Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 182 posts

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#51

Post by mgr86 »

lutusp wrote: post #32

A quote: "After about two months of weekly therapy, the eight participants who received full doses of LSD improved by about 20 percent on standard measures of anxiety, and the four subjects who took a much weaker dose got worse." I hope no one thinks this is science. There's no control group, those who received the treatment under study knew who they were, and they were asked about their emotional state after the tre…

Yes, but if you continue reading the start of the very next paragraph addresses this.

>The trial was far too small to be conclusive, >said Dr. Gasser, whose co-authors include Dr. Doblin, >Dominique Holstein of UniversityHospital Zurich and Rudolf >Brenneisen of the University of Bern.

they go on to say that

>“It’s a proof of concept,” Dr. Doblin said. >“It shows that this kind of trial can be done safely, and >that it’s very much worth doing.” --

which is important. This sort of research all but halted in the mid-60s. In fact, the reason LSD even made it into popular culture can be a credited to the fact that many who tried it in clinical trials liked it enough to take it home a share. Of course, that is a bit of a dump down version, but not too far from the truth.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#52

Post by yogi123 »

The most prominent researcher in LSD therapy was Stan Grof. Look up his books - they are the definitive material for psychiatric work using psychedelics. There are experiences in the books that will blow your mind. I believe he was head of the psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins, before this research was shut down.

However, it is interesting that he now appears to be a proponent of meditation and other methods, as far as I know. He teaches an interesting technique called holotropic breathing which aims to replicate the benefits without the risk.

I think a prominent meditation teacher summed it up best when he said that psychedelics can lead to a powerful opening, but they are not a path.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#53

Post by dave809 »

conradfr wrote: post #37

My mother suffered from cluster headaches recently (the worst pain you can endure in life they say). Apparently mushrooms and LSD are unofficial treatments. When asked, her doctor encouraged her to use mushrooms ... Apparently a non-psychedelic version of LSD could be made but it's difficult to justify spending millions in research with the official stance regarding drugs. I'm glad change seems to come, albeit slowly…

Did the mushrooms help?

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#54

Post by munchhausen »

Nursie wrote: post #26
snake_plissken wrote: post #23

I've always found it incredibly amazing that psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, DMT etc) were outlawed in responses to forms of massive, peaceful "movements" in which taking psychedelics was something the members of the movement were known to do; that legislators and policy makers were so afraid of the affects these chemicals would have on society that they had to put the serious force of the law behind getting the…

I think it was just a convenient way to continue to suppress the counterculture while also looking tough and moral, because we all know how much our politicians love that. The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?

> The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. > I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?

Nice red herring.

Indeed, you do not need to take LSD to know that the government is wasting money and making insane legislation. It's really pretty obvious and in the midst of a breakthrough LSD trip, you would probably find this to be a trifling, utterly irrelevant matter, and wouldn't waste too much time thinking about it.

The effects of LSD on freeing people's minds lie elsewhere, not in making people aware of the governmental abuses of power.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#55

Post by Nursie »

benched wrote: post #48
Nursie wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no evidence such awakenings exist, and nobody can ever really define what they mean by them. What do you mean, exactly? Nobody is wrong to feel profundity in the mundane, but LSD can have you feeling a profound connection to a piece of cheese, or suddenly realising that all humanity's problems would go away if we just wore more purple. As for the problems with society, it very relevant to people who talk about…

You're still doing it. You're spouting inanity you contrived out of your own head, and feigning to attribute that inanity to typical LSD use. But do keep promoting your conclusion - I'm sure there's some important insight there.

>> You're still doing it. You're spouting inanity you contrived out of your own head, and feigning to attribute that inanity to typical LSD use.

I may as well say the same to you, having started by misquoting me and then failed to answer any questions.

>> But do keep promoting your conclusion - I'm sure there's some important insight there.

My conclusion is there's no evidence that widespread use of LSD would change much or result in major changes to society. Do you have any evidence or are you just spouting shit too?

