[HN Gopher] When America first dropped acid
___________________________________________________________________
When America first dropped acid
Author : jseliger
Score : 104 points
Date : 2024-01-22 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| Deprogrammer9 wrote:
| paywall blocked
| degenerate wrote:
| Better than commenting "paywall blocked" is to provide an
| archive link: https://archive.is/vH7vF
| spacebacon wrote:
| I liked "like magic it is unlocked" better ;)
| yieldcrv wrote:
| they messed up by blocking icloud relay in an ill guided vpn
| spam prevention implementation, archive.is useless
| quickthrowman wrote:
| And yet when I click the link, I can read the article.
| spacebacon wrote:
| I too can click the link and read the article. It's only
| useless if I close my eyes.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Oh it's not an infinite recaptcha loop anymore, ok glad
| the implementation is a little better
| h2odragon wrote:
| That was a DNS problem with cloudflare.
|
| It bit Mozilla users harder because Mozilla uses "DNS
| over HTTPS" to cloudflare _itself_ , ignoring your system
| DNS. There's a setting to change that but you have to
| enter "DNS" in the "setting search" to get it.
| latchkey wrote:
| https://gitlab.com/magnolia1234/bypass-paywalls-chrome-clean
| lemonberry wrote:
| I take psychedelics a few times a year. I'm good with LSD once a
| year and I'm ok skipping it. I enjoy low (not micro) doses of
| mushrooms a few times each summer.
|
| Both have been very good for my sobriety. They aren't for
| everyone though.
|
| Great to see this becoming mainstream. Sad to see the number of
| charlatans and the industry has popped up around it.
|
| I hope that we're able to safely get these substances to those
| that need them.
| ericmcer wrote:
| The effects of low doses of mushrooms/MDMA make me wonder if we
| have been going about it all wrong. You can easily take 20% of
| the normal amount and have a pleasant and noticeable effect but
| still be highly functional. It is like our "normal" dose for
| those drugs is the equivalent of 6+ drinks, and the idea of
| only having a beer or two is painted as a waste.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The effects of low doses of _______ make me wonder if we
| have been going about it all wrong
|
| It's human nature to think that more is better. If a little
| works, why not use more. There's a definite bit of
| experimenting that should be done to see when more become
| less effective. As a user, that's just part of the journey.
| Then we have the marketing/sales view point where they just
| want those numbers higher, but it actually makes to product
| less but not in a way the marketing cannot overcome it. I
| feel this way about the microbrewery movement with high
| alcohol and hops=>IPA usage.
| fragmede wrote:
| melatonin is one where 1 mg works and 10 mg doesn't.
| peebeebee wrote:
| It's not the same though. A high dose can lead to life
| altering insights. A low dose will just be a fun time.
|
| Alcohol in higher doses isn't therapeutic. More than 4 beers
| and any therapeutic effect alchohol could've had is now also
| gone. :)
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Just this weekend I took a low dose of mushrooms and went to
| a nightclub. I typically drink at these places so it was
| interesting to take just mushrooms and zero booze.
|
| It was quite fun at a low dose and gave a similar feeling to
| being drunk without the downsides. After that experience if I
| had to choose to go out and drink or go out and take a low
| dose of mushrooms I'm definitely doing the latter.
| anjel wrote:
| Micro dosing psylocibe/psylocin on a regular basis puts your
| heart valves at some risk of permanent damage in ways
| occasional high dose use does not.
| pennaMan wrote:
| You got a reference to back that up?
| babyshake wrote:
| Yes, this is the first I've heard of this but I would be
| interested in learning about it.
| financltravsty wrote:
| Psilocybin is a partial 5-HT2B receptor agonist. 5-HT2B
| receptor agonism causes deposits of collagen in heart
| valves (which will lead to valve disease). This is true
| for LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin.
|
| A note is that psilocybin is only a partial agonist, and
| the dosages taken for micro-dosing may not be comparable
| to something like fenfluramine (a drug which does cause
| heart valve dysfunction for certain). There was a drug
| nerds thread lying around on Reddit where the theoretical
| receptor activations were compared. IIRC, psilocybin is
| not a major risk, as long as you're not tripping every
| day for months on end.
| alan-hn wrote:
| The risk comes from taking the 2b agonist regularly,
| that's why it causes fibrosis. Not only is taking the
| larger dose safer as long as there are no preexisting
| cardiovascular issues but microdosing has been shown to
| be no better than placebo
|
| Microdoses also don't inspire hippocampal neurogenesis
| whereas larger doses do
|
| Microdosing is not only not beneficial but it may be
| actively harmful
|
| "...it is possible that chronic microdosing may carry a
| risk of fibrosis and VHD, which should be assessed in
| future studies. There is converging evidence that
| simulation of the 5-HT2BR over several months may lead to
| the development of fibrosis. Duration of intake plays a
| major role in drug-induced VHD, even if the substance is
| not taken daily (Connolly et al., 1997; Schade et al.,
| 2007)."
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02698811231
| 225...
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/04/13/safety
| -fi...
| midiguy wrote:
| Microdoses have no real effect on me at best, and put me
| totally on edge at worst. But I love a mild 1-2g trip. I
| personally think the optimal dose is a mild tripping dose
| (perhaps mid ~3.5g if you are experienced and are looking for
| that kind of experience).
|
| But at the end of the day, everyone reacts different. I don't
| know if there is a point to characterizing what should be
| 'normal' dosage. They are basically completely different
| drugs with different uses at different doses.
| huytersd wrote:
| The common knowledge amongst enthusiasts is that shrooms have
| a threshold below which you don't feel anything and I feel
| like anecdotally I can vouch for that (though it's been a
| long time and I can't exactly remember anymore).
