[HN Gopher] Is the psychedelic therapy bubble about to burst?
___________________________________________________________________
Is the psychedelic therapy bubble about to burst?
Author : pseudolus
Score : 122 points
Date : 2022-09-02 13:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| twirlock wrote:
| devonallie wrote:
| Is this not the opposite of a bubble? It seems like public
| opinion and public policy are actually making significant shifts
| into making psychedelic treatments more mainstream. From which I
| expect a large industry to emerge.
| hcks wrote:
| You are literally stating what makes it a bubble: the narrative
| according to which psychedelics are now being rehabilitated
| into treatments due to very promising results.
|
| But this narrative is getting old now, and the promising
| results in question are actually quite slim, in a field which
| is historically riddled with treatments that have a low
| effectiveness (when they work at all)
| nocoiner wrote:
| I know an anecdote isn't data, but I'm a pretty straight
| laced guy who's never used an illegal drug other than pot, so
| no prior experience with any psychedelics (except for taking
| an Ambien on an empty stomach lol). I started ketamine
| therapy a few weeks ago, and while I obviously can't prove
| that it isn't the placebo effect at work, my mood was
| tremendously and noticeably improved immediately after my
| first course of medication. And it's had an immediate
| beneficial effect on my regular/traditional therapy sessions.
| It just feels like it was a missing piece to a puzzle I've
| been working on for a long time.
|
| I want to see the science continue to study these drugs and
| psychedelic therapy, but for me there's no doubt in my mind
| this has been significantly more beneficial in the short term
| than any other medication I've ever taken (i.e., been
| prescribed). If the science shows it isn't right for everyone
| or most people - so be it. But it has been a game-changer for
| me.
| MAGZine wrote:
| So by your definition, fusion energy is also a bubble?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I don't think that makes it a bubble. A bubble is when my mom
| starts talking about it. Who has access to these psychedelics
| outside of research? They are not mainstream at all. If I
| wanted some I couldn't get any.
| mistermann wrote:
| > the promising results in question are actually quite slim
|
| Promising results that occur outside of formal scientific
| settings _still occur_ , although consciousness (possibly
| amplified by various pre-existing beliefs) can make it appear
| as if they do not. As luck would have it, psychedelics can be
| very helpful in sorting out one's thinking on such things.
| devonallie wrote:
| This is true. I should have said that it seems to be a slowly
| but sustainably growing market. When I think of bubble, I
| think of a rapid boon followed by a bust. I don't think this
| industry will have either.
| mw888 wrote:
| It seems like the bubble that's been bursting for the last couple
| of years obvious to anyone paying attention is that microdosing
| is not equal to the sum of its doses.
|
| The studies which show inspiring results on hard problems like
| PTSD and depression involve high dose, singular experiences, and
| because of the nature of that high dose, a lot of preparation
| takes place, weeks or months sometimes and a lot of care planned
| out via therapist.
|
| I believe it was a Roland Griffiths study that showed that if the
| subjective and measured (brain scan) experience was not
| consistent with a deeply spiritual experience, the positive long
| term effects did not come.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| Whether the potential of psychedelic therapy has been overstated
| or not, I think the bubble cannot be "about to burst" for the
| simple reason it hasn't had the timeframe nor the scale to even
| be called "a bubble", let alone for it to finish on such an
| intense note as "bursting".
|
| _<<Is the psychedelic therapy spark about to fizzle out?>>_
| might have been a more apt analogy.
|
| (I have no reason to opine either way regarding the answer)
| mountainriver wrote:
| It hasn't even remotely reached its potential
| flybrand wrote:
| I agree, this isn't yet big enough - or fake enough - to be
| labeled as a bubble.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It hasn't even had nearly enough scientific research done on it
| either, since it's classed as drugs in most areas.
| alecbz wrote:
| I've dealt with depression for the better half of my life. I
| tried SSRIs for a decade with moderate results -- they definitely
| helped, but more so in a way where the depression felt manageable
| than feeling really happy. I went off them at the beginning of
| the year to experiment with managing the depression other ways:
| therapy, meditation, exercise.
|
| One day I got to work and noticed that for the first time in a
| while, I was feeling really happy. In a way where I realized that
| other times I thought I was happy, I was really just not-too-sad.
| _This_ was what actual happiness felt like. I was kind of
| surprised, but thought "wow, I guess the meditation and exercise
| are finally paying off? It must be that... nothing else has been
| different recently..."
|
| And then I remembered that I'd tried shrooms for the first time
| the day before.
|
| So far, trips seem to pretty reliably have this effect for maybe
| 1-2 weeks. I suspect I'm also seeing some more durable benefits
| beyond that, but a little harder to be sure.
| nocoiner wrote:
| This sounds very similar to my experience. I have persistent
| depression - usually pretty minor, but sometimes worse than
| others - and social anxiety, and recently started psychedelic
| therapy with ketamine (I'm still on my SSRIs, which keep things
| in check, but certainly aren't a cure).
|
| I didn't experience any psychedelic effects, but my mood was
| significantly improved during the weeks after. Anxiety greatly
| diminished, confidence greatly increased and I for the first
| time in a few years, I feel like I have a path to conquering my
| impostor syndrome.
|
| I'm not yet totally comfortable telling my social circle that
| I've been prescribed horse tranquilizers, but I've been an
| immediate convert to the possibilities of these courses of
| treatment. I can't say it isn't psychosomatic or the placebo
| effect at work, but I've been frankly shocked at how quickly it
| worked for me and how well it has seemed to work.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I have had the same after trips. For a few days I just felt
| good which is usually rare for me. It was good to experience
| how feeling good feels. I had almost forgotten.
| mistermann wrote:
| > It was good to experience how feeling good feels. I had
| almost forgotten.
|
| Good point.
|
| I wonder what kind of interesting experiments could be
| designed around psychedelics, skilled counsellors &
| mediators, and people who've ended up with various "extreme"
| beliefs, political or otherwise.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| I don't take psychedelics. But I'm convinced meditation and
| exercise can re-wire your brain.
|
| Meditation trains the mind to learn to see when it is falling
| into maladaptive grooves. It doesn't prevent it, just a raises
| awareness. Exercise for me seems to shift the baseline mood
| forward a bit. Kind of feels like my hormones are in the right
| place after 25 years.
| kekebo wrote:
| I agree, learning to direct focus can shine valuable light
| onto (often unreflected) self-narrative processing.
|
| Exercise never yielded the benefits I sometimes saw in
| studies for me but every time I manage to motivate myself to
| do the healthy/sane/right thing against inner resistance, it
| leads to a small boost in self-respect that accumulates over
| time.
| alecbz wrote:
| I think exercise is closer to improving hormonal balances
| than really "rewiring" your brain, but for sure I notice that
| it can help a bit. Maybe it does have some "rewiring"
| effects.
|
| I do think meditation rewires your brain in a way that's
| similar to psychedelics (there's common themes you experience
| with both, like ego death), but I think it just takes _much_
| longer to achieve similar effects. I'd meditated daily for
| close to a year straight, and while it helped, I didn't feel
| like I got anywhere close to how I felt either during
| tripping (kinda obviously maybe) or after tripping.
|
| That said, while so far psychedelics seem safe, they're at
| the very least more logistically "disruptive" than
| meditation, not to mention social stigmas, difficulty getting
| them, etc. Meditation does seem like a more sustainable long-
| term practice.
|
| Some of the above is why I've become interested in trying
| ketamine therapy instead.
| workshirt wrote:
| Hormones are kind of the wires in the "rewiring the brain"
| analogy.
| endorphine wrote:
| Did you stop meditating after a year? If so, why?
|
| I tried to stick to it but I find it kinda hard to.
| elevaet wrote:
| As someone who's taken plenty of psychedelics, done lots of
| meditation, and gets tons of exercise, I'd agree that they
| can all re-wire your brain.
|
| Psychedelics are very different from the other two tho, just
| like exercise is very different from meditation.
|
| They are all very worthwhile and can help you grow.
|
| Meditation and exercise are best practiced regularly.
| Psychedelics are best used for singular cathartic events,
| saved for special occasions.
|
| Psychedelics can change your outlook overnight, while
| meditation is a more gradual process. Excercise won't really
| change your outlook palpably, it will just keep you in a
| better head and body space.
|
| They all can be difficult and rewarding. Its possible to harm
| yourself with any of them, but generally you come out well
| ahead if you do them responsibly. They can all make you a
| better person.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Is the pop science journalism bubble about to burst?
|
| Unfortunately, Bettridge's Law applies here.
| adultSwim wrote:
| I don't think psychedelics need to be a miracle cure-all to have
| value in our society. Prohibition should end immediately.
| Ambolia wrote:
| Never cared about psychedelics, but if it's only "marginally
| better" than antidepresants, and has less side effects, that
| sounds like a huge win.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The first bloom of the rose being _marginally better than
| current antidepressants_ is a bad sign, seeing as right now it
| 's going to be getting the most biased and cherry picked
| selections of studies it's ever going to get. SSRIs started off
| as _miracles_ before they became _possibly no more effective
| than placebo_. Psychedelics are starting as marginally better
| than possibly no more effective than placebo.
| febeling wrote:
| Let's not forget, the bubble being about getting these substances
| back from being banned and considered to dangerous for society to
| research and otherwise deal with responsibly.
|
| Fits the theory that this is a paid hit piece, obviously without
| evidential support. Remind me, could there be an industry
| financially interested to get psychedelics back into the box?
| NoToP wrote:
| What industry conspiracy are you trying to insinuate? Is it big
| pharma? Doubt it. Guess who would ultimately own the labs, run
| the clinical trials, and be first to market with a safe and
| precise FDA approved antidepressant based on a psychedelic
| active ingredient. Let's not forget LSD started as a research
| chemical in a drug r&d lab in Switzerland. Industry never
| wanted it criminalized.
|
| It's not a good look to rationalise away all bad news as "paid
| hit piece".
