[HN Gopher] Some Vermonters turn to ayahuasca as a 'last resort'...
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Some Vermonters turn to ayahuasca as a 'last resort' to heal
Author : miles
Score : 65 points
Date : 2021-08-27 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sevendaysvt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sevendaysvt.com)
| aazaa wrote:
| > Today, the Van Tuinens said, they're healthy, sober and doing
| much better. They live together in their family's Waterbury home,
| where they have a Sunday ritual of hiking in the woods,
| meditating and discussing their emotions. Last year they founded
| a nonprofit, Cultivating Connections, to help other Vermonters
| struggling with addiction, mental illness and past trauma.
|
| Hiking in the woods should not be underestimated. Every positive
| outcome described in the article can flow from peeling oneself
| away from a screen, leaving an artificial environment, getting
| lost every once in a while, and moving one's body toward a goal.
| philpem wrote:
| I can't help but wonder what kind of world we exist in, if people
| are driven to drugs (not specifically ayahuasca, but also
| prescribed ones) just to live.
|
| The spike in mental health diagnoses and drug use ... it feels
| like there's something seriously wrong with the world and
| environment in which these people exist. The system is broken, as
| it were.
| jrockway wrote:
| I don't think much about the human condition has changed.
| Rather, people are becoming more open about mental health
| issues, and we are developing ways to treat them. In the past,
| you'd just suffer in silence by yourself, or hope it got better
| on its own. I remember as a kid I had strep throat a lot. If I
| were born 200 years earlier, it would be accepted that
| sometimes you go blind or die from that. Every episode would
| have been a nail-biter for my parents. But in the age of
| antibiotics and 5 minute rapid tests, you go to the doctor and
| they cure it. Are we overreliant on drugs? Nope, we're just
| dying less from childhood diseases. I look at mental health
| issues through the same lens -- we're better at recognizing
| them and treating them now, so what looks like more people with
| mental health issues is actually the medical system helping
| more people.
|
| (The same is true of pretty much anything. In the 1700s, there
| weren't a lot of people with Internet streams driving around
| looking for tornados. In the 2020s, there are, and as a result
| there are a lot more tornado reports. Does that mean the
| frequency of tornadoes is increasing? Nope. It just means the
| one that touches down in a field in the middle of nowhere is
| live-streamed from 20 separate angles, instead of going
| unnoticed by humanity as it would have many years ago.)
| sjwalter wrote:
| Many, if not most, of the pre-modern civilizations of the world
| were to some degree or another vision-seeking. Ayahuasca is a
| psychedelic. If people were never at all seeking altered states
| of consciousness, that would be surprising.
|
| Though I do agree. I read some study somewhere about the absurd
| proposition that the Nordic countries are the happiest on earth
| --when they also have the highest use of SSRIs in the world.
| What kind of world is it wherein people are driven to lame
| pharmaceuticals to maintain their lives?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| A lot of human history was influenced by drugs, tobacco,
| alcohol, marijuana, even wheat fungus (ergot)... the list is
| very long.
|
| I'm almost willing to bet that that evolutionary crucial
| awakening of the "human" consciousness, that pivotal moment
| when our ancestors split from their apelike predecessors, was
| likely from the clash of normal consciousness and some drug
| or hallucinogen.
|
| I am not a drug enthusiast or user outside of caffeine
| really, but I can empathize with people that want to do more,
| to go farther, to make the next evolutionary step in their
| own lifetimes, you know?
|
| Why not let them see where they can reach?
| fragmede wrote:
| _I_ can 't help but wonder what kind of world we exist in, if
| people are driven to oversimplify situations, draw faulty
| conclusions due to the oversimplification on top of
| misunderstanding. It feels as if something is seriously wrong
| with education and society these days. People can no longer
| grasp involved, complex topics and engage with nuance and
| subtlety, as it were.
|
| Heroin's not the same thing as asprin, nor the same as
| caffeinated coffee, for that matter. Lumping them all together
| and trying to draw conclusions thats society is fucked from
| that, when there are much louder, specific signals that could
| be addressed (but are more difficult), is questionable.
