma? Are you sure you know what religion is? Are you sure you know what science is? Are you just trolling?
Do you not know anyone who has spent many years of their life doing something and are still rather poor at it? You probably do. You may even have such a skill yourself - I certainly do!
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If that's true, I'm confused how this is a "double-blind, randomized, controlled trial"? Also, what's up with drug studies always having such a low sample size? Is it really that hard to find people who'd volunteer to get free drugs?
TBH there's no way to have a double blind trial of drugs like psilocybin (Scott Alexander has written a little bit about this [1] with respect to controlled trials for MDMA), for any reasonable dose size of psilocybin. Both the patient and the person administering the drug will become very aware, very quickly, if they're in the psilocybin group. 1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/05/is-pharma-research-wor...
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Thanks for sharing this, you’re not the only one. I have a close friend who tried LSD as a last resort to get the best of his severe depression and suicidal thoughts (after being on SSRIs for his entire life) and just one session completely removed his suicidal thoughts for months . After this experience he repeats this whenever he feels the dark thoughts are coming back and it always curbs them down almost completel…
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…
Which is not to say that psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, Mescaline, Psilocybin) are not powerful stuff and that they allow for mental states that would be unlivable otherwise (clinically that would be schizophrenia or something like it). I do believe that their therapeutical and recreational benefits do outweigh the drawbacks though. There must be a better way to handle this than Schedule-1'ing the whole bunch.
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…
For folks that are interested in anecdotes about psychedelics, I recommend reading Erowid expertise vaults as what gets volunteered here is very narrow and not representative of the population as a whole. I would know, as my psychedelic mega dose stories are very different from this and also completely unique to me. I’ve done 500ug of LSD and it was great fun. I scheduled a day off to rest ahead of time and was back…
shrooms feel kind of weak until you get to mega dose territory
I wouldn't recommend a shroom mega dose either, it feels too chaotic to take anything away from
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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…
8 grams in one sitting? Im not even so worried about the psychological response but even a gram can give me extreme stomach pain and nausea that ruins the whole thing.