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > What industry conspiracy are you trying to insinuate?
|
| What is wrong with insinuating an "industry conspiracy"?
| Industries are found guilty by judges and juries in massive
| lawsuits all the time.
|
| > Guess who would ultimately own the labs, run the clinical
| trials
|
| Big Pharma doesn't run most of its lab experiments. They use
| contracted research companies to do that. In the past this
| was done to evade responsibility and it doesn't seem to have
| changed. See the Pfizer Covid vaccine whistle blower article
| as an example of that:
| https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635
|
| > and be first to market with a safe and precise FDA approved
| antidepressant based on a psychedelic active ingredient
|
| They can't patent molecules found in nature or synthetic
| molecules they didn't create.
|
| > Let's not forget LSD started as a research chemical in a
| drug r&d lab in Switzerland.
|
| How is one lab in Switzerland representative of al all the
| other pharmaceutical companies?
|
| > Industry never wanted it criminalized.
|
| How do you know that?
|
| > It's not a good look to rationalise away all bad news as
| "paid hit piece".
|
| The health industry is a major source of revenue of all major
| US news publications.
| mandmandam wrote:
| It's not a rare or unheard of thing for an industry to attack
| solutions that are significantly better than their own (very
| profitable) solution.
|
| Psychedelics _can_ _permanently_ fix problems - anxiety,
| alcoholism, depression - that otherwise would make pharma
| companies huge amounts of money.
|
| LSD is incredibly cheap to manufacture. There's no patent on
| it. Same with mushrooms and many others.
|
| Now look at how much money those pharma companies made with
| Lexapro, with Prozac, with Risperdal. Even when they were
| caught marketing those drugs for unapproved uses, _to
| children_ ; and caught buying academics opinions, they made
| _billions_ off the stuff.
|
| Compare the list of side effects on their drugs to mushrooms
| or LSD. Compare the effectiveness. These companies aren't
| maintaining huge divisions of PR goons for the fun of it;
| they absolutely are out there on the internet, lobbying, and
| on traditional media, convincing people to form opinions like
| yours.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| But LSD was a "big pharma" solution and Sandoz tried to
| sell it as a pharmaceutical for at least a decade.
|
| There is a lot of problems with "big pharma" but being
| against cheap and effective permanent solutions is not one
| of them, otherwise they wouldn't sell vaccines: many
| vaccines are cheap, one time use, effective and prevent
| profitable (?) diseases.
|
| The pharmaceutical industry has ways of making money of
| cheap and out of patent drugs. For example, by patenting a
| 0.1% more effective derivative and selling it, or by simply
| jacking up the price when you are the only one making it
| (see the Epipen scandal). This, by the way is the problem
| with the pharmaceutical industry, they spend way too much
| effort making money with old medicine and finding
| patentable derivatives than researching new ones. If LSD
| turned out safe and effective by regulatory agency
| standards, they will definitely sell it, or maybe some
| slightly tweaked and patented variant of it.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| There's currently no patent on Lexapro, Prozac, or
| Risperdal either. "These companies" now have basically zero
| incentive to support them or to sic "PR goons" on their
| opponents.
|
| There are also legitimate concerns about biases in the
| evidence base for claims about the efficacy of
| psychedelics:
| https://stuartritchie.substack.com/p/psychedelics
|
| And yes, psychedelics have side effects: https://en.wikiped
| ia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_percep...
| brnaftr361 wrote:
| Patent is actually kind of irrelevant here, it's discrete
| competition. How do you put your fingers into this when
| it takes all of 3 months to have a lifetime supply of
| therapeutic doses? But it does ostensibly (if effective)
| curtail sales of pharmaceuticals.
|
| The originator pharma companies pay generic mfgs to _not_
| manufacture the drugs, ultimately the arrangement is such
| that both parties profit while maintaining the status quo
| allowing single-entity control of a given substance - in
| the US at least, which is the only place any of this
| matters. Not that that 's the case with the previously
| mentioned medications.
|
| Ritchie on his vast tower of scientific conceit totally
| fails to acknowledge the human element in all of this.
| These drugs are interesting because of their mechanism,
| but that mechanism isn't necessarily complimented well by
| the "therapeutic" setting; the drug in and of itself
| isn't necessarily the catalytic element, but rather the
| experience - itself derived from the _set and setting_ :
|
| In normal (particularly traditional use) practice it is
| unheard of to take a bunch of these drugs and hang out in
| a lab with a bunch of strangers. Anthropology shows us
| these drugs are uniformally used in _group_ practices
| with familiars.
|
| And this is something noted in the textbooks, you can
| have internal and external validity - and "internally"
| yes, it may not look great but that's kinda predictable
| because it's going to get railroaded into the narrow
| confines allowed by statistics and ethics. You can on the
| other hand hop on Erowid and read countless case studies
| from various perspectives to get a holistic view, but
| that's not "science" because it has nigh-zero internal
| validity. But to me that reads as a semantic difference
| and we could debate it all day - what I think really
| matters in this case is that in the wild, in real
| practice, it's efficacious.
| mandmandam wrote:
| > "These companies" now have basically zero incentive to
| support them or to sic "PR goons" on their opponents.
|
| Bro. They have new drugs that are a molecule different
| which they sell instead. And your scorn notwithstanding,
| they _do_ have entire division of goons, whose explicit
| purpose is to alter opinion online, in academia, in
| politics, etc.
|
| > There are also legitimate concerns about biases in the
| evidence base for claims about the efficacy of
| psychedelics
|
| Pfft. Same goes for pharma drugs.
|
| > And yes, psychedelics have side effects:
|
| I didn't say they don't. The side effects are on a
| different level though.
|
| We're talking about companies that _knowingly_ sold AIDS
| infected products, among other atrocities. You 'd wanna
| be a little less naive.
| tomclancy wrote:
| > There's no patent on it. Same with mushrooms and many
| others.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/race-to-engineer-new-
| psychedelic...
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > It's not a rare or unheard of thing for an industry to
| attack solutions that are significantly better than their
| own (very profitable) solution
|
| See Juul, attacked by both the smoking industry and anti-
| smoking lobby. Ecigs don't have brand loyalty like
| "Marlboro"--and cigarettes cost only 6 cents a pack to
| manufacture. So, buy Juul, kill it, preserve the massive
| profit flow.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| Juul was/is a tobacco industry scam to make vaping more
| accessible and more likely to lead to tobacco addiction.
|
| Juul started with all kinds of flavors, but then they
| were banned and only tobacco extract flavors were
| allowed.
|
| Those extracts are more than flavor. They contain the
| same psychoactives which make tobacco smoking so
| addictive compared to vaping freebase nicotine -- which
| Juul is _not_ because it is an extract of tobacco
| nicotine salts to begin with.
| samatman wrote:
| This is hmm. Poorly informed.
|
| I use a Juul most of the time to vape. To keep myself in
| cartridges, I do have to buy the Juul ones, so I get a
| cart full of the magic Juul juice to keep me company.
|
| Then I refill it a bunch of times with third-party
| nicotine salts which taste better. It's the same thing
| basically.
|
| Juul popularized using salts at high concentration with
| less vapor. That's about it. The rest is good product
| design and a fad.
| mandmandam wrote:
| Yep. That's a pretty clear example, and it sucks to see
| people falling for it. Vaping is immediately and
| obviously far less bad than smoking, but _they can 't say
| that_. The fear-porn around the issue is wild, and I'm
| certain legislators and media types are getting brown
| envelopes to demonize vaping.
|
| Cannabis / hemp would be another. Alcohol giants, cotton,
| painkillers, and many more have a lot to lose to an
| alternative that's superior in many ways.
|
| Fossil fuel companies spend huge amounts putting doubt
| into people's mind about nuclear and renewables, lobbying
| for themselves, systematically buying academics and news
| stories.