|
| Approx what year would you characterize this "spike" as having
| started?
| silisili wrote:
| Caveat: I'm not a medical professional. But it's something I've
| spent tons of time wondering about myself. Personally, I think
| isolation is what kicked it off widespread. Humans are social
| creatures, always have been. And now we go to work, come home
| to our AC, watch TV alone or at best with a family member. And
| many of us don't even get the social interaction of work
| anymore.
|
| Add to that the stress of work. Then the stress of politics,
| then the stress of social media, and now, lockdowns and
| doom/gloom news. It's no wonder people are at wits end.
|
| Isolation is what media and tech companies want, as it means
| you'll spend more time 'engaging.' Keep checking your feed
| while watching the 24h news cycle. And in doing so further
| alienating people from one another.
|
| I have no idea how this is resolved, but it certainly doesn't
| seem sustainable.
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| I think that's a key reason for the rise of the wellness
| industry, the commercialisation of mindfulness and stoicism, as
| they provide a less chemicall dependent means of dealing with
| stress.
| Borrible wrote:
| On the other hand, there are people who thrive in such a world.
|
| In a Gaussian world, where suffering and thriving are the
| result of more or less independent random factors, this is
| fine.
|
| As systemic interdependencies increase, the situation shifts to
| a Paretian world, a power law distribution that emerges from
| feedback loops.
|
| In the end, there are few who thrive and many who suffer. Often
| because of the thriving of the former.
|
| And just to depress the mood a bit and abandon all hope:
|
| The Paretian world may be even more stable, as long as
| sufficient resources are available.
| [deleted]
| jdavis703 wrote:
| If I did not need to live in the modern world, I would not take
| drugs for my mental health. Unfortunately we've developed a
| world where at best nuerodivergent people face discrimination
| to at worst imprisonment in mental facilities and potentially
| even death (I have a family member who died from electro shock
| therapy in a mental hospital.)
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Well, yes!
|
| I feel you are an alternative-perception deprived individual.
|
| It is an essential component of the human experience that we
| must at least try to understand the nature of perception, and
| experiment with our consciousness. There is nothing seriously
| wrong with this, except societies (and the State) condemnation
| of human nature.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Or people have been taking these drugs (especially stuff like
| ayahuasca) for thousand of years anyway, and the rise in
| diagnoses is because we diagnose more now (and also have more
| people, live longer etc.). Most of humanity throughout history
| lived very stressful lives, and those with severe problems
| mostly just died or suffered undiagnosed rather than getting
| help.
| GordonS wrote:
| People have sought to change alter their consciousness through
| psychoactive substances for millenia, so I don't think the
| world we currently live in has too much to do with it.
| carabiner wrote:
| I've tried every psy except Ayahuasca: DMT, LSD, Bromo-DragonFLY,
| RC's from the 2c family, ketamine, MDMA, and so on. In each case,
| I had "profound" realizations during the experience that lasted a
| day or two, then I reverted back to my normal ways of being
| depressed in a messy apartment and slacking at my job. In this
| article, I see descriptors of Ayahuasca similar to those of other
| psychedelics (years of therapy in 1 day etc.); is it really more
| profound than what the other drugs do?
| finfinfin wrote:
| I have tried both everything from your list and Ayahuasca
| (multiple sessions in a jungle retreat in Peru). From my
| experience nothing comes close to LSD. Ayahuasca is definitely
| an intense experience - both physically and mentally - but the
| "effect" did not last much longer compared to other substances.
| danhak wrote:
| It can be useful just to remember that it is _possible_ to feel
| those profound experiences. That you have access to them, and
| that your normal, depressed experience is subjective too.
| mikodin wrote:
| What are you doing during these experiences? What are your
| moments leading up to them? What are your weeks after it?
|
| Are you doing them for fun or are you intentionally doing them
| to improve and analyze your life?
