Shrooms: What You Need to Know • Hacker News Board

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#61

Post by kinjba11 » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:21 PM UTC

mettamage wrote: post #58

toastercat wrote: post #41

This is a great resource to anyone interested in psychedelics in general. I've only done psychedelics twice in my lifetime, both with the same friend, and both times NOT in ideal scenarios (because we were both tripping without a sober person trip-sitting us). I would like to warn anyone interested that *tripping is risky if you suffer from high anxiety or OCD*. My first trip was an incredible experience, I couldn't…

Sounds familiar, what is harm OCD?

> Harm OCD is a subset of classic obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The condition is characterized by having aggressive, intrusive thoughts of doing violence to someone, as well as the responses the person uses to cope with these thoughts... OCD makes the individual feel that they can’t trust their own mind. Wherein someone without OCD could have a violent thought and recognize that it is simply a thought, a person with OCD who has the Harm OCD subset worries that just having the thought is somehow meaningful.

https://centerforanxietydisorders.com/what-is-harm-ocd/

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#62

Post by renewiltord » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:23 PM UTC

I know lots of people will warn you about this stuff but with the caveat that every person is different: I have friends with high anxiety and all these things. We trip together quite pleasantly and enjoyably.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#63

Post by tyingq » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

jinjin2 wrote: post #44

tyingq wrote: post #14

Never did any type of psychedelics. You don't read much about "death by misadventure" associated with them though. I'm curious about this. Alcohol, for example, is pretty famous for clouding judgement, reducing inhibition, and so on. Such that otherwise rational people drive intoxicated, get into fights, fall asleep in inappropriate places, fall off of and into things, etc. Psychedelics obviously cause you to halluci…

Last year there was a pretty public case of a guy dying during a ceremony where they used psychedelic toad venom. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52920291.amp

Ah, that's a bad decision while sober, before taking anything, though. Different category.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#64

Post by aeturnum » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

meepmorp wrote: post #43

I feel like I'm alone in this, but I don't like mushrooms. I usually have unpleasant body effects, and I don't like the trip generally. I'm fairly confident in my ability to have dosed as responsibly as possible with a biological product. Usually, though, I just feel weird and uncomfortable for 10. LSD, by comparison, is positively therapeutic for me.

Psychadelics famously impact people in vastly different ways. Anyone who hasn't tried them before will probably have the best time doing a standard dose (1 "tab" of lsd or ~1.5g of mushrooms) around friends with nothing else scheduled during the day.

That said, many people have nonlinear responses to these substances. I know folks who hate lower doses of LSD because they just get an anxiety-generating body high, but love the experience above that. Generally, on a per-dose basis, LSD and mushrooms are inexpensive and so experimentation is cheap (even though it's also time consuming because of the ~8hr trip duration). Though, again, if you take lower doses (below the standard I mentioned above) most people will have no trouble doing chores if you must get something done (as long as that chore does *not* involve driving).

Edit: mushrooms are hard to dose consistently, the dose I listed might be high or low but it will probably not melt your face off or do nothing. More info here: https://erowid.org/plants/mushrooms/mushrooms_basics.shtml

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#65

Post by defaultname » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #14

Never did any type of psychedelics. You don't read much about "death by misadventure" associated with them though. I'm curious about this. Alcohol, for example, is pretty famous for clouding judgement, reducing inhibition, and so on. Such that otherwise rational people drive intoxicated, get into fights, fall asleep in inappropriate places, fall off of and into things, etc. Psychedelics obviously cause you to halluci…

"You don't read much about "death by misadventure" associated with them though"

When stories do come out, they tend to be over the top. For instance-

https://globalnews.ca/news/4735129/thomas-chan-guilty-mansla...

People with certain conditions should stay away from psychedelics.

Having said that, as others said a normal experience does not include hallucinations of the cliche "see weird crazy things that aren't there" variety. Instead you get more of an experience from patterns, music seems richer, colours deeper, etc.

Our brain dulls reality for us as a evolutionary benefit to allow us to focus our brainpower only on changes/unique things (e.g. the predator sneaking up in our periphery). Shrooms roll that back a bit so suddenly the pattern on a blanket, the branches on a tree, or the backing track in a piece of music, or even the varying white points of lights, comes front and center. In many ways it's like experiencing things with fresh eyes and ears, and that really is the delight of the experience, de-jading our senses.

This can be a disadvantage if you're doing something safety critical and suddenly you're amazed how you never noticed the features of some thing, distracting your attention. No one should ever drive or do dangerous things under the influence. The evolutionary benefit allows us to focus attention in a way that keeps us and those around us safe.