|
| With the above examples, there are people _dying_ thanks
| to the PR FUD.
|
| Microsoft did similar stuff, buying and squashing
| competitors by any means necessary. Even the DoJ had to
| step in when they tried to own the internet. Some people
| think MS Office is still around because it's better than
| the competitors, lol.
|
| Banks lobby to make business as awkward as possible for
| credit unions.
|
| Bitcoin maxis smear superior tech with the most laughable
| arguments.
|
| Etc.
| darksaints wrote:
| In the case of the recent fast tracked FDA trials for MDMA
| assisted therapy, I believe those trials were being led by a
| non-profit organization, and they don't have any interest in
| patenting the drug, let alone selling it. Their interest is
| in the therapy aspect of it, for which cheap and readily
| available MDMA is a high priority. So yeah, the pharma
| industry isn't going to be profiting off of it, at least for
| MDMA.
| yung_steezy wrote:
| I'm not sure this is necessarily a hit piece. There have been a
| few high profile cases of psychedelic therapists in countries
| like Canada being investigated for questionable practice. At
| the moment we're in a bit of a wild west where the actual
| procedures surrounding the use of these drugs as treatment are
| not standardised.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| That feel less like a bubble bursting and more like a cage
| breaking.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| Your comment sparked some interest in me and I found this
| article to be very detailed and nuanced:
|
| https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/09/ending-silence-
| psychede...
|
| If you know other sources on your comment, I would love to
| check them out as well!
| eternalban wrote:
| > The findings were somewhat lackluster: it found that the
| psychedelic was only marginally better than traditional
| treatments at relieving depression.
|
| Not a peep about the side-effects of "traditional treatments",
| which presumably include the designer drugs.
| [deleted]
| michaelwww wrote:
| 1) This is nothing compared to when Prozac(r) was introduced in
| the 90's. The idea that Prozac was going to cure Western mental
| health ills was quite popular and viral. It was a dawn of a new
| age according to some. Now SSRI's are still used when
| appropriate, but no one thinks they are a cure all for
| depression.
|
| 2) There's a distortion at work here. Many people, including
| myself, thing that natural growing mushrooms or other plants
| containing hallucinogens should not be illegal. The problem is
| that it appears the only way to legalize at the current time is
| to force them into a doctor/patient therapeutic relationship.
| This is causing people to twist themselves into a knots trying to
| explain why this small step towards legalization should be
| allowed. Many exaggerations and false claims are being made. And
| who wants to always have to do their trip with a doctor sitting
| by their side?
|
| My hometown of Santa Cruz California is on the right track.
| Decriminalize for personal use and move on to more important
| issues.
|
| Santa Cruz decriminalizes magic mushrooms and other natural
| psychedelics, making it the third US city to take such a step
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/us/santa-cruz-mushrooms-psych...
| yboris wrote:
| Other cities have followed, for example _Ann Arbor_ in Michigan
| - making mushrooms the lowest priority for police (effectively
| decriminalizing them).
|
| One thing stands out: _Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020_
| - it feels like a not well-known fact.
|
| Another side-note: because mushroom spores do not contain the
| psychoactive ingredient, they are not illegal to ship across
| state lines, so it's entirely legal to purchase spores on the
| internet ("for microscopy use only"), and then use "Uncle Ben
| Tek" to grow your own mushrooms (this part is illegal).
| michaelwww wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! I've been thinking about growing my own.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If only 2) were true; the process that pot went through didn't
| turn out that badly. My fear is that it's exactly the opposite,
| and medicalization will turn psychedelics into the new class of
| drugs that a medical degree anoints you to deal, like opioids.
| Still very illegal, but everyone is on them.
| michaelwww wrote:
| That's what I was trying to say. They want to do it
| differently than they did with pot. With pot you could easily
| get a doctor to write a prescription and you used THC and CBD
| as needed in the comfort of your own home. With hallucinogens
| it sure seems like they want you to take them under the
| supervision of a therapist, who will guide your experience in
| a therapeutic direction. A few reasons come to mind for why
| they might be doing this
|
| - To reassure the legal authorities that the use of them is
| properly supervised and safe
|
| - To bring them to a wider audience, such as a depressed
| grandma who needs to accept her approaching death but would
| never take them on her own
|
| - For their own status, power and money needs. It worries me
| that once they achieve this, they will fight legalization for
| recreational use
|
| That's all fine, but don't tell me I can't take them for my
| own pleasure and purpose when I want, such as at a music
| festival, on a hike in the woods, or just because. I really
| don't need a therapist to guide my trip, thank you very much.
|
| Edit: Another thing, I've raised the issue on Twitter that
| doctors and therapists who used them in therapy settings
| should have some experience with hallucinogens. They shut me
| down really quick. It's the elephant in the room apparently.
| How are you going to guide someone when you have no
| experience with them?
| benevol wrote:
| No, it hasn't even started, and it's not a bubble.
|
| There is so much potential in this and so much catching up to do.
| Many who are familiar with the relevant substances know this.
|
| Our various corrupt systems (political, financial, "health" care,
| media, etc.) have deliberately prevented this type of therapy
| from exploding for a very, very long time. It will massively
| reduce the pharma industry's revenues, among other things.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The health care industry would be overjoyed to administer
| psychedelics to you for the rest of your life, and politicians
| and media will be happy to be paid to allow you to do it, to
| subsidize your doing it, and to convince you to do it.
|
| Whatever bizarre conspiracy theory that would convince you of
| the opposite is evidence that there's already lots of money
| being spent.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > There is so much potential in this and so much catching up to
| do.
|
| And a whole lot of new risks to go with the potential. As the
| saying goes: it's important to keep an open mind, but not so
| much that your brains fall out.
| AndrewVos wrote:
| It's people like you that keep holding humanity back from
| really flourishing. Think on that for a bit.
| derac wrote:
| Keeping relatively safe substances criminally illegal is
| probably not the best solution.
| matt89 wrote:
| Proper and wider research is important. Let's hope that these
| substances become more popular and available to be researched
| and tested, so that hopefully in 5-10 years we would know
| their risks and advantages. Then people could make educated
| decisions whether or not to try and use them.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "And a whole lot of new risks to go with the potential"
|
| As long as alcohol is legal and easily available we shouldn't
| worry about psychedelics. I know plenty of people who have
| taken all kinds of psychedelics and seem OK. Psychedelics
| just don't seem very addictive for most people. I also know
| quite a few people who have been hurt by alcohol. They either
| hurt themselves or they hurt others while drunk.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Psychedelics are mostly illegal because Nixon didn't like
| the hippies and federal agencies were looking for new
| budgets. It's not as shameful as weed being illegal because
| the cops hired to enforce the prohibition needed new jobs
| and it mostly impacted poor communities and African
| American but it's close.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| The core complaint here seems to be that therapists abuse
| patients undergoing pyschedelic therapy - but I don't see any
| claims of evidence that abuse is more prevalent than abuse in any
| other therapeutic setting.
| jp0d wrote:
| How is this a bubble if it's actually helping people with mental
| health issues. A lot of universities have begun studying this.
| These should never have been illegal in the first place.
| Kalanos wrote:
| right, "only slightly better than existing drugs."
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's a bit odd that this article doesn't even mention the fact
| that psychedelic treatments for depression, if widely successful,
| would likely destroy a major fraction of anti-depressant sales
| across the United States. That's an obvious reason the
| pharmaceutical industry would be pushing back against this.
| mousetree wrote:
| If they were widely successful, why wouldn't the pharmaceutical
| industry offer psychedelic treatments?
| akomtu wrote:
| Because it would be wildly efficient and cheap. All your
| permanently depressed clintee would be gone and with them
| your profits.
| [deleted]
| LouisSayers wrote:
| The problem is barriers to entry. If made legal there'd be
| very little barrier to entry for people (or companies) to
| grow mushrooms.
|
| There's a lot stopping people from producing patented drug
| concoctions.
| jscipione wrote:
| The SNRI therapy bubble has already burst, now druggists are
| looking for alternatives. The tragic part is that psychologists
| have been prescribing mind-altering drugs for years that didn't
| treat depression. What makes psychedelics any different?
| myshpa wrote:
| Personal anecdote: 2 years of "research", 2 trips on psilocybe
| (one month apart), proper set & setting & guide & a lot of
| talking about it later with a trusted person ... decades-long
| cripling neurosis/anxiety disorder gone, addictions gone,
| depression receding, worldview changed, rated as one of the most
| influential experiences.
|
| Depression is (imho) not to be healed with "here, swallow a
| pill", structural changes to one's life are necessary.
| Psychedelics can help to show the way, not to solve it.