|
| Psychedelics have had an incredibly positive impact on my life
| and have led to prolonged and drastic changes.
|
| I've healed relationships, changed life long habits and truly
| feel as though I am on the continual path of self improvement
| and being a better person. Those were all seeds that were sewn
| during a psychedelic experience.
|
| These compounds may change your life overnight (but only for a
| week or so) what they mainly do is plant seeds in very fertile
| soil. It is on you to recognize the seeds and water them in
| your normal, daily life.
| awb wrote:
| What comes after the trip is often called "integration" and
| it's even more important than the trip.
|
| The medicine (and any other form of support like therapists,
| etc.) can only show you the path to healing yourself, the
| actual work of healing yourself can only be done by you.
|
| The idea that the lessons seem profound, is rooted in the idea
| of ego death and listening to your higher self. As the medicine
| wears off the ego returns.
|
| Your intention makes a huge difference too. If you take the
| medicine with the intention of healing, or with a healing guide
| like a shaman or medicine worker they can help support you
| through the integration.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Heh maybe stop doing so many drugs?
| pnut wrote:
| Yes
| the_only_law wrote:
| Almost the same experience with most psychedelic drugs here
| except I wouldn't say I had any profound realizations, more so
| that things I knew and understood in my subconscious I was more
| more open to myself about.
|
| Ofc a few days later and I'm back on my bullshit.
| peakaboo wrote:
| Not with that mindset, no. The shamans in Peru consider
| ayahuasca to be medicine for the soul. It will bring up your
| worst fears and problems as visions, so you can face them.
|
| I did ayahuasca 6 times and I'm not a drug user at all. Never
| even tried pot! But for me it was a life altering experience,
| and I think every single person on the planet should try it. It
| will change who you are.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Ayahuasca is usually tied to a complex ritual involving fasting
| and guidance by a shaman. Taking the drug is only part of it.
|
| It is not like with recreative drugs where is is more like
| "take a dose and see what happens".
|
| I think it is the real difference, there is a lot of
| conditioning happening, both when sober and under influence. In
| the same way, dropping mescaline and participating in a Native
| American ritual involving Peyote can be a totally difference
| experience even though the chemical is the same, and in
| psychedelic therapies the therapy is the important part, the
| drug is just an assistance.
| azinman2 wrote:
| From what friends have described, it is very different. I've
| seen it transform a number of lives, including one guy who
| started out with a single visit to Peru to do it and the
| decided to live there permenantly. I think context matters as
| well -- these people were all doing it as a group to accomplish
| something with a shaman, and not just for fun at a rave or
| whatever.
| the-dude wrote:
| Did he move there to continue the use? How is that different
| from an addiction?
| carabiner wrote:
| Most people take these substances at most a few times a
| year, similar to going on a travel vacation. You need time
| to reset and you don't feel like doing it again for a
| while. This is far less often than the most addictive drug
| many of us use, caffeine. Would this mean going on
| vacations is an addiction? Maybe.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You don't need to go to Peru to get it (there's plenty of
| drugs in the Bay Area). He moved there to fundamentally
| change his life.
| the-dude wrote:
| Ok. Does he consume it regulary?
| nick__m wrote:
| Even if you want you can't!
|
| Tolerance to hallucinogens grows exponentially. If one
| take a blotter of LSD, wait 24h, then take another
| blotter, it will feel like [1/4,1/2] of the original
| dose. If one wait another 24h and take another dose it
| will feel like [ 1/8 ,1/4] and so on. With LSD one must
| wait a few day between doses to feel the full effects.
|
| With psilocybin, the period of abstinence required to
| feel the full effect is measured in weeks.
|
| I have no personal experience with Ayahuasca, but
| administered daily it is probably not too different from
| medical treatment with Isocarboxazid as the psychedelic
| component should dissapear and the MAO inhibition should
| persist.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I can't tell you as this particular example was a
| colleague that I didn't know that well, but from talking
| to him I don't think it's what you think it is. These
| kinds of drugs aren't really fun party drugs. They're
| deep, introspective, intense things that aren't fun at
| all. And literature shows hallucinogens generally aren't
| addictive.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I have heard tales that the Andes are full of Westerners,
| mostly young men, who blew out their modern brains and now
| wander forever..
