[HN Gopher] A personal story of treating social anxiety with 5-M...
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A personal story of treating social anxiety with 5-MeO-DMT (2016)
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-07-11 21:02 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (psychedelictimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (psychedelictimes.com)
| elevenoh wrote:
| Psychedelics have been quite beneficial for my social anxiety as
| well.
|
| I once took mdma, went to a random toastmasters meetup solo, and
| gave two presentations. Twas effective in reframing my
| relationship to social anxiety to a non-trivial degree.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| How long was the effect for?
| elevenoh wrote:
| This single event was simply a strong step in the right
| direction.
|
| I consistently work at this & now have low social anxiety.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| You went to a Toastmaster's meetup on MDMA?
|
| That's in now way comparable to having treated your social
| anxiety. Recreational drugs obviously produce short-lived
| mental changes.
| warent wrote:
| Few people are willing to put in the long hard work required
| for many things including mental health. Instant
| gratification and quick fixes are very popular, and I'm not
| convinced of it being a long term solution.
|
| It's like being challenged to climb a mountain but we just
| take a helicopter up instead. Sure we get to the top and see
| the view, but we still didn't learn to climb it. The
| unshakable personal growth is missed, and there will be many
| future mountains with the same challenges.
|
| Do the real work, find a good psychologist, build a
| relationship, and the healing can be life changing on levels
| you only dream of. It took me about 3 years(!) before I
| finally got brave enough to truly open up to my therapist
| which finally lead to identifying that I have OCD. That has
| been an enormous mental burden lifted from my psyche. The
| journey was well worth the milestone, and it's just the start
| of the work.
| creamytaco wrote:
| You spent three years trying to get someone else to first
| understand you and then use him as a go-between for "you"
| to better understand yourself.
|
| Extremely inefficient.
|
| Psychedelics blow the door to the mind-psyche apart and
| place you right at the center of the cyclone (to paraphrase
| John Lilly). For a smart, introspective/reflective
| individual there is nothing more direct and arguably
| better: No filters, no go-betweens, an aspect of one's self
| is placed inside one's own own mind, free to observe and
| experience.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I think your mountain analogy is accurate, but I also think
| it means that these temporary, breakthrough experiences
| still have their place. Imagine thinking that you could
| never, ever get to the top of the mountain. There's no
| point even trying to work up to it. Then someone takes you
| up in a helicopter. You see the path from above. You see
| other people taking it. You see the view. Then, you're
| dropped back into the valley. That experience gives some
| people a sense of hope and changes their relationship with
| the work.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| When he says reframing his relashionship with soxial anxiety,
| I don't think he just means being drunk at the time.
|
| Social anxiety is an opinion you have of yourself. That can
| change. Or at least, you can decide how you feel about it.
| daxuak wrote:
| > ... lead him to a psychospiritual retreat center in Mexico,
| referred to him by Psychedelic Times, he felt completely out of
| his element.
|
| Just a friendly reminder that this article is directly affiliated
| with the website it was posted on.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| And this publication profits off of promoting psychedelics and
| getting sponsorships from these psychedelic retreat centers.
|
| This article is one step away from those spammy YouTube ads
| that promise to treat medical illnesses with secret
| discoveries. Click here to learn more...
|
| The fact that he was a reader of Psychedlic Times to the point
| of using them to identify treatment centers suggests this isn't
| your average anxiety sufferer. This person was a true believer
| in psychedelics from the start, which is a huge variable in an
| outcome know to be prone to significant placebo effect.
| kulig wrote:
| Jeez. Be careful with this stuff. It could also destroy your
| life.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| Seems like you mean well, but you're all shadowbanned. Can't
| downvote someone calling for safety, as much as I love the idea
| of psychedelics helping people.
| wcoenen wrote:
| If you find yourself making Skype calls to a Mexican psycho-
| spiritual treatment center to discuss your condition, and then go
| on a trip there, you do not have "debilitating social anxiety".
|
| "debilitating social anxiety" is when you pace through your
| living room for 15 minutes to work up the courage to make a call
| to order pizza. And then afterwards, ruminate on every awkward
| detail in that one minute conversation, forever.
| agency wrote:
| They describe having anxiety attacks on the way to work. That
| sounds serious by any reasonable definition. Who made you the
| arbiter of social anxiety?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| People have good days and bad days
| [deleted]
| antiterra wrote:
| I don't think it helps to gatekeep like this.