| johnfn wrote:
| I'm confused how your first sentence appears to say that you
| completely solved your depression, addictions, anxiety,
| neurosis and worldview with two trips, and your second sentence
| says that depression can't be solved with a pill. These seem to
| be at odds, unless I'm missing something.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Even if you take psychedelics it won't magically fix your
| problems bc most peoples problems are systemic. The system
| must change but the psychedelics allow the user to see the
| value in the change.
| voisin wrote:
| Can you elaborate on your research and how you were able to
| find the right guide, achieve the proper set & setting?
| Maursault wrote:
| > Depression is (imho) not to be healed with "here, swallow a
| pill", structural changes to one's life are necessary.
|
| Clinical depression rarely has anything to do with what you've
| done or events in the outside world.
|
| Psychiatry has settled on treating depression with two strokes,
| a cocktail which is a chemical antidepressent, and a chemical
| stabilizer, and they expect you to take these daily and stay on
| it for the rest of your life. I have no evidence for it, but I
| assume this is some pharmaceutical company's agenda, to keep
| you a customer for the rest of your life. While it works,
| chemicals always have side-effects, and with so much exposure,
| daily, they are bound to compound, making it more difficult to
| consume.
|
| Therapy alone can cure depression, it just takes a lot of time
| and effort. I don't think it is possible talk therapy could
| ever make things worse, but it just doesn't work fast enough.
| Still, recommended.
|
| But I have discovered a way to cure depression relatively
| quickly in two ways.
|
| First, chemically, but without a life sentence. I have
| discovered a substance that will cure depression overnight, not
| unlike an aspirin cures a headache. You get headaches, too? How
| would you feel about being told you need to take a daily
| medication for the rest of your life to cure it? No, one dose
| will do. The drug is unregulated, and is available OTC in cough
| gels. You won't find this in any PDR, but depending on the
| patient's weight, say for a 160lb. man, 900mg of
| dextromethorphan will cure depression overnight, and it has
| been for some time in many clinical studies exploring its
| potential as a fast acting treatment for treatment-resistant
| depression. You take the large dose with a pepsid, and go to
| bed, wake the next day depression free, and its depression-
| killing effects can last up to a year. It is an old and safe
| drug, and the lethal overdose is estimated, because it is
| unknown. Though it is an OTC remedy for cough, dextromethorphan
| has already been approved for treatment of emotional
| incontinence, which could be seen as sort of a cousin of
| depression.
|
| The other cure, chemical free, is sunlight. Light in the eyes
| regulates mood. Not enough light will eventually cause
| depression. Too much light will cause mania (as we should have
| suspected from the exploits of Florida Man). Put enough
| sunlight in your eyes, it will cure your clinical depression.
| If daylight is not enough, get an artificial light that is an
| accurate simulator of natural sunlight, which is probably not
| LED, due to too much blue light, which also damages the eye and
| slowly blinds you, but you can't go wrong with halogen. Point
| it at your eyes. You can even close your eyes, light goes right
| through the eye lids and is still effective at fighting
| depression.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Dextromethorphan is now approved by FDA for treating
| depression. They use much less than 900 mg, though -- 45 mg
| -- and coupled with 100 mg bupropion, increasing to twice
| after tolerance is demonstrated.
| Maursault wrote:
| This just happened a couple weeks ago. There are still
| ongoing clinical studies which are testing much higher
| doses for treatment-resistant depression.
| Jabrov wrote:
| mbesto wrote:
| > Psychedelics can help to show the way, not to solve it.
|
| The best way I had it described to me is:
|
| Psychedelics are microscopes, not panaceas. A trained
| psychiatrist is the panacea.
| hi5eyes wrote:
| Psychs often leave oneself with the motivation to make radical
| changes to improve themselves
|
| implementing those changes over time is the key
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| I wonder if the same effects can be attained by someone who has
| used psychedelics recreationionally their entire life, from say
| 16 onward. is it the external guidance during the experience
| that really makes the difference? or is a life of experiences
| responsible for one not having anxiety or depression on those
| levels
| nico wrote:
| Not sure, but I have a friend who has plenty of experience
| with psychedelics, and he just had his first session of
| psychedelic therapy with ketamine (done by a medical
| professional trained to do it). After the session he said it
| was very different to anything he had done before and that he
| felt he made a ton of progress.
|
| My guess is that the intention that you set before "the
| trip", really impacts the experience and hence the results.
| As well as having a professional guide/sitter that knows how
| to guide you and create a therapeutic setting.
| hesdeadjim wrote:
| Buddy of mine recently did a two session psychedelic
| ketamine treatment with intensive pre and post-support
| therapy. The changes in his negative habits and ruminative
| thoughts were impressive. He had done LSD a few times, but
| he said the ketamine was a much more "safe" feeling
| experience.
|
| I've been considering it myself, despite not being
| depressed or anxious, just to see what channels of growth
| it might open up.
| mmsnberbar66 wrote:
| where can you do these therapies?
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| USA directory here: https://www.askp.org/directory/
| brnt wrote:
| > is it the external guidance during the experience that
| really makes the difference?
|
| That's what psychiatrists using psycho active drugs say:
| without proper stage setting and guidance, the experience can
| be terrifying and traumatic in itself. Remember, not
| everybody has good trips, especially not people dealing with
| depression and trauma.
| mudrockbestgirl wrote:
| It's difficult to explain if you haven't had that kind of
| experience yourself, but one way to describe it is that
| psychedelics (some more so than others) open up a window that
| allows for change. You are no longer stuck in your old ways
| of thinking that you took for granted.
|
| But the experiences themselves don't change you. _You_ still
| need to put in the work to make the changes. You can
| certainly do this without a guide. But if you take these
| drugs recreationally without such intentions and without
| putting in hard work pre- and post-session, nothing much is
| going to happen in the long term. A guide will help you to
| get the most out of the experience (while also helping with
| trip safety).
|
| It's not about whether you use psychedlics or not, it's about
| _how_ you take them.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| "It's not about whether you use psychedlics or not"
|
| "without putting in hard work pre- and post-session,
| nothing much is going to happen in the long term"
|
| Sounds a lot like cognitive bias to me. It's ultimately a
| placebo if you still need to put the work in. Ergo, you
| could achieve the same results even without taking it. It's
| attributing personal growth to a drug rather than to your
| own willpower to do something.
| GendingMachine wrote:
| This doesn't really make any sense, just because you
| still need to put in the effort doesn't mean it isn't
| highly affective at making it much easier for an
| individual to direct that effort positively.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Sounds a lot like cognitive bias to me. It 's
| ultimately a placebo if you still need to put the work
| in._
|
| If you take a doping pill to run faster, you still need
| to train and to expand heavy personal effort during the
| race. Is the doping pill "placebo"?
|
| Heck, if you have leg surgery after an accident,
| depending on the type of surgery, you often need (and are
| advised by the doctor, and asked to take it up with
| physiotherapist and such) to put in personal work and
| exercize properly for months, to be able to walk and
| regain use of your leg again. Is the leg surgery placebo?
|
| Or how about a debugger. It wont solve your problem
| automatically. You still need to write the program
| yourself, to look into different places, and to know how
| to find a bug etc. Is the debugger a placebo?
|
| Needing to put personal work to get a result is not
| what's the distinction between a placebo and a drug.
|
| A placebo is not that which is only effective when
| combined with additional personal effort (that can hold
| for any regular drug).
|
| A placebo is a neutral drug that does nothing at all
| itself (it's just water, or some neutral powder or saline
| solution, etc) and it's effectiveness is all about the
| belief that it helps.
|
| Besides, psychedelics (even assuming what they do have no
| bearing at all to getting better from depression, etc, an
| assumption with which research disagrees), have huge
| immediate effects on mental state when taken. So they're
| not neutral in the way a placebo is even on that account.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Logical fallacy of composition/division. My comment isn't
| being applied to all these other scenarios, it is being
| applied to the topic at hand--psychedelics.
| coldtea wrote:
| Logical fallacy of non seguitur.
|
| The logic of the comment should hold for any analogous
| scenario.
|
| You either have to argue why one or all of the above
| analogies doesn't hold (what element is crucially
| different, so that the same counter-argument can't apply
| to your psychedelics argument), or to argue that the
| points made for those other things are wrong.
|
| Except if you believe that you've discovered some unique
| logic that only applies to a single specific case.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I don't have to argue, period. An analogy is unnecessary.
| We are talking about psychedelics, not doping in sports.
|
| My opinion: people are likely commonly capable of working
| through things without the use of psychedelics, and we
| are crediting the substance and not the human being.
|
| I'm not anti-drugs by any stretch, just feel like a lot
| more research needs to be done before we can start
| stating things like they're facts. Can you otherwise
| disprove that it wasn't placebo effect and the individual
| wouldn't have otherwise figured it out without a placebo
| or with a sugar pill he was told was a microdose of
| psychedelics that would unlock the secrets of the
| universe?
| kaoD wrote:
| Well, during victorian times people got through surgery
| without anesthetics. What's your point?