|
| source: psy-friendly people who have been there
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| You're not doing the hard integration work, so the window of
| opportunity closes and you haven't healed.
| tra3 wrote:
| I have not tried any; but I'just curious -- if you write your
| epiphanies down do they hold their values or turn into
| gobbledygook when you sober up?
| paulluuk wrote:
| I've tried mushrooms (both dried and natural) and LSD. In my
| case, "epiphanies" were basically the same as what you get
| when you smoke a lot of pot or drink a lot of beer: "the
| world is in 3d", "time is only a construct", "everything in
| the universe is connected", "our bodies can't physically
| touch due to the space between atoms", etc. I've written them
| down in journals, but it's all "gobbledygook" as you mention.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| They may seem trite, but these are fundamental truths that
| 98% of the population will never know. You remember the
| feelings of subjective profound realization. This is what
| is important.
| azinman2 wrote:
| I tried MDMA many years ago. It gave me a different
| perspective of the world: one of wonder and extreme beauty. I
| don't carry it with me in daily life, but it's very easy for
| me to turn that perspective on at will, and at times when I
| come across extreme ugliness or extreme beauty, I do turn on
| that perspective. It's almost a spiritual thing, where you
| see with amazement that this world even exists as organized
| chaos despite all the random collisions of atoms in the
| universe.
|
| Like most things with the mind, it's what you put into it. I
| wouldn't expect a magic pill to take that just fixes
| everything. I found this part of the article quite shocking:
|
| > "I walked out of that office feeling hopelessly depressed,"
| he said. "That was a real turning point. I realized for the
| first time that, if I was going to overcome my depression, it
| would have to be self-driven."
|
| Uhh, ya it's going to have to be self-driven. If you're
| expecting to just take a pill and do no actual work yourself,
| then you're totally unrealistic about taking control of your
| own mind and life. This goes for any area of life, weight,
| depression, happiness, etc. That culture/pharma/whomever
| sells this idea of an easy out to Americans is quite sad.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Ayahuasca is DMT + some maoi to prologue the effect (and make
| you puke). Beyond the longer trip the only more 'profound'
| thing is the rituals which presumably put you in a more
| spiritual setting. If you've done DMT and so many other
| psychedelics there's little reason to think you'll get that
| much more from Ayahuasca.
| cronix wrote:
| Much like if you read a good book, as time goes on you will
| lose the details and only recall the main gist unless you
| reread the book occasionally. There is concrete work to do
| beyond just getting in the right state of mind. It sounds like
| you're doing the surgery but ignoring the post-surgical
| physical therapy required to fully heal. I'd suggest a guide to
| help with the 2nd part. If you'd really like to learn some
| things about yourself and the experience that you'll likely
| forget soon after, record your entire session and rewatch it
| while sober. Listening to your words/questions and watching
| yourself will retrigger some of those experiences/lessons in
| much higher clarity.
| fragmede wrote:
| I happy for you, that you've been able to access so many
| psychedelics that many others will never come close to, but how
| much therapy have you had? How many different types of therapy
| have you tried? How many mainstream pharmaceuticals have you
| tried?
|
| By your own admission, you're depressed and are slacking at
| work, have you tried looking into an ADHD diagnosis?
| sumnole wrote:
| I've not tried Ayahuasca but I doubt it. The real trick is to
| hold on to the memory of your profound realizations and
| meditate on those lessons every now and then, without needing
| the psychedelics.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > is it really more profound than what the other drugs do?
|
| I suspect the drug itself is only part of the equation. A
| common theme among these newsworthy success stories is that the
| people had extremely high expectations going into their
| experiences. They weren't just seeking a recreational
| experience. They were _convinced_ that this was the cure for
| all of their problems after reading a lot of glowing reports.