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I've done it a few times. The 1.75g was one of the most
| profound moments of my life and the .25g were just an
| interesting night. Felt like a 20x difference to me.
| EmilyHughes wrote:
| For the psychedelics this is very true, I enjoy mostly low
| doses. But I am not so sure about the MDMA. If I didn't have
| enough to get "over the hill" it always felt it's about to
| come on now but it never does it's just a very dissapointing
| limbo state. Even worse, redosing after that won't get you
| the full effect either for that night (maybe because some
| serotonin was already depleted at that point).
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Sad to see the number of charlatans and the industry has
| popped up around it.
|
| This is (should have been) expected for any trending topic, but
| especially something currently seen as taboo. We've seen CBD
| and the 10000MG 1oz bottles. There will always be fraudsters
| and scammers. It's just too easy for money to be made by people
| that have no idea about the actual products, but it's not just
| drug related. Just look at Amazon to see how prevalent it is,
| and how accepted it has become
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Why bother?
| graublau wrote:
| America was introduced to LSD via CIA's MK-ULTRA program.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
|
| 'to channel youth dissent and rebellion into more being and non-
| threatening directions' - FBI internal memo
| spacebacon wrote:
| In hindsight counter culture (LSD being a component of this)
| does seem to have been the response to heightened tensions
| pushing us towards authoritarianism. Still relevant today.
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| I think the name of the book is Poisoner in Chief, it's a great
| history of how Gottlieb ran that program and its impacts on
| society.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I don't think your first claim is true. It was "introduced" by
| psychiatrists and various philosophical zealots. MKULTRA
| attempted to research it to see if it could be used for the
| purpose you describe.
|
| Without MKULTRA, LSD still hits the US and still causes some
| cultural tremors.
| bhk wrote:
| "The LSD movement was started by the CIA. I wouldn't be here
| now without the foresight of CIA scientists." -- Timothy
| Leary
|
| Subproject 6 of MK-ULTRA involved funding Eli Lilly to
| develop its own synthesis of LSD. The CIA embarked on this to
| ensure an adequate supply after finding that Sandoz had
| produced only 40 grams total of LSD. After Lilly succeeded,
| the CIA became the main customer, and via various other
| subprojects funded and supplied researchers that experimented
| with LSD.
|
| In particular, many counterculture figures first encountered
| LSD as subjects of CIA-backed experiments, including Ken
| Kesey, Allen Ginsberg, and Grateful dead lyricist Robert
| Hunter.
|
| Timothy Leary himself was one step removed, being introduced
| to psychedelics by a fellow Harvard researcher whose research
| into magic mushrooms was CIA-funded.
|
| [this is all discussed in Kinzer's "Poisoner in Chief"]
|
| Without the CIA it might have taken decades longer.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I'm curious to see how many people have access to mushrooms these
| days. For my 20s and 30s it seemed impossible to get, now all of
| a sudden I can get them no problem. I have a friend who is not
| into drugs at all but grows them, weighs them, and has a pill
| making machine to make pills so he can accurately micro-dose to
| address severe depression. I have other friends who love drugs
| and can get the literally anytime they want. It's shocking that
| they are so available now compared to even 5 years ago. Anyone
| else experiencing this?
| newsclues wrote:
| I smoke weed so it's always been easy to find acid or shrooms,
| but now people openly advertise it (I'm Canadian)
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| So I'm a stage 4 cancer patient and now there's a real fire
| under my ass to do a heroic dose. I talked to my therapist
| about it and he was like yea, here's this website where you can
| order some chocolate bars. My jaw hit the floor. I thought he
| was referencing the darkweb, but nope just a typical site in
| Canada I think.
|
| I'm still incredibly new to it all and would love to grow my
| own at one point. I'd also love to know where _ahem_ folks are
| sourcing their stuff.
| quchen wrote:
| Germany: Spores are legal in Austria (maybe also
| Netherlands?). Then search Uncle Ben's Tek online.
|
| You can also grow legal mushrooms like this, King Oysters in
| my case. It's a wonderful project teaching you a lot. Start
| to finish it's about 20 hours of work spanning 2 months.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| Spores are illegal in Germany. But just buy a growkit from
| the Netherlands, if you're terminally ill in Germany,
| chances are that law enforcement won't even start
| processing before you're dead.
|
| PS: awesome tip!
| quchen wrote:
| > Spores are illegal in Germany
|
| So are growkits, but spores are easier to transport (in a
| syringe suspended in water, or on aluminium foil).
| Problem with growkits is that it takes a while to see
| whether you've got a good (or contaminated) one, and
| yield isn't that high.
|
| Main options:
|
| - (Learning, qulity) Start from spores (syringe or dry):
| do this to learn a lot, and also to have something to eat
| afterwards. It was one of my most valuable projects ever.
| Spores go into petri dish, then search for Uncle Ben's.
| Two months starting from zero.
|
| - (Learning, quality, faster) Clone a living part: get
| your hands on mycelium or a fresh fruiting body (possibly
| also a sclerotium AKA truffle), which consists of
| mycelium as well (the >>fruit<< is the same material as
| the >>tree<< for fungi, I digress but this is so
| interesting). Put into agar petri dish, let it grow, and
| search for Uncle Ben's. (I did this with store-bought
| King Oysters.) Roughly 2 weeks faster than the spore
| process because you're skipping the selection-and-
| transfer phase, and thus also contamination risk.
|
| - (No learning, genome+contamination gambling, fastest)
| Growkit: don't have experience with this, but I've heard
| that they often don't work because they're contaminated.
| I have no practical experience here.
| grey8 wrote:
| I used a Growkit with no experience at all; and it worked
| beautifully. YMMV.
