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Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

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Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#41

Post by scottlocklin »

roymurdock wrote: post #5

Lots of revived interest in psychedelics that is finally coming front and center in no small part due to Michael Pollan's recent book "How to Change Your Mind". Rolland Griffiths plays a pivotal role in the book (and in the real life advocacy and study of psychedelics) and Pollan probably seeded the ideas of psilocybin's potential into the right ears around Berkeley and on his book tour [1]. Think there's a ton of po…

They all have blood on their hands. Some people may benefit from these drugs. Some people destroy themselves with them. It's far from clear what the ratios are here, and attempting to popularize yet another mind-bending "soma" in a culture that can barely deal with beer is wildly irresponsible.

And as for all y'awl self congratulatory bozos who think this stuff is "just so amazing" -I've used enough of them to know they're not. It's fundamentally a mentally masturbatory experience; something that confuses people in a way that increases their self regard. I suppose some psychotics also have high self regard.

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#42

Post by roymurdock »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #40
MrLeap wrote: post #33

This probably isn't the place for it, but here's my anecdote to give background to why I think this is a step in a more humane direction than most. Once upon a time, I chopped up a bag of dry mushrooms and mixed them with some general tso chicken. I really love my general tso. This particular meal occurred during a point in my life where I was near my lowest. I was depressed, burned out, reeling from failure. For abo…

Is it possible to do mathematics while on such drugs? I am working through a textbook on projective geometry and I feel like those visualization enhancements would be super useful.

I'd give microdosing LSD a shot:

In the 1950s, before the term “Silicon Valley” existed, a handful of engineers at the tech pioneer Ampex were approached by Al Hubbard, the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD.” And with his help, they found that dropping acid could make their jobs easier.

“[Hubbard] wanted to turn on the best and brightest and have the wisdom trickle down to the populace,” Pollan said. “Engineers who were working on chips found LSD very helpful in imagining a structure as complex as a computer chip. Before there were computers, designing a computer chip was much harder! It was a three-dimensional structure, layered, and you had to hold an incredible amount of information in your head.”

The Ampex engineers started a nonprofit called the International Foundation for Advanced Study, giving LSD to people like inventor Doug Engelbart. His first under-the-influence invention was a toy for toilet-training boys, but Pollan pointed out that it was only after this experience that Engelbart did the work he’s most famous for: Inventing the computer mouse, the graphical user interface and key components of the internet.

“Engineers, unlike scientists, deal with irreducible complexity,” Pollan said. “There’s so many variables that, instead of reducing a problem to simplicity like scientists, they have to find patterns in a very complex space. That’s what LSD does — it helps you find patterns.”

https://www.vox.com/2018/5/16/17358484/michael-pollan-how-to...

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#43

Post by milchek »

roymurdock wrote: post #5

Lots of revived interest in psychedelics that is finally coming front and center in no small part due to Michael Pollan's recent book "How to Change Your Mind". Rolland Griffiths plays a pivotal role in the book (and in the real life advocacy and study of psychedelics) and Pollan probably seeded the ideas of psilocybin's potential into the right ears around Berkeley and on his book tour [1]. Think there's a ton of po…

For those interested, there is a fantastic documentary called, "The Substance: Albert Hofmann's LSD" which was released in 2011 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2075352/) that covers a lot of the history of how LSD was discovered and then made its way to the US, and then subsequently how the proliferation of the drug shaped a lot of the cultural landscape in the US.

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#45

Post by m0zg »

A bit of a contrarian view. This stuff tends to go like a pendulum and it could very well swing too far in the other direction, and a lot of people will get fucked up in this case.

We're seeing this with marijuana right now. I live in a state where it's legal, I voted for legalization, and I think it's wonderful that people aren't being thrown in jail for possession anymore. But I categorically DO NOT want this shit to be aggressively marketed to the public and normalized. It is harmful in most cases. Smoking MJ is not that much better than smoking tobacco, if at all. Certainly not great for the lungs. You can get really ill from THC if you consume a lot for an extended period of time, especially if you're fat, which most people are nowadays. Long term impact of TCH on the brain is poorly understood, etc.

Now, granted it's better than alcohol in most ways. You're very unlikely to even contemplate driving a car while stoned, for example, let alone be able to do so successfully. You're unlikely to be aggressive. You're unlikely to destroy your liver by smoking weed, and so on.

But that does not mean that it should be something people just do willy nilly IMO. Same with psychedelics. I'd be more OK with it if it's legal but socially frowned upon, and all marketing is forbidden.

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#46

Post by scarecrowbob »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #40
MrLeap wrote: post #33

This probably isn't the place for it, but here's my anecdote to give background to why I think this is a step in a more humane direction than most. Once upon a time, I chopped up a bag of dry mushrooms and mixed them with some general tso chicken. I really love my general tso. This particular meal occurred during a point in my life where I was near my lowest. I was depressed, burned out, reeling from failure. For abo…

Is it possible to do mathematics while on such drugs? I am working through a textbook on projective geometry and I feel like those visualization enhancements would be super useful.

You'd have to try it yourself.