|
| Not sure why you think studies aren't controlling for
| placebo? Although it's obviously notoriously hard with
| psychedelics.
|
| Just to be clear: I agree that more studies are needed,
| just disagree with the rest of your statements.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| That over time, through time-proven hypothesis, we arrive
| at a modern understanding of our biology and psychology.
|
| So you openly admit that this is difficult to assess?
| That much we can agree on at least.
| kaoD wrote:
| In fact I'd go a step further and say that it's not only
| difficult but impossible to assess since it's pretty easy
| for the test subject to discern whether he was given a
| placebo or not, especially considering that the benefits
| are suspected to come from the induced experience itself
| and not the drug as a substance in isolation.
|
| You can't control if exercising is placebo either, can
| you? But the consensus is that it's physically and
| mentally beneficial. I don't think controlling for
| placebo is of great use here although it obviously has to
| be taken into account.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| There is no logical fallacy. Your original comment is
| just wrong. If psychedelics improve the outcome, they are
| still worthwhile even if the therapy is still needed and
| not a placebo. You are just misplacing the bar. The
| analogy to performance enhancing drugs is actually quite
| good.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| There absolutely is. They held up countless irrelevant
| examples that have nothing to do with psychedelics, thus
| casting a wide net.
|
| My original comment is my opinion. When there's further
| studies done rather than anecdotal rubbish pertaining to
| woowoo in the comments, then I'll reconsider my stance.
|
| Analogies are unnecessary and distracting.
| bmacho wrote:
| > My original comment is my opinion.
|
| Not at all. "The sky is blue, therefore dogs are green"
| is not an opinion but a statement, factually incorrect,
| and annoyingly incomprehensible.
|
| The idea that you presented, that if something doesn't
| solve _everything_ then it is _useless_ is just not true.
| Maybe you should keep this in mind.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| I never said it was useless.
| bmacho wrote:
| > Sounds a lot like cognitive bias to me. It's ultimately
| a placebo if you still need to put the work in.
|
| Say without drugs 20% of the depressed population gets
| better, and with drugs 80% of them. Why would you call
| this 'placebo' (which is an entirely different topic),
| and from this word deduce that it is bad? Nonsense.
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Did I say that it was bad? Nope.
| bambataa wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree, because people might put in the
| hard work without the psychedelic and not experience the
| benefit.
|
| Michael Pollan's "How to change your mind" talks about
| psychedelic studies where the more effective, longer
| lasting changes are seen by the people who had more
| "mystic" experiences.
|
| It's not just about good intentions, or just taking
| psychedelics, but seemingly priming your mind to use the
| psychedelics to (temporarily) change fundamental thought
| patterns.
| mudrockbestgirl wrote:
| By that definition, getting therapy is also a placebo.
| You could go to therapy "recreationally" without wanting
| to get better or work on yourself. But that's not going
| to help you. You still need to put in work. Does that
| make therapy a placebo?
| coldtea wrote:
| I think the parent conflates "non placebo" with "fixes
| everything all by itself".
| barrysteve wrote:
| Cars don't drive themselves just because you put fuel in
| the tank.
| 8note wrote:
| Where does that willpower come from though?
| hammyhavoc wrote:
| Placebo? Situation changing day-to-day? Diet? All kinds
| of variables. But in this particular scenario, likely
| placebo.
|
| If I tell someone that a tablet will make them able to do
| something and it's just a sugar pill, they'll likely be
| able to do it. The blocking factor is usually a
| confidence issue.
| Ayesh wrote:
| Psychedelics, LSD in particular, see their major use being a
| party drug. Coming from a personal experience, many people
| decide the "trip" they want to go on way before the trip
| starts. I am pretty sure there are non-zero amount of people
| who regularly take psychedelics, but have never been on that
| kind of "trips" that instead of going deep into your own
| mind, they just enjoy EDM, a party, perhaps a hike, paint
| something, watch a movie, play some sports outside, play
| video games, etc.
| recyclelater wrote:
| Edit: I wanted to amend this to say I don't think people
| should use psychedelics regularly, which I think my
| original comment below might imply. Lots of downsides to
| regular use, occasional (every couple years) seems to have
| little risk and some benefits in my experience. Original
| text below is unedited.
|
| I dunno, if you regularly use lsd or mushrooms, you
| probably have had a "wow that was more than I wanted"
| experience, that means you had complete ego loss, had the
| veil of reality completely pulled back so you could "see"
| the arbitrariness of society and human interactions. Your
| embarrassing actions you have been deluding yourself about
| come crashing down around you. You sober up and you
| rationalize some of it away but there's a big nagging thing
| in the back of your mind screaming "maybe you should stop
| doing ____".
|
| At least this has happened to me on a couple of occasions
| and has led to me apologizing to people, changing my
| default behaviors, etc. I am not a super introspective
| person so the kick in the head that psychedelics
| occasionally provide has allowed for some personality
| changes that were necessary and good.
|
| As an adult I now recognize that these experiences could be
| beneficial as therapy with the right person to guide you
| through it, that most people probably don't get the full
| benefit these occasional experiences provide by themselves.
| I didn't think this while young and just partying (though
| did have a bit of woo woo collective consciousness mind
| expansion mindset). Anything other than the recreation
| aspects of it were me trying to justify why it was ok, and
| getting high a lot is generally not ok. I actually sobered
| up for rest of my life after a strong mushroom trip left me
| thinking I was wasting my life and going down the wrong
| path.
|
| In short, there's meat here, but of course with all these
| things there will be people riding a fad and making a buck,
| but bad usually tags along with the good in some amount.
| molszanski wrote:
| People confuse simple with easy. How to quit smoking? Simple.
| Don't smoke. Easy? Not so much. Many things require mental
| willpower to make it happen.
|
| Feels like those kind of therapies help make that happen. I
| know one person who was borderline suicidal and this kind of
| therapy helped her move life into a nice direction.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm glad for you, but the researchers involved in this story
| did an actual RCT with a cohort of patients and measured the
| effect, and the benefit of psilocybin was shown to be marginal.
| The study is linked in the first paragraph of the story.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Almost all RCTs involving depression throw a bunch of people
| diagnosed with "depression", but suffering a variety of
| conditions, all given that label, in a tank together. The
| treatment may help a few, harm others, and have no effect on
| the rest, and the treatment is then labeled "ineffective".
|
| RCTs depend for validity _absolutely_ upon precise, accurate
| diagnosis for validity. Bad diagnostics = > meaningless
| results. RCTs are not magic. They can be as wrong as anything
| stupidly performed.
|
| RCTs around depression are worse than most.
| briffle wrote:
| I'd probably take that choice compared to the cost and daily
| dosing of the pharmacy alternative.
| yboris wrote:
| > The study, a small trial run at Imperial College London
|
| I'm puzzled how a small trial run can derail decades of
| larger-scale evidence?
| tptacek wrote:
| The larger-scale evidence is of much lower quality than an
| RCT.
|
| I don't think the study is dispositive, but it's strong
| evidence, much stronger than a message board axiomatic
| derivation of why psilocybin should work.
| ncmncm wrote:
| RCTs are not magic. They are not always strong evidence,
| and not always any sort of evidence. The details always
| matter.
| tptacek wrote:
| I don't disagree with any of this.
| ParallelThread wrote:
| Are you in the US? Where can I find information about people
| who can help me be with the experience safely?
| no_butterscotch wrote:
| > 2 trips on psilocybe (one month apart), proper set & setting
| & guide & a lot of talking about it later with a trusted person
|
| What does "proper set & setting & guide" mean? Clinical? Or
| friend/shaman type thing?
| GameOfFrowns wrote:
| I'd like to know this as well. I think this is one of the
| biggest hurdles to a first time user: If you're anxious or
| depressed, you're by definition not in a good "set". And with
| psychedelic therapists being rare as unicorns where to find
| that trip-sitter who isn't just a "That's groovy, man" weirdo
| that will shape your trip (and your malleable brain) into the
| bog-standard _one with everything_ experience.
| barrysteve wrote:
| I'm glad you had a good outcome. It's difficult to relate to
| your experience from the outside. Most of the time people talk
| about these experiences, they are vague and difficult to
| understand.
|
| Sometimes in poor cases it can sound like gym-bro science where
| I should totally pop a supplement because this guy had a good
| experience on it and trust me bro.
|
| I would love to know more specifically about the subjective
| experience is like, so we can pick out pieces that have a
| greater meaning to collective understanding.
|
| Depression is an umbrella term for one experience caused by
| many, many different problems. Some chronic medical situations
| are going to allow your body to be re-depressed after a
| positive drug experience, so being able to see subjective
| reports in detail can allow the public to decide if it's worth
| doing a psychedelic treatment.
|
| Not to mention we should probably map this experience out to
| slowly cut down on the same speculative questions every time
| drugs come up; about the divine/psychological/medical nature of
| a drug trip.