|
| I can order a pizza and travel to foreign countries alone, but
| I have nearly been fired for my inability to initiate friendly
| conversation with leaders of other teams at work. I have
| agonized for 30 minutes to write three sentences for friendly
| 'let's have coffee' emails. Maybe that's not debilitating per
| se, but with the right timing it could have destroyed my
| career, ability to afford living expenses etc.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| "debilitating social anxiety" is when you feel that way.
| renewiltord wrote:
| People are always making a big damn deal about psychedelics and
| I've been doing shrooms and LSD for like years and it's been
| fine.
|
| I've got a bit of a feeling it's people trying to make it more
| "we self regulate" than anything.
|
| Personally, I enjoy them at festivals too as a party drug and mix
| it up with MDMA and alcohol and it's great.
|
| This stuff isn't even addictive. I stopped for a period of years
| to test myself.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| >I stopped for a period of years to test myself.
|
| I'm glad you did so I don't have to :D
|
| >I've got a bit of a feeling it's people trying to make it more
| "we self regulate" than anything.
|
| I think if it's genuinely helping people, that's all that
| matters to me. Everything can't be a big deal to everyone.
|
| LSD works just fine as a party drug. Also works great if you
| want to use to write 600 lines of harsh self reflection and
| make a change in your life.
|
| I trust people to tell me how they're feeling about it, for the
| most parts. It definitely doesn't feel like homeopathics or a
| placebo, but we'll see what the studies come out saying...
| parafactual wrote:
| > He considered himself a logical rationalist with a self-
| described "zero tolerance for woo-woo," so when his search for
| social anxiety treatment lead him to a psychospiritual retreat
| center in Mexico, referred to him by Psychedelic Times, he felt
| completely out of his element.
|
| I don't really understand how these things are connected.
| Zealotux wrote:
| I'm currently exploring similar options and I'd also describe
| myself as a "logical rationalist with zero tolerance for woo-
| woo". The thing is: a lot of these psychedelic retreats are
| wrapped with strong spiritual culture.
|
| I'm torn on this, on one end I noticed retreats in Northern
| Europe usually have a more "scientific" approach than, let's
| say, similar retreats in Peru such as Ayahuasca which is rooted
| in shamanism. I believe both approaches are valuable, but it's
| clear that a "rational mind" would be out of its element at
| first.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| As someone who started out as a die-hard atheist materialist,
| who mellowed out and became much more open to "spirituality"
| and religion (when they're constructively positive and
| tolerant rather than dogmatic, intolerant, close-minded, and
| violent), I've started to develop an allergic reaction to the
| recent shamanism craze.
|
| James Oroc, in another article on the same site about
| underground 5-MeO facilitators[1], summarized some objections
| which I also share:
|
| _" A lot of these practitioners like to take the tail hit on
| the end of the pipe because they believe if they are in tune
| with you, they are influencing your 5-MeO-DMT experience. I
| would say for one, if you've had a true 5-MeO release your
| experience is almost un-influenceable. Music can affect it
| and touch can bring you back a little bit, but the whole
| point is for your consciousness to go and for your body to be
| safe and undisturbed. I actually think the best practitioner
| is a licensed nurse who can put you in the recovery position.
| Any practitioner who would actually mess with your body in
| any way while your consciousness is out surfing the Akashic
| field, that's unethical in my opinion. And that's a common
| theme among all these practitioners- they all like to get
| really involved with your experience. So that's going to be
| the next major thing I write about: my ideas on the
| importance of a neutral container._
|
| _" I'm actually a little irritated at the moment, the way
| the whole movement has sort of been swept up by the New Agers
| and falling back into this kind of cultism. Because there was
| a moment when Burning Man and psychedelic culture were
| actually breaking free of that, and heading into a much more
| William Gibson punk-anarchist kind of reality. That's still
| mixed in there, but I feel like we keep getting pulled back
| into this New Age bullshit. To me, the toad shamans are a
| classic example of that."_
|
| For more examples of the harm some of these "shamanic"
| approaches can cause see: [2]
|
| [1] - https://psychedelictimes.com/underground-5-meo-dmt-
| facilitat...
