[HN Gopher] Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman
___________________________________________________________________
Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman
Author : zafka
Score : 155 points
Date : 2025-06-11 00:36 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wvutoday.wvu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (wvutoday.wvu.edu)
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.
|
| Umm, ok, sure thats what it's used for.
|
| That one sentence just points to a large issue with the whole
| tone of this article. Clearly LSD is still a problem child.
| AngryData wrote:
| How is it a problem child? The only problem is the fed's
| blanket ban of it like many other drugs that do have known
| medical uses. Feds still classify marijuana as schedule 1 with
| no medical uses, and yet multiple states allow you to buy it
| freely. Just don't invite the feds to your house.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| "LSD: My Problem Child" is the name of Hofmann's book.
|
| https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la.
| ..
| garciasn wrote:
| Please be serious: alcohol is a real problem child but it's
| widely used and legal.
|
| Cannabis and LSD have their issues, sure; but, so do so many
| other drugs that aren't schedule I.
|
| Scheduled drugs are simply politicized to separate the
| 'desirables' from the 'un-'.
| knowitnone wrote:
| are you saying alcoholics are desirables because I have a
| different view on them
| fuzzer371 wrote:
| No, it's because the "Undesirables" simply have a skin tone
| that isn't white.
| fsckboy wrote:
| pretty sure LSD is readily found amongst white people at
| predominantly white universities.
| hobs wrote:
| Yes, but it was the dirty hippies taking it, not the god
| fearing white male conservatives. They just smoked
| cigarettes and drank until they died.
| fsckboy wrote:
| to be clear, a lot of the dirty hippies smoked cigarettes
| and drank till they died too. maybe some heroin too.
|
| source: my family
| hobs wrote:
| Yes of course, but the point was that the hippies were
| part of the undesirables, along with the black folks, the
| mexicans, and any women who wanted to say, own private
| property or have a bank account.
| worik wrote:
| Look at what Timothy Leary and Ken Keasy were saying
| about LSD
|
| Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.
|
| Apart from being really stupid advice it was viewed,
| correctly, as a direct threat to the established order.
| The established order is very bad (no arguments now?) but
| Tim and Ken were being very stupid and bought a whole
| load of shit down and put psychedelics back 40 years
| mynameisash wrote:
| It's extremely well-known and documented that the War on
| Drugs was racially motivated, and hence drugs used by
| certain minority groups more than the majority white
| population were made illegal.
|
| GP's comment isn't suggesting alcoholics are desirable, but
| that people who preferred alcohol over other drugs were
| historically part of the "desirable" group. That's my
| reading of GP's intent, anyway.
| fsckboy wrote:
| are you acknowledging that alcohol was made illegal in
| the US for white people and only re-legalized after those
| laws proved unenforceable and fed the growth of white
| organized crime?
|
| there was a lot of racism in US legal history, but don't
| try to make drugs and white people who wanted to do drugs
| the victims, it was non-white people who were the victims
| directly.
| m3047 wrote:
| "problem child" is an allusion to Hoffman's own
| characterization.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Indeed. "LSD: My Problem Child" is the name of Hofmann's
| book:
|
| https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la.
| ..
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You should read / watch Michael Pollan's "How to change your
| mind" https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21062540/
| doormatt wrote:
| > The researchers prepared a DNA sample and sent it away for
| genome sequencing, funded by a WVU Davis College Student
| Enhancement Grant obtained by Hazel. The sequencing confirmed the
| discovery of a new species and the sequence is now deposited in a
| gene bank with her name on it.
|
| > "Sequencing a genome is a significant thing," Panaccione said.
| "It's amazing for a student."
|
| Question - how is it significant, considering they sent it off to
| another company to do the sequencing?
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| She did want to say: "It is amazing for a student to get this
| much success by a half accidental discovery"
|
| Then she thought about things incomprehensible for programmers
| and said the other sentence.
| therein wrote:
| > incomprehensible for programmers
|
| You should stop projecting. I understand something may be
| incomprehensible to you and you happen to call yourself a
| programmer. That doesn't mean you're correct about either.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I'm expecting the significant thing is knowing which DNA to
| sequence. Also, if I'm reading the article correctly she
| isolated the DNA being sequenced first, so it's not like she
| just sent in the fungus and offloaded all of the work.
| dathinab wrote:
| I think what they mean is:
|
| sequencing a genome [of a new species] is a significant thing
| buckle8017 wrote:
| A full human sequence is only 2-5k USD so it's about money.
|
| I doubt she wrote the grant, professor looks like he would give
| certain students undue credit.
| esseph wrote:
| > professor looks like
|
| Sounds awful already
|
| > ... he would give certain students undue credit.
|
| What the fuck???
|
| I hate our stupid ape brains so much.
| snitty wrote:
| >Question - how is it significant, considering they sent it off
| to another company to do the sequencing?
|
| It's actually a little more complicated than they made it
| sound. What the student likely did was assemble the genome.