|
| Some of them even paid thousands of dollars, traveled long
| distances, and participated in elaborate ceremonies with strong
| religious overtones:
|
| > In February 2020, Whalen spent $3,000 to attend a seven-day
| ayahuasca retreat at the Soltara Healing Center in Costa Rica.
| On four of the seven nights, she participated in ayahuasca
| ceremonies with 16 other participants and two shamans.
|
| > As each drank the brew, Whalen said, the healers sang icaros,
| or healing songs, meant to pull them deeper into the medicine.
|
| > The woman pressed her lips against Whalen's head and inhaled
| deeply. "And just like that, I stopped crying ... and I knew it
| was over," Whalen said. "I could think of the people who hurt
| me; I could think of those times, all of the mistakes that I've
| made, and there was no longer that surge of shame and pain.
|
| It seems the psychedelics may not be directly exerting an anti-
| depressant effect, but they may be pushing the right buttons in
| the brain to open the door for pseudo-profound experiences.
| Surround the psychedelic with enough high expectations and
| rituals and maybe it can help convince people that something
| amazing has happened.
|
| But FWIW, I think most psychedelic experiences don't live up to
| the hyperbole in these articles or Michael Pollan books. I have
| a few friends who tried the Ayahuasca retreat thing. They said
| a lot of the people there were repeat customers back for their
| 2nd, 3rd, or 4th experience, hoping that maybe _this time_
| would be the magical time where they received the amazing
| benefits they had been primed to expect.
| daliusd wrote:
| Netflix has show about some stuff like that and one episode is
| about Ayahuasca. My TL;DR from that episode: it helped for at
| least one person, but some people do to get anything from that.
| c54 wrote:
| +1 to everyone talking about the importance of integration
| after a psychedelic experience. Talking with someone else can
| help distill the important insights from the trip and separate
| wheat from chaff. Once you have that as a base, you can start
| to think about and plan longer term larger changes to your
| life, in whatever direction you want to change.
|
| If you're ever need someone to talk to either during a trip or
| afterwards for integration, please check out Fireside
| Project[0] at 62-FIRESIDE. I'm a volunteer on the line there,
| it's a great group of people building culture and support to
| help everyone interested in self-transformation using these
| powerful tools.
|
| [0] https://firesideproject.org/
| puddingforears wrote:
| Yeah that relief only works in the long term with actively
| changing how you think and feel about "all this", I imagine
| that's why it's applied in the context of therapy rather than a
| one-and-done panacea that I feel is being pushed popularly.
| Don't get me wrong, regardless of the tool used therapy takes a
| lot of work, and for me personally it took a lot of years and
| requires constant vigilance for me to keep it together. Eating
| some caps on its own isn't going to fix anything.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Ayahuasca is a much longer, heavier application (drink vs
| smoke) of DMT + MAOI, so you have had a taste. I have also had
| everything in your list too.
|
| D is one of the few drugs I deeply deeply fear/respect, and
| folks should not take this lightly. The spirit molecule is
| nothing to be trifled with.
| chasd00 wrote:
| I've never heard of "D" but I know from experience actual
| proper LSD is not to be taken lightly either.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| D = DMT
|
| For sure, One should respect LSD also. It is not a 'party
| drug'. But DMT is something quite different. LSD will warp
| reality for a day. D will rip you right out of reality for
| 5 mins.
| [deleted]
| murph-almighty wrote:
| Comedy Central runs a Youtube series where comedians talk
| about their drug trips, and the DMT ones always seem INTENSE.
| It seems like if you take enough you basically check out of
| reality for a while, wondering if that's true/what your
| experience was?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Literally ripped out of reality. Teleported to another time
| and place. It totally disrupts your senses from reality,
| and substitutes something else. One time I recall seeing
| the walls growing with vines like snakes, and being
| transported to a place with purple light.
|
| When you emerge, you feel refreshed and renewed.
