Funny, psilocybin has been largely detrimental to the mental health of everyone I know.
sometimes it amplifies preexisting issues and forces you to deal with them, at least that's what they did for me
Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
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Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#322I’m pretty sure getting repeatedly punched in the head would “best SSRIs” in a long term comparison too. Hasn’t the entire body of research that gave us SSRIs been exposed as fraud a couple of years ago?
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
'great fun' seems like a weird way to describe a 500ug trip. Did you have some tolerance before this, and do you have very high confidence that the dosage is accurate?
No tolerance, and yes the dosage was accurate. I picked “great fun” as a description as a shorthand because, while I could write more about it, it had little to no net positive or negative impacts on my mental health. For the purposes of this discussion, “Great fun” is kind of meant to communicate that the story is neither a warning or a recommendation regarding depression or any other mental health condition.
500µg is an immense dose, unless you have tolerance. Tabs usually have much less than the claimed amount. What was the source and form that makes you think 500µg is accurate? When it's 250µg or more, it's so overwhelming that many people don't have recollections from the trip after some point.
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could compare against other psychedelics. I’d be interested in that.
Yeah. Especially a comparison with LSD seems interesting. However, if both perform similarly, this could either mean they both work or they both don't work.
There are many hints at psilocybin not being different to LSD, some researchers opted for psilocybin for trials just because it was less known to the wide audience and had less cultural baggage than LSD. There are some comparisons, e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-023-01607-2
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#325Earlier 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…
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.
My friend once described to me how mushrooms differ from alcolhol: With mushroom you get the hangover first and then the high. With alcohol it is the opposite.
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
No tolerance, and yes the dosage was accurate. I picked “great fun” as a description as a shorthand because, while I could write more about it, it had little to no net positive or negative impacts on my mental health. For the purposes of this discussion, “Great fun” is kind of meant to communicate that the story is neither a warning or a recommendation regarding depression or any other mental health condition.
500µg is an immense dose, unless you have tolerance. Tabs usually have much less than the claimed amount. What was the source and form that makes you think 500µg is accurate? When it's 250µg or more, it's so overwhelming that many people don't have recollections from the trip after some point.
I didn’t write an extended trip report of a massive dose of LSD because this isn’t erowid and the details of the trip itself aren’t relevant. I brought it up as an example to contrast the post I responded to, as my experience was different regarding long-term effects
I was very aware of and confident about the dosage and I had not had any psychedelics for months previous, so tolerance was impossible (also no medication or other drugs etc)
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You" can learn to steer your mind by choosing which of these thoughts to capture and dwell on, by monitoring them. There is voluminous writing in the area of monastic spiritually about this. On the one hand, they affirm that these thoughts aren't chosen, using the vocabulary of sinful thoughts introduced by demons. But it's also clear that change is possible through prayer/meditation (not exactly identical to modern…
I tend to agree that change is possible and you can learn to steer, but that too is no choice.
I believe that our minds are much like Large Language Models. Our brains put together and combine and mix up sentences that on average have some benefit to us. We speculate to explore possible outcomes. We practice saying sentences within our heads and then explore their possible consequencees.
It is a random (but not totally random of course) process where one thought gives rise to new ones. I think that depression means being in an indirect loop of negative thoughts which amplify each other. Phychedelics might be a way to break out of such loops. But, I'm just speculating here of course.
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
> 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? They try to make for no comorbidities and and for MDD that is pretty rare. It also means that we’re often studying rare configurations compared to those commonly seen in actual practice. Statistics doesn’t like confounding elements and humans are very confounding. So eithe…
Just to add one minor detail to this very good explanation: even if you could find 500 participants matching the criteria instead of 50, you wouldn’t want to “waste” all of them on your first study design.
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
500µg is an immense dose, unless you have tolerance. Tabs usually have much less than the claimed amount. What was the source and form that makes you think 500µg is accurate? When it's 250µg or more, it's so overwhelming that many people don't have recollections from the trip after some point.
I didn’t write an extended trip report of a massive dose of LSD because this isn’t erowid and the details of the trip itself aren’t relevant. I brought it up as an example to contrast the post I responded to, as my experience was different regarding long-term effects I was very aware of and confident about the dosage and I had not had any psychedelics for months previous, so tolerance was impossible (also no medicati…
I was just pointing out (mostly to other users who read this) that the alleged dose is immense and would be overwhelming for most people. Wasn't questioning your experience, only asking out of curiosity about the kind of source and form that makes you confident about the dose.
Re: Psilocybin bests SSRI for major depression in first long-term comparison
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn’t write an extended trip report of a massive dose of LSD because this isn’t erowid and the details of the trip itself aren’t relevant. I brought it up as an example to contrast the post I responded to, as my experience was different regarding long-term effects I was very aware of and confident about the dosage and I had not had any psychedelics for months previous, so tolerance was impossible (also no medicati…
I was just pointing out (mostly to other users who read this) that the alleged dose is immense and would be overwhelming for most people. Wasn't questioning your experience, only asking out of curiosity about the kind of source and form that makes you confident about the dose.
> source and form that makes you confident about the dose
Volumetric dosing from a vial of known quantity.