| josephg wrote:
| > Most of the time people talk about these experiences, they
| are vague and difficult to understand.
|
| I've taken LSD a few times. When people ask about it I like
| to say that the experience is exactly like how people
| describe it, but nothing like what I expected. Trying to "map
| it out" in complete detail would be like trying to map out
| sex. I'm not convinced I can fully explain my experience, and
| even if I did, I bet your experience would be different from
| mine.
|
| Maybe the best description I can give is that your mind stops
| suppressing a lot of thoughts. When I hear music on LSD my
| brain turns the music into a whole planet that looks like
| that music sounds. When I look in the mirror I see myself as
| a fey creature full of animus and life. The things that my
| sober self stresses about seem ridiculous - like the fears of
| a 5 year old. And I still feel trapped by my fears at the
| same time.
|
| It's a very unique experience. As Sam Harris says, if you
| take enough LSD it's impossible to be bored.
| naasking wrote:
| > Trying to "map it out" in complete detail would be like
| trying to map out sex. I'm not convinced I can fully
| explain my experience, and even if I did, I bet your
| experience would be different from mine.
|
| That's exactly right. I think of it like this: you've spent
| a lifetime building and entrenching filters around your
| perceptions and thought patterns to react to them. They
| persist because in evolutionary terms you being still alive
| means your behaviour is "adaptive" in a sense, irrespective
| of how you actually feel.
|
| Psychedelics temporarily tear down most of those filters
| and disrupt those thought patterns, allowing you to
| perceive things in very novel ways and react to hem very
| differently.
|
| Nobody's thought patterns or filters are going to be the
| same and so nobody's psychedelic experience will be the
| same even though many of them will have similarities (we
| are the same species in the same culture after all).
| cainxinth wrote:
| From personal experience, I think one of the reasons
| psychedelics can help with depression is that when you are
| severely depressed, it feels permanent, like nothing will ever
| get better or even meaningfully different.
|
| But then you have a psychedelic experience, and for a brief
| moment, things are very much different. And if the experience
| is even slightly positive, it reminds you that it's still
| possible to feel something good, and that glimmer of hope can
| chip away at your entrenched fatalism.
| sharadov wrote:
| But can't that experience be had under different
| circumstances - like a meditation retreat, or travel to a
| completely new country?
|
| Meditation practice under a guide, can rewire your brain much
| like psychedelics.
|
| Not to diss on psychedelics - but there is way too much hype
| about it being a miracle cure for all your psychological
| ailments.
|
| Psychedelics are wonderful but dangerous and to be used under
| the right set and setting, a bad trip can induce psychosis
| and my fear is people with existing mental ailments will
| start popping psychedelics - not paying much attention and
| end up in a far worse place than they started.
|
| Hopefully it is regulated.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| The same is true of some existing meds and even meditation
| is known to trigger psychosis and anxiety. Most
| antidepressants come with a warning that they may trigger
| suicide
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| That fits with the analogy that I use, that psychedelics are
| like a helicopter - they allow you to zoom out and realize
| that there is a path to the top of the mountain (assuming
| you're stuck/walking in circles). But once the effects wear
| off it's up to you to remember where to go
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'm writing a book about exactly the point you're getting
| at: that there is no better questions that get at the
| experience of being human than our ability to ask ourselves
| the following two questions:
|
| (1) Where am I? / What the heck is going on?
|
| (2) Where am I going to go next? / What am I going to do
| about it?
|
| Sorry if this seems overly esoteric, but I really
| appreciate seeing applications of my thesis in the wild.
| Cheers
| kingkawn wrote:
| Just need some overwhelming novel stimulus
| pdntspa wrote:
| That describes my outlook after taking MDMA... anxiety has
| been a constant through my life, and molly showed me what it
| was like to not feel it. Ever since I have used that as a
| benchmark in my own quest for healing, and the closer I can
| get to that feeling without assistance, the further along I
| know that I am in my journey.
|
| Of course, it's a nice to visit with molly every once in a
| while. But the real progress is in how I reframe life. Too
| bad that finding quality MDMA nowadays is so tough.
| ncmncm wrote:
| I have seen borderline schizophrenia made much worse by
| exposure to LSD, and treated effectively after exposure to
| MDMA.
|
| So, which psychedelic matters a great deal.
| sharadov wrote:
| True hence the need for regulation and proper diagnosis.
| tleilaxu wrote:
| >anxiety has been a constant through my life, and molly
| showed me what it was like to not feel it
|
| This is so interesting to read, because I had exactly the
| same experience - primarily with social anxiety.
|
| I sat on a hill at a festival with a friend after taking
| MDMA for the first time and imagined just walking up to a
| food van and ordering food... and didn't feel the automatic
| anxious reaction.
|
| It showed me what was there, and what life could feel like
| without it. I found that it started a positive feedback
| loop afterwards, where I'd do something social and
| automatically steel myself against the incoming anxiety...
| only to feel none! It was absolutely beautiful.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'd agree with this.
|
| I've never done psychedelics (at least not the kind that are
| experimentally used for mental health; I did Molly once but
| fuck that comedown), but I spent years depressed, anxious,
| guilty, etc. and then I started using weed. I went a little
| TOO hard for a while, because it was the first time in years
| I'd had my body and brain giving me primarily GOOD feelings.
|
| Which led to me ending up in therapy and actually addressing
| my PTSD, because then I knew that feeling shitty wasn't just
| how I was programmed to be biologically because something was
| Wrong with me.
|
| The 'too hard for a while' is probably why these things
| should be done under medical supervision. I basically spent 8
| months blazed out of my mind.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean mental health is never just one thing; in your case,
| weed was a gateway drug to therapy (I'm simplifying to try
| and keep things light). PTSD and C-PTSD are underdiagnosed
| or ignored a lot, I think, but there are treaments
| available. One is EMDR [0] that, anecdotally, was very
| effective in treating my GF's cptsd.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitizat
| ion_a...
| Mezzie wrote:
| I want to try EMDR but I need to find someone who can
| adapt it to me since I don't have fine muscle control in
| my eyes and I used to be blind.
|
| (I'm a statistical oddity! YAY!)
| ornornor wrote:
| > I used to be blind.
|
| That's awesome you aren't anymore!
|
| And also: wait what? It's possible to reverse blindness??
| I'm totally ignorant on the subject but I'd b interested
| to know more if you care to elaborate.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Legally blind, not totally blind.
|
| I had really bad strabismus plus vision bad enough that
| it wasn't possible to correct my vision before I had
| surgery to fix my eye muscles. Since that didn't happen
| until I was 4, I spent my first 4 years with vision so
| bad my dominant eye is classified as 'can see movement'
| and my non-dominant eye is 'can see light'. Then I had
| surgery and they could correct my vision.
|
| I'm not sure why it wasn't done earlier.
|
| I have some visual issues related to this early period.
| I'm terrible with crowding [0], have no depth perception,
| have trouble with facial feature recognition (I recognize
| my loved ones based on their auditory cues), rely more on
| other senses than sight, etc.
|
| My life can basically be broken down into periods based
| on what medical oddity I dealt with, looking back. Yikes.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_crowding
| px43 wrote:
| > I'm not sure why it wasn't done earlier.
|
| Giving general anesthesia to babies/toddlers can be
| tricky, so that might be a key reason. Our two year old
| recently went under general anesthesia, and luckily
| things started going wrong early enough that they could
| abort and back out without doing any serious damage.
| Scary situation though.
| Mezzie wrote:
| That is probably why, yes! I was put under.
|
| I'm glad that your child was okay.
| froh wrote:
| emdr at its core has bilateral stimulation, can be
| auditive, kinesthetic too, experienced therapists should
| be able to adapt it.
| EmilyHughes wrote:
| going by that logic cocaine and heroin should also treat
| depression in the same way, but they clearly don't.
| GendingMachine wrote:
| Well, if the reason Heroin doesn't help depression is
| because the body quickly adjusts to it and then you end up
| needing to use it just to maintain your previous baseline.
| If it didn't cause chemical dependence and retained its
| initial efficacy long term it would probably be extremely
| valuable.
|
| Cocaine doesn't really help because it just dramatically
| increases the intensity and energy of your current state,
| it doesn't really alter your thinking in a way that could
| introduce positive thoughts not already present.
|
| If psychedelics had similarly severe downsides then they
| would likely not be effective at aiding depression in the
| long run, but fortunately it has relatively few issues with
| careful use.
| LocalH wrote:
| Various stimulants can also have a different effect,
| depending on one's neurotransmitter balance. For example,
| Adderall is generally speed to someone without a dopamine
| deficiency. I would imagine even crystal meth would be
| far less harmful with a dopamine deficiency than without
| (although there are still the issues with purity and dose
| size that would make it inadvisable to experiment).