|
| When you send DNA out for sequencing, you get back files of
| 100-300 basepairs. You then need to do assemble them into a
| genome by figuring out where all the pieces overlap.
|
| Obviously there are tools that help with this, but there are
| lots of fiddly bits and settings that you need to play around
| with to get it right.
| analog31 wrote:
| As I understand it, sequencing is the step that confirms the
| discovery, so it represents the culmination of the effort.
|
| Biology is one of those fields where accidental discoveries
| still have value. Whether they earn the same recognition as
| some long grinding effort is up in the air, but it's a nice
| feather in the cap for a student.
|
| There's the old saying: "Chance favors the prepared mind." The
| student must have had an insight that caused them to
| investigate something that many other people had probably
| overlooked or dismissed as unimportant.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The whole article feels a bit confusing, and I'm not really
| sure what they're talking about. Are they saying the mushroom
| produces ergot alkaloids--the precursors to LSD? That would be
| interesting but not groundbreaking. Or are they claiming it
| actually produces LSD itself?
|
| Fun fact: I once knew someone whose master's thesis involved a
| solid-gas fluidized bed reactor--basically wheat kernels
| suspended in humid air, with ergot fungus growing on them.
| Ergotamine was then extracted from the air. The reactor was
| quite complex, spanning several floors, and was a gift from a
| now-defunct chemical giant.
| lovemenot wrote:
| iirc, it is LSD, but not LSD-25. Which is the kind usually
| synthesised and sold on blotters. LSD-25 was so named because
| it was Hoffman's twenty fifth experimental LSD variant.
| anotherpaul wrote:
| It's great for the student. And it shows that the lab she
| worked in and the university are able to do this type of
| science.
|
| Sequencing a new fungus is not that rare. It's done all the
| time these past years. People discover new species all the
| time.
|
| What is cool is that they already know a bit about where this
| fungus lives and what it might do.
|
| The hard biology will be go actually culture it, test it's
| abilities and see what else it can do.
|
| I mean the article is very short so this is me speculating, but
| if it is of interest they might figure out what the symbiosis
| really means to the plant and the fungus.
|
| Also discovering the gene clusters that produce the active
| compounds will be cool and interesting.
|
| Edit: just so it's clear, its amazing that the student was
| involved and had the trive to do this. It's easy to not be
| curious but she was and also she was in an environment where
| her curiosity was taken serious. That's a great feat of the
| superiviser or whoever else was involved
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| It is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain
| LSA.
|
| Also LSA is different from LSD. While you can legally get the
| former it is (from my experience) way more dangerous than LSD.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| >It is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain
| LSA
|
| This is one of the givens they were working off of. The finding
| of the research is the fungus that produces the LSA in the
| seeds.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| LSA distorted my perception of object sizes and made me very
| nauseous.
|
| I took it once in high school. HBWR seeds. Scraped the nasty
| stuff off the outside. Fell asleep while waiting for it to kick
| in. Woke up intoxicated. Puked. Went back to sleep
| NewJazz wrote:
| Lol similar situation for me. Took a hike actually. Puked on
| the beach. Got some seawater and washed the puke away /
| buried it in the sand. Rough time.
| culi wrote:
| Always take dramamine or ginger with you if taking HBWR.
| There are ways you can extract the LSA without the
| compounds that give you nausea but it's a pretty involved
| process
| culi wrote:
| HBWR seeds cured my anxiety when I was in highschool. Also
| gave me the worst nausea I'd ever experienced. Also made me a
| lot closer to my mother
|
| Hell of a plant
| jlg23 wrote:
| > it is (from my experience) way more dangerous than LSD.
|
| That is not necessarily related to the compound but the method
| of consumption. Natural sources of psychedelic compounds have,
| naturally, variances in potency. With Morning Glory seeds you
| also ingest some other probably pharmacologically active
| compounds, again in amounts that vary from seed to seed.
| Xmd5a wrote:
| What happened ? I took LSA (both top-choice morning glories and
| HBWRs) about 20~40 times. About half to 1/3rd were "blank
| shots" (when you feel almost no effects). I even re-peaked
| once.
|
| Very unpredictable, but it was always less, never more intense
| trips. The fact I took top-of-the-shelf seeds might have to do
| with that. It's better to take 10 HWBR from Ghana than 50 from
| Hawaii (may have god mercy upon your soul if this is the case).
|
| Also ipomea vs HBWR is as different as sativa vs indica.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.
|
| Wait: I thought LSD is schedule 1, and there are no legally-
| sanctioned uses of it? Did something change while I was living
| under a rock? (Unlike MDMA, where there were legally-sanctioned
| experiments recently.)
| hungmung wrote:
| Here's one, I'm sure there are others:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38042914/
| AngryData wrote:
| MDMA, magic mushrooms, and cannabis are all also Schedule 1 by
| US federal law too. All it really takes though to get around it
| is for a state law to allow it and the state to tell the feds
| to go fuck themselves and close the door to them and make them
| challenge it in court if they want to do anything about it,
| which the feds don't want to do because it would cost ass tons
| of money to fight in court and would only further prove that
| drug scheduling is mostly just bullshit and lies.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| They'd likely have to show they're worse than booze or
| cigarettes, which is gonna be awfully hard to accomplish.
| immibis wrote:
| The federal government has just shown itself willing to
| militarily invade states that it doesn't like. (See also the
| imperial boomerang)
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Drug scheduling is complete bullshit and is backed by politics
| and bronze age protestant beliefs, not science.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| Fact check: true. It's also completely up to the head of the
| NHS, who is currently noted drug enthusiast RFK Jr. Here's
| hoping he'll legalize LSD and mescaline! He's used enough
| mescaline and spiked enough people's drinks with it, and also
| forced LSD on his pet birds, so at this point it's pure
| hypocrisy for him to keep it scheduled. Of course, we should
| expect everybody to have much better morals and sense about
| it than he's ever had.
| wbl wrote:
| After the dead whale nothing should surprise me but what?
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| Is this really for HN? This is leftist piffle, conspiracy
| theory, and unsubstantiated allegations. I'm not sure what
| it adds to the discovery by this undergrad. I don't know.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| "Robert F Kennedy Jr And The Dark Side Of The Dream" by
| Jerry Oppenheimer, page 54:
|
| > Back at the Kennedy compound before summer's end, away
| from Billings for the time being, he continued his bad
| behavior, feeding LSD to his parakeet, and forcing his
| brother David to trip on the psychedelic mescaline.
| Hallucinating, looking wide- eyed at his brother, he
| imagined the worst, screaming, "You're dying just like
| Daddy!"
|
| Jerry Oppenheimer is generally considered to be a
| credible biographer and journalist.
|
| That takes care of the charge of "leftist piddle,
| conspiracy theory, and unsubstantiated allegations." It
| is not piffle, it is written by a serious reported in a
| serious biographical piece. It is not a conspiracy
| theory, for it does not posit any particular conspiracy
| because typically those require more than one
| conspirator, and it is about as substantiated as many of
| the claims RFK Jr himself makes.
|
| Having now established the substance of the claim I made,
| I shall proceed to establish its relevance. RFK Jr has a
| long history with drugs, as do many politicians. RFK Jr
| is the head of the HHS. The secretary of the HHS can
| initiate proceedings to deschedule drugs. It is
| hypocritical, given his own admitted history with drugs,
| to continue to imprison people for it.
|
| For that matter, we have recently had Elon Musk (a
| notorious drug enthusiast) involved in the highest levels
| of government while actively doing copious amounts of
| illegal drugs. He should be in jail, like everyone else
| of lesser means who have been victimized by this
| senseless war on drugs. He won't be imprisoned, because
| he has money. It is the best evidence we have that the
| war on drugs is actually a war on the poor.
|
| They don't care about drugs, or they'd enforce drug law
| evenly. Joe Rogan, a self-admitted fan of many schedule 1
| hallucinogens, remains a free man in the proto-christian-
| nationalist state of Texas. It is hypocrisy.
|
| It is time to end this war on drugs and move towards a
| sensible drug policy that is fair for all people and
| respects our basic freedoms.
|
| So, yes, it is for HN, thank you.
| Amezarak wrote:
| I started at "bronze age Protestant" and chuckled. I know you
| of course weren't being that serious about the exact
| phrasing, but of course the Protestants didn't come around
| until the 1500s. What that phrase put into my mind was
| Pilgrims showing up in the Trojan war. :)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Now I'm imagining some skit for something like History of
| the Wolrd Pt 3
| noitpmeder wrote:
| Make the kickstarter and I'll donate
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| What are Bronze Age Protestant beliefs? I wasn't aware that
| Protestants existed in the Bronze Age.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| I wasn't aware people could act so credulously in the face
| of obvious hyperbole.
|
| Do you really, truly, believe this poster to be making a
| positive claim about when Protestants did or did not exist?
| If so, I weep for your social comprehension skills.
|
| Christian moralism is an antiquated, self-contradicting,
| socially regressive belief system that continues to plague
| humanity and politics to this day. If people want to
| believe in Sky Daddy on their own time then that's fine, we
| all need a way to cope our way through the horrors of
| living with other humans. Your capacity to believe in Sky
| Daddy ends where it impinges on my freedoms, which are not
| granted by any imaginary deity. We should keep Yahweh (and
| every other unfalsifiable, immaterial, intelligence) out of
| the politics that govern mortal, material, extant humans.
| An omnipotent presence could surely argue for his own
| agenda in politics. It's baffling that so many narcissists
| believe themselves to be charged with the responsibility
| for advocating his agenda instead.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| I believe there are religious exceptions allowed. See Michael
| Pollan's "How to change your mind."
|
| Book: https://michaelpollan.com/books/how-to-change-your-mind/
|
| Documentary based on book: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21062540/
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Timothy Leary didn't get to have his!
| hollerith wrote:
| >> drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder
|
| LSD can _cause_ PTSD. Dr K of the "Healthy Gamer" YT channel
| gives that as the reason people shouldn't do LSD in this next
| 8-min video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7hE1Ba_QA
|
| The video is not about LSD or PTSD, so it would be nice if I
| could give a time index into where in the video Dr gives the
| warning, but sadly I don't have time right now.
| 173throwaway wrote:
| LSD saved my life. I suffered chronic depression and anxiety
| with suicidal ideation, had tried multiple psychiatric drugs
| and forms of therapy, and nothing had improved (the failure of
| these officially-approved modes of treatment actually left me
| feeling much more hopeless). Taking LSD gave me the insight
| that this wasn't fundamental the the nature of being me, that
| there was hope that one day I could love my life. The road to
| get there has been difficult, and has involved intense (non-
| LSD) psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with very deep
| childhood trauma, but that first fundamental glimmer that
| there's a reason to have hope came from an experience with LSD.
|
| If I had listened to stern authority figures telling me that
| there's never a good reason to try it and it could only do me
| harm, I would in all likelihood be dead today.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I personally know some whose life was destroyed by it. LSD
| totally shattered them.
|
| 10 years later and this person still isn't right.
| wsintra2022 wrote:
| Pink Floyd's man who recently passed away may be an
| example. Brian Wilson another, I heard him say his one
| regret was psychedelics as they scrambled his brain... I'm
| all for them when used with respect and correct (mind)set
| and setting. Lots of human progress has came off the back
| of psychedelics but they not for the common people. It
| takes a brave and worthy (shaman) to guide someone through
| the collective conscious
| jajko wrote:
| Those folks had serious psychiatric mental issues to
| begin with. Then they threw tens of truckloads of hard
| drugs in various mixes on top of that, often for decades.
|
| This could break even the most healthy person and tells
| nothing about therapeutic potential of these substances
| with right approach. Its like judging how healthy salt is
| to humans by watching some maniac consume 200g of it
| daily.
| larrled wrote:
| Ironically, many in this thread are advocating for that!
| Take someone with mental problems, throw a truckload of
| psychedelics on top. That'll fix em gud! And, if that
| doesn't work, up the dosage, or maybe do the 3000 dollar
| ketamine sessions twice a week to really really fix the
| problem.
| larrled wrote:
| Wilson was taking a lot of different sorts of drugs iirc.
| Part of the problem is people take psychedelics in youth,
| when schizophrenia, bipolar and other mental disorders
| tend to arise making it hard to quantify true risk.
| jajko wrote:
| Was that person a well-balanced cca normal happy person
| without any childhood traumas or in-borne mental issues
| before?
| fnord77 wrote:
| no but I believe he was trying to treat some mental
| problems by using it
| baq wrote:
| It's always risk vs reward. It turned you around, it can push
| healthy folks into a long lasting depression. Happy for you,
| but it isn't a magical cure, it's a chemical for twisting
| your synapses. As you've noted, having a guide through the
| experience and a purpose is vital.
| jajko wrote:
| > it's a chemical for twisting your synapses
|
| Thats an oversimplification to be polite. For most people
| it can bring the most intense and beautiful experiences
| their live can ever produce. Then there is (non-trivial)
| minority which has something broken in their core (which is
| a statement that can mean many things). Yes, its not for
| them, or only at great risk (and potentially great reward
| as OP wrote).
|
| But man, I never ever came close to the simple pure beauty
| that I experienced repeatedly on mushrooms (for the sake of
| argument cca 1:1 to LSD), never with any sort of guide,
| just let my mind wander to places it wants to go.
|
| And I've got married, have 2 beautiful healthy kids, was
| there to cut umbilical cord for both, climbed extreme peaks
| like Matterhorn, hiked for weeks and months in himalaya and
| other places around the world, all very intense.
|
| Psychedelics changed permanently perspective on life and
| important matters quite a bit. Experienced very intense
| spiritual moments, despite being cca agnostic (and it just
| confirmed and enforced my views to be clear). For all the
| bad it can do and does, it adds _so much_ good to mankind.
| Its a very powerful tool.
| larrled wrote:
| Your post actually makes me sad. You have such a
| wonderful life: kids, wife, privilege and wealth to
| travel to Europe. But the most beautiful experience in
| your mind wasn't any of that, it was tripping on shrooms?
| If you are trying to make me not want to try psychedelics
| you did well.
| ordu wrote:
| The glass is half full of half empty? Did GP have reduced
| intensity of experiences related to his family, or they
| were of "normal" intensity, just intensity of shrooms
| experiences were above it?
| earth-adventure wrote:
| The person you reply to sounds like someone who kknocks
| it without having tried it. I base this on the full
| comment, and more specifically on the fragment "tripping
| on shrooms". Drugs all enhance and alter what's inside
| you, for better and for worse, controllable or not. If
| climbing Mt Everest was your most eye opening and amazing
| experience, does that somehow reduce the value of your
| wife and kids? Such a strange premise...
| larrled wrote:
| I mean I hear former junkies say the same thing about
| heroin after they kick. "It was the greatest pleasure
| I'll ever know," they'll tell you with utmost sincerity.
| More a bug than feature, to me, YMMV
| nashashmi wrote:
| Neither psych drugs nor therapy nor LSD is a cure for
| depression. I too have had chronic depression and anxiety.
| Maybe I have had a more severe cocktail of mental conditions.
| Psych drug informed me where the irritation came from, caused
| me to rebel, but then it proceeded to give me suicidal
| ideation. Therapy was like a person talking a language I
| didn't understand. alcohol was the most addicting experience
| as an escape from problems. I imagine lsd was an escape from
| reality.
|
| The ultimate cure for depression: call this new line of
| sadness and hopelessness and despair as the baseline for what
| life is. And any ounce of hope, happiness, bloom is a gift
| and blessing that you appreciate without taking for granted.
| And then you structure yourself to live for those fleeting
| moments. And suicide is a world of persistent misery many
| times worse than what you are experiencing.
|
| But instead you took LSD, and found yourself hope yet the
| message can be a complete deception. What will you do when
| you realize that? All you have done is separated yourself
| from ever understanding your reality because of that hope.
|
| People who suffer from depression are those who are unable to
| connect with their world. Either trauma, anger, or confusion
| will cause them separation and difficulty of integration.
| There is this book called feeling good I think which goes
| into CBT. The first few pages repeats one thing relentlessly:
| you have exaggerated the negatives in your world in order to
| cope with it.
|
| Some people adopt supremacy complexes to give themselves new
| meaning and curse out all irritations. This is a temporary
| solution because it swings them into the other side of
| disconnect eventually
| dgfitz wrote:
| Your whole post reads like a supremacy complex.
| 112_134 wrote:
| Similar experience here. Historically traditional talk
| therapy only retraumatized me and was not going to be
| compatible with my personality. I had ran out of other
| treatment options (stimulants, SSRIs, EMDR, ECT,
| meditation/mindfulness...) before finally reaching for
| psilocybin purely out of desperation.
|
| Combined with intensive integration therapy it has been the
| only treatment that had _any_ positive effect. A lot of
| treatments have a risk profile in whether they will confirm
| my existing beliefs and only aggravate my situation (similar
| to above, failing to find "go to therapy" useful advice and
| opening myself to blame/unlovability from givers of the
| advice), but I hope I can go back sometime for a similar
| treatment if it's psychoactive.
|
| It was no cure, and today I'm largely the person I was before
| treatment moodwise, but one thing I learned was for a
| condition such as mine, there is unlikely to _ever_ be a
| cure. I had just the right amount of trauma that I can expect
| to manage my condition for the rest of my life. But what
| opinion do I choose to attach to this belief? That I 'm okay
| with it. It wasn't my fault so there's not any sense in
| shaming myself for not finding what I can't have. At least
| one thing I can say is I found _something_ that had an
| effect, and no matter how pessimistic I get, not even I can
| deny that with some depressive retort. This is not a
| sensation I 'm familiar with. Before taking the drug I had
| lost all hope from believing my incompatibility with doctor-
| approved methods made me an untouchable, on top of already
| being depressed. It was clear my path forward would have to
| be paved away from the one society prescribes for me from
| then on.
|
| Strangely I have no strong desire to take the drug again yet
| even though I am still depressed. I accept my life will be
| one of sometimes violent mood swings and I will have to be
| more patient with myself than in the past. I have made it my
| life's goal not to foist my malfunctioning brain's
| irrationality onto others at all costs. My condition is not
| my fault, but it is my responsibility to manage it. If I'm
| depressed now I just try to sit with it instead of fighting
| for things I know are unrealistic to have. I'm just not like
| most people, and I'm okay with that now, more or less.
| monadoid wrote:
| hey thank you for posting this. I'm sorry to hear about
| your condition but happy LSD was able to help a bit.
|
| One unsolicited idea from a stranger: consider trying it
| again! I was in a similar situation for a long time (found
| it helpful but no strong desire to try it again), but
| multiple trips over time ended up being very helpful - for
| me at least.
| 112_134 wrote:
| Agree, I read research (unsure which) that stated people
| with my circumstance benefited more from repeated
| sessions, sometimes as high as 5x. I intend to go back at
| a later date but I see no rush.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| I think people should be properly informed about the risks of
| LSD and should try a small dose before trying anything larger,
| and should have the maturity to understand what a complex or
| difficult trip could mean.
| tialaramex wrote:
| It's not at all unusual for drugs to have effects similar to
| the thing they're used to treat.
|
| The anti-emetic I needed to take for chemo (chemotherapy is
| literally poison, your body will quickly figure out that you're
| being poisoned and, despite the fact that the poison was
| injected into your veins, throw up to try to remove it, so, you
| need an anti-emetic or you'll have a bad time each session) has
| "Nausea, vomiting" on its list of possible side effects. It
| also has a long list of really nasty psyc effects, so since
| taking it _after_ chemo isn 't mandatory I just didn't, most
| people take it for a few hours or a day, I just didn't, which
| was not fun but to my mind the risk wasn't worth it. [Yes I'm
| fine now, chemotherapy works]
|
| Even more hilariously I read a friend's Morning After pill
| patient info while she was busy taking it, and almost every
| symptoms of early pregnancy is on the side effects list -
| basically the only thing they're _not_ saying you might have
| despite this pill is a baby. Vomiting, cramps, dizziness and
| headaches, bleeding, sore nipples - pretty much everything
| except the newborn human in nine months was on the list.
| hollerith wrote:
| The other things that are good for PTSD though don't carry a
| risk of making it worse: friendship with people who
| understand you and don't trigger you, talking about the
| traumatic experience, supporting general metabolic health and
| brain health.
| yard2010 wrote:
| These two go together - set and setting.
| nick__m wrote:
| For lessening the effect of traumatizing experience, 40mg
| of propranolol an hour before remembering and visualizing
| the traumatic, under guidance of a therapist, should be the
| gold standard for treatment. There a lot's of researchs
| showing its effectiveness but for some reason it's use
| stays experimental. I suppose it's because there is no
| money to be made with an old drug cheaply available from
| many generic suppliers.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes, it is a major risk. I'm unsure why people want to pretend
| that it isn't. Everyone knows someone who unexpectedly changed
| forever for the worse bc of these drugs. It also happened to me
| even though I had perfect set and setting, I was traumatised by
| it for years, and I know if I took it again today I would still
| have a bad time. And yet I've met multiple people who have told
| me that the issue is that I just didn't take enough, some even
| going as far as saying that I'm stuck in some kind of purgatory
| unless I take a heroic dose
|
| Wildly irresponsible, many of the fans of these drugs, who seem
| to talk as if things like risk and responsibility are just
| constructs from the man trying to keep you down
| esseph wrote:
| > It also happened to me even though I had perfect set and
| setting, I was traumatised by it for years, and I know if I
| took it again today I would still have a bad time.
|
| > I know if I took it again today I would still have a bad
| time.
|
| Maybe. Maybe. Maybe not.
|
| I'm sorry you had a bad experience.
| bowsamic wrote:
| And again another irresponsible person comes to try and
| whisper in my ear "try it again". Absolutely horrific
| morality
| directmusic wrote:
| They did not do that.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yes they literally did. I spoke on various topics, one of
| those being about how people try to convince me to take
| more drugs. Their sole response? Telling me, in effect,
| "maybe you won't have a bad trip next time". This cannot
| be interpreted in any other way than to convince me to
| open up to the possibility of taking such drugs again
| which is exactly what I am criticising.
|
| So yes, they did do that.
| esseph wrote:
| > Yes they literally did
|
| No.
|
| One in technology should learn to not speak about things
| in such absolutes, we get proven silly time and time
| again.
|
| It seems your LSD experience further traumatized you.
|
| I am sorry you had a bad experience.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Now you are mocking me? Why do you want to make me take
| LSD again?
| esseph wrote:
| You are putting intent where there is not.
|
| When someone else tried to explain that to you, you
| doubled down.
|
| Note that I said: "we get proven silly time and time
| again". You made that statement a personal attack on you.
|
| It fucking says "we".
|
| This is just a perfect example of what I'm talking about
| about.
|
| Your trauma has given you a particular worldview that is
| assigning intent or malice where there is none.
|
| I won't return to this thread, it's not of any relevance
| and you're clearly worked up about this.
|
| Peace be with you.
| bowsamic wrote:
| The only thing you said is "maybe maybe not" to me saying
| that I won't take drugs again bc I know next time I'll
| have a bad time. How is that appropriate? Let's stick
| with what you did wrong and how it is indicative of the
| blase attitude people have about the risks. All I'm doing
| is pointing that out but since I mentioned trauma you are
| weaponising it against me
|
| Why do you want to convince me to take drugs?
| vlz wrote:
| It is at about 7:50 in a short aside. Notice that he only says
| psychedelics can be dangerous if you already have PTSD and he
| does not recommend it.
|
| The video seems not to say that nobody should take LSD. In fact
| it explains how psychedelics can help with depression if I am
| not totally mistaken.
|
| (LSD is also never actually mentioned in the video. It talks
| more generally about psychedelics and hallucinogens.)
| hollerith wrote:
| Can you provide a transcript or a quote to support your claim
| that Dr K "only says psychedelics can be dangerous if you
| already have PTSD"?
|
| Here is the passage that I think is relevant to whether
| people should do hallucinogens. (I was mistaken earlier when
| I claimed the passage was about LSD specifically.)
|
| >substances like psilocybin fracture our sense of self -- and
| that can be traumatic and dangerous by the way and leave
| people with PTSD, which is why I don't recommend you do it
|
| It is an aside in the middle of another sentence. Here the
| same passage with more context (specifically, everything said
| from 7:10 to the end of the video):
|
| >the focus of your mind is on "I". You are the object of your
| attention. [Dr K looks at the chat stream] OK? Like anxiety,
| yes. [Dr K stops looking at the chat stream] Then what
| happens -- so, when this person says, this person on the
| reddits says, you know, "I actually think that self-awareness
| is the problem," they are absolutely right because their
| self-awareness is their default-mode network being highly
| active. Then we can look at neuroscience papers, and what we
| discover is that substances like psilocybin fracture our
| sense of self -- and that can be traumatic and dangerous by
| the way and leave people with PTSD, which is why I don't
| recommend you do it -- fractures the sense of self, but when
| you stu -- when that sense of self gets fractured, you are no
| longer stuck thinking about yourself, and when you are no
| longer stuck thinking about yourself, this problem of over-
| self-awareness goes away, and people get better in terms of
| depression. Does that make sense?
| homeonthemtn wrote:
| I really appreciate the mature tone this article took towards the
| discussion of a psychedelic compound
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _produces effects similar to the semisynthetic drug LSD,
| which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-
| traumatic stress disorder and addiction_
|
| yes, such incredible maturity, didn't even mention that these
| are not the reasons that most LSD is sold, bought, and
| consumed... although, "self-medication" probably does adhere
| pretty well.
| worik wrote:
| >...these are not the reasons that most LSD is sold, bought,
| and consumed
|
| Yes
|
| To be clear most LSD users, who've done LSD for years, do it
| for fun.
|
| Once you've polished the windows, it is fun to go back and
| look at the view...
| NewJazz wrote:
| For me the last time I took a trip I was alone for most of
| the trip and I cried a lot and my heart felt physically
| pained. I felt sorry for my heart that it had to keep
| beating and could not rest. It was a really challenging
| trip. I haven't been on another trip since.
| worik wrote:
| > I haven't been on another trip since
|
| Good choice.
|
| It is not fun, unless it is
| hollerith wrote:
| That would be good subject matter for a poem.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Set and setting?
| NewJazz wrote:
| If setting includes the people you are with, or lack
| thereof, then yeah.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I am a frequent LSD user and I do it for fun and healing.
|
| I don't know about PTSD (although it did help me after I
| got hit by a truck, and also after I hit my head and nearly
| died), but it helps me get through stressful times. It also
| helps me become productive again when I feel like I'm too
| burnt out to work. I don't know how exactly this happens,
| but I assume it's something like giving me enough tunnel
| vision to forget about background/subconscious anxieties.
| balamatom wrote:
| >but I assume it's something like giving me enough tunnel
| vision to forget about background/subconscious anxieties
|
| counterpoint: it might be said that one's "tunnel vision"
| is made out of anxieties pushed to the background,
| disrupting the default mode network allows the person to
| consciously process them. ofc i can't say whether this
| tracks with your experience
| LoganDark wrote:
| It pushes more than just anxieties to the background.
| During the peak of an LSD trip, I can be so distractible
| that I can barely keep more than one thing in my head at
| a time, and it's incredibly easy for any new thought to
| overwrite everything prior. I do know that spending some
| time in that state of mind does tend to help me. With
| that said, I don't think I can speak much on the default
| mode network because I haven't developed an intuition on
| how that affects me.
| esseph wrote:
| Do you have or suspect you have ADHD?
| LoganDark wrote:
| I definitely have ADHD.
| gavinray wrote:
| > _" Once you've polished the windows, it is fun to go back
| and look at the view..."_
|
| On the other hand:
|
| _" If you get the message, hang up the phone."_
|
| - Alan Watts
| nkrisc wrote:
| > Once you've polished the windows, it is fun to go back
| and look at the view...
|
| I spent a long time trying to decide if you were
| referencing licking the windows, or something more poetic.
| I decided to let both interpretations occupy my mind, as it
| seemed greater than the sum of its parts.
| worik wrote:
| Huxley
| fnord77 wrote:
| I feel like it overhyped it for being a treatment when that
| hasn't been validated yet
| larrled wrote:
| The use of LSD in psychiatry is one of the less wacky things
| about the state of psychiatry at that time. Arguably
| psychiatry is still wacky, and still overhypes novel
| compounds without knowing how or why they work exactly. LSD
| was very rigorously studied compared to say today's use of
| ketamine.
| hx8 wrote:
| Yes, there was a ton of psychiatric research on LSD.
| However the bar of required to perform pharmaceutical
| testing on humans is much higher now, and the quality of
| the data is much higher because of improved testing
| standards.
| larrled wrote:
| For sure. But if you read some of that wacky stuff from
| way back, you can start to see how parts rhyme with
| aspects of contemporary psychiatry. They too had much
| better standards and data than their predecessors. The
| hype around LSD back then, and a bit of the kookiness,
| was similar to the current emphasis on trauma, ketamine
| therapy, etc... Stuff that works and is new gets
| overhyped.
| uncircle wrote:
| After the discovery of a psychedelic compound, there are two
| pipelines for release:
|
| - the academic way, where it's studied in labs by "serious
| people", and after FDA approval a big pharma with worldwide
| licence sells it for one million $ per kg.
|
| - the black market way, where it's manufactured in quantity by
| shady RC companies and sold on the internet, until someone
| tries too large a dose, gets it put in Schedule I and banned.
|
| I guess this one went the first route, unlike LSD.
| jampekka wrote:
| LSD was discovered in and extensively tested and produced by
| the giant medical company Sandoz for about 20 years. It was
| also extensively studied in academic settings.
|
| The black market production started a lot later, mostly due
| to the War on Drugs.
| herbst wrote:
| Sandoz still produces LSD
| scythe wrote:
| >Still, some clinicians use them to treat conditions like
| migraines, dementia, uterine hemorrhaging and Parkinson's
| disease.
|
| I think it's more common to use synthetic derivatives of ergot
| alkaloids like ergonovine. But ergot itself is infamously
| difficult to cultivate. So it's no surprise that they have
| immediately started trying to culture this new fungus.
| throwing_away wrote:
| Are clones available for research purposes?
| Zaylan wrote:
| Really impressive that a student managed to find something
| Hofmann suspected nearly a century ago. Makes you wonder how many
| of these hidden chemists are still quietly working in symbiosis
| with plants, carrying out complex metabolic processes we haven't
| noticed yet.
|
| It also makes me think about how much untapped potential might be
| hiding in the ordinary plants we pass by every day.
| latexr wrote:
| > Really impressive that a student managed to find something
| Hofmann suspected nearly a century ago.
|
| Why is that impressive? I'm genuinely asking, I do not
| understand the obsessive fascination with "student discovered".
| It's like everyone expects "student" to mean "mentally
| incapacitated" and anything beyond tying their own shoes is
| impressive. Or is everyone so disillusioned with the
| educational system they are caught off guard when students
| apply what they've learned? If this same student had graduated
| two months before making the discovery, would it have made it
| less impressive or significant?
| PakG1 wrote:
| Perhaps the impressive thing is that it wasn't found for so
| long and finally was. Not that it was a student.
| dinkumthinkum wrote:
| This is a bit much, I think. It is impressive because it is
| rare for an _undergraduate_ to make a discovery. It's not
| disillusionment with the educational system; that seems
| pretty politically charged. Normally, undergrads are studying
| what has been already known and it is a small portion of them
| that to do so"undergrad research" and usually that does not
| rise to the level of publishing anything. It's normally
| graduate (MS and PhD) students that do such things. Also,
| graduate students, particularly PhD students, are primarily
| concerned with research while undergrads are primarily
| concerned with classes (educationally anyway!). Also, it
| would have also been surprising, as you say, if the student
| had been graduated for two-months and not in graduate school
| to make such a discovery. So, it's not some grand reason or
| indictment of society. In the end, it is just plainly
| uncommon.
| hx8 wrote:
| > It also makes me think about how much untapped potential
| might be hiding in the ordinary plants we pass by every day.
|
| A ton, which is one selfish reason the genetic diversity
| collapse is such a negative. In this particular discovery, we
| already knew there was something interesting about the morning
| glory plant and it took us decades and decades to find it. To
| give you an idea how little plant life has been studied, we
| have sequenced the gnome of less than one thousand species.
| perrygeo wrote:
| Think of the millions of years of evolution as knowledge
| discovered by non-human species. When we extinct an under-
| studied species, we don't know what we're losing. It's like
| burning the Alexandria library without any curiosity about
| what's inside it.
| hx8 wrote:
| If a plant species going extinct is like burning a book,
| then it's a book that might contain medical knowledge that
| would help millions of people.
| driggs wrote:
| While it's been known for many years that endosymbiotic fungi are
| responsible for producing the ergot alkaloids in the Morning
| Glory plant family, and the recent discovery here is the
| identification of the host-specific fungal symbiont for the
| common decorative flower _Ipomoea tricolor_ , this plant-fungus
| relationship was not known in the days of Albert Hoffman's
| research.
|
| He is most famous for synthesizing and experiencing the effects
| of LSD from ergot-derived alkaloids; ergot is a fungal pathogen
| that grows on grain plants. He then identified psilocybin as the
| active psychoactive component of magic mushroom samples from
| Mexico.
|
| When he turned his work to identifying the active component in
| Morning Glory plants, he presented his work showing that he'd
| discovered LSA, another ergot alkaloid. Other researchers accused
| him of having contaminated samples, because he'd found in plants
| compounds which were known only from the fungi kingdom. Hoffman's
| work was vindicated, in a sense, when the relationship of
| endosybiotic fungi (cryptic fungi which spend the majority of
| their lifecycle inside a plant) was later elucidated.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-14 23:01 UTC)