|
| The yield is "not as big", right, but it's still more
| than you can reasonably consume. I don't quite remember,
| but I think three flushes yielded ~50g (dry) or so out of
| one small Growkit. Two big glass jars full.
|
| I want to do it again out of enjoyment for the grow
| process alone. It's really fun watching these things
| grow!
| flerchin wrote:
| Sorry about the cancer. What's the idea behind a heroic dose?
| csa wrote:
| If my understanding is correct, it helps with coming to
| terms with imminent mortality.
| Wonnk13 wrote:
| Yes exactly. Basically trying to replicate some of the
| clinical trials in my bedroom lol.
| kamranjon wrote:
| Oregon has stores now that sell everything you need to grow
| your own. Pre-sterilized substrate bags with injection ports
| and many different strains of psychedelic mushrooms sold in
| spore syringes. You basically just stick it in a closet,
| inject it and it will just do its thing - in a few weeks you
| will have pounds of mushrooms.
|
| There are more than one of these stores in my city - wouldn't
| be surprised if it was happening in many other cities on the
| west coast as well.
| h2odragon wrote:
| They're easy to grow. I can highly recommend these folks:
| https://sporeworks.com/
|
| I used to do "too much" doses and go running the hills with
| the hounds, back when. They're a great thing; but like all
| good things they can be overindulged.
|
| probably got an ounce or two under alcohol in the freezer
| still; haven't felt the need to dip into that for a decade.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| Look up Portland Psychedelic Society videos about how it
| works. It's super easy as a hobby. You buy the spores or the
| substrate online. Also super easy. Grow-boxes should
| basically be legal for your purposes.
|
| Sounds like it very much is about time. If I were you I would
| also just splurge and seek out a solid ayajuaska experience
| somewhere in that other America down there. Good luck
| ParanoidShroom wrote:
| Shroomery has all the information in the world or just
| youtube. Spore tend to be legal in many places, then buy
| sterilised kits and inject, its really easy. You can do it
| all yourself for a bit less money but then you'll see tricky
| grain infections can be.
|
| >heroic dose. imho they arent worth it, im making assumption
| regarding the cancer but you might benefit more from an
| actual `ceremony`. Not to get spiritual but they are more
| guided, a guided ayahuasca ceremony might be less intense but
| I personally think would be a better fit.
|
| Hope you'll be fine.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| DO NOT just go and do a heroic dose on your own if you are
| not VERY experienced.
| dumpsterdiver wrote:
| Agreed. Definitely calibrate your internal register for
| "this is what taking mushrooms feels like" using a low
| dose. IMO it's especially important to familiarize yourself
| with the anxiety / exhaustion that can occur as the drug
| takes effect.
|
| I've always considered myself someone who can "maintain
| their shit" pretty well on drugs (granted, I rarely do
| drugs recreationally, my mushroom schedule is maybe once or
| twice a year these days). The few times I've hit a bit of
| turbulence has always been on the come-up or come-down. For
| mushrooms the comedown has always been smooth for me, but
| going up I've noticed a vague sense of anxiety until the
| full wave hits.
| TSiege wrote:
| Please do it with an experienced friend! High doses like that
| can be really jarring for your first time if you're not in a
| good location with someone who knows how to remain chill on
| them
| huytersd wrote:
| Eh, I've done it a dozen times and it was amazing every time
| except the last one when I was expecting some bad news in the
| near future. If I did shrooms with my death looming, I feel
| like I might have lost my mind. Be careful, though I guess
| you don't have a lot to lose. If I were you, I would go the
| stimulant (amphetamine) and opiate route since it's a lot
| more easily accessible fun and will probably help you
| mentally cope with this period better.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Availability is cultural
|
| If you grew up around cattle country in Texas they are
| literally growing out of cow shit everywhere
|
| It's effectively decriminalized in the US at this point
|
| Now that people realize that it's better medicine than what
| pharmaceutical companies are producing they are adjusting their
| consumption
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Toronto has dozens of stores (with huge colorful signs,
| expensive ground floor storefronts, ads all over the city,
| people handing out leaflets) openly selling them in the
| downtown core despite it being completely illegal
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The "uncle ben tek" has been around a decade or more now and
| that really changed the accessibility of it. It uses shelf
| stable ready-to-eat (fully cooked, sterilized) rice as the
| medium for inoculation.
|
| It dramatically reduces the difficulty and risk of what used to
| be the main failure point in the process. Now for $200 of gear
| and the complexity of a weekend baking project you can just do
| the whole thing yourself.
|
| Anecdotally I've also seen a lot of people pick up this
| skill/"hobby" the last few years. I really think the
| accessibility of this technique is what's driving the increased
| availability.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Huh, I've been using PF tek as a starter for grain beds,
| never heard of uncle ben. I'll look into that.
|
| It's a fun hobby. It motivated me to go back to school and
| pursue a biology degree. I think there's a lot we can learn
| from fungus, and not even in some kind of spiritual mumbo
| jumbo way, they're just better than we are at a lot of tasks
| (e.g. if you want to talk about 9's of availability,
| mycorrhizal networks are way ahead of us: they don't tend
| towards single points of control/failure like we do).