|
| The day we can discover what someone's _exact_
| neurotransmitter balance is, I think we 'll learn a huge
| amount about how the brain works via that mechanism. I
| think if we ever reach that day, we'll also learn that
| there is no such thing as "neurotypical"
| elefanten wrote:
| Coke and heroin form a stronger dependency faster, and then
| you've created a new & very distracting problem.
|
| Weed dependency is understated by many, but it typically
| takes longer to form a strong dependency, and the
| withdrawal symptoms are usually much milder than the other
| two.
|
| So, I agree that your logic could apply in some cases... in
| the more typical case (like op's) of someone stumbling into
| this experiential eye-opening organically, if it happens
| via coke/heroin it'll probably be a much rougher road.
|
| Edit: Probably why psychedelics work well... the experience
| is _very_ different but has very weak habit-forming pull
| (it's not easy to do casually because it's an ordeal)
| johnfn wrote:
| Having done none of these, perhaps it's something about the
| quality of the experience? E.g. perhaps when you do
| cocaine/heroin, the quality of the high is so clearly
| unusual and extreme that you could never mistake it for
| being an accurate representation of "how things could
| actually be" without depression/anxiety? And maybe shrooms
| etc aren't nearly as extreme?
| dymk wrote:
| Those are completely different drugs, so no, that doesn't
| follow from that logic.
| EmilyHughes wrote:
| That's my point. OP reduced the effectivenes of
| psychedelics down to just being able to feel good for a
| short while.
|
| Well do some cocaine and you'd feel great for about an
| hour but nobody cured their depression that way.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I take your point, but I think the distinction is that
| some drugs can make you feel euphoric, but psychedelics
| affect you on a deeper, psychological level. You're not
| just feeling an absence of pain or a rush of pleasure
| (though that can happen, too), you're also thinking in a
| different mindset.
| api wrote:
| Are there any examples? These drugs are very dangerous and
| addictive but that doesn't mean nobody anywhere has ever
| had a positive long term outcome from trying them. It just
| means that statistically a negative outcome is a lot more
| likely. There are always a few outliers.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| There's that Dr. Carl Hart story
| https://reason.com/video/2022/04/12/carl-hart-on-life-
| libert... that has popped up twice or more on HN
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31145393
| webmobdev wrote:
| This is exactly why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety
| medications are prescribed - to help people realise what an
| "undepressed" state of mind feels like. Even with "talk"
| therapies, like Cognitive Therapy (that have proven to be as
| effective as anti-depressants, and actually better than it in
| the long term), psychiatrists still prefer to combine it and
| start treatment with such medications as it really helps you
| to understand how different you think and feel when you are
| not depressed.
|
| Please note that if you are depressed it is better to start
| with well researched medications like anti-depressants (whose
| working are still not fully understood) than psychedelics. To
| be safe, consider shock therapy or psychedelics only as a
| last resort, after you have exhausted both anti-depressants
| and Cognitive Therapy under a good therapist and are really
| desperate.
| Spivak wrote:
| > This is exactly why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety
| medications are prescribed - to help people realise what an
| "undepressed" state of mind feels like.
|
| This is so real it hurts, I had two doctors diagnose me
| with severe anxiety without telling me -- like they just
| put it in my chart thinking I already knew. And then one
| day I did one of those depression anxiety screens and
| failed so hard genuinely believing it was normal my doc,
| who I guess assumed it was managed, was like, "hey have you
| ever taken anything for mood." And I was like "no, why
| would I do that?"
|
| For literally the first time in my life I felt what "not
| anxious" feels like. I was in disbelief for months bracing
| myself for the pangs of anxiety I got in response to
| different triggers and... they just never came.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| I agree.
|
| Then there is also this: Classical psychedelics are
| _profoundly immunomodulating_. All serotonin receptor 5-HT2A
| activators (agonists) reduce systemic inflammation. Generally
| in very beneficial ways.
|
| Systemic inflammation and depression are intimately related.
|
| (Of course, care should be taken not to suppress inflammation
| when it is needed. People probably ought not to take
| psychedelics when fighting off an infection.)
|
| Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.20
| 15.0035...
| [deleted]
| BaculumMeumEst wrote:
| This absolutely happened to me, except with a physician's
| prescription of Xanax rather than psychadelics. I was
| severely depressed, experiencing daily panic attacks, etc.
|
| I stopped taking them pretty quickly because I'm prone to
| addiction, but your experience mirrored mine completely.
| immmmmm wrote:
| the second time it cured me from depression, the healing
| process happened in around 10 minutes where i was taken from
| the worst to the best. felt like 100's of simultaneous orgasms
| and was in shock for the next three days.
|
| i have read a single take can increase neuronal connectivity by
| 10% in rodents, which is not surprising after that experience.
|
| still feeling great more than a year after.
|
| meanwhile my mom gas been on AD for 40 years.
| 34679 wrote:
| The headline presupposes that a bubble exists. I would argue it
| doesn't. A psychedelic therapy bubble would have many commercial
| products that do basically the same thing, all competing for the
| same dollars.
|
| Begging the question:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
| akomtu wrote:
| What psychodelics seem to do, based on all the accounts of
| "feeling of connectedness" and "higher vision", is it does
| something to epiphysis cerebri in the brain to mute the lower
| triad of the human - body, emotions and mind - so the quiet voice
| of the true human, aka its soul, can be heard. There, above,
| connectedness of everything, as well as the clear vision of
| purpose and practical invincibility, are self evident realities.
| It gives you a glimpse into what the normal state of
| consciousness of a saint looks like. Meditation is a slow and
| safe way to get to the same state eventually, with an important
| difference - that state won't depend on a whim of some chemicals.
| bambam3000 wrote:
| I happened to watch the 'Ecstacy' documentary on Prime last
| night. I was surprised to see the guy who brought MDMA to the
| world was sad that it had become a party drug as he believes it's
| primary purpose could have been to help people psychologically.
| Definitely worth a watch.
| mmsnberbar66 wrote:
| MDMA is underrated. I gained a lot of healing from it in the
| past. If done responsibly and intelligently it can be very
| powerful.
| yboris wrote:
| People just don't know that MDMA has been shown in careful
| research studies to cure PTSD in severe treatment-resistant
| cases.
| kristofferR wrote:
| There's no mismatch between being a party drug and helping
| people psychologically [1]. The only people who think so are
| the same kind of sad, dull people who were upset at the Finnish
| prime minister dancing - and since MDMA turned out to be an
| awesome party drug they had to ban it and punish the ones who
| had fun.
|
| [1] For me, for example, I didn't have any major traumas before
| I tried MDMA (so therapy would have been pointless), but I were
| really shy. MDMA at a party setting helped me realize deeply
| that there's no reason for being scared of talking and
| connecting with people.
| deadbeeves wrote:
| No fun allowed.
| [deleted]
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| Only tangentially related but quite interesting:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/GraduatedBen/status/1565041582671...
|
| Sometimes I wonder if SSRIs are one of those things that the
| industry overinvested in and now that there's plenty of momentum
| (and budget) to support the narrative that they are the cure it's
| hard to suggest that there may be simpler alternatives
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm worried that the industry is stampeding into lionizing and
| monetizing another thing that ultimately statistics say may not
| be working better than placebo and has harmful side effects,
| but 20-50% of the population is on and is also responsible for
| a large percentage of health care spending.
|
| SSRIs are that. Opiates are almost that (for long term pain
| management.) Statins are suspicious (and also held up as
| miracles by paid experts suggesting that we might add both them
| and lithium to the water supply like fluoride.)
|
| I see a future of bare clinic rooms filled with beds, and on
| each bed someone who is being intravenously fed psychedelics
| (that are still illegal to grow, or take without a doctor's
| signoff and a nurse's supervision.) Each of them paying a $10
| copay, while the facility bills the government and insurance
| $500/hr.
|
| It'll be like the methadone clinic model, where we decided that
| to get people off heroin, we would addict them to a drug far
| harder to quit than heroin.
|
| edit: I wish we would simply decriminalize psychedelics, and
| not do this thing again where something gets captured by a
| couple of oligarchs and sends their worth into the
| stratosphere, while every media outlet is fanning the flames.
| Really fucking dreading seeing the psychedelic (completely
| industry-funded) patients' rights organizations representatives
| getting interviewed while crying on tv about how
| party/politician X doesn't take depression seriously and is
| trying to genocide them by not letting five year olds trip.
| krona wrote:
| The SSRI narrative seems to be unwinding, very quickly.