Personally, I have very limited technical skill when tripping. I'm a semi-professional musician, and I can keep up with folks, but I don't think I sound better or worse. There are a lot of interesting aesthetics that you can pull from that kind of visual hallucination, but IME it's not super "realistic" or "rational".

I've gotten a lot out of psychadelic drugs but the realizations are usually far more poetic than practical.

The longer-term revelations I've found have more to do with realizing that, say, a lot of my relationships have been validated by caring for my partner because I didn't get a certain level of care growing up, and that I've probably worked to find partners who need a certain amount and kind of care... so as long as I keep doing that I will probably keep failing in those relationships.

That's an example of something I realized in my last session, and it holds up well even now that I'm sober. It was also something that I have been working though over the last couple of years, so it's not like big astounding fact... it was just really brought home because it feels (once again, maybe just to me) much more inviting to really examine those kinds of thoughts and conditions in that setting.

On the other hand, I can't program / do calc / do about anything technical... when I look at designs while sober it's all wingnuttery with obvious flaws.

You might have a different experience

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#47

Post by KhoomeiK »

ZhuanXia wrote: post #40
MrLeap wrote: post #33

This probably isn't the place for it, but here's my anecdote to give background to why I think this is a step in a more humane direction than most. Once upon a time, I chopped up a bag of dry mushrooms and mixed them with some general tso chicken. I really love my general tso. This particular meal occurred during a point in my life where I was near my lowest. I was depressed, burned out, reeling from failure. For abo…

Is it possible to do mathematics while on such drugs? I am working through a textbook on projective geometry and I feel like those visualization enhancements would be super useful.

I was able to visualize four dimensional structures on LSD. I can't see it "instinctually" anymore, but I had a vision of our universe as the 3D surface of a 4D hypersphere, and from that perspective it's subjective whether you consider the entirety of the universe inside of you or outside of you.

After coming down I thought it was probably some nonsense that my brain dreamt up, but I analogized it as a 2D surface of a 3D sphere and it makes complete sense. Drawing a circle on a sphere and calling one side of the line you draw the "inside" is completely subjective—we just tend to call the smaller side inside. If you grow the circle to the greatest meridian of the sphere, which side is now "inside"? Is my brain on the inside and the universe on the outside, or is the universe on the inside and my brain on the outside?

I also kept seeing (when I say "see", it isn't the type of hallucination that appears like a real object in front of you, these all form in my mind's eye but are more vivid than what I can usually visualize) these grid-like, branching "corridors". I'm not sure what the best term for it would be and it may have not been 4 dimensional per se, but I don't think the way it's laid out would work in 3 dimensions. It was like I was floating in an intersection with rows (x), columns (y), and aisles (z) passing through me. A lot of this is hard to visualize when not tripping.

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#48

Post by scarecrowbob »

m0zg wrote: post #45

A bit of a contrarian view. This stuff tends to go like a pendulum and it could very well swing too far in the other direction, and a lot of people will get fucked up in this case. We're seeing this with marijuana right now. I live in a state where it's legal, I voted for legalization, and I think it's wonderful that people aren't being thrown in jail for possession anymore. But I categorically DO NOT want this shit…

I am skeptical that it's a big problem.

I'm not a fan of cannabis, but I'm living in a state where it is legal. I'm really not seeing any worse effects, I think. It's just as available to me as it has ever been... I've never not been able to find it and that's pretty common among the people I know.

Unlike cannabis, most folks I know who don't have a lot of other pathologies will quit doing psychedelics. That's purely anecdotal, but I know quite a lot of people who've worked with both these drugs.

Also, it's not the kind of stuff that markets well. It's incredibly cheap to produce... in the case of mushrooms they are easy to grow. The market is more or less already saturated, because the folks who really want that experience just go find it.

I guess my main thought is this: tripping is often quite scary, and most people who do it a lot eventually give it up for that reason. At the same time, of the literal thousands of people I know personally who've used psychedelics, none have had their lives ruined over a single, first trip.

So I'm skeptical that even if it were marketed like weed, it would actually result in a problem.

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#49

Post by shaggerty »

Zarath wrote: post #18

Bit of a contrarian take here, but this is the first step towards capitalism getting its grip on a transformative and disruptive thing and coopting it for its purposes. I'm all for decriminalization, but I get nervous when something subversive becomes just another commodity.

The process you’re describing is called recuperation[1] and I believe your skepticism is well-founded. The effects of these drugs on the human mind and culture is more powerful than any other drug in history. The effects may not be immediate but I believe they will be more dramatic than any other pharmaceutical society has experienced so far.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

Re: Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research

#50

Post by RangerScience »

anon9001 wrote: post #7

At minimum, those substances would be very useful in a therapy setting with a trusted therapist. They might also be useful on their own merits, as in, if you have severe depression and eat a bunch of mushrooms maybe you won't be so depressed anymore. Given the current state of anti-depressants, it certainly seems worth a shot.

Hi!

You are correct. The first usages of MDMA (the defining ingredient in ecstasy) were in therapy.

If you have severe depression (or severe anything really), I would not recommend experimenting without an experienced guide. Think of it like like scuba diving or sky diving: first you learn how with those who already know.

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