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| If you have the process and technique down you might end up
| just sticking with what you're using. My understanding is
| the benefit of uncle ben is its reliability for beginners,
| not so much yield or quality. I think there are also newer
| & better variants of it anyway? But yeah look around.
|
| So yeah, fungus. Funny enough I pretty much only grow koji
| and some other food molds. I like to talk shop with
| mushroom growers though. The techniques are really
| different but we share a lot of experiences and... mindset.
| People end up with an almost spiritual admiration for the
| mold. Which is self-evident for psilocybes of course, but
| koji growers seem to develop it too.
| quchen wrote:
| > My understanding is the benefit of uncle ben is its
| reliability for beginners, not so much yield or quality.
|
| This.
|
| - You get sterilized substrate, which requires special
| equipment to produce on your own (large enough pressure
| cooker, mainly).
|
| - Sterilizing rye is a bit of an art. Not too mushy, not
| too hard, properly sterilized, get the moisture right.
| Might take a couple of attempts.
|
| - Financial investment is negligible either way.
|
| - You're hedging your contamination bets with 200g packs,
| because creating lab conditions at home isn't that easy.
| (Plenty of tutorials claim it is, and then show you their
| special mushroom tent, which you won't recognize as a
| beginner, and then you wonder why you've got orange fluff
| a month later.)
| thow16161 wrote:
| Yes, they've gotten easier.
|
| There are mushroom based gummies available in local smokeshops
| due to some loophole in the that this particular strain of
| shrooms is not explicitly illegal.
|
| My gf just got into shrooms. She started getting them from her
| weed dealer. His shrooms were overpriced, and hit or miss
| quality. Then we ran into a girl with a shroom hat at a
| festival, and it turns out she's a great source. Selling
| shrooms is her primary source of income. She makes little vegan
| shroom "cookies" (which are more like fudge), and also sells
| raw shrooms. She's a licensed massage therapist, and seems to
| launder the income by charging you for a massage.
| quchen wrote:
| > hit or miss quality
|
| Psiloc(yb)in content varies a lot among fruiting bodies of
| the same batch, genome, flush, hell even within the same
| cluster (example papers [1][2]). So even for known/good
| sources I would suggest mixing at least a couple of fruiting
| bodies to have something known and repeatable. Since powder
| degenerates faster, honey is a good water/air/light free
| preservative.
|
| [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17401967/ [2]: https://w
| ww.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/037887...
| Clamchop wrote:
| I don't believe there's a loophole, if you're talking about
| the US. There are indeed mushroom products in smoke shops,
| but they're amanitas. The effects are much more mild.
|
| Psylocybin and psylocin are Schedule I wherever they occur.
|
| The only practical loophole is spores, which can be sold for
| research purposes, though not in all states, and are illegal
| to germinate anywhere. Still, many online outfits sell and
| ship liquid culture (mycelium suspended in liquid), which is
| illegal but it appears nobody cares too much.
| yonaguska wrote:
| If you're in IL, I believe I know this person.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I've never had a hard time finding them. You could always just
| order spores online if you didn't know a guy. But now that it's
| not a crime to possess them where I live (Colorado) I'm a
| little less reserved about talking about it. The terrarium is
| out of the closet, and that's a recent change.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| Recently read a description of 1960's ideology. The claim being
| that its all propaganda, and what we know as 60s ideology (peace
| love etc) actually never really happened for a real duration of
| time. What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line
| of thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much
| acid they were societally irrelevant. There werent many people
| actually out and about that were pushing those lines of thinking,
| the ideology died within a year or two, but mass media keeps it
| alive.
|
| Weird to think about how media can amplify a set of ideas, that
| itself didnt last very long. We keep having this renewed
| consciousness of ideas, like a microphone blowing it into
| everyones ears. Even funnier is to think that an ideology that
| hates mass media (anti corporate 60s culture) may actually just
| be a product of mass media, much like mickey mouse.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Unless we are defining that "ideology" very narrowly, the sheer
| volume of cultural output (fashion, music, cinema, etc) would
| be a clear counterpoint.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| How long did that period last? It died very fast, and was
| really only 5 years at maximum. Probably not much longer than
| the time that covid started until now. A flash in the pan.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The lingering effects might very well last longer than the
| actual event itself though. Hell, the effects of LSD last
| much much longer than the drug itself lasts in the body. So
| to me, you're harping on the wrong thing. Sure, maybe the
| movement lasted a short time, but the mindset is still out
| there
| moelf wrote:
| 1960s is only 10 years so if something went on in the
| public mind day on and day off for 5 years (like COVID did
| for 3 years), I think it's a good candidate for the decade-
| defining theme
| frutiger wrote:
| There's a related occurrence of the same principle -- we
| have had movies/stories about the wild west for longer than
| the archetype frontier period existed.
| mrangle wrote:
| Cultural output pushed by media, continuously and inarguably
| well after the movement ended?
|
| If there's one thing that's clear beyond all else involved in
| the topic of popular culture, it's that the media chooses
| what culture to push and what to ignore.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I think that the "Mondo" films played a part.
|
| For those not in the know, Mondo films (that's usually the
| start of the title, like _Mondo Freudo_ ) gathered together
| very disparate samples of different slices of life, with a
| heavy emphasis on the titillating, the criminal, the
| bizarre, not to mention almost anything that might be
| numbered among the counterculture, and presented them in a
| vaguely documentary-like format. How much was staged, how
| much wasn't? Still, aside from the almost obligatory
| nudity, you got a very strong feeling of "look at the
| strange stuff _these_ people get up to! "
|
| My guess is that they had kind of an outsized impact for
| what seemed like half "nudie cuties" of the 50s married to
| a casual National Geographic feel of different cities in
| Europe, the United States, and associated territories.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > The claim being that its all propaganda, and what we know as
| 60s ideology (peace love etc) actually never really happened.
| What did happen was that those that prescribed to that line of
| thinking either moved to communes, or they dropped so much acid
| they were societally irrelevant.
|
| This sounds like something you'd read in a pop psychology book,
| not an actual piece of historical analysis.
|
| Given the visible cultural impact that the "ideology" (to use
| your word) had, and the sheer number of artifacts we have to
| attest to that, it's almost impossible to imagine how this
| claim could be substantiated.