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
| p_j_w wrote:
| It's not been very quick, the serotonin hypothesis has had
| huge question marks around it for as long as I've been
| reading about it, which is 10 years.
| [deleted]
| throwpsychosis wrote:
| If anyone with mental health issues is considering psychedelics
| on their own, outside a clinical setting: please be careful and
| do your research beforehand. They nearly completely ruined my
| life. Definitely do not do them if you are on an SSRI.
|
| I am bipolar but was diagnosed incorrectly with depression and
| OCD, taking an SSRI. I was a regular marijuana smoker and took
| DMT which resulted in acute psychosis that lasted months. I'd had
| what I now recognized as hypomanic episodes before, but nothing
| this bad.
|
| I will not get into details for privacy reasons but had to take
| months off of work or school. I alternately thought I was famous,
| being followed, could control cameras that were following me at
| all times - the works. I had visual and auditory hallucinations
| days after the DMT experience, auditory weeks to months later. I
| told friends strange things about my mental health history that
| were misperceived. It is a bit of a blur.
|
| About a week after taking DMT, I was involuntarily hospitalized
| and only sent home with family supervision. They put me on strong
| antipsychotics with nasty side effects. They didn't help at all.
| I only got better months later, after I got off of all
| psychiatric drugs, and realized when talking with a friend that I
| was not famous. I then entered into a nearly year long depression
| and perceived that I had lost almost all my friends, although I
| now think that was not the case.
|
| Now, I've been stable for almost 10 years, and am married with a
| great career. We have a dog, a house, and are looking to have
| kids soon. I'm incredibly happy and only recovered with the
| support of family, friends, and great doctors. I've been taking
| lamotrigine daily for bipolar. For me, it is a wonder drug.
| Bipolar is incredibly hard for psychiatrists to diagnose. It took
| them years to identify it.
|
| Another friend of mine had acute psychosis due to another
| psychedelic drug and had a similar experience to mine with a
| hospitalization.
|
| If you have any family history of schizophrenia or bipolar or are
| on psychiatric drugs, please really carefully consider the
| possible consequences of using psychedelics.
| kirel33 wrote:
| Lamotrigine has been a wonder drug for me, I'm still early days
| on my treatment but can already notice the massive
| improvements!
|
| just adding my comment so people see that getting help is
| perfectly fine (if you get the right treatment/diagnosis, it's
| a life changer for the best!) - mental health is still a bit
| taboo in some circles and I remember reading about the good
| experiences of people online made me finally jump into
| treatment :)
| huetius wrote:
| A friend of mine has a similar story. Still searching for his
| good ending. I'm glad you're better.
|
| I feel like we're at the beginning of the opioid wave again,
| and the obvious and foreseeable negative consequences are just
| being shunted aside. We never learn anything.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Yes. Anyone borderline schizophrenic should be very, very
| careful around psychedelics.
|
| But I have seen good results (treatment-seeking, successful) in
| borderline schizophrenics after exposure to MDMA.
| fritztastic wrote:
| Thank you for sharing that. That's a valid concern- people
| trying psychedelics on their own also run into the risk that
| what they're getting is altered, not what they wanted at all,
| or unintentionally taking a dose that will bring them bad
| outcomes. Even with cannabis, back when it was completely
| illegal, I knew people who would sometimesb unknowingly get
| their hands on batches that had been laced with something else
| and end up having wildly unpredictable (and sometimes
| frightening) experiences.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| A lot of people here are claiming that Big Pharma is suppressing
| the truth about psychedelics so that they can make money from
| SSRIs. But remember: Big Pharma _isn 't_ making much money on
| SSRIs anymore, now that they've gone generic. If anything, it's
| the movement _against_ SSRIs and in favor of new treatments that
| may be motivated by profit.
| gnz11 wrote:
| A drug becoming available as a generic doesn't mean end of
| shady practices to maximize profits.
| https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pharmaceutical-companies-pay-...
| eluketronic wrote:
| Psilocybin is still something that can be grown/synthesized
| outside of a lab. Sure, major pharmaceutical companies could
| synthesize pure psilocybin and sell that as a new treatment in
| some kind of ideal form but it seem that from a lot of
| anecdotes posted here as well as many other stories I've heard,
| "normal", non-lab-produced psilocybe mushrooms can have a
| profiundly positive effect. This might be what big pharma is
| seeing as a potential opportunity loss and therefore funding
| studies that skew results in a less positive way.
| jasonhansel wrote:
| The issue is that your doctor can't write a prescription for
| the mushrooms themselves, so those aren't likely to become a
| mainstream treatment.
|
| The more likely outcome is that the industry will create a
| synthetic analogue of psilocybin, conduct the trials needed
| to get it FDA-approved as a depression treatment, and then
| market it widely, making it more readily available and widely
| known than psilocybin itself.
|
| This isn't necessarily a bad thing: such an analogue might
| (say) have fewer side effects or work more reliably. But it
| will result in the pharmaceutical industry getting the bulk
| of the profits.
| smt88 wrote:
| Big Pharma has more money to make from psychedelics than from
| suppressing them. They're already selling ketamine and
| ketamine-adjacent drugs for depression.
| jamal-kumar wrote:
| I made friends with a woman who does something called integration
| therapy. She deals mostly with people who have gone and dosed
| themselves in the hope of finding themselves or whatever and just
| end up needing professional help because that's a very hard thing
| to do to yourself if you're already messed up.
|
| The way I've always seen it is this - Learning your lesson with
| these things is kind of like learning your lesson because you
| just got your ass handed to you in a fist fight, except with
| psychedelics it's like getting cosmically beaten into a pulp by
| having your consciousness put into a cannon and fired across the
| universe and back. Some people are really attuned to this kind of
| thing and can just shake it off while laughing the entire time.
| Others, who have no idea what they're getting into, with stuff
| like pre-existing anxiety conditions? If anyone really thinks
| them going solo on these kind of journeys is going to make them
| better then they might as well send them down some rapids with no
| boating or swimming experience for a 'therapeutic' prank show.
|
| The key thing this article and the researchers touch on is that
| it's the integration part of the therapy that works, the drug is
| something like a catalyst, and any hype around treatments which
| work without that component is likely to turn out to be a
| dangerous disappointment. I don't disagree with this at all.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| I think you need some kind of framework in order to utilize
| psychedelics properly. Buddhist or other meditation oriented
| practices are very popular, but not the only path.
|
| The important thing is to have something you can cultivate
| because otherwise what might happen is that you accidentally
| heighten your existing feedback loops, which are likely negative,
| leading to a bad trip and in the worst case possibly psychosis.
|
| Having strong foundational positive feedback loops that you can
| use as a anchor or bedrock are useful not only during chemically
| altered brain states, but in general life as well in protecting
| your mind (a Patronus for your "defense against the dark arts"
| you might say).
| braindead_in wrote:
| > Afterward, participants received aftercare, known as
| "integration," in which they process everything that happened
| during the trip.
|
| Integration is definitely the key step. Without integration, the
| trip is no different than recreational use for fun. Integration
| requires sustained effort and guidance. If you don't have
| professional help, then meditation is the best DIY method. It
| usually leads to Spirituality. Pyschedlics tend to go very well
| with Buddhist and Vedantic spiritual practices. I think it best
| complements with Neo-Advaita. If Advaita is the theory, then
| psychedelics are the practicals.
| darawk wrote:
| > The findings were somewhat lackluster: it found that the
| psychedelic was only marginally better than traditional
| treatments at relieving depression.
|
| Err, what? What could possibly be lackluster about that? A one
| time (or few times) treatment does marginally better than a daily
| pill? Even if taken at face value, that's a spectacular result.
| p_j_w wrote:
| It's also just one single study. Maybe there's more out there,
| but this article doesn't even remotely make the case that its
| headline implies.
| nostromo wrote:
| The actual paper states things more clearly.
|
| > In this trial _the primary outcome did not differ
| significantly between the trial groups._
|
| > Secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over
| escitalopram; however, the confidence intervals for the
| between-group differences were not adjusted for multiple
| comparisons, and _no conclusions can be drawn from these data._
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Another thing that stood out to me is that all participants
| actually received psilocybin, it's just that one group took
| 25mg vs the ssri group that took 1mg. It's certainly a very
| small dose, but it's a powerful chemical that seems to have
| effects even at these microdose levels. It would have been nice
| to see a group that had no psilocybin at all.
| tony_cannistra wrote:
| I was totally struck by the sexual abuse perpetrated by
| therapists within research studies that this article talks about.
| It belies a need for much more careful scrutiny of the whole
| research enterprise, if you ask me.
|
| I can't believe someone who wants to help someone else (and, by
| the way, try to demonstrate the power of psychedelics that they
| no-doubt believe in) would jeopardize the whole enterprise that
| way.
|
| Why has nobody in this thread commented on that?
| AndrewVos wrote:
| Probably because sexual abuse is a bad thing that happens, but
| not something that invalidates taking drugs to cure depression?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> create a "psychedelic utopia."_
|
| To those of us "of a certain age," this sounds ... _familiar_.
| mistermann wrote:
| Let's hope we screw it up _less badly_ this time, and maybe
| eventually get it to stick.
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