|
| [2] - https://www.dmt-
| nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86872
| Zealotux wrote:
| Thanks for that, definitely some interesting insight for
| someone looking for a radical experience. It can be very
| confusing to navigate this world, and I'm not sold on most
| of these spiritual gurus.
|
| I'm very novice on this, I feel like Humanity is missing
| out on important tools and we're just barely scratching the
| surface of what's possible to heal the mind.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| If you're a novice I'd recommend staying away from what
| is reputed to be the most powerful psychedelic on the
| planet: 5-MeO-DMT.. at least until you have some more
| experience with other substances.. though many 5-MeO-DMT
| users think there's really no way to prepare for it, as
| nothing else remotely even comes close.
|
| Legal MDMA therapy with a professionally trained and
| licensed therapist is probably the safest way to dip your
| toes in.. and, regardless of what you do, integration
| with a professional therapist you like and trust can be
| very helpful.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Because currently, psychadelics as a treatment for mental
| illness and neuroses are on about as firm of ground as cough
| medicine and chiropractic.
|
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/chiropractic/
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11045895/
|
| That is not to say we don't definitively know they do not work.
| We just dont know if they do anything or not. There is
| promising preliminary research but a lot of that research is
| coming out of a community that appears prone to some serious
| motivated reasoning. And there is a small cultural movement
| brewing that seeks to promote them despite our current
| ignorance. Proponents have made a mad dash to dump them into
| alt med toolbox to sit alongside acupuncture, cupping, ear
| candling, essential oils, etc.
|
| Edit: Don't get me wrong. I really hope these do work as the
| current standards of care for most mental illness are terribly
| flawed. Lithium for example is amazing but it has horrible side
| effects, destroys your organs and for many eventually stops
| working. Abilify has saved a lot of people's lives but when
| you're on it, a lot of times you just fucking want to die. It
| would be great to move beyond SSRIs, mood stabilizers and
| antipsychotics.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" That is not to say we don't definitively know they do not
| work. We just dont know if they do anything or not. There is
| promising preliminary research but a lot of that research is
| coming out of a community that appears prone to some serious
| motivated reasoning."_
|
| It's not just preliminary research.
|
| At the time LSD was banned there were thousands of research
| papers on it, and I've read that it was the most widely
| studied psychoactive substance on the planet.
|
| The research that's come out more recently about psychedelics
| has largely just confirmed what was already known about them,
| and what has become crystal clear is that they're actually
| far more effective for some very severe mental illnesses
| (like treatment-resistant depression and PTSD) than any other
| medication or therapy in existence.
| sterlind wrote:
| MDMA successfully completed Phase III trials for PTSD:
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03537014 results here:
| https://www.pharmacytimes.com/view/phase-3-trial-of-mdma-
| the...
|
| Psilocybin can provide peace to terminally ill patients:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367557/
|
| and it's in Phase II trials for major depressive disorder:
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03866174
|
| and already has successful results in a small cohort, as
| published in JAMA Psychiatry: https://jamanetwork.com/journal
| s/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/...
|
| hell, ketamine is _FDA approved_ for depression:
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-
| appr...
| pmoriarty wrote:
| For anyone considering trying this, I strongly recommend:
|
| - informing yourself as much as possible (and then some) about
| this substance[1][2]
|
| - not doing this alone
|
| - reading and following the guidelines of _The Conclave_ [3]
|
| - very carefully vetting the people you're entrusting your safety
| to[4][5][6][7]
|
| [1] - https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/5-meo-dmt
|
| [2] - https://erowid.org/chemicals/5meo_dmt/5meo_dmt.shtml
|
| [3] - https://theconclave.info/
|
| [4] - https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=86872
|
| [5] - https://entheonation.com/blog/death-fraud-octavio-rettig-
| ger...
|
| [6] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsSN4p1cLrM
|
| [7] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQctOMSmBuk
| perardi wrote:
| _- not doing this alone_
|
| _- very carefully vetting the people you 're entrusting your
| safety to_
|
| Agreed, strongly.
|
| Set and setting are important for psychedelics. They should
| ideally be taken in a comfortable environment with people you
| trust...and hopefully they're not tripping as well. Or at
| least, they have experience.
|
| _The first time I took LSD was by myself. That was...perhaps
| not the best idea. It turned out fine, but whoo, it was a lot._
| jahnu wrote:
| Also just want to emphasize how correct this is.
|
| And yeah wow on your own the first time. Damn.
|
| I was with 2 others taking and 2 people not to guide in a
| comfortable environment and it was a lot even then. It's just
| an incomparable experience and while bad trips are actually
| very very rare and you should not worry about them if you've
| prepared everything else right, the experience is still
| just.. well.. wow!