|
| Ironically, the only thing in that that's close to a correct
| statement is the line about communes and acid, which were
| actually a very small part of the "ideology" that you're
| referring to, and relatively rare, but which were amplified in
| public perception due to media portrayals.
| ldjkfkdsjnv wrote:
| No this opinion comes from Academia. A large volume of media
| was created in a very short time, and then essentially
| disappeared/stopped production over night
| kamranjon wrote:
| You say this but having an actual source would be great.
| mistermann wrote:
| LSD is a hell of a drug, but it's nothing compared to
| consciousness + culture.
| revscat wrote:
| This is an incredibly difficult position to defend, and I
| would challenge you to do so.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Couldn't we make the same claim about all polarized views
| (both right and left) that the media love to amplify today,
| but not many people actually hold?
| feedforward wrote:
| There's almost universal opinion on the mainstream, left and
| right that a cultural shift happened in the US between
| Eisenhower leaving office and Woodstock. It's not some
| narrative invented and pushed out.
|
| The media does manufacture narratives. Youth in New York and
| San Francisco had a subculture in the 1950s which was framed as
| beatnik, and soon sitcoms were mocking beatnik. Small basement
| performance places would have patrons not clap to avoid noise
| complaints, so patrons would snap their fingers as applause.
| This was then presented as something unusual and pretentious,
| minus its original context. The same thing with San Francisco
| hippies - they arose organically, the mainstream culture took
| notice of them and presented them a certain way, and the cycle
| goes on.
|
| Every social movement that arises is met with an attempt to
| coopt and to commodity by the corporate media and corporate
| America, this has happened for a long time.
| altairTF wrote:
| In the same way, Woodstock '99 broke all that was left of the
| mainstream hippie movement, giving rise to the new metal one
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Metal hippies? Is that a thing? I'm more familiar with the
| 2010s hippy festival goers eating mushrooms and research
| chemicals while listening to a combination of jam bands and
| various electronic genres
| altairTF wrote:
| Sorry, Nu metal. It was more in the sense of the hippie
| movement falling out of mainstream for good around the
| 00's, at least on my view of the world, of course
| CPLX wrote:
| If you want to read a _very_ smart book that really digs into
| this concept may I recommend:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Cool-Business-
| Counterculture...
| morelisp wrote:
| Also recommended: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book
| /chicago/F/bo377360...
| elsjaako wrote:
| I love the way Hunter S. Thompson described it. I'll strip it a
| bit for brevity, but the whole book (Fear and Loathing in Las
| Vegas) is worth reading.
|
| San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and
| place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in
| the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music
| or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there
| and alive in that corner of time and the world.
|
| ...
|
| So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep
| hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of
| eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where
| the wave finally broke and rolled back."
| takoid wrote:
| Another relevant quote from Fear and Loathing that was posted
| on HN a little over a week ago by isoprophlex:
|
| _... a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who
| never understood the essential mystic fallacy of the Acid
| Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least
| some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel._
| nyolfen wrote:
| the actual impact of the 60s counterculture was that the
| hegemonic mainstream culture had its legitimacy broken -- but
| it was not replaced by the counterculture, or anything else
| morelisp wrote:
| One thing which immediately reveals the lie in this is that it
| pretends the counterculture was the only thing going on in the
| 60s and ignores the New Left, Civil Rights movements, various
| arts movements, the cementing of the MIC, the rise of the PMC,
| etc etc. The 60s were a massive rupture and while it's true the
| counterculture wasn't the only influence its bizarre to say it
| didn't really exist to any extent.
| CPLX wrote:
| And beginnings of the labor market having its back broken of
| course.
| morelisp wrote:
| IMO that's concomitant with the PMC since it's the concrete
| moment workers stop thinking of themselves as workers and a
| big paycheck is sufficient to make people class-dumb, but I
| know that's a contentious view.
| asveikau wrote:
| I disagree, but ignoring this somewhat, I offer this:
|
| One remarkable thing is how the hippie stuff often induced by
| chemical manipulation of serotonin receptors mirrors a lot of
| religious messages. You can take slogans like "peace on earth,
| love your neighbor, love is all you need" and say, is that
| hippie stuff? Or is it, say... The message attributed to Jesus?
| In that sense, you don't really need the drugs or
| counterculture to come up with that. It's been an authentic
| part of history before. Nor can it totally be dismissed as only
| coming from drug culture, or a brief source for a small moment
| in time. We've had similar movements and ideas become popular
| before. I'd go one step further and call it objectively a good
| thing.
| matrix87 wrote:
| Maybe because psychedelics wake up the part of the human
| psyche that understands religion
| nwiswell wrote:
| That doesn't seem right.
|
| I think of the brain as a "rationalization machine". It
| observes environmental inputs, and reflexively seeks to
| ascribe a _cause_ for those inputs. In so doing, a causal
| model of the world is constructed (whether accurate or
| not), allowing the agent to make intelligent decisions
| about what actions to take in order to produce desired
| outcomes.
|
| What hallucinogenic drugs tend to do is overwhelm the brain
| with sensory inputs that are _sui generis_ and cannot be
| folded neatly into a pre-existing causal model of reality,
| but that are so numerous that they cannot simply be
| ignored.
|
| So the "protective mechanism" of the brain, rather than
| abandoning or risking damage to this highly valuable causal
| model of reality, is to shunt these experiences over into
| an "other" category of mystical and religious significance.
| The fact that these experiences are inexplicable, rather
| than being an indication of any "malfunction" in the brain
| which might prompt us to doubt our perception in general,
| is instead proof of their cause: the incomprehensible
| divine.
