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Psychedelics and mental illness

stuartritchie.substack.com

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Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#81

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

standardUser wrote: post #75
slibhb wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Lots" is not the same thing as "the vast majority". Millions of people used LSD between '66 and '80.

Millions of people use LSD every year today, in addition to a dozen other hallucinogens. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/americans-increas... "In the late 1970s... 10 percent of high school seniors reported ever using LSD, compared with 6 percent today." Ten percent isn't very much. Americans in the 60's and 70's were far more likely to support endless jail time for drug users than to be one themself.

> Ten percent isn't very much.

It took less than that to bring Pokémon-frenzy into my school, and it only takes 1-3% of a population to effect revolution.

I don't know, bud.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#82

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

supertofu wrote: post #63
standardUser wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced that the "normal" way Americans consume weed is basically an overdose for most people. Heavy users drive the market and the 30% THC and higher strains are targeted at those high-spending, high-tolerance users. I started to enjoy weed again when recreational stores opened up and I could find 10-15% THC weed that gets me pleasantly high, not paranoid and incapacitated.

I find that CBD-rich hemp still gets me "high", but the effect is extremely therapeutic. I hope low-THC cannabis is more widely studied. High-THC cannabis has a very negative effect on my mind, mood, and motivation. But CBD-rich strains with low THC are perfect for handling my anxiety and autoimmune symptoms.

That's moreso "stoned" than "high" — a calm, vs a stimulant sort of thing, with CBD vs THC.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#83

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
supertofu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anecdotal and slightly off topic response to your note on cannabis tolerance. I am a frequent cannabis user and have been for a long time. While I no longer use psychoactive cannabis regularly (not in a fully legal state anymore) but I do use CBD, which purports to be non-psychoactive and, by law, has THC delta-9 levels of below 0.3%. What I find fascinating is that CBD absolutely has a psychoactive effect…

I think the opposite is what is happening, the regulated CBD products aren't regulated in a way that keeps them free of psychoactive components and nobody noticed yet or aren't too excited to try to change it, legalization being on the menu all over the place.

CBN, CBG, and terpenes, are all responsible for medical and recreational things that regulators don't have a single clue on, and medical folks are only beginning to.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#84

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

hutzlibu wrote: post #29
suction wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue starts with the moniker "shamanic", which does not sound like a place many people would trust their health to.

Well, I would rather say there are probably way too many people, who would totally trust such a place with their whole health, just because of the name and some other esoteric buzzwords like indigenous, ancient wisdom. I do have great respect for "real" shamans. But I met way too many fake ones, handing out horrible and dangerous advice, while glowing in their self declared illuminative state of higher consciousness.

Where'd you find these?

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#85

Post by xyzzy123 »

slibhb wrote: post #76
vehementi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as I can tell they didn't usher in a new age of love, peace, and tolerance. Things did improve, but of course how would you attribute it to that, and of course, how would you account for the effectiveness of the counter forces? Just because something didn't succeed completely doesn't mean we can conclude it has no effect, especially if it wasn't actually tried at the suggested scale. We have this problem in Vancouv…

> There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . . > And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we…

I don't think that vibe was unique to drugs or the 60's, perhaps every generation gets that.

For example, I feel the same way about the 90's Internet...

It's hard to explain the optimism a lot of people felt at the time.

It seemed like it could fix the world, what if everyone could just talk to each other? Couldn't we fix the misunderstandings?

We were gonna route around the censorship and cryptography (not crypto...) was going to free us from The Man. State control of "the message" through TV and newspapers was over.

I look at what we got and there it is, human nature staring right back at me.

Anyway, what a sap.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#86

Post by tonguez »

slibhb wrote: post #16

I like the article. With psychedelics, it's clear that much of the excitement comes from people (including scientists) who have used them and found their experiences helpful. That's not science but that doesn't mean it's wrong. Not everything is amenable to clinical study and this doesn't mean we should disregard it. And the issue isn't just psychedelics being hard to study. Mental health is hard to study. An overwei…

"Mental health is hard to study."

is it? what is mental health?

"I'm also very skeptical of people who think widespread use of psychedelics can make society better. Lots of people used LSD in the 60s and 70s and as far as I can tell they didn't usher in a new age of love, peace, and tolerance."

what was the control in this experiment?

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#88

Post by [deleted] »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
supertofu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anecdotal and slightly off topic response to your note on cannabis tolerance. I am a frequent cannabis user and have been for a long time. While I no longer use psychoactive cannabis regularly (not in a fully legal state anymore) but I do use CBD, which purports to be non-psychoactive and, by law, has THC delta-9 levels of below 0.3%. What I find fascinating is that CBD absolutely has a psychoactive effect…

I think the opposite is what is happening, the regulated CBD products aren't regulated in a way that keeps them free of psychoactive components and nobody noticed yet or aren't too excited to try to change it, legalization being on the menu all over the place.

[deleted]

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#89

Post by umvi »

Why are these articles so popular with HN? Any article about treating mental illnesses (including depression) with LSD/shrooms/cannabis/[drug] immediately shoots to the top, and I see articles like this every other day at the top of HN. Is it just people wishing for a silver bullet that will cure their mental problems? At any rate, the number of mentally ill people on the internet must be much larger than I am estimating.

Re: Psychedelics and mental illness

#90

Post by [deleted] »

colechristensen wrote: post #68
supertofu wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an anecdotal and slightly off topic response to your note on cannabis tolerance. I am a frequent cannabis user and have been for a long time. While I no longer use psychoactive cannabis regularly (not in a fully legal state anymore) but I do use CBD, which purports to be non-psychoactive and, by law, has THC delta-9 levels of below 0.3%. What I find fascinating is that CBD absolutely has a psychoactive effect…

I think the opposite is what is happening, the regulated CBD products aren't regulated in a way that keeps them free of psychoactive components and nobody noticed yet or aren't too excited to try to change it, legalization being on the menu all over the place.

[deleted]
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