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| I've always tripped alone, as an introvert, and I love
| having the whole space to myself and just having a good
| time without worrying about other people too much
|
| Agree with all the above, but I'd also emphasize dosage.
|
| I think I remember a study that showed the risk of people
| having a bad reaction is very clearly correlated to taking
| too much. Which should be pretty obvious.
|
| Start slow! You can always take more.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| The main risks of doing 5-MeO-DMT alone are:
|
| 1 - you can vomit and choke on your own vomit while being
| completely out of your body and without any consciousness
| of the outside world or bodily control
|
| 2 - some people move around a lot on it, while being
| effectively unconscious of the world around them... this
| can cause them to hit their head or otherwise injure
| themselves
|
| So it's much safer to have someone watching over you..
| someone who is trained to put you in to the recovery
| position if you start vomiting, and to otherwise keep you
| physically safe.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| Absolutely, that sounds like very good advice for 5-MeO-
| DMT specifically.
| newbie789 wrote:
| I found this article kind of odd, personally.
|
| A million years ago I did quite a bit of 5-MeO-DMT and compared
| to N,N-DMT (or many other tryptamines) I found it to be... kind
| of lackluster. I wasn't aware that there was such a large
| community that use this substance for spiritual or self
| improvement purposes.
|
| Kudos to the people that are getting value out of this!
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Could you go in to more detail about what it was like for you
| and why you found it lackluster?
|
| I'm very interested.
| temp0826 wrote:
| The title says 5-meo-dmt but article says bufo (from the toad). I
| find pure 5-meo much nicer -- it can be safely insulfated (though
| it does burn quite a bit), which makes more a much smoother come-
| up. My last experience started with insulfation, then smoked a
| tiny amount after about 15 minutes which catapulted me. (Won't go
| into details because I can't...it really is an ineffable
| experience). Also no harm to endangered toads, which is a plus.
| jahnu wrote:
| Have you tried LSD? Does it compare?
| temp0826 wrote:
| It does not compare at all. I'm not sure that you could get
| to that same place of full release/disconnection even with a
| massive dose of lsd.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Interesting story, but as always it's important to consider the
| source. These results shouldn't be interpreted as typical or
| average. 5-MeO-DMT isn't extraordinarily rare or hard to obtain,
| but stories of people turning their entire lives and psychology
| around for the better after a single dose aren't common.
|
| Even the subject recommends against self experimentation, owing
| much of his outcome to the overall experience and ritual itself.
| He suggests he was skeptical, but skeptics don't get on an
| airplane and travel to a destination to consume psychedelics
| under the guise of self-healing. The placebo effect plays a
| strong role in many of these outcomes, with the jarring
| experience of taking a psychedelic and having reality dissolve
| act as a sort of super-place that signals that whatever
| experience was had was noteworthy in a supernatural way.
|
| That sort of super-placebo effect doesn't only amplify positive
| thoughts, though. Any psychedelic guide will emphasize "set and
| setting" as important because it's well-known that a negative set
| and setting can trigger a harmful trip which can exacerbate pre-
| existing anxieties and negative ideas rather than making them
| disappear as this single anecdote would suggest. More
| realistically, "set and setting" had become a code phrase for
| post-rationalizing bad trips as being the fault of the user, not
| the drug, as relatively little guidance is provided about what
| constitutes proper set and setting. Instead, negative trips are
| hand-waved away as problems with "set and setting" as a way to
| vindicate the drug itself.
|
| In more typical real-world experiences, life changing results
| like this aren't typical. Some users report a sort of afterglow
| effect, but it often fades in a matter of days or weeks. This
| leaves some of those users chasing additional doses or wondering
| what they've done wrong. On the other end of the spectrum,
| psychedelic experiences can and do trigger long lasting negative
| affect, or even unmask latent mental illness. Again, it's not
| uncommon for these to be hand-waved away as pre-existing
| underlying conditions or improper set and setting, but it's
| important to know that negative outcomes or exacerbations of
| mental illness are a very real possibility.