|
| Do you remember deep dream? When i first saw it, I thought
| we might have some kind of ML model of the human experience
| of D.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I also had that purple light vision. Curious if it was
| the same? Mine was our in space, purple and white lights
| all over the place, some kind of universal womb with
| souls.
| kubb wrote:
| Man, I remember doing shrooms in Amsterdam, it was such a great
| time. At some point I had this feeling as if all of my worries
| were "figured out" and all that was left was a sense of calm
| optimism about the future. Great experience, would recommend.
| Maybe this is something that I should do once per year as a
| ritual: go up there, eat a bag of mushrooms, wander around, feel
| grateful for existing and at peace with the world.
| sojournerc wrote:
| I definitely think it should be a ritual, instead of merely
| recreational (for the fun of it). I think of shrooms like an
| intentional reset button.
|
| I don't do crazy amounts and use the experience as a way to
| explore my life and my emotions, often with my wife.
| [deleted]
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Focusing only in the substance w/ pharmaceutical interest, with a
| reductionist view, may be missing the point IMO.
|
| In the Amazon basin you'll find different tribes, with different
| ceremonies, where ayahuasca may be administered in different ways
| and associated with other things (e.g. "rape"), not to mention
| how the particular shaman (or "paje") conducts the ceremony and
| the overall setting (being in the middle of the jungle, at night,
| is an experience in itself if you're not used to it).
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I simultaneously believe two things are likely true:
|
| 1. Psychedelic research holds some interesting possibilities for
| advancing the fields of psychiatry and drug development.
|
| 2. Psychedelics are currently at near the "Peak of Inflated
| Expectations" in the Gartner hype cycle.
|
| I've seen a lot of these glowing articles about Ayahuasca, LSD,
| and Mushrooms lately. The claims within are, frankly, out of
| control and verging on anti-psychiatry babble. Does anyone really
| believe that a single dose of Ayahuasca is "Like 10 Years of
| Therapy in One Evening" as stated in this article? Or that all of
| the people taking LSD, mushrooms, and other psychedelics before
| the current hype wave simply forgot to notice that these drugs
| were miracle cures?
|
| I get the impression that many of these psychedelic success
| stories are deeply intertwined with the placebo effect. When
| people spend months or even years reading stories about
| psychedelics are miracle cures they build an anticipation that
| they, too, will be cured just as soon as they receive that
| psychedelic experience. Many of the people interviewed are
| investing thousands of dollars in these psychedelic retreats.
| They travel to distant locations where a shaman confirms their
| expectations that they are about to be cured. They then take a
| psychedelic and have a wild mental experience that confirms their
| expectations of something dramatic happening. For some time
| afterward, they are convinced they have been cured and proceed as
| if they are living a new life.
|
| And hey, maybe it's working for some of them for a while! Maybe
| showering people in high expectations for a long time and then
| shocking their system with a psychedelic punch can cement those
| placebo effects for a while and kick-start their new look on
| life. But I think the hyperbole is also a strong filtering
| mechanism to select for those most susceptible to the placebo
| effect, similar to how Nigerian Prince scam e-mails are so over-
| the-top as to only select for the most gullible.
|
| This would explain why past recreational users didn't notice the
| same idyllic cure-all psychiatric effects: They weren't primed to
| expect them. It also helps that many of these people are spending
| thousands of dollars to do this and being encouraged by people
| posing as professionals:
|
| > In February 2020, Whalen spent $3,000 to attend a seven-day
| ayahuasca retreat at the Soltara Healing Center in Costa Rica. On
| four of the seven nights, she participated in ayahuasca
| ceremonies with 16 other participants and two shamans.
|
| The expectations surrounding this psychedelic hype are so deep
| into hyperbole that they seem to self-select for people who are
| believers. For example:
|
| > But Craig had read about a 2004 Johns Hopkins study on
| psilocybin, which is chemically similar to DMT. He found it
| "truly fascinating" that people could take a single psychedelic
| dose and rate it years later as among the most profound
| experiences of their lives, on par with getting married and
| having children.
