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

The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 200 posts

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#61

Post by Fargoan »

14 wrote: post #45
NickC25 wrote: post #5

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or…

Where does one buy LSD this day and age. Doesn’t seem very popular in my neck of the woods and have not heard anyone having it since I was in high school 20 years ago.

There's an international network of computers used for communication and commerce. You can find it on this network.

"1P-LSD - PsychonautWiki" https://m.psychonautwiki.org/wiki/1P-LSD

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#62

Post by randomopining »

kodah wrote: post #10

I recently did LSD. It wasn't my first encounter with psychedelics but none have done what LSD did. I have a good bit of trauma that I'd attempted to work through throughout my life. The thing is, many of those things are settled. I cannot change them, I've course corrected my life away from my actions being influenced by these things, and on the exterior I think most people would find me well adapted. I was pretty m…

How big of a dose?

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#64

Post by nickparker »

sharklazer wrote: post #30
heap_perms wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Talk about missing the forest from the trees. The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. " I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.

My belief is that the “trip” is us being able to observe more about our brains than we typically access. My personal experience indicates to me that the “trip” is removing filtering processes the brain uses to remove noise and irrelevant information to the task at hand. When in a “trip” then, it’s more like we are seeing what our brain sees—the things that appear auditorilly and visually are due to neural circuits ov…

Anyone curious about psychedelic methods of action, particularly based on their personal experience, should read Surfing Uncertainty or at least the SSC review/summary of it.

The predictive processing interpretation of these drugs is that they change the balance between top-down predictive generative models from our "deep" brain and noisy bottom-up sensory percepts from the peripheral brain. When you get super-resolution like experiences of banal everyday textures, that's your peripheral brain failing to filter them out for lacking novelty, when you get psychedelia style visuals that's intermediate "layers" of abstraction running amok, and when you go off on extended narrative experiences fully detached from reality that's the deep generative models doing their own thing unmoored from the error signals your senses would otherwise generate.

It's an awesome book in many other respects, but IMO the best bit is how many plausible mechanistic explanations it offers for psychedelic experience.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/05/book-review-surfing-un...

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#66

Post by throw819352119 »

I have a friend who has severe depression, including self harm and thoughts of suicide. So far guided meditation sessions and antidepressants have had little effect.

I have read that some illicit drugs can be effective in treating depression, even after just one or two uses. Can anyone suggest what might be the best option out of ketamine, shrooms, LSD or MDMA?

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#67

Post by digdugdirk »

zionic wrote: post #37
heap_perms wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Talk about missing the forest from the trees. The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. " I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.

>long-term positive changes. Proponents frequently mention things like this, yet _no one_ who publicly admits to psych use is someone I want to be. All the people I've ever met, and friends who didn't but started down that road, aren't "all there" anymore. They'll preach day and night about the "benefits", but from the outside looking in it's obviously a coping mechanism.

This post suggests sustained long term usage.

The compounds being discussed can have major long term effects from one/few experiences.

If 5 "trips" over the span of as many years in someone's early twenties provided a decade of long term positive changes, would you classify that as a coping mechanism?

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#68

Post by User23 »

sianemo wrote: post #54
zionic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>long-term positive changes. Proponents frequently mention things like this, yet _no one_ who publicly admits to psych use is someone I want to be. All the people I've ever met, and friends who didn't but started down that road, aren't "all there" anymore. They'll preach day and night about the "benefits", but from the outside looking in it's obviously a coping mechanism.

While I may not be someone you want to be for specific reasons relating to our individuality, I am a long time psych user and I'm demographically and overall culturally someone that is presented as desirable to be. I'm in a reasonably high income percentile, I lack unsecured debt, I'm happily married, I have a diverse social circle and several personal hobbies, I stay physically active, and I enjoy intellectual pursu…

I know alcoholics who are well to do, out of debt, happily married, and have a diverse social circle and several personal hobbies, get exercise, and enjoy thinking. None of that shows the merits of alcoholism. I can't speak for the person you're replying to, but I could guess that it's your drug addiction that they have no desire to emulate.

Addicts insisting that their addiction isn't one is cliché for a reason.

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#69

Post by [deleted] »

sianemo wrote: post #54
zionic wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>long-term positive changes. Proponents frequently mention things like this, yet _no one_ who publicly admits to psych use is someone I want to be. All the people I've ever met, and friends who didn't but started down that road, aren't "all there" anymore. They'll preach day and night about the "benefits", but from the outside looking in it's obviously a coping mechanism.

While I may not be someone you want to be for specific reasons relating to our individuality, I am a long time psych user and I'm demographically and overall culturally someone that is presented as desirable to be. I'm in a reasonably high income percentile, I lack unsecured debt, I'm happily married, I have a diverse social circle and several personal hobbies, I stay physically active, and I enjoy intellectual pursu…

[deleted]

Re: The high-stakes race to engineer new psychedelic drugs

#70

Post by criddell »

colinsane wrote: post #47
NickC25 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nightmare - as said companies will have a fixed amount of revenue per patient, and it won't be recurring. Wall Street doesn't like companies that go against the ingrained model of "extremely expensive long term care as a service".

what of the insurance companies though? if they no longer have to pay for recurring treatments, then more of the customer’s monthly premium can go to the shareholder. Wall Street gets their recurring revenue one way or another.

Insurance is regulated. Typically they can only hold on to about 20% of the premium. If they collect too much money, you will get a rebate check mailed to you.
Post reply on HN