|
| Psychedelics are an interesting research topic, but we need to be
| honest and realistic that these aren't hidden miracle cures that
| will wipe away anxiety and change everyone's lives for the better
| after just one dose.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _> stories of people turning their entire lives and psychology
| around for the better after a single dose aren't common_
|
| This story itself is not about someone turning his entire life
| around after a single session. As the author writes:
|
| _" Ironically, my first visit to the clinic didn't really
| address my social anxiety directly, as there was a lot more
| fundamental stuff that I had to work through. I've been back
| twice now..."_
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Exactly. As I said above, a lot of these psychedelic
| afterglows are short-lived, leading to an urge to redose to
| recapture the experience.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| Urge to redose is maybe laying it on a bit thick. Drugs
| feel good, obviously, but psychedelics aren't particulraly
| adictive to most people. It's usually pretty draining, not
| something most people would want to do every day.
|
| The afterglows are pretty long for me!
|
| Love
| sterlind wrote:
| I've had the opposite. Horrendously scary experiences
| brought on by panic attacks, magnified by the drug and
| stretched out to subjective days by time dilation. My ego
| was run through the thresher and dismembered.
|
| Having such a negative experience was probably better
| though. I rebuilt my ego after a few months and
| permanently (10+ years now) fixed deep problems in my
| psyche. But it scared the bejeesus out of me and I have
| no desire to go through that ever again.
| loves_mangoes wrote:
| I'm really sorry you went through that, for what it's
| worth <3
|
| Stay safe.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| Bad trips often uncover a lot of negative unconscious
| material that the tripper does not want to deal with in
| their ordinary waking consciousness. Psychedelics can
| sometimes just kind of "put your nose in it" whether you
| like it or not and make you face these things. Some
| people can't handle it.. especially if they're not
| expecting it, have not prepared, and have no professional
| support to help them to work through and integrate the
| experience.
|
| It can be terrifying, but my own bad trips (which
| happened decades ago) have taught me much more than my
| good trips, which were just fun. Not that I'd want to
| have a bad trip or wish one on anyone else, but they can
| be used constructively and be ultimately helpful if one
| tries to learn from them instead of just push them away.
|
| Surrender to whatever happens during the trip and turning
| towards the fear has also been shown to lead to a
| positive outcome as one experiences "ego-death" and then
| rebirth, which is why this approach is encouraged in
| professional psychedelic therapy. I've read some
| psychedelic therapists telling their patients that if
| they feel like they're dying to just die.. and that it'll
| be ok.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Lovely article. Love how simple it was to read. So many times,
| authors get caught wasting time uselessly describing everything
| around them. Really cut to the meat quick and fast.
|
| > This isn't something I feel like people should be experimenting
| with on their own. Having that envelope, having that support
| mechanism, is very important. I believe the energy in the room
| contributes to an experience. Search out people that are
| knowledgeable and really have experience with these things. The
| integration work goes hand in hand with the actual psychedelic
| journeys. Having a psychedelic experience without anyone
| knowledgeable to help you unravel it probably wouldn't be
| productive in a lot of cases. Find competent people to guide you.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| You don't need to fly to Mexico and smoke toad venom to trip on
| DMT. It's very easily produced with no special equipment or
| skills from simple precursor materials that are readily available
| and completely legal to buy online in the US. Not that I would
| know.
| obedm wrote:
| I can't take an article seriously when it's published under a
| pseudonym, by the website itself.
|
| It could just be marketing for all I know. And it most likely is.
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| I think this is a fair criticism. Delivered perhaps a bit
| acerbically.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| As somebody who struggles with tact lately, would you mind
| sharing a kinder way to phrase the above while also being
| factually correct?
|
| I used to be good with people, but somewhere along the way I
| became a jerk. Any tools in my tool belt would be
| appreciated.
| echlebek wrote:
| Put yourself in the shoes of the person you're talking to,
| and try to understand how you are coming across. How would
| you feel if you were them?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Psychedelic posts get a free pass from the usual criticisms on
| HN for some reason.
|
| This is a blatant promotional article for a mystical cure
| associated with a sponsor of the website it's posted on (the
| article admits they referred him to the retreat center, a
| subtle invitation to other readers to also reach out to get
| similar referrals to this miracle cure).
|
| Replace psychedelics with any other substance and the comment
| section would be full of criticisms about this being an n=1
| anecdote and the obvious conflict of interest with the source.
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