|
| Again, we're detached from reality. Estimates of lifetime
| psychedelic use in the United States approach 10% of the
| population. Does 10% of the population really rank their past
| psychedelic experiences as being on par with getting married or
| having children? I seriously doubt it. These sound bites are
| starting to feel like weird pro-drug propaganda that has latched
| on to a thread of hope that drugs can have positive effect.
|
| If this is anything like past hype cycle topics, we're in for a
| "trough of disillusionment" where the media takes the other side
| and starts demonizing psychedelics. Instead of glowing stories of
| people being cured, we'll be getting stories about the sketchy
| Ayahuasca retreat operations charging people $3K and making them
| sick, or the people who tried psychedelics that ended up
| triggering extended depressive or anxiety episodes (which is a
| thing that happens, no matter how much anyone insists these are
| perfectly safe).
|
| Take these stories with a grain of salt.
| POiNTx wrote:
| "Does anyone really believe that a single dose of Ayahuasca is
| "Like 10 Years of Therapy in One Evening" as stated in this
| article?"
|
| "Does 10% of the population really rank their past psychedelic
| experiences as being on par with getting married or having
| children? I seriously doubt it."
|
| Yes, for some people
| calkuta wrote:
| People all over the world are doing this, and it's not a last
| resort. It's a foundational component of the spiritual journey.
| fridif wrote:
| The best cure for whatever is ailing them is leaving Vermont.
|
| Humans, biologically, were not designed to live in Vermont. It is
| the equivalent of putting a Husky in the Sahara.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| I suppose then that those of us living in Canada are beyond
| saving.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Don't worry the world is doing its level best to make Canada
| hospitable for human inhabitance just in time for everyone to
| move north to try to escape the heat.. and flooding and
| tornados and etc etc.
| fridif wrote:
| Vancouver and Victoria are fine because of the Pacific ocean
| current.
|
| Toronto has plenty of mental illness as well. That's why many
| Canadians hop a plane to Mexico.
|
| Why is everyone so defensive about this? Moving from a cold
| climate to a warmer one is a much less radical idea than
| taking psychadelic drugs.
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Sure, but having lived in Houston for several years, I
| would take Montreal winters over Houston suburbia and humid
| heat any day.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't take HN threads into flamewar.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: can you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments generally? You've unfortunately done quite a
| lot of that. We ban such accounts because we're trying for a
| different sort of website here.
| fridif wrote:
| It isn't a flamewar. I would say the same about Quebec City
| or Alaska.
|
| Humans do not survive well in cold, dark climates. Is my
| point a bit clearer now?
| dang wrote:
| You just fucked with the wrong Canadian.
|
| That is a joke.
|
| Seriously, what you posted was obviously flamebait--and
| regional flamewars are (like generational flamewars)
| particularly tedious, substance-free, and avoidable. Now
| you're just trolling. Please don't do this here, and please
| don't overlook this:
|
| _can you please stop posting unsubstantive and /or
| flamebait comments generally? You've unfortunately done
| quite a lot of that. We ban such accounts because we're
| trying for a different sort of website here._
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| With all due respect you're completely wrong. People have
| inhabited Vermont for thousands of years.
| [deleted]
| thehappypm wrote:
| Vermont's weather is similar to Northern Europe, much of the
| rest of North America, and Japan. What's your point?
| fridif wrote:
| Have you ever lived in Vermont? The cold there is very
| different from NYC, which is just 4 hours away.
| thehappypm wrote:
| I've lived in New Hampshire and spent a ton of time in
| Vermont and Maine in all four seasons. Yeah it's cold,
| especially during cold snaps. Most people actually like it
| and enjoy the skiing and other outdoor activities it
| affords. And the summers are marvelously mild!
| Avicebron wrote:
| I currently live in Vermont, just moved back here after a
| few years in the Bay. I strongly prefer it here than there,
| minus the obvious lack of infastructure, but the weather is
| wonderful.
| g000m wrote:
| It's quite popular in Washington as well.
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