|
| This isn't academic, just my 2c.
| matrix87 wrote:
| At the end of the day, you can either see a beautiful
| thing and share it with a bunch of people. Or you can see
| an ugly mechanistic thing and think that you're smarter
| than the people seeing the beautiful thing
|
| I don't think whichever one you see is a choice either,
| more like the yanny vs laurel thing
|
| At one point I made the same argument you make. Now I
| don't see it that way. And I feel much better honestly
| nwiswell wrote:
| For what it's worth, I don't think it's ugly.
|
| I think you're right that it's a personality thing, maybe
| connected to how strong the "rationalization drive" is? I
| don't know.
|
| I guess I'd rather tickle the rationalizing side of my
| brain with a rationalizination of the tendency to stop
| rationalizing rather than just stop rationalizing :)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| At least we know rationalization is not possible without
| free will!
| asveikau wrote:
| > highly valuable causal model of reality,
|
| It's important to not become too confident in this
| either. Our perception of that is as you say useful but
| also subjective and flawed, and I think if you get down
| to pure materialism, it's harder to pin down than you may
| think.
|
| Even something basic which seemingly we all agree on at a
| basic level and require to function, trying to answer
| questions like "what is time?", you quickly can end up
| with mind bendy examples from physics where the intuitive
| understanding falls apart.
| mock-possum wrote:
| That would require that religion exists outside of human
| experience, to be discovered and understood and awoken to -
| which is a nice story, but not strictly true.
|
| There is no religion, outside of what we imagine. We made
| it up. It isn't like the water cycle, it's not something
| just waited to be discovered by humans who know how to look
| for it. Religion is fantasy.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| There is a not insignificant amount of evidence pointing to
| psychedelics as playing an outsized role in the formation of
| religions.
|
| A shaman brewing a mystical drink that gives you visions of
| supernatural forces is pretty convincing evidence of a god(s)
| to your any 2000 B.C. person. How else could you explain such
| a trip while having no concept of chemicals much less
| neurochemistry.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Alternatively you can also meditate/pray your way to
| similar states as the ones psychedelics induce. It takes a
| ton of practice, but I was able to generate very notable
| open-eyed hallucinations after just 2 years of low-
| intensity meditative practice (roughly equivalent to 120ug
| of LSD).
|
| It is totally believable that a true religious zealot would
| be able to achieve much, much more with decades of
| practice.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Ram Dass told the story about how he visited the guru
| Neem Karoli Baba (AKA Maharaj-ji) and gave him a bunch of
| LSD, which supposedly had no effect on the guru because
| he was already having open-eye hallucinations from his
| meditation.
|
| https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/baba-
| ram-da...
|
| Probably BS, but matches with what you say.
| asveikau wrote:
| It's an interesting theory that I've heard before, and I
| think it did probably play a role at least some of the
| time, but I think we need to be cautious about attributing
| too much to it. I think people who have interest in drugs
| often may get excited about this idea and push it a little
| far.
|
| My point is you don't necessarily need chemical inducement
| to start or sustain the idea. Centuries of religious people
| believed in transcendent consciousness at times in history
| where they demonstrably had no access to drugs. You don't
| need to partake to be moved by John Lennon's _all you need
| is love_ either; a lot of the people listening did not. And
| part of our cultural norms have these ideas baked in, with
| or without drugs.
| satellite2 wrote:
| Fever will also cause hallucinations.
|
| And in the three main monotheist religions formation
| stories there is a good amount of time spent/lost in the
| desert.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| It's pretty convincing evidence to a 2000 A.D. person too!
| kingkawn wrote:
| This is such an absurd overgeneralization of the cultural lives
| of millions of people
| bratwurst3000 wrote:
| The French Revolution was also 4 years btw and nearly anybody
| involved in it that did matter was killed. Still it has a
| profound effect on society to that time And maybe to today.
|
| My opinion is also that it is more amplified then justified
| part of the 60s. The more important part was the social
| revolution and not the sexual revolution. The sexual revolution
| was more the pill. People did fuck before.
| mynameishere wrote:
| They're selling hippy wigs in Woolworths, man.
| renewiltord wrote:
| To be honest, if you've used psychedelics, you'll know many
| people have that experience. I definitely have that over-
| encompassing all-is-one feeling. To be honest, it feels like a
| lower level of consciousness, less sophisticated, that is just
| making connections between random things.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Depending on how you define America, use of psychedelics goes
| back a bit further than the 20th century, or the arrival of
| Europeans. For example, here's a nice overview of the history of
| mescaline, the active ingredient in peyote cactus:
|
| https://medicalhealthhumanities.com/2019/09/17/from-the-dese...
| latchkey wrote:
| I recently ran out of gummies. Thanks to things being legal now,
| I just went to the handy Eaze website to do an order.
|
| $70 of goods + $30 in taxes and fees.
|
| Is this what libertarians mean by "taxation is theft?"