But from a judgment perspective, I am a fairly average chess player (I mean among active players), and under the influence of shrooms I play at the same level as not. I manage time as well, etc. I have programmed some critical code that I later marvel over on shrooms. This is wholly different from under the influence of alcohol, for instance, where my ability drops precipitously.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#66

Post by sedibles » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #19

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #8

Keep in mind that “harm reduction” material shouldn’t be interpreted as a guide to avoiding all potential negative consequences. When it comes to psychedelics, the pendulum of popular opinion has swung from an extreme of “extremely bad for you” to “actually good for you” but neither extreme is good, IMO. It’s worth reading some of the material about how psychedelic users are weirdly prone to picking up strange belief…

When reading advice before my last trip, it occurred to me there's a lot of fear-mongering around psychedelics due to judgment. People judging experiences as positive/negative distracts from what's going on. Simply labeling challenging-to-accept experiences as "bad" and large doses as "heroic" is enough to establish a distracting delusion. It was upon realizing this that I decided I understood how to approach the mus…

Fair enough, but I would disagree on the point about taking an unknown amount (unless I misunderstood?). In my view correct dosing is one of the best ways to achieve a safe experience. One of the biggest issues with such substances is that most users will have no idea how strong the dose is, or if it is even what it says it is.

Courage is one thing, but overdosing is not a pleasant experience, even if it is usually not (physically) unsafe. Cannabis edibles are famous for this since most people have no idea how strong their brownies even after they make them. It was one of the main reasons I made an online calculator as a side project (http://www.scientificedibles.com) to help people to estimate dosage, rather than "take one" and end up on the floor.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#67

Post by klyrs » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #57

klyrs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad had some pretty wild stories about near-death misadventures. He stopped after he came home tripping and my mom made him change a diaper... I learned from these stories: don't drive on hallucinogens, and don't trip when you've got real-life responsibilities.

Driving on hallucinogens? Whenever I've taken LSD it was quite clear that I couldn't and shouldn't drive. It's not like alcohol, where you think you can drive. With LSD you very clearly have the presence of mind to know you can't.

Well... the set of things we find self-evident today are not the same as those from the 70s... but once, he did realize that he shouldn't be driving. So he pulled over, and climbed down a 50' cliff down to the beach to walk home. Which, I kinda find incredible: last time I was tripping near a cliff, I noticed that the height appeared to be getting short enough to jump down, so I advised my sitter that we should change locations.

Oh, and it bears mentioning that folks who do drugs recreationally tend to mix hallucinogens with other substances. LSD on its own is comparably clear-headed, but I've known people to mix it with weed, cocaine, mdma, etc... and who knows what's going to sound like a good idea.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#68

Post by mistermann » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #56

CPLX wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly it depends on your definition of real. But it’s not a complicated concept to get. Like a person who is drunk might see double, when in fact there is one object. A person who is on a lot of amphetamines might believe they are being purposely followed when in fact there are no people intentionally following them. Those perceptions are not real, in any commonly understood meaning of the word. It’s easy to unders…

If you get angry at someone and later realize it was just a misunderstanding, is that "real" anger?

I think a lot of people miss this very important yet ~subtle (easy to completely miss) aspect of what can be learned from psychedelics.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#69

Post by mistermann » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

mam4 wrote: post #2

Tripsafe, Erowid, psychonaut and r/drugs are among the best ressources the web has been able to produce: thousands of actual trip reports, and empirically tested Risk Reductions procedures withtout stigma or judgement. Dont do drugs as a illegal thing that give you the thrill of being a bad boy. Take a scientifi approach of risk evaluation, read testimonies and reports and ensure your own safety, as you would do for…

> Also never do drugs "because it makes you feel better when you are sad".

It's not risk free, but I disagree with this as absolute advice, a trip can fill up one's spiritual gas tank to keep on moving forward, they can demonstrate that one's depression is largely illusory.

Re: Shrooms: What You Need to Know

#70

Post by c54 » Sat, Dec 25, 2021, 6:41 PM UTC

OGWhales wrote: post #45

c54 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hallucination affected by psychedelics such as mushrooms isn't what you might expect. It's not a fully synthetic kind of "i now see an object that is not actually there". There won't be a floating pink elephant in the middle of the room. Instead the effect at most normal doses (3.5g) is more that the walls and floors seem to take on a slightly ephemeral breathing characteristic. You may see patterns in things of…

This sub reddit has a lot of examples of people trying to recreate what they saw while tripping. There are some pretty good examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/replications Also, I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve heard that some of the hallucinations you see on psychedelics are signals/noise your brain normally filters out, but stops getting filtered during the trip. I believe the context was for so called “sacr…

Yeah! There's evidence for a reduction of the brain's normal input-filtering processes that I alluded to in the parent post. As Huxley says, 'the doors of perception are opened'

These two articles discuss in more detail some of the biological/neurological correlates for the types of patterns seen during psychedelic experiences. Some of the pictures of retinal structure etc are pretty eye opening (hah):

https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-...

https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha...