[HN Gopher] Psilocybin decreases depression and anxiety in cance...
___________________________________________________________________
Psilocybin decreases depression and anxiety in cancer patients
(2016)
Author : Bluestein
Score : 245 points
Date : 2025-07-18 10:57 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
| BlueGh0st wrote:
| (2016)
| clbrmbr wrote:
| This. I saw the late Roland Griffiths as first author and
| thought the same.
| milchek wrote:
| Anecdotal, but about a year ago my wife participated in a
| psilocybin trial at a university here who were looking at
| patients with severe anxiety. It was her last hope after trying
| therapy, various supplements, as well as dietary and lifestyle
| changes, etc
|
| It has been life changing for her, but one thing she tells people
| now is that what also helped was that it was facilitated with a
| trained therapist there during the session for guidance to make
| sure she didn't "get stuck in a loop." There was also many
| sessions pre dosing day to optimize the result.
|
| She would highly recommend the treatment and hopes it becomes
| mainstream soon.
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| Was she in placebo group?
| yesseri wrote:
| Is it possible to have a placebo group when doing a study on
| psilocybin? Would participants in the placebo not notice the
| lack of psychedelic effects?
|
| EDIT: In the original link it says the placebo group received
| a much lower dose, so that seems to be one way of doing it.
| mock-possum wrote:
| sounds like in that case you're not testing the efficacy of
| high versus sober, you're testing heroic dosing versus
| micro dosing.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| There are also studies that test against placebo. There
| have been lots and lots of trials on these things with
| different designs that make different cost/benefit
| tradeoffs.
|
| A difficult one with psychedelics is as-mentioned: people
| can easily "break the blind". But if you want to
| eliminate _that_ problem you can instead do a micro vs
| macro dose, in which case you 're measuring a slightly
| different thing.
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| Then again what if showing some funky hallucinogenic
| images/movies would have the same effect on some people? We
| surely know that people can go crazy (so have psychological
| effects) in cults and similar settings. What if intense
| visual/sonic/etc stimulation, visual distortions etc.
| together with messaging like "it will change your life and
| cure your anxieties" is the key in this therapy?
| cassianoleal wrote:
| > intense visual/sonic/etc stimulation, visual
| distortions etc. together with messaging like "it will
| change your life and cure your anxieties" is the key in
| this therapy?
|
| I sincerely hope this is not at all how any of this
| works. That sounds like a recipe for paranoia.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| That isn't how these studies are being done... because
| yeah, it'd probably confound the results.
| nemomarx wrote:
| That's not so much a placebo as a head to head test of
| different effects? I think you'd do it in a new study
| entirely
| OldfieldFund wrote:
| One way is using niacin in high doses, also known as
| vitamin B3, as an active placebo to induce a sensation of
| heat and cause the skin to flush red, which is a typical
| reaction to tryptamines.
|
| The rest is a regular placebo. It can be a really strong
| thing when you are feeling hot.
| milchek wrote:
| I suppose different trials do it in various ways, for hers
| there was a placebo group that was given a strong
| antihistamine. Participants in the trial were allowed to
| opt in for the real dosing day once the trial concluded. I
| suppose this was to entice people to join, as otherwise it
| was basically 50/50 if you would get the trial treatment
| you were looking for. Post trial dosing was obviously
| omitted from the results.
| milchek wrote:
| There was a placebo group that were given basically a very
| strong antihistamine which induced some drowsiness.
|
| This particular trial, however, allowed participants who were
| in the placebo group to later opt in for the real dosing -
| obviously with those results omitted from the trial.
| Levitating wrote:
| > "get stuck in a loop"
|
| I feel that. Thought loops are scary and it takes someone to
| recognize them to get you out.
| sampl3username wrote:
| The point of music during a psychedelic experience is to
| provide a reference for the passing of time and to help with
| progression of thoughts. Music guides you through your
| thoughts, avoiding loops, by providing a changing texture,
| melody, rythm, and story.
|
| This is on top of the other effects of music, such as emotional
| effects.
| foobiekr wrote:
| For other readers, I would like to suggest no music, just a
| sunny day and quiet.
|
| Music, television, people talking, etc. gives you an external
| clock and the timelessness of the experience, one of the
| greatest feelings, is lost.
|
| I guess if you're just doing them for fun it's ok.
| milchek wrote:
| Yes, exactly - I should've added that she head a specific
| guided soundtrack as well, which the facilitators said was
| integral to optimal treatment, at least for this particular
| trial.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| If I understand what you wrote correctly, Your wife did not try
| any traditional medication to treat her anxiety? Or is that
| included under "supplements"?
|
| If so the term "lost hope" is not in my opinion accurate.
|
| I am quite happy that it worked and it is a better alternative
| than medication, I certainly do not think that medication is
| the cure all, or optimal.
| esseph wrote:
| > If so the term "lost hope" is not in my opinion accurate.
|
| What an absolutely asshole statement, which also shows an
| absolutely profound misunderstanding of suicide prevention
| and care.
|
| Edit: Core belief of suicide ideation is that hope is gone.
| This is often (but not always) a perception. There may always
| be more things to try - but that's irrelevant to the person
| that is dead because they could not see another way.
| cubefox wrote:
| He meant "last hope". That was the original phrase.
| esseph wrote:
| Ah, then I'll fix my statement!
|
| > If so the term "last hope" is not in my opinion
| accurate.
|
| What an absolutely asshole statement, which also shows an
| absolutely profound misunderstanding of suicide
| prevention and care.
|
| Edit: Core belief of suicide ideation is that hope is
| gone. _This is often (but not always) a perception._
| There may always be more things to try - but that 's
| irrelevant to the person that is dead because they could
| not see another way.
| cubefox wrote:
| You are right, there are many medications against anxiety
| disorder, and psilocybin not anyone's last hope if they
| haven't tried any of those other drugs.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| Technically, what is the approximate dosing regime?
|
| How often, for how many days, how much (=how high?)?
|
| Is this a therapy with an end or do you have to take mushrooms
| forever?
| foobiekr wrote:
| Taking mushrooms together with someone you love, who loves you,
| is possibly one of the most life changing experiences a couple
| can have.
|
| Have you taken them with her?
| milchek wrote:
| I haven't yet. It's not easy to find the place or time to do
| so. The trial was great because everything was meticulously
| organised, such as the dose and - I guess - quality? I'd be
| worried about sourcing myself and messing something up there.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Trial eligibility required someone with documented evidence of
| treatment-resistant depression, with at least two prescription
| regiments in recent history.
| milchek wrote:
| Correct, screening was pretty thorough and there were a lot
| of sessions with therapists, blood tests, etc before they
| made the decision to allow her into the trial.
| tux3 wrote:
| The study design does try to mitigate blinding issues and
| expectancy effects, but with half of the participants reporting
| past use of hallucinogens, this is not going to be very effective
| blinding.
|
| A majority of your low dose 1st group likely very much realizes
| that they're on the inactive dose.
| bedane wrote:
| I think this says more about the usual psy drugs we're
| prescribed and use.
|
| they don't do jack shit.
| Bluestein wrote:
| The very apparent effect these things have makes you wonder
| if they do not (somehow) correct for what otherwise could be
| a built-in deficiency we carry with us, by "design"
| correcting some sort of built-in imbalance ...
| jenkstom wrote:
| Sorry, but I'd be dead without mine. I'm going to have to
| disagree with you.
| hattmall wrote:
| The interesting thing with mushrooms is that you could eat
| a handful, realize you are already dead, and then maybe not
| need the other meds at all.
| quesera wrote:
| This could be interpreted as psychedelic ego death from
| psilocin, backdooring into some kind of personal
| revelation.
|
| Or as clinical death from _Amanita_ toxicity, with some
| meta commentary on religion.
|
| +1. :)
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Mine have definitely helped me, as if I miss them for a day I
| get noticeably worse
| demiters wrote:
| Is it even possible to solve the issue of there being no
| convincing placebo? Would a different hallucinogen like 4-HO-
| MET work, where the visual experience component is similar, but
| the visceral effect on consciousness and thought patterns is
| less pronounced, almost sober like?
| voidUpdate wrote:
| "Well everything looks exactly the same to me, and the guy over
| there is staring at the carpet and whispering about The
| Fractals, so I think I'm in the control group"
| josh-sematic wrote:
| Of course things get really complicated when this guy is
| messing with your control group https://xkcd.com/790/
| alphazard wrote:
| There's an argument to be made that traditional blinding and
| placebo techniques are not really relevant for interventions
| targeting mood or personality. e.g. anything that makes you
| feel better _is_ an effective mood intervention, by definition.
| "blinding" in these studies is really just going through the
| motions to make certain authorities happy.
|
| I would be more interested in polling the close friends and
| family of study participants and asking them about perceived
| changes. Instruct participants not to tell anyone about their
| experience in the study (whether they think they got a drug or
| how much).
|
| It looks like the study tried to do something like this with
| "session monitors" who interviewed the participants the day
| after. They call it double-blind, but it's more like single-
| blind because the 3rd person assessment is the outcome measure.
| sorcerer-mar wrote:
| The issue with relying on placebo effects is not that they
| aren't real/don't work (everything you said also applies to
| e.g. a painkiller), but that they are very context-sensitive.
| Deploy that drug to an individual or population with a
| different belief framework or contextual information about
| the therapy or their condition, and you won't get the desired
| results.
|
| The design you mention is really interesting! Have you seen
| this done anywhere?
| hattmall wrote:
| Or they could give them a different psychedelic to test the
| efficacy of psilocybin specifically would be my thought.
| _alternator_ wrote:
| Seems that most hallucinogens have similar benefits, with
| "more powerful" drugs having a more profound effect. Here's a
| study on social learning in mice [1]. TLDR: length of trip
| correlates strongly to duration of treatment effect (eg 6
| hour trip -> 1 week effect, 36 hour trip -> 6+ month effect
| IIRC).
|
| Psylocybin isn't the most studied because it's likely to be
| the most effective drug. It's because the therapists/grad
| students can work an 8 hour day instead of providing 12+ hour
| care for LSD or multi-day treatment with Ibogaine.
|
| [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
| apwell23 wrote:
| full title Psilocybin produces substantial and
| sustained decreases in depression and anxiety in patients with
| life-threatening cancer: A randomized double-blind trial
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| @dang, the OP title needs changing imo.
| bedane wrote:
| this stuff cured a lot of problems I had been trying for years to
| get rid of, overnight. (literally) mind-blowing
|
| bonus, it made my buddy quit drinking
|
| variance, it made my other buddy delusional and stupid. hasn't
| really recovered
| g-mork wrote:
| it only takes one bad trip (absolutely massive overdose in my
| case) to understand how badly south things can get. used to be
| a favourite consumable, haven't touched it in over a decade and
| extremely unlikely to again following that one experience. it
| also helped phrase 3 earlier experiences in terms of the new
| "peak", and made me understand how much incredible danger I had
| been in at all times even prior to the bad trip
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Did you ever reflect on why you had a bad trip? Did the drug
| change or did you change?
|
| Was the setting different? Different people around, different
| location ...
|
| After all learning from mistakes can be just as helpful as
| the positives in life.
| hellohello911 wrote:
| Figure 3 is suspicious. Even the placebo arm has much better
| scores for depression and anxiety from baseline?
| ketamine wrote:
| Not defending that - some times just knowing you are trying to
| better yourself helps make things seem better.
| hellohello911 wrote:
| Sure - but I don't see the authors mention group convergence
| anywhere.
|
| While the first 5 week post treatment actually looks
| impressive, I don't think the treatment arms being
| essentially the same after 6 months supports the conclusions
| of the study. Unless we backpedal and say the inactive grouo
| was microdosing (which has its own baggage...)
| AndrewThrowaway wrote:
| As far as I know antidepressants and even pain killers are the
| most susceptible to placebo effect.
| hellohello911 wrote:
| Agreed. If I saw an SSRI with those curves I would doubt the
| efficacy of it. But this might be why I am not in charge of
| clinical trials. Just a layman taking pot shots.
| Aurornis wrote:
| This happens in every depression study: Placebo effect is
| extremely strong for depression.
|
| You can even collect depressed people, do nothing at all, and
| when you survey them 6 months later the average scores will
| improve. This is because depression is, on average, an aberrant
| condition and the average patient will tend to revert toward
| the mean.
|
| However, psychedelic studies have a bigger problem:
| Psychedelics trigger false feelings of amazement and wonder,
| feeling like something magical has happened. This is like turbo
| placebo when you tell people that it's a depression treatment.
| Maybe that's a valuable therapeutic effect, or maybe not.
| There's a lot to explore, but from all the studies I've read
| I'm not as bullish on mushrooms for depression as the headlines
| would indicate.
| hellohello911 wrote:
| Setting aside the psychedlic aspect, do you think figure 3
| supports the study's conclusion?
| Aurornis wrote:
| If this is your first time reading depression studies then
| it's going to be surprising to see both groups improve.
| This is normal and expected.
|
| The key indicator of efficacy is the difference between
| groups. In this case there is some difference between
| groups but it is small.
| hellohello911 wrote:
| I don't want to be patronized about the number of
| depression studies I have or have not read. Can you
| answer yes or no: does figure 3 support the study's
| conclusion?
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Thanks for this. Great insights.
|
| Depression is a symptom, and for symptoms there are many
| causes.
|
| Personalized medicine will fix this but that costs money and
| time and caring.
| pegasus wrote:
| What do you mean by "false" feelings of wonder?
| mauriciokeita wrote:
| Why is there no more recent studies on that?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Because usually the "euphoria" people feel is their biology
| failing due to mild poisoning. It is why most people will often
| upchuck within a few minutes of ingestion.
|
| People may think they are finding enlightenment, but are no
| different from the local deranged squirrels aggressively
| howling at passerby after nibbling Amanita in the fall.
| Apparently the squirrels use the mushroom to help preserve food
| stores, and it doesn't poison them as severely (often fatal for
| humans.)
|
| Paul Stamets is a weird dude, but his work contains some
| profoundly detailed observations.
|
| People need to think about Fungi as closer to animals that
| don't move on their own, and acknowledge they rapidly adapt
| genetically to survive. Pretty to photograph, but often far
| more complex than people like to admit. =3
| pjerem wrote:
| > Because usually the "euphoria" people feel is their biology
| failing due to mild poisoning.
|
| All the recent studies in the last decade have proven it's
| the opposite. What's your point exactly ?
| jfyi wrote:
| >Amanita
|
| It's an entirely different class of hallucinogen. I don't
| have personal experience with it but I have done other
| dissociative hallucinogens and his take is likely largely
| true (though I wouldn't argue with someone saying they felt
| euphoria on it). The problem here is it's the entirely
| wrong mushroom.
|
| I can assure any doubters that psilocybin on the other hand
| has legitimate euphoric effects.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The psilocybin containing variety also naturally grow in
| our yard, and the Amanita is an invasive variety. The
| "high" people feel is a chemical lobotomy from mild
| poisoning, and onset of renal failure. Hence why you feel
| nausea and often erupt out both ends if ingested
| (especially bad if allergic to a specific fungi.)
|
| I asked for 5 citations not sponsored by dealers that he
| claimed were available, and my post was flagged. To be
| fair, I would also accept 3 double-blind medical
| citations of reasonable quality.
|
| You can't argue with the irrational, as hitting yourself
| in the head with a brick also causes similar results. lol
| =3
| nilamo wrote:
| > Paul Stamets is a weird dude
|
| A Star Trek reference?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| He was writing practical agricultural mycology books long
| before he advised the TV show.
|
| First came across his work while modeling hermetic food and
| waste reclamation options. Paul looked at this area several
| decades prior, and documented everything in detail. He is
| weird, but a good scientist worthy of respect. =3
| zevon wrote:
| The other way round. They named the Star Trek character
| after a real-world mycologist.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| the "euphoria" they feel is serotonin.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Indistinguishable from the stages of Death:
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_my_stroke_of_in
| s...
|
| Some do not choose wisely =3
| breadsniffer wrote:
| Let me guess, you've never tried them? This is the one
| substance no one should be talking about if you've never
| tried it. You can't reason your way through it with first
| principles.
| Youden wrote:
| This is from 2016, a lot has happened since then:
|
| - The FDA recognized psilocybin as a breakthrough therapy for
| treatment-resistant depression: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-
| releases/compass-pathways-re...
|
| - Some more studies, such as
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27909164/
|
| - More widespread use in medical treatment, such as approval in
| Australia (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-66072427) and
| limited approval in Switzerland
|
| Very much anecdotal but I can say that psychedelics helped me and
| several friends a lot with depression. They don't just magically
| make you feel better - at least not long-term - but they give you
| the neuroplasticity you need to adjust your internal filters and
| behaviour. As such, if the purpose is truly healing and recovery,
| they're best paired with professional therapy, preferably from
| somebody who's experienced with psychedelic-assisted therapy
| specifically.
| tuesdaynight wrote:
| I don't have depression, but the first time I used psychedelics
| was so emotional helpful that I strongly suggested for
| depressed friends. I corrected that mistake hours later, after
| realizing that the risks are low, but life changing if it
| happens. However, I will never forget that feeling. I've used
| it again in the following years, but the results faded and it
| became boring for me.
| rjxc wrote:
| What are the low-but-life-changing risks?
| causality0 wrote:
| Some people report personality changes, some as radical as
| "I found I didn't love my husband anymore."
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's not a risk, that's a realization. You need those.
|
| You may have saved 20 years in an unhappy marriage.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The risk is that it's a false idea triggered by the
| psychedelic.
|
| Maybe a better example would be my friend who took
| psychedelics and then believed he was in communication
| with Elon Musk. This one is more obviously a false idea,
| but nevertheless he was convinced it was real for a
| period after the psychedelic experience.
|
| There's a mystical concept that psychedelics open your
| third eye to see the world as it really is or something,
| but psychedelics are notorious for giving false ideas and
| making them seem like revelations. It's obvious when it's
| nonsense (like telepathy with Elon Musk) but it's less
| obvious when the implanted idea is something like "your
| husband secretly doesn't love you". Another strangely
| common report is the belief that people around you have
| been replaced by clones, which can get scary very fast if
| the person can't separate the idea from reality.
| AppleBananaPie wrote:
| Yeah I agree with you 100%. it's interesting folks
| immediately taking the experience and result at face
| value when we understand so little about what's
| happening, even without psychedelics is most cases.
|
| In the referenced anecdote it could be as simple as an
| excuse needed for someone who's been thinking about it
| for years. Though maybe that's enough to be a benefit
|
| Anyway I like your example and look forward to what is
| learned about using psychedelics to help people :)
| armonster wrote:
| It sounds like your friend had a predilection for
| psychosis. I feel like the nice things about psychedelics
| is that they don't alter my processing too much (as
| compared with other drugs), moreso they just give me
| different 'inputs' into my senses / experiences, and then
| I process those.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > It sounds like your friend had a predilection for
| psychosis.
|
| No prior history of any mental illness in him nor any of
| his family.
|
| This is a common excuse: Blame some hidden
| susceptibility, not the drug. It doesn't matter what it
| was, though. The drug caused it and there were no warning
| signs. Fine before the drug. Not fine after the drug.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _a common excuse: Blame some hidden susceptibility, not
| the drug_
|
| It's the interaction between that person and the drug.
|
| I have a crustacean allergy. That doesn't mean
| crustaceans are bad, or other people shouldn't eat
| shrimp. It just means it's a bad mix for me.
|
| One of the benefits of administering psychedelics in a
| clinical setting is that telepathic nonsense is more
| likely to be noticed early and corrected for, whether by
| reducing dosage or suspending treatement. (And treating
| it as medicine allows us to study those people who react
| negatively to it, further reducing harm.)
| Bluestein wrote:
| > then believed he was in communication with Elon Musk
|
| Now _that_ is scary.-
|
| PS. We used to trip to contact our wise, the Spirit,
| spirits, our gods, the beyond, our higher selves ...
|
| ... now we just get ketamine kid.-
| rjxc wrote:
| That's interesting, I've seen a few comments like this
| appearing. I was expecting more about HPPD or heart valve
| issues from extended use.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| need another dose to take it to the next level: I found
| that love is an action not a feeling, perhaps I never
| loved my husband and I should now begin to
| anon6959 wrote:
| Exacerbation (and possibly development) of mental illness
| like psychosis, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia is
| entirely possible.
|
| Along with two other blokes, I got interested in
| psychedelics in high school. Took one medium high dose and
| wasn't right for a few months. Never in my life did i ever
| experienced paranoia, delusions, or hallucinations that are
| genuinely hard to separate from reality, but I did after
| that.
|
| Intense psychedelic experiences can fracture what you once
| knew as "reality" allows all sorts of ideas to float into
| your mind, with equal possibility. This might be helpful
| and give you more flexible thinking (helpful for
| depression) but it also leaves you incredible vulnerable to
| all sorts of garbage ideas that you never would have
| considered otherwise. ie conspiracy theories or straight up
| delusions about the supernatural. Remember: It's not
| paranoia if you genuinely believe they _really_ are out to
| get you!
|
| Fighting these garbage ideas is a lot of work once they
| take hold, but you'll only know too late if you were
| vulnerable, and worse, if you can successfully align your
| understanding of reality with most other people.
|
| I got extremely lucky that I stabilized. I'm convinced part
| of this was only doing it one time. My two co-experimenters
| took many trips with various doses are still in and out of
| mental hospitals years later. Psychedelics are _incredibly_
| potent and _nobody_ really understands them very well. A
| lot of what is written on the internet ignores, downplays,
| or denies the very serious risks to your philosophy of mind
| and mental function. Its like playing with fire when you
| don 't have heat sensation in your hands.
|
| Several other comments on this page echo these warnings.
| One even claims there is an 18% chance you could go from
| depressed to schizophrenic. I have no idea where that
| figure came from, but the risk is certainly not 0%
| hungmung wrote:
| Just curious, which psychedelics were you guys
| experimenting with?
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Basically it hyper-connects your brain. When people talk
| about seeing shapes, its not that they are hallucinating,
| its that when they look at the random fuzz pattern on a
| rug, and pick out the particles of fuzz that make a
| creature face, its looks like someone purposefully put
| those pieces there to make that face.
|
| As such, if you are "surfing" thoughts and find an
| association of something, that association can become very
| prominent. If you don't have the context to understand why
| you are making that association, especially after the trip,
| you can get stuck with beliefs about yourself that could be
| non optimal.
|
| On the flip side this hyperconnectivity also allows you to
| see things like a completely different person would see
| them, which is where the true healing power lies. Its like
| you can be disugsted with a particular food when you are
| sober, but on shrooms you can truly feel what it would be
| like to enjoy that food. Once you have that context, you
| are able to move forward after the trip into right
| directions.
|
| This is why set and setting are EXTREMELY important for
| significant trips. You want to be with someone who a) has
| done psychedelics, b) is in a very good mental state, and
| c) has a low ego not to project their own personality onto
| you. The best trip sitters are those that encourage
| exploration - they take everything you communicate to them
| and ask you questions about it without imparting any bias.
| foobiekr wrote:
| HPPD and .. honestly, some people have bad trips, and while
| it is popular in psychedelic circles to say "There is no
| such thing as a bad trip just the way you interpret it"
| that isn't really true. Even Terrence McKenna stopped
| taking mushrooms for a decade after a bad experience.
|
| That said, I _do_ recommend mushrooms to everyone I know
| with depression or anger issues.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| I had a panic attack one time, not sure how I should
| "interpret" that one. I've get anxiety since childhood
| for context. That said I'd love to do a session with a
| professional rather than by myself. Self medication for
| mental health issues is a bit of a gamble. I've also had
| good experiences even at higher doses so it's a bit
| random
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Many people say the first time they use Prozac that it was so
| helpful they recommended to their friends but then after a
| while it wore off.
|
| How do you think psychedelics work? They activate the
| serotonin 2a receptor. It's nothing but a different drug that
| effects serotonin. Except it does it more intensely but like
| all these drugs that act on receptors they wear off because
| of something what's called receptor density changes.
|
| For 70 years, we've been trying to manipulate receptors into
| making people feel good. It's a losing proposition and it's
| time to. We changed our thinking. For instance, if these
| people do have serotonin deficiencies, which is still
| possibly the case, what is it? That's causing these
| deficiencies? Is it low, zinc, low B6, genetics, infection?
| There's so many other things that we know that this could be,
| but we don't try it.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I think this is naive. A mushroom trip is fully metabolized
| and cleared in approximately 6-12 hours. Despite the
| similar levels of reduction in depressive symptoms for the
| subsequent weeks, the psilocin has been cleared on the day
| of, unlike prozac, and hasn't been stimulating 5HT2* at all
| for that afterglow and post-exposure period.
|
| Nobody other than crazy micro-dosers is taking mushrooms
| often enough to cause a change in receptor density and
| those people are putting themselves at risk of valvopathy
| due to 5HT2a restructuring of the heart valves (which, as
| an aside, is turning out to be a problem for people on
| prozac and other long-term SSRIs).
|
| A drug that is very occasional, point use, with no ongoing
| use, which has long term treatment results, is absolutely,
| utterly unlike prozac.
|
| That aside, let's say for the sake of argument that the
| mechanism is similar for prozac; I think that's wrong (one
| additional explanation may actually be: https://www.science
| direct.com/science/article/abs/pii/S15675... ) but
| whatever. If so, then psilocin is vastly superior to prozac
| because you are not required to have continuous exposure
| for the benefits, as the corresponding cost, withdrawal,
| sexual dysfunction, weight gain, heart issues, etc. are
| removed.
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| > Nobody other than crazy micro-dosers is taking
| mushrooms often enough to cause a change in receptor
| density
|
| This is so frustrating to me. Why not just google it
| before you think you know more about this than someone
| studying it for ten years? Two things can change receptor
| density: time and dose.
|
| _A Single Dose_ of Psilocybin Increases Synaptic Density
| and Decreases 5-HT2A Receptor Density in the Pig Brain
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33467676/
|
| This is exactly why psychedelics last longer than prozac.
| It has less to do with half life and more to do with
| dose.
|
| How is the mechanism not at least comparative to prozac
| since it is well know they both effect serotonin? The
| risk with psilocin is exactly the dose, as many people
| find out. And you thing there are not cardiac side
| effects from psychedelics?
|
| A Case of Prolonged Mania, Psychosis, and Severe
| Depression After Psilocybin Use: Implications of
| Increased Psychedelic Drug Availability
|
| https://psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.22
| 010...
|
| Worsening suicidal ideation and prolonged adverse event
| following psilocybin administration in a clinical
| setting: case report and thematic analysis of one
| participant's experience
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11698204/
|
| Safety First: Potential Heart Health Risks of Microdosing
|
| https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/04/13/safety-
| first-p...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > after realizing that the risks are low, but life changing
| if it happens.
|
| I think these risks are more common than was previously
| discussed on the internet. For a long time reports of very
| negative experiences were dismissed, laughed at, downplayed,
| waved away as symptoms of something else, or excused as
| something positive but mysterious.
|
| It's becoming more acceptable for people to discuss their
| negative experiences and not get downvoted or attacked for
| sharing them.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Negative experiences have always been a part of it. It's
| half the point. Negative also doesn't mean permanent, which
| is extremely rare.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Negative experiences have always been a part of it.
| It's half the point.
|
| This is the type of dismissal and downplaying I'm
| referring to.
|
| My friend descended into psychosis after taking
| psychedelics. It was not "half the point" and not helpful
| to his life in any way.
| nwienert wrote:
| Not that rare, anyone with predisposition to
| psychosis/schizophrenia has a high risk of permanent
| effects, and that's not that small of a segment of
| people, and nearly unknowable beforehand.
| tuesdaynight wrote:
| I just don't buy it, sorry. One thing that I learned about
| the internet is that most online opinions are from
| extremes: excellent or horrible experiences. Just search
| about any surgery. You will probably find a lot of bad
| experiences for anything. However, if you look at the data
| for the big picture, psilocybin is one of the safest drugs
| out there. There are risks, but they are nowhere near what
| you see in these conversations.
| larodi wrote:
| Wonder how Adderall with its fourfold amphetamine recipe can
| fast-track to market, while psylocibin with all its ancestral
| approval had not yet been pilled AT ALL. How can a soldier
| designated pill make it to 60m prescriptions and amazing
| substantiated illegal use, while psylocibin is still rated as
| schedule-1 drug alongside heroine, which of course is major
| offense to possess.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#History
|
| This makes very little sense unless on purpose. I mean, like
| what, people been doing it for millenniums and still we got
| where we are now, and not because of downsides of its use, or
| what?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| Modern drug laws came about in the 1970s, at the height of
| hippies on psychedelics trying to overthrow the government.
|
| People in power fear losing their power, and they saw these
| drugs as a threat.
|
| The weirdest part of the whole thing to me is that they
| outlawed Cannabis, Psilocybin, and LSD, but kept cocaine
| legal with a prescription under schedule 2.
| pstuart wrote:
| But those modern drug laws picked up where the older drug
| laws petered out, and in both cases they were intended to
| _punish_ their users, not protect them.
| pksebben wrote:
| To bang a fairly weathered drum, this is largely a matter
| of conservative policy. Psychedelics were far more common
| in leftist circles (some might argue that this is cause
| as opposed to effect - mind-expanding experiences tend to
| shift politics towards that end of the spectrum).
|
| This means that if you wanted to use the law as a
| political cudgel without being accused of thought-
| policing, you could outlaw psychedelics and be confident
| that the blast zone would exclude the politically
| faithful while locking up loads of political
| undesirables; like hippies, panthers, etc.
|
| Of course, these days you have right-wing podcasters
| discussing DMT with billionaire CEOs, so it's a little
| trickier. Thus the tentative steps toward legalization.
| bwestergard wrote:
| A family friend who was an ophthalmic surgeon once
| explained to me the cocaine was long the default anesthetic
| for eye surgery, and thus it had an accepted medical use
| (which was the criterion for Schedule 2). Sounds at least
| plausible to me.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| You have to understand that drugs roughly break down into
| two categories IMO: the touchy-feely stuff that creates
| empathy and kindness and healing on the one hand. On the
| other hand you've got stuff that makes people "hard-
| charging" -- going off and doing a thing without thinking
| it through, with a tinge of anger, fury, unstoppable raw
| power. Think: cocaine, booze, caffeine and any other
| stimulants. These _reduce empathy and create problems for
| people_.
|
| These two camps are pretty wildly opposed! If I had to
| guess, I'd bet my money on the people in power _liking and
| using_ the hard charging stuff while loathing the touchy
| feely stuff.
|
| All this feels a bit trite, over-simplified, and maybe even
| a but concocted on my part. But after a lifetime of being
| around these drugs, it fits well with my experience.
|
| I'd add, too, that the book "Chasing the Scream" gives a
| better perspective on drug laws & their origins, which
| really began much earlier than the 1970s.
| fragmede wrote:
| It's oversimplified in terms of the drug landscape;
| fentanyl != meth != alcohol, and the reasons people use
| them are different. You could simplify it as escapism but
| you'd be incorrect. Or rather, where do people want to
| escape _to_? That has little to do with the racism of the
| 1970s when interracial marriage was literally illegal
| though which is when the original drug war and those laws
| date back to.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Definitely over-simplified for the drug landscape, but I
| still think that users roughly sort into these two
| categories.
|
| I also think its incorrect to define this sort of
| escapism as escaping _to_ something. IME people escape
| _from_ something -- the "to" doesn't matter as long as
| the "from" ain't there.
|
| I'd further agree that it has nothing to do with
| interracial marriage -- not sure where this point came
| from?
|
| The "War on Drugs" as Nixon named it isn't the beginning
| of the story.
| fragmede wrote:
| it's not the beginning nor is it the end. To go back to
| the story, you said
|
| > If I had to guess, I'd bet my money on the people in
| power liking and using the hard charging stuff while
| loathing the touchy feely stuff.
|
| that some people liked the hard charging stuff and were
| white, and that some people liked the touchy feely stuff
| and who just so coincidentally some of them happened to
| be dark skinned, in an era that was racist to the point
| of having anti-miscegenation laws, isn't some minor
| coincidence.
|
| > the "to" doesn't matter as long as the "from" ain't
| there.
|
| The "to" matters because after you've gotten high you're
| there, but where's there? it's that the one where your
| kids are listening to you? where your wife never left,
| where your boyfriend wasn't beating you? In that "to",
| how is life?
| tootie wrote:
| It's politics and optics. But as someone taking a schedule 3
| medication that is really a schedule 1 in disguise (sodium
| oxybate) I wonder why they couldn't use the same tap dance
| for psylocibin or MDMA. Slight chemical modification to
| adjust absorption rate but same active ingredient. I think we
| only get away with this because it's prescribed so rarely and
| out of public consciousness. It's incredibly effective at
| treating a pernicious condition.
| temp0826 wrote:
| I think the Analogue Act covers stuff like that?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
| tootie wrote:
| You'd think, yet I get it sent to me legally anyway. It
| is under a very restrictive REMS program, but it you're
| formally diagnosed with the very short list of applicable
| conditions, it's not that difficult to get.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| >had not yet been pilled AT ALL
|
| Simple - there is no real lasting money in psylocibin as most
| people really only need 2 or 3 good sessions.
|
| Whereas adderall is not technically addictive, but if you can
| function on it, you do become dependent on it.
|
| You also really don't need it to become a prescription,
| shrooms just need to get legalized. The risks that come from
| overuse are far and few in between to the point where normal
| over the counter meds carry much more danger in abuse than
| shrooms do.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| The parsimonious explanation is that amphetamine was
| basically grandfathered in over a historical period where
| shrooms/acid were cultural and political pariahs and they
| still have to overcome the residue of that a half century
| later.
|
| Has nothing to do with being a one shot solution vs
| subscription.
|
| Even economically the conspiracy theory against one shot
| cures makes no sense. As your shitty subscription solutions
| all go generic, I enter the market with my low risk one
| shot cure and eat all of your lunch.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I agree with you, but ..
|
| Through direct experience, I do not think 2 or 3 good
| sessions and you're done is really true. Maybe with
| experience even that goes - you learned what you needed to
| learn and there's nothing more to it.
|
| But IMHO psilocin is a strong anti-inflammatory which may
| in and of itself be some (not all) of the mechanism for
| alleviating depression (the link between inflammation and
| depression is strong). That will almost never be lasting.
|
| So we may be in the case where the real breakthroughs are,
| as you say, in the first two or three sessions. I think
| most people who took mushrooms out of desperation would
| agree with that - by the end of the third session many of
| the things they needed to accept are, in fact, front of
| mind for awhile. But ongoing maintenance is probably
| useful.
| seattle_spring wrote:
| > Whereas adderall is not technically addictive
|
| I don't think I've ever heard someone claim that Adderall
| isn't addictive.
|
| > use of amphetamines and stimulants such as Adderall can
| result in tolerance and physiological dependence and can
| lead to the development of a substance use disorder. Misuse
| of prescription stimulants such as Adderall for any reason
| (e.g., to improve academic performance, reduce the effects
| of other drugs, etc.) is associated with both substance use
| disorders and use of other substances.
|
| https://americanaddictioncenters.org/stimulants/amphetamine
| /...
| yibg wrote:
| Not enough money in it. It's not something that is taken
| regularly for long term like ADHD meds, or something that
| pretty much everyone uses at some point like antibiotics. If
| psilocybin came in a pill, it'd be targeted to a relatively
| small group of people for occasional use.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Not enough money in it_
|
| Source?
|
| The simple answer seems sufficiently explanatory.
| Psilocybin is burended by its history as a recreational
| drug. That creates pockets of motivated advocates against
| it in a way that doesn't materialise for most drug
| candidates.
| wheels wrote:
| Adderall is just speed, which also has a long history of
| recreational usage. It was a widely used recreational
| drug decades before it began being used for ADHD.
| Liquix wrote:
| it's also very easy to produce (grow) at home, further
| decreasing $$$ potential for big pharma.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The traditional HN way is to make up some "It's Just That
| They Hate Us"[0] teenage conspiracy. The reality is this:
| amphetamine was widely used medically for decades by the time
| the Controlled Substances Act was passed. When these acts are
| passed, governments are usually under pressure to not remove
| access to things that people commonly use. Therefore, it was
| scheduled in a category that recognized medical use. This
| allowed the subsequent development of associated clinical
| trials and so on. It is much harder to work with Schedule I
| drugs than Schedule II drugs. So an accident of historical
| timing is what caused the difference.
|
| 0: This game is really tiresome. It's "capitalism". "They
| just don't want to lose power". "There's no money in it".
| Thought-terminating cliches. LLM-grade.
| fragmede wrote:
| That the guy that was on Adderall was able to pay attention
| to endless meetings and fill out forms and stick with it,
| while the guy on mushrooms was not, is surprising to you?
| pier25 wrote:
| Oregon even started giving licenses for psilocybin therapy a
| year or two ago.
|
| https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/preventionwellness/pages/psilo...
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| > at least not long-term
|
| To be clear they absolutely do regularly provide short to
| medium term depression relief (up to a few months). I also know
| someone who had severe treatment resistant depression that was
| cured long-term (at least years) from one dose.
| jtrn wrote:
| Welcome to year 30 of trying to prove psilocybin works for
| psychiatric illness. And still in the pilot stage.
|
| Even taking the data at face value, the trial cannot disentangle
| the drug effect from expectancy, psychotherapy, and statistical
| noise. The enormous effect sizes are almost certainly inflated,
| multiple-comparison error is uncontrolled, and the participant
| pool is highly self-selected. Until a preregistered, parallel-
| group, active-placebo, adequately powered study with blinded
| independent raters replicates these findings, their practical
| value for routine cancer care remains minimal.
|
| It's so interesting to see how strong the drive to prove
| something works is, overriding everything. As a clinical
| psychologist, I would welcome this kind of therapy if it worked.
| But this is just sad. It's just like listening to people claim
| that ivermectin can cure everything.
|
| Show me one place where this therapy is conducted by people who
| haven't "drunk the Kool-Aid," and I'll be impressed. It's so
| frustrating to work with actual patients and see how much these
| therapies really don't work in reality. These kinds of biased
| studies pop up all the time without actually panning out. I'm
| starting to think that people promoting therapy, giving false
| hope, and spending money on research like this should be viewed
| as corrupt and evil.
| motoboi wrote:
| To better appreciate his point, read "The Control Group Is Out
| Of Control": https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/28/the-control-
| group-is-o...
| johndhi wrote:
| Why do you say the effect sizes are inflated?
| jtrn wrote:
| Due to a small, self-selected sample, biased toward educated,
| prior hallucinogen users, inadequate blinding, p-hacking via
| uncorrected multiple tests on 17+ outcomes, and crossover
| design flaws that confound long-term effects with intensive
| therapy.
|
| Similar psychedelic therapy claims--for LSD/psilocybin
| alleviating cancer-related anxiety/depression--have echoed
| since the 1950s-1970s, yet they've never panned out into
| practical, scalable clinical therapies. This alone should
| raise a MASSIVE Bayesian statistics red flag, due to prior
| discount: with decades of unfulfilled hype. At this point new
| evidence requires extraordinary proof to update our view.
|
| If such massive effectiveness were true, it would blow what
| we already have out of the water, and I would be the first to
| promote it to my patients. But you know what they say when
| something sounds too good to be true.
| pas wrote:
| FDA approved in 2018 for (treatment-resistant) depression?
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/compass-pathways-re...
|
| ?
| jtrn wrote:
| https://www.fda.gov/drugs/resources-information-approved-
| dru... !
| Aurornis wrote:
| That's not what that means.
|
| Breakthrough Therapy designation means they can continue to
| study it with support.
|
| It does not mean it's approved for depression.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Thank you for this. I am neither an advocate nor against
| psychedelic use in therapy but as a person who has consumed
| these things in the past, my own experiences make me entirely
| skeptical of people who put on an advocacy hat around any
| particular chemical. Especially psychedelics like psilocybin
| which are _extremely_ unpredictable.
|
| When I was a teen a friend gave me an analogy that stuck with
| me. In much older computers (e.g. C64, Vic-20, etc), they'd
| behave "interestingly" when you mucked around with the physical
| circuit board or there was a fault. E.g. if something short
| circuited because a screw was loose in the board, or a
| cartridge was halfway in or a chip partially desocketed, etc.
| Characters would appear in random places, or the machine go
| through odd loops and so on. And to someone who didn't know how
| the machine worked, there could be a certain "magic" and a
| "pattern" to this. But clearly you'd be missing the point if
| you thought you had "enhanced" the machine this way.
|
| LSD and psilocybin are kind of like that, but for your brain.
| They short circuit and alter pathways. In ways that can be
| _entertaining_ but you 're entirely missing the point if you
| try to assign a higher meaning to them.
|
| Our brains are expert pattern-finding machines, and produce
| causes and reasons even when there are none. For some there may
| be value in the experience of altering the operation of your
| brain to get yourself out of a stuck pattern, I guess. But I am
| not sure the very random stochastic nature of the whole thing
| is ... medicinal.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Most people involved in it are aware at some level that this is
| at best suspect and at worst a deception designed to push
| legalization. Same as the "health benefits of marijuana" crowd
| who violently deny the risks, addictive nature, potential to
| induce schizophrenia (temporary or permanent), tendency to make
| people lazy and obese, etc.
|
| Legalization has never been a question of "is this good for
| people?"
| jtrn wrote:
| Plot twist, I'm for full legalization.
| landl0rd wrote:
| So am I, of both "hard" and "soft" drugs. I'm just pointing
| out the ridiculous approach some people choose to take
| rather than arguing from principled grounds. It's also a
| dangerous one: "we shouldn't use state violence against
| people who use X" is a moral position. "I'm going to spread
| lies that may lead more people to use dangerous substance X
| because I want to get high" is a very immoral one.
| jtrn wrote:
| I think I agree. But I come at it from a different angle.
| I only care if proposed therapies actually work, when
| people claim they do. I think the state has a horrendous
| track record of deciding what people are allowed to do
| with their own life. And I think drug enforcements are a
| waste of resources. I think almost all drugs are terrible
| and should never be taken. To me, all of these are
| simultaneously true.
| throwaway330935 wrote:
| >Welcome to year 30 of trying to prove psilocybin works for
| psychiatric illness.
|
| That is true, but it misses some important nuance: the war on
| drugs has effectively eliminated the ability for legitimate
| researchers to do significant research on these criminalized
| drugs.
|
| For example, for me personally, a mild dose of marijuana is as
| effective as Zolpidem (Ambien) as a sleep aid, but without the
| lethargy and mental fog the next morning.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> the war on drugs has effectively eliminated the ability
| for legitimate researchers to do significant research on
| these criminalized drugs_
|
| That's not true any more. We have a substantial body of data
| already from clinical trials and a huge number of trials
| currently in the pipeline. The results from completed trials
| are quite equivocal - while psilocybin does appear to work as
| a treatment for depression, anxiety and other common
| psychological disorders, we have no evidence yet to suggest
| that it is meaningfully more effective than current
| treatments.
|
| We have good reason to believe that psychedelics may be
| useful for some patients in some circumstances, but the
| widespread talk of a revolution in psychiatry is pure hype.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=psilocybin&filter=pubt.
| ..
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?intr=psilocybin&aggFilters.
| ..
| emtel wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong on the limitations of these
| studies, but I also don't think it's unreasonable for people to
| believe in the power of these drugs.
|
| For many people (myself included) taking psychedelics was an
| immediately life altering experience. I don't need any more
| scientific validation that psychedelics helped me than I would
| need to prove that touching a hot stove burned me. It's an
| immediate and unmistakable effect that is wholly different from
| any other experience I've had.
|
| Now, proving that these drugs would be beneficial at a
| population level may be an unanswered scientific question. But,
| to quote you: "trying to prove psilocybin works for psychiatric
| illness" - well, that's been done. The people who have been
| helped have all the proof they need. I think the issues you've
| raised are more properly targeted at the question "should we
| recommend psilocybin treatment to depression patients more
| broadly" which is in fact a much higher bar than "do they
| work?"
| jtrn wrote:
| I can respect this view 100%. And your rephrasing, "Should we
| recommend psilocybin treatment to depression patients more
| broadly," is in perfect sync with my thinking, and the right
| question to ask.
|
| I would only add that it's extremely hard to know if
| something actually works. There are seriously some
| medications that people claim don't work, but objectively
| they are healthier, happier, more social, more active, and
| "better" on almost every objective measure. An example of
| this is when you really have a good match with venlafaxine
| for co-morbid panic disorder and depression.
|
| Then there are drugs everybody claims are good for them, but
| they almost never are, especially in the long run. Basically,
| all of the benzo sleeping aids (in the context of chronic
| use).
|
| So I can't and won't say you are not right. But I hope you
| permit me my goal of finding "objective" markers for saying
| "something works." Because, to quote Murderbot, "Humans are
| idiots!" (me included). And self-report is a notoriously
| unreliable measure.
| emtel wrote:
| > But I hope you permit me my goal of finding "objective"
| markers for saying "something works."
|
| A very worthy goal!
| yewenjie wrote:
| The study mentions they administered 30 milligrams of psilocybin
| for 70 kg of body weight. Does anybody know how many grams of
| dried mushrooms that is equivalent to, roughly?
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| 2 to 5 grams dried psilocybe cubensis, per chatgpt.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| You'll be tripping balls on that amount. 5g is close to a
| heroic dose.
|
| EDIT: Never mind, didn't see that it was cubensis - which
| might take more due to being weaker than regular wild
| semilanceata.
| throwaway330935 wrote:
| I've been doing some recent research and testing, and
| here's what I have found: I'm talking about the "Penis
| Envy" strain, which is quoted as being ~30% more potent
| than typical. 2g is the edge of where I start getting
| visual artifacting, and only sometimes. 3g, which I have
| not tried, was quoted as being towards the upper end of a
| "theraputic dose", and 6g as the upper end of a
| recreational dose. Some friends with much more experience
| consider 1g to be microdosing, FWIW. 0.25g I can't feel at
| all. .5g I start to feel some euphoria and 1g to 1.5g I
| start to feel "high" but with no noticeable psychedelics or
| just minor visual artifacting when I'm reading.
|
| I don't really have anxiety or depression. I do have a
| fairly high stress family life, wife and kiddos have lots
| of issues. A few weeks ago I had 2g on an empty stomach on
| a Sunday and I just listened to music for ~4 hours and it
| was like I had a vacation. I hadn't enjoyed listening to
| music so much for 20-30 years. Also, I seem to feel kind of
| sleepy when I'm trippy, but afterwards I'm wide awake for
| 4-5 hours. So evening dosing is best avoided.
|
| It's kind of great, for me personally, living in a state
| where it has been decriminalized.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Personal response may vary. At .15 grams of dried
| mushrooms I can definitely feel effects, while still be
| able to perform normal life functions.
| mock-possum wrote:
| And I'd consider about an eighth to be a dose, so that sounds
| like it's in the right neighborhood.
| throwaway330935 wrote:
| I learned from an episode of "The Studio" that by "an
| eighth" you are likely referring to an eighth of an ounce
| is around 3.5 grams. Dude thought he got really mild shroom
| laced chocolates ("an eighth of a gram") and much hilarity
| ensued.
| scellus wrote:
| Here's a rough breakdown from Claude:
|
| "[...] psilocybin converts to psilocin in the body at roughly
| a 1:1 ratio by active effect [...]
|
| Psilocybe cubensis (most common): Contains about 0.5-1.0%
| psilocybin by dry weight. Since psilocybin converts to
| psilocin in the body at roughly a 1:1 ratio by active effect,
| 30mg of psilocin would be equivalent to roughly 3-6 grams of
| dried P. cubensis.
|
| Psilocybe semilanceata (liberty caps): Much more potent at
| 1-2% psilocybin content, so you'd need only about 1.5-3 grams
| dried.
|
| Psilocybe azurescens: Even more potent at 1.5-2.5%
| psilocybin, requiring roughly 1-2 grams dried.
|
| Important caveats:
|
| - Individual mushrooms within the same species can vary by
| 3-5x in potency Growing conditions, harvesting time, and
| drying/storage methods all affect potency
|
| - The caps are typically more potent than stems
|
| - Fresh vs. dried makes a huge difference (fresh mushrooms
| are ~90% water)"
|
| Have to note that the paper is from 2016; for those really
| interested, it's good to read recent review papers.
| sampl3username wrote:
| @grok is this true????
| scellus wrote:
| lol
| skeezyboy wrote:
| there was a study recently showing no difference in caps v
| stems
| locallost wrote:
| I don't know if that's true or false, but I would certainly
| not trust chatgpt blindly in this case.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| That is the problem with clandestine pharmacy by Florida man,
| as people may get the wrong dose or a mixture of various other
| poisons like arsenic (see dark web article.)
|
| When ready, please talk with your doctor first. =3
| awithrow wrote:
| A good ballpark for dried shrooms is roughly 1% psilocybin by
| weight of dried shroom, so about 3g. That said, it's going to
| vary a lot shroom to shroom, genetic to genetics, and species
| to species. Could be as high as 6g for more mild strains and as
| low a 1g for something like pan cyans.
| bowsamic wrote:
| For me it did the opposite, made me suicidal when I'd never felt
| that way before. I didn't even have particularly bad trips or
| anything.
| mehphp wrote:
| Anecdotally, I didn't get severe anxiety and panic attacks until
| immediately after trying mushrooms. I didn't even have a bad
| trip, but the next day something was off and I never truly
| recovered from that.
| krzat wrote:
| Psychodelics allow brain to change, but the change is not
| guaranteed to be positive.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Exactly. This is why I hate it when psychonauts push the
| "there are no bad trips" angle. It's a lie, and psychedelics
| can have a long lasting negative impact on the brain in some
| cases.
| immibis wrote:
| Following the logic, though, it could be undone with a
| positive experience on psychedelics...
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Or you could have further triggering experiences
| spiralcoaster wrote:
| I had this exact same experience. It felt like it opened the
| door to panic attacks, and I had a few of them in the years
| that followed.
| selectodude wrote:
| I have way too much mental illness in my family to ever
| consider trying psychedelics.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| In general, even with genetically inherited disorders your
| chances of developing most conditions drop from 54% to less
| than 18% in low stress environments.
|
| Epigenetics are weird, but if you are past 35 without
| symptoms than you should be fine without medication (know
| several people that weren't as lucky.)
|
| Stay healthy friend =3
| landl0rd wrote:
| "18% chance you go from depressed to schizophrenic" (in
| reality this risk is going to vary across a distribution of
| risk) is still not favorable odds the way I see it.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I have a buddy that ended up in a ward, and still phones
| from time to time.
|
| The 3rd generation medications keep his cycles under
| control fairly well. Note, prior to being processed by
| our medical system. These same a--hole sycophantic
| dealers would target vulnerable people with BS treatments
| all the time.
|
| Talk with your doctor, get out for a walk every morning,
| and try out cognitive behavioral therapy when you are
| ready. =3
|
| A funny post about what not to do:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o
| landl0rd wrote:
| I have a family member who has never been alright due to
| moderate psychedelic and heavy marijuana use in college.
| Maybe some people are fine, sure, and maybe this is even
| a rare outcome, but the denialism bothers me when I
| personally know that they can, at some unknown rate, turn
| someone schizophrenic and ruin his life. I wish we could
| get him treatment but he's not high-grade enough to be
| involuntarily committed but paranoid schizophrenics who
| hate and distrust their family don't respond well to "hey
| we should get you treatment."
|
| I have a friend from college who smoked too much
| marijuana during lockdown back in India. Thankfully the
| insanity cleared up after a few weeks to a month clean of
| it, but not all are so lucky.
|
| The denialism and propaganda campaigns bother me. As pro-
| legalization as I am, I personally have never and will
| never use drugs. They are dangerous and unnecessary, and
| I resent those who would influence others' decisions to
| do something high-risk and potentially very damaging
| because they want to get high.
| skeezyboy wrote:
| > I have a friend from college who smoked too much
| marijuana during lockdown back in India. Thankfully the
| insanity cleared up after a few weeks to a month clean of
| it, but not all are so lucky.
|
| I would love to meet one of these people that lose their
| minds in such a short time on drugs. I know they exist
| but I just want to see the reality of it.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Some have genetic vulnerability to addictions, and others
| latent disorders do manifest.
|
| Very common side-effect for people that try strong
| hallucinogens and or use malformed neurotransmitters.
|
| The find-out part happens later =3
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Many people with psychiatric challenges (both acute or
| chronic disorders) will often seek self-medication
| options. Marijuana is indeed a mild hallucinogen, but you
| are correct in that many hard drugs can trigger a
| psychotic episode. Often illegal dealers lace the stuff
| with addictive compounds that cause severe problems
| during withdrawal.
|
| Having a family member with active untreated disorders
| can tilt the odds out of ones favor, but those with
| intellectual gifts also tend to be more resilient to such
| situations.
|
| >The denialism and propaganda campaigns bother me
|
| Understandable, after a few years people see the same
| excuses, exploitive scams, and rhetoric. The Sackler
| family ruined a lot of lives to capture that money, and I
| guess a few psychopaths saw a business opportunity.
|
| Best of luck =3
| foobiekr wrote:
| I will up front say that while I advocate taking
| mushrooms to depressed people, and said so elsewhere, I
| would not recommend them to _young people_.
|
| But I think you might be missing the forest for the
| trees: unlike mushrooms, there is a _ton_ of research on
| pot specifically that illustrates that heavy use in the
| young is extremely detrimental to their mental health,
| especially young men. The studies on psilocybin/psilocin
| do not show this.
|
| That said, Michael Pollan has a quote in one of his books
| that foes along these lines: coming to psychedelics in
| old age, when you are set in your ways and everything is
| locked in, helps you break out and reconsider things, but
| young people don't have those things, so the value is
| mostly absent.
| codingdave wrote:
| > in low stress environments.
|
| How many people live in low stress environments these days?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Even Elmo has changed:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbk7leQdxbo
|
| Go outside, stop watching media, and meet real people.
| lol =3
| skeezyboy wrote:
| come on man, youre sat here posting on hacker news....
| its all a bit jordan petersons 12-rules-for-someone-
| elses-life
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| waiting for the build... paid to wait... rather be
| golfing... lol =3
| inanutshellus wrote:
| "there's an XKCD for everything"
|
| https://xkcd.com/303/
| landl0rd wrote:
| Ditto. They contributed to long-term trashing the psyche of a
| relative and we have a really strong history of such issues,
| stuff like schizophrenia that they can trigger. It's an under
| appreciated risk.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Similar. Was over a decade ago. Not easy, but gradually gets
| better. Sorry to hear about it, it's not something I'd wish on
| anyone.
| kbos87 wrote:
| Yes, the one time I've tried mushrooms it was a very unpleasant
| experience. For weeks I was left feeling like I had done some
| permanent damage to my mental health. I eventually got past
| that feeling and there might be a point I try them again, but
| not without professional guidance. Psilocybin is powerful and
| not a remotely recreational thing (for me at least.)
| LakesAndTrees wrote:
| The first time I tried them, it was like I peaked behind the
| "curtain" in the Wizard of Oz, and knew even in that moment
| I'd never be able to unsee or forget it. It was the
| equivalent of being a child and realizing Santa didn't
| actually exist.
|
| Life as I had known it, the things that then animated me,
| were "shown" to be a pantomime - a joke. It was tremendously
| sad, and - for better or worse - I've never been the same
| since.
|
| Maybe it was a coming of age experience - something I would
| have more painfully experienced later anyway. But it cost
| something significant. It changed me. Still, some 25 years
| later, I don't know if it was for the better.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| thanks for sharing that
| throwmeaway222 wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. While not everyone's experience is
| the same, after hearing all the hype I was inching closer to
| trying this... but this confirms that it's not a magic bullet
| and there are dangers. I don't have any specific mental issues
| right now, so there's also probably no reason to try it. The
| only thing I wish for, at 45 yo, is to have a faster to adapt
| mind like I had when I was younger.
| andoando wrote:
| And I've gotten far worse effects from weed than shrooms or LCD
| weirdly enough.
| superfrank wrote:
| I've did a bunch of recreational drugs growing up, but
| mushrooms were the only one that I swore off forever. It just
| didn't sit well with me and would lead to a ton of anxiety both
| during and after taking them.
|
| I think it's too easy for people to get caught up in the idea
| that these are miracle cures and forget that, just like with
| any drug, the effects will be different for different people.
| I'd love for it to be available for people who are seeing
| benefits, but I don't think there's any shame in people saying,
| "that doesn't work for me"
| IceDane wrote:
| ... In patients about to die from cancer. This title is
| disingenuous.
| foobiekr wrote:
| You think depression knows about cancer?
| thisismyswamp wrote:
| To be fair, so did a lobotomy. I believe close attention should
| be paid to any unintended outcomes of a therapy that the patient
| themselves would no longer be able to identify due to the nature
| of the treatment itself.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Psilocybin is about the 180-degree opposite of a lobotomy, just
| from a purely mechanical perspective. And it certainly feels
| that way qualitatively as well.
| thisismyswamp wrote:
| organic systems seek points of equilibrium, with veering too
| much off in any axis being detrimental
| gavmor wrote:
| Yes, although--within a specific range--mild "hormetic"
| stress or departure from baseline can lead to adaptive and
| beneficial effects in organic systems.
|
| Hormesis is characterized by a biphasic dose-response:
| _low-level_ exposures to stressors (toxins, temperature,
| exercise, dietary restriction, etc.) are those which
| stimulate adaptive beneficial responses, eg exercise,
| ischemic preconditioning (short bouts of reduced blood flow
| improving tissue resilience), and dietary energy
| restriction.
|
| Rather than negating homeostasis, we can say that hormesis
| "refines" it: mild, intermittent stress can make us
| resilient through larger future perturbations.
| itomato wrote:
| A patient doesn't metabolize a lobotomy.
| thisismyswamp wrote:
| they don't have to as there's no ingestion of the therapeutic
| agent
| Aurornis wrote:
| Anecdotally, I know several people who have tried mushrooms
| and/or ayahuasca for depression in recent years and their results
| are nothing like the glowing Internet reports.
|
| The worst case is a friend who became disconnected from reality
| for a very long time. Went from atheistic to believing in
| mystical ideas. He thought he was able to see and sense things
| that we could not, like auras and secret messages. He was getting
| better last time we checked but he's hard to get in contact with
| now. No prior hints of psychosis or family history, just a
| psychedelic induced mental illness.
|
| The other anecdotes were not as dramatic, but also not as
| positive or free of side effects as studies like this one would
| make you think. Multiple stories of extended periods of
| derealization or anxiety attacks that started after the trip.
| There are similar comments here throughout this comment section.
|
| There was a time when sharing these negative stories was met with
| disbelief and downvotes. I think as it's becoming more common
| people are realizing that the interaction between psychedelics
| and depression isn't as great as it seemed for a few years when
| they were virtually being promoted by podcasters and social media
| influencers as a novel cure for depression.
| hattmall wrote:
| Psychedelics are basically like shock therapy.
|
| The whole ketamine thing though is even crazier at least with
| psychedelics there is a forced introspection and very little
| addictive nature.
| chuckadams wrote:
| I think a lot of the negative reception to negative anecdotes
| were because they were often in the context of legalization. "I
| know someone who went crazy after trying $foo so we should
| still lock people into iron cages just for the crime of
| possessing it." Debate tends to get polarized when doors are
| being kicked down. Academic studies that are disconnected from
| culture wars don't tend to provoke such responses, probably
| because they don't tend to reach the general public in the
| first place.
| landl0rd wrote:
| Which is a terrible strategy actually. People did the same
| with marijuana. "Dude it's medicine lol. Dude it can't
| possibly contribute to schizophrenia. Dude weed lmao."
|
| All this does is create a credible argument that the pro
| legalization crowd are objectively lying to people and
| therefore untrustworthy.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Its natural! therefore God made it for us to consume
| braaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh
|
| just ignore things like cyanide, and mercury
| chuckadams wrote:
| When it comes to truthful arguments, the anti-legalization
| crowd historically hasn't stood on very firm ground either.
| I think we can agree that perhaps with the heat dialed down
| a bit, we're allowed to have grown-up conversations now.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > because they were often in the context of legalization. "I
| know someone who went crazy after trying $foo so we should
| still lock people into iron cages just for the crime of
| possessing it."
|
| I think that's what people thought when reading negative
| anecdotes, but I definitely didn't see a lot of suggestions
| that we lock people up.
|
| The same thing happened for marijuana: Any mention of
| negative effects would bring downvotes, scorn, and disbelief
| pre-legalization. Then once it was legal it became acceptable
| to say that marijuana wasn't a panacea and using a lot of it
| was actually a problem.
|
| Before this change, it was common to read highly upvoted
| anecdotes here and on Reddit claiming everything from
| medicinal properties to fixing depression to improving
| driving skills (an actual claim I saw here and on Reddit
| multiple times). Now it's widely acceptable that frequent
| marijuana use is not good for mental health and wellbeing,
| but that was once a thing you could not say on the internet.
| chuckadams wrote:
| > definitely didn't see a lot of suggestions that we lock
| people up.
|
| Nobody had to suggest that, it was the law of the land
| already. Hyperbolic argument is hyperbolic ("iron cages"
| was a bit of a tip-off) but consequences short of
| imprisonment were typically some other state-run means of
| destroying one's career, family, and/or life. Pointing out
| that this isn't a good thing and isn't actually working
| somehow made you into The Enemy Of Decency. And while
| there's still lots of Drug Warriors out there who still
| think that way, I'm encouraged at the increasing avenues
| for actually productive discussion. Seems to be the one
| politically-charged topic that isn't getting _more_ toxic
| these days.
| Levitz wrote:
| I'm sure it's nothing like a panacea, but I've lost count of
| the times in which getting some context behind a report of a
| bad experience shows recklessness or just plain old bad
| decisions.
|
| It also works the other way around, people even talk about how
| years of therapy didn't help but psilocybin did, and few seem
| to consider that _maybe_ it was a combination of both? Perhaps
| all of that therapy that "didn't help" set the stage for
| something else.
|
| General problem with anecdata I guess.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I don't know if people have forgotten all the lessons from the
| 60s, but set and setting are still extremely important for what
| kind of experience you are going to have.
| pegasus wrote:
| That's why use should be done in a controlled setting, with an
| experienced guide (ideally a therapist).
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I know someone who suffered major depression and
| was hospitalized multiple times. Their medication wasn't working
| and neither was therapy.
|
| They discovered mindfulness meditation and in combination with
| becoming a more moral person, limiting music, eliminating social
| media and unwholesome entertainment, and practicing small acts of
| charity multiple times per week they were able to overcome their
| depression. It's been almost 15 years since they've had any
| symptoms.
| vonneumannstan wrote:
| "Just be a better person" is not real treatment advice lol.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| The way they've explained it is that immorality is usually
| based on desire and aversion. And constantly giving in to
| these things creates a dependence where we're never satisfied
| with what we have. Having a structured moral code that allows
| for observing these mental qualities without giving in to
| them eventually leads to their reduction because we're
| breaking the habit pattern. Once your desires and aversions
| are reduced then you become more satisfied with what you
| have; ie eliminating depression in their case.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Pali terms for anyone interested in the "source code" of
| the modern Mindfulness Movement that allows you to look up
| the original Pali technical terms:
|
| > [unskilful] _desire_
|
| tanha (The second Noble Truth)
|
| > _aversion_
|
| dosa
|
| > _we 're never satisfied_
|
| dukkha (The first Noble Truth)
|
| > _moral code_
|
| sila
| sctb wrote:
| You added the "just". Becoming a better person is probably
| the best thing you can shoot for, though obviously it's not a
| trivial process and requires significant effort and
| intention. I mean, what else can you do? You're the one that
| has to live with yourself.
|
| Even if the whole world is going to shit, if you desire the
| happiness and wellbeing of others, as a deep internal
| orientation, this itself is its own form of happiness which
| is not subject to anything external. Since this thread
| already has Buddhist vibes, you don't have to take my word
| for it and can refer to metta (loving-kindness) as its own
| practice in addition to mindfulness.
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| The really interesting part is they are Muslim. They said
| that learning about Buddhism helped them understand the
| core of Islam and helped everything click into place.
|
| I think learning about different cultures and religions can
| unlock perspectives which enhance whatever we're currently
| practicing.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The native Muslim tradition akin to what mindfulness
| meditation is doing would be Sufism. There are still Sufi
| traditions extant, but in many places they're being
| attacked by militant Islamic fundamentalists.
| krzat wrote:
| Actionable advice: be generous and notice how it feels. Then
| just be nice for the pleasant satisfaction it gives.
| seneca wrote:
| That makes a lot of sense. May I ask, why "limiting music"? Was
| it just a specific type of music, or did music in general have
| a negative effect?
| phyzix5761 wrote:
| The way they've explained it is that we listen to music
| because we have a desire for sensual pleasure. And constantly
| giving in to desires, in general, creates a dependence where
| we're never satisfied with what we have. This
| dissatisfaction, when it becomes strong enough, leads to
| depression.
|
| They practiced something called guarding their senses where
| they limited the amount of sensual pleasures they exposed
| themselves to and this calmed down their mind down to the
| point where even small things like the taste of ordinary food
| or having a conversation with a friend felt really
| satisfying.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Pali terms for anyone interested in the "source code" of
| the modern Mindfulness Movement that allows you to look up
| the original Pali technical terms:
|
| > _guarding their senses_
|
| indriyasamvara
|
| > _calmed down their mind down_
|
| samadhi / samatha
| pegasus wrote:
| In western/modern terms, dopamine fasting.
| mezzie2 wrote:
| Music I like is a huge dissociative trigger for me. I
| definitely am 'better' the less I listen to it. Luckily, I'm
| not usually that fond of music of the type that plays in
| public areas.
| rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote:
| I hung out with some (Vietnamese Zen) buddhist monks at their
| monastery for a bit, and it was really interesting how they
| really strive to limit sensory indulgences that take their
| awareness away from what's happening right here, right now.
|
| They didn't just cut out the obviously mindless things like
| television and social media, but music, small talk, and even
| books were considered things to be consumed in moderation,
| because they were striving to spend as much time as possible
| each day really focused on the present moment.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Pali terms for anyone interested in the "source code" of the
| modern Mindfulness Movement that allows you to look up the
| original Pali technical terms:
|
| > _becoming a more moral person_
|
| sila
|
| > _mindfulness_
|
| sati
|
| > _acts of charity_
|
| caga / dana
| skeezyboy wrote:
| > becoming a more moral person oh you mean like ISIS bringing
| back the caliphate?
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I am referring to Buddhist ethics and this has nothing to
| do with Muslim Sharia law or the re-establishment of
| caliphates.
|
| If you are genuinely interested in what I am referring to
| then you can search for pancasila (The Five Precepts) which
| form the foundation of Buddhist ethics/morality/virtue.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _pancasila (The Five Precepts) which form the
| foundation of Buddhist ethics /morality/virtue_
|
| Isn't it more accurate to call it an early commonality of
| Early Budhism than a foundation [1]?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_precepts#History
| neom wrote:
| FWIW: Got me sober and I think: kept me sober. Psilocybin is some
| powerful stuff tho, do recommend if people want to try it for
| "issues" - you seek someone who knows what they are doing first.
| baerrie wrote:
| Taking psychedelics allowed me to shed years of guilt and my own
| historic personality to become a more open and grateful person. I
| think some people have psychologies built on strong foundations
| that if shaken by psychedelics, cause more harm than good. The
| people who psychedelics help are those with more suggestible
| psyches that want change.
| esseph wrote:
| > own historic personality
|
| What do you mean by this?
| baerrie wrote:
| I meant to say historical personality. I thought I had heard
| about this type of ego-death when reading some of the early
| pioneer's works but can't find a mention. Basically it was
| the idea of who I was that had built up over time based on
| people's assumptions, judgements, and the way they treated
| me. My built up idea of self was enforcing negative looping
| behavior patterns until tripping freed me from that past
| idea, my historical personality. This led to me feeling a
| more open and unburdened sense of identity, allowing my idea
| of self to be an unfolding story rather than someone else's
| half-telling
| tbirdny wrote:
| And it might slow aging:
| https://x.com/bryan_johnson/status/1943824432419811437
| sibeliuss wrote:
| I have a family member who participated in this trial and their
| life was utterly transformed, from top to bottom. And it resolved
| a lot of _other_ unrelated issues in a totally unexpected way.
|
| They describe their participation as the most meaningful event of
| their lives, second to the birth of their children.
|
| (Stage 4 metastatic lung cancer -- and still kicking nearly 10
| years later ;)
| pxc wrote:
| Does anyone know if any similar treatments are currently
| available or if there are any ongoing or pending such studies?
| Someone in my life is a cancer patient who could potentially
| benefit from this.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Just buy some mushrooms and turn on some Allman Brothers.
| pxc wrote:
| My dad is a boomer who's strongly (and I think uncritically)
| against non-medical use of all drugs except alcohol (and he
| himself doesn't drink). He would be hesitant to do this under
| medical supervision, but he definitely wouldn't just do it
| "on his own".
|
| Besides, he's kind of a closed off person who has a lot of
| emotions he just avoids dealing with, even more so since the
| cancer diagnosis. He definitely needs a trip sitter, but he
| has few friends (certainly none who could do that
| competently), and no one in our family could fulfill such a
| role for him. Maybe I could for someone else, but my
| relationship with him is too complicated for me to do that
| job well, I think. :-\
|
| To top it off, my dad's cancer is in his liver, even though
| he never drank much at all for dietary reasons (he was on a
| strict keto diet for ages). I would worry about the
| possibility of toxicity with introducing new drugs without
| medical supervision.
| jdietrich wrote:
| Oregon, Colorado and New Mexico have legalized psilocybin for
| supervised medical use. There are a number of clinical studies
| that might be relevant and are recruiting or soon to recruit
| participants.
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/search?cond=cancer&aggFilters=sta...
| pxc wrote:
| Thank you so much. I have no familiarity with the appropriate
| search tools for this kind of thing. It's really great that
| we have a tool like this. Thank you for introducing me to it!
| aristofun wrote:
| Do you really need to be a doctor to realize that this type of
| drugs makes someone's mood better?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Another positive anecdote for me
|
| I am more empathic for weeks after doses of psilocybin. Getting
| there doesn't rely on any hero trips, no fractals, just maybe to
| the point of seeing more vibrant lights for a few hours. They
| used to hurt my stomach which would throw off a trip while
| dealing with that, and I still avoid eating stems, but it looks
| like I have tolerance to that now.
|
| Nothing supremely insightful, I mostly ignore my mind's attempts
| at epiphanies and the false feelings of clarity, I wait till
| music festivals to consume them and just enjoy the vibrant lights
| and echo-ing sounds. Just to the point where conversations and
| ambient noises from further away than expected are being
| amplified and spliced in to things happening much closer to me.
|
| Recreationally, I like the people I attract when I'm feeling the
| effects of psilocybin. I'm far too analytical in default mode,
| not nearly as much as when I was a bit younger, but still a far
| cry from where I would prefer to be. Its like I "null route" all
| of that and am more present to how people feel or want to feel.
| Its kind of crazy and obvious when it wears off, I respond to
| stimuli differently, or ask about things I don't really want to
| ask about. Less "vibes" in the moment and more "analyze" like
| noticing incongruences in people's lives and asking about that as
| a form of smalltalk, when it would be better off ignored. People
| respond normally, but I can tell it doesn't give them a spark of
| warmth like the vibes version of me does. Wasn't a goal or
| something I was aiming to work on, just a side effect I noticed
| over time.
|
| I also use other kinds of psychedelics but I didn't want to
| pollute this comment with more anecdotes.
| pstuart wrote:
| I did a medically supervised psilocybin treatment and it was a
| glorious adventure but had no lasting effect.
|
| Ketamine was equally "experiential" but actually had lasting
| impact. It's a pity it's challenging to come by, as one can DIY
| the former.
| cantSpellSober wrote:
| > a high dose (22 or 30 mg/70 kg) of psilocybin
|
| What is this compared to a recreational dose? Are these patients
| getting high as part of their treatment?
| psyclobe wrote:
| Psychedelics put me in Heaven... and in Hell. Use wisely.
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Hello from cancer family.
|
| It indeed decreases. When my spouse was diagnosed, they
| prescribed her anti-depressants. We replaced them with
| psilocybin. Never taken any anti-depressants.
|
| We had a very serious case with multiple surgeries, chemos,
| radiations. Not one, not two, and not ten or even twenty. MORE
| than that.
|
| The treatment still goes on, soon it is gonna be 5 years. With
| ZERO anti-depressants. And I've learnt how to grow them, not
| buying them.
|
| So we don't need studies, we tested it the hard way, and it works
| :) I can talk about it for hours.
| Bluestein wrote:
| I am sorry about the situation and hope it goes well. Hang in
| there.-
| RomanPushkin wrote:
| Thanks! I just realized we're mostly feeling normal, maybe
| even a bit more happy than average non-cancer family. It's
| only the side effects that are uncomfortable: losing money, a
| couple of jobs down the road, affected childhood of our 11
| y.o., dealing with jerks, etc. Mood-wise psilocybin brought
| us back to normal life, maybe even slightly better than it
| was before :)
| Bluestein wrote:
| Happy to hear. Be well :)
| aszantu wrote:
| I used to Microdose psylocibin, ever 4. Day. Since I didn't hold
| a job but did some daily routine, I knew it would be a slow day.
| It actually worked really well.
|
| One day I had a little too much. That day I was really productive
| and obsessed with folds in clothing.
| lukasb wrote:
| Being obsessed with folds in clothing has a long, noble history
| - check out Huxley's Doors of Perception
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