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| https://tor.taxi
| dang wrote:
| This is the book of Hacker News's own
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=benbreen!
|
| All: please let's discuss the specifics of _this_ article--there
| 's a lot there, and it will be much more interesting than the _n_
| th generic thread about psychedelics. Specifics beat generics on
| HN.
| throwaway_ls wrote:
| I was suffering from really bad loneliness and depression. I
| caught wind that friends I wasn't particularly close with were
| having an LSD retreat. I was raised that all 'hard' drugs were
| bad and potentially addictive. But I decided to join them and to
| try it.
|
| It turned out to be an transformative experience for me. And it
| wasn't from the LSD itself, the dose was too low to impact my
| brain in a lasting way. But it's helped me connect with others
| better in a more 'intimate' setting and build more meaningful
| relationships. It's been over a year and I've done it a few times
| since and each time it's been a great experience with others.
| That's the TLDR of my experience.
| bowsamic wrote:
| My experience was sadly the opposite and it greatly exacerbated
| my depression and invented the thought of suicide in my mind.
| It's hard because there are many people online who get angry at
| any mention of negative outcomes, but I have to share my side
| of the story too. Thankfully it is slowly improving, but it has
| been quite a ride since then. Maybe exactly what I needed? But
| can't say those 5 years weren't absolute Hell
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Referenced in the article, Michael Pollen's 2018 "How to Change
| Your Mind" book is wonderfully written [1]. I read this right
| after reading Gabriel Mate's "Chasing the Scream" [tl;dr:
| addiction is a mental problem, not judicial]. Pollen's level-
| headed approach to the silly topic of entheogen exploration
| reminded me that I am just a simple chemical meatbag.
|
| Reading the article, I am reminded of my humanness.
|
| [1] Check out Pollen's "Botany of Desire" about plants (THC
| included) controlling humans. IMHO it's the author's best title.
| enonimal wrote:
| "When they permitted you to mount your father's throne, it was
| only on the assurance that you'd keep the spice flowing."
| benbreen wrote:
| Author of the book under review here. AMA!
|
| One thing I thought would be helpful is to link to the YouTube
| video described in the opening paragraph:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMF-cyHAaSs
|
| It's from a 1957 CBS documentary series called "Focus on Sanity"
| that featured interviews with Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard,
| among others. I found it fascinating and my questions about it
| were actually one of the motive forces for why I wrote the book.
|
| I believe the recording was first brought to public attention by
| Don Lattin, whose books _The Harvard Psychedelic Club_ (2010) and
| _Distilled Spirits_ (2012) are both great.
| galenmarchetti wrote:
| What does your writing process look like when you set out to
| write an entire book? I know a lot of HN users have blogs, but
| the idea of writing a whole book seems daunting. Would love to
| hear the details of your experience and what it looked like
| particularly for Tripping on Utopia
| benbreen wrote:
| I wouldn't recommend my process to anyone, to be honest! I
| probably wrote a total of around 200k words over a four year
| period, of which I ended up cutting around 110k. I find it to
| be very true that you don't know what you actually want to
| say until you start writing things that _aren 't_ what you
| want to say. Then it's an iterative process of critiquing,
| rethinking, and starting over. I'm sure some people are able
| to start with a clear outline and then just plow through to
| the end, but I'm not one of them.
|
| In terms of research, I used to keep all my photographs of
| archival documents, PDFs of sources, etc in DEVONThink, but I
| switched over to using the standard Photos app on Macs. It
| has automatic OCR now so I'm able to search text that appears
| in photographs quite easily. I did a lot of oral history
| interviews to supplement the archival research. This book
| wouldn't have been possible up until recently because it's
| only in the past decade that so many historical archives have
| been digitizing their collections. I was able to visit the
| key archives in person, but with others, archivists were nice
| enough to send me scans of key documents. Super grateful to
| them.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| From reading Michael Pollan, I recall that there was a lot of
| work being done on psychedelics up here in Canada.
|
| Did you look into that at all? Especially considering the
| current stance on psychedelics in Canada (essentially
| decriminalized), and the state of serious research, do you see
| Canada being a pioneer going forward like it was in the past?
| benbreen wrote:
| Yes, Canada (and especially Saskatchewan) is very important
| in psychedelic history. I didn't look into it much personally
| because it's one part of the story that's been documented
| very well already via the work of Ericka Dyck, which is
| excellent. Specifically her book _Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD
| from Clinic to Campus_ (Johns Hopkins, 2008) but also other
| articles by her students and collaborators.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Excellent find.
|
| I heard perhaps urban folklore from an old-timer former
| journalist that the LSD trade was monopolized by a single
| criminal syndicate in the 50's. There are still some haunts
| with local regulars not overrun with suits, squares, or
| tourists.
| codingdave wrote:
| Why would a criminal syndicate in the 50s monopolize a drug
| that was not illegal at that time?
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Are you daft? Money. Doesn't matter if it's legal or not.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Of course it matters. There isn't much money in selling
| something where your criminal network doesn't give you
| any advantage over other distributors.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| We have an idea, from our own vantage, that if it is not
| illegal capitalism will inevitably try to monetize - but
| what if that's not true. What if every company decides,
| no we don't want to be associated with that business.
|
| So then somebody who does want to be associated starts
| doing it, but what if they want to be associated because
| they've done the drug. Maybe they want to make the drug,
| have access to the drug, sell the drug, but not do all
| those other business bits like keep track of monetary
| flow and pay taxes.
|
| It's not illegal to sell the drug, but they are
| essentially incapable of selling the drug legally.
|
| Not saying that's the case - just saying it's not
| impossible in the uptight 50s for it to have been the
| case.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Not only was it not illegal, but at that time the patent
| holder (Sandoz labs) was giving it away for free to
| basically any researchers who wrote in asking for a sample,
| in order to try and find a way they could monetize it.
| bag_boy wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendation.
|
| After reading the article, I watched the Margaret Mead bit on
| "The Rejected."
|
| Hope your book does well. I'll buy it on Audible :)
| buildsjets wrote:
| Hi author! Given the timeframe of the subject, I was surprised
| to see no mention in the New Yorker article of Al Hubbard, who
| was well known to be involved in that early era, both in
| developing now common therapeutic practices such as the use of
| the Hubbard Room, and working to expose as many influential
| cultural, religious, industrial, government, and military
| figures to the experience as possible.
|
| Was there any collaboration or correspondence between
| Mead/Bateson and Hubbard? Documentation on Hubbard can be hard
| to find, and he seems to have preferred it that way.
| matrix87 wrote:
| I used to do psychedelics frequently and tried really hard to get
| something out of them. Up until the last time I dropped acid, I
| just got high and came down.
|
| The last time I ever did a psychedelic, I dropped acid and was
| reading this book called "Be Here Now" by Ram Dass. There's a
| part of the book that talks about drug induced psychosis. There's
| some illustration of lightning hitting a tower. I remember
| turning the page, seeing it, then hearing this super loud thunder
| outside that shook the house
|
| I stopped doing them after that point because it was some kind of
| sign. When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God,
| after that experience I could
| dingnuts wrote:
| >When I started doing them I wasn't able to believe in God,
| after that experience I could
|
| meanwhile, the experience of general anesthesia basically took
| away my ability to believe in God
|
| one in one out, I guess. It seems like I'd be happier if I'd
| gone the other way but one can't control what one believes
| matrix87 wrote:
| I'm sorry. I didn't know that anesthesia could do that kind
| of thing
| profsummergig wrote:
| I've never dropped acid.
|
| Net-net, what's best in your (whosoever is reading this) opinion?
|
| 1. To never drop acid.
|
| 2. To try it out a couple times and never do it again?
|
| 3. To add it as part of one's regimen as and when one needs it?
| progmetaldev wrote:
| I think it can be very worthwhile, but I would wait until
| something internal calls you to use it. If you don't feel a
| draw to it, I would suggest not ever trying it. If you decide
| to use LSD, I would make sure to take it with others that have
| experience using it, and that you deeply trust. It's very easy
| to let go of your ego and spill every secret in your head, and
| you'll want to make sure you're around people that won't be
| judgmental of that. Personally, I think moderation is
| definitely key, and this is coming from someone that did not
| use moderation and ended up in a bad place because of abuse. I
| was psychologically addicted, and I believe it helped
| exacerbate latent anxiety. I was always somewhat anxious, but
| it made my anxiety clinical and negatively life affecting. I
| still think that it has its place, and can be extremely
| profound and positively life changing. Make sure you are in a
| good head space with people you trust, in surroundings that
| won't drastically change for the length of your experience.
| nyolfen wrote:
| it is basically analogous to porn -- what porn serves for your
| sex drive, acid and psychedelics generally do for your desire
| for meaning and insight. occasionally you will hear of someone
| who finds it therapeutic for trauma or something, but for most
| people, even those who claim to have found great truths, it
| makes no material impact on the course of their lives, unless
| it is a negative one from emotional destabilization if they are
| vulnerable for whatever reason. it can still be fun and worth
| doing as a novelty but it is dangerously oversold imho.
| tech_ken wrote:
| 2 or 3, depending on definition of regimen, but also "best"
| depends on what you're shooting for/concerned about. From what
| evidence I've reviewed it seems pretty low-risk from a health
| perspective, _as long as you 're taking prudent doses with
| prudent infrequency_, and the effects are generally positive
| although somewhat inconsistently so. If you're curious about
| taking it, I would recommend doing so and picking between 2 and
| 3 afterwards. If you have a lot of anxiety around drug use, or
| are generally averse to intoxication, it might be better to
| stick to 1 as I think you will find the experience
| overwhelming. Regardless I would recommend not hyping up the
| experience too much in your mind, as IMO the actual 'tripping'
| experience on a standard 1 tab dose is quite different (and in
| some ways more mild) than the typical media representation, and
| I think too much fantasizing about what it's like can lead to
| more anxiety than is really necessary. Finally, I would
| recommend not taking more than 100ug in almost any
| circumstances, as IMO beyond that point the downsides start to
| accumulate far faster than the upsides.
|
| Some background/trip-reporting-ish: For the last 6 months or so
| I've been dosing around 25-50 micrograms at a frequency of ~1
| per 2 weeks as my "going out" drug, rather than consuming
| alcohol. Results have been mixed, definitely enjoyed some
| nights very much but others the effects were similar to pot
| paranoia. Lately I've decided that this is probably an
| imprudent frequency and am dropping down to maybe once per
| quarter, but will likely consume closer to 100ug per a session.
| The things I like about it are:
|
| * the rush of energy that persists for the first few hours
|
| * the duration of the trip (4-6 hours of effects, which from a
| bang/buck perspective is a plus in my book)
|
| * the general silly vibe it creates in me.
|
| Things I don't like about it are:
|
| * the high body load (it creates a lot of muscle tension in my
| body, and I often feel physically worn out the next day like I
| was working out)
|
| * the occasional paranoia/in-my-headness
|
| * the higher level of emotional vulnerability I feel while at
| peak trip (good for some social situations, but in the wrong
| environment kind of sucks).
|
| tl;dr: on the best trips I turn into a silly fae with a lot of
| curiosity and humor, on the worst trips I turn into an
| analytical gargoyle perched at the fringes of the function. In
| all cases I'm kind of run down the next day.
| 65 wrote:
| Acid is one of those things that you do a few times then don't
| have much of a desire to do again.
|
| I've done acid about 15 times. Was fun, I guess.
|
| Acid makes you think outside the box and really zoom out on
| life. It feels like you're able to think 100x more in the time
| you're tripping than sober. I would definitely try it. It can
| open your mind a bit.
|
| But I think magic mushrooms are overall better as an emotional
| aid.
| dmoy wrote:
| Dang I thought this was gonna be about tripping on LSD-like
| substances in rye bread in Salem before getting burned at the
| stake for witchcraft in the 17th century.
| UberFly wrote:
| This thread has degenerated at warp speed into the kind of
| generics that dang steered against in the first post. Not
| surprised, but that was fast.
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