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#56

Post by epsylon »

Nursie wrote: post #24
GuiA wrote: post #9

I'm glad the taboos around psychedelics research, especially as tools for therapy, are slowly falling down- there's some fascinating stuff in there. To people who have never experienced drugs, grown up in a culture that demonizes them all indiscriminately, have a hard time wrapping their head around what they are/do exactly but are curious about them, I recommend this article by Sam Harris, a great neuroscientist[0]…

"LSD - My Problem Child" is also well worth a read IMHO. It's by Hoffman and it tells the story of its discovery, also giving a few of his thoughts on what happened afterwards. Personally I'm not a huge fan of the "wonder drug that will cure all ills and open your EYES man" theories that abound around psychedelics. They can certainly induce a sense of the profound but I'm not sure they actually produce profundity. Th…

They can certainly induce a sense of the profound but I'm not sure they actually produce profundity.

What's the difference?

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#57

Post by Nursie »

munchhausen wrote: post #54
Nursie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was just a convenient way to continue to suppress the counterculture while also looking tough and moral, because we all know how much our politicians love that. The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation?

> The effects of LSD in freeing peoples minds or somehow waking them up to reality are exaggerated IMHO. > I mean, do you need LSD to know the government is wasting your money and making insane legislation? Nice red herring. Indeed, you do not need to take LSD to know that the government is wasting money and making insane legislation. It's really pretty obvious and in the midst of a breakthrough LSD trip, you would p…

>> The effects of LSD on freeing people's minds lie elsewhere, not in making people aware of the governmental abuses of power.

So please describe what these effects would be?

And please don't think when I talk about it inducing a false sense of the profound that I speak from ignorance or inexperience.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#58

Post by munchhausen »

Nursie wrote: post #31
benched wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess if it is humble enough, that opinion isn't too harmful. I think many people would find it dismissive of their experience, especially since you have no justification for characterizing their experience for them. To presume to speak of "The LSD Experience" is anything but humble.

I'm not characterising their experience for them, it's far too variable and subjective to do that. I also didn't use the phrase "The LSD Experience" so I'm not sure why you felt the need to quote that. What I will say is that some people seem to come back from it convinced that acid will change the face of humanity and society in some sort of miraculous way. But when pressed they can't say how. I don't think it's wro…

> As I said - do you need acid to see the problems in our human society?

You are on a red herring streak :)

You do not need acid to see the problems within human society. But acid helps when it comes to seeing the problems within yourself, and giving you motivation to fix them.

The transformative potential of acid on society can be expressed in statistical terms. If a sufficiently large number of people were to embark on a course of self improvement and personal evolution towards humanistic and compassionate values, this phenomenon would bring about societal change.

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#59

Post by Nursie »

munchhausen wrote: post #58
Nursie wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not characterising their experience for them, it's far too variable and subjective to do that. I also didn't use the phrase "The LSD Experience" so I'm not sure why you felt the need to quote that. What I will say is that some people seem to come back from it convinced that acid will change the face of humanity and society in some sort of miraculous way. But when pressed they can't say how. I don't think it's wro…

> As I said - do you need acid to see the problems in our human society? You are on a red herring streak :) You do not need acid to see the problems within human society. But acid helps when it comes to seeing the problems within yourself, and giving you motivation to fix them. The transformative potential of acid on society can be expressed in statistical terms. If a sufficiently large number of people were to embar…

What sort of changes?

Why do you think LSD would necessarily bring about more humanistic or compassionate values?

Re: LSD, Reconsidered for Therapy

#60

Post by spinlock »

jey wrote: post #21
spinlock wrote: post #19

I had a friend in college -- really smart physics major -- drop acid one summer and lose the ability to do math. He needed to take a year off and finally finished his degree but was never on top of his game again. I'm not saying that always or even usually happens. But, acid is no joke and I just wanted to make sure that the inexperience reading this know that trips can go really wrong. Especially when you aren't usi…

> lose the ability to do math What does that mean? (How did it play out and what did it look like?)

I have no idea what was going on inside his head but he just couldn't figure out things like making change for a dollar. He and my roommate were doing their calculus homework shortly before he left and he just couldn't do simple problems. He went from just getting math to being mistified by it.
Post reply on HN