Maybe the title has been changed since you and mike lyvers posted your comments. Right now, it reads “The joy of magic mushrooms”, which doesn’t immediately suggest LSD to me! Nor does the subtitle, “Science is finally explaining how hallucinogenics can trick your mind” – both psilocybin and mushrooms containing it are commonly referred to as hallucinogens.
The article could well be ‘Guys who loved tripping as University students find tripping is good for curing stuff.’
written by a writer who tripped as a young guy, and also liked tripping, with free cod-psychology thrown in. ‘its like your perception thinks you are a pencil, but you know you are not, so tripping makes things seem like paper, and so…
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
Is this all part of the micro-dosing thing that Joe Rogan and otters have been going on about for some time? Obviously, it’s better that people take a natural product like mushrooms instead of whatever concoction the drugs companies come up with. However, it seems to me that nobody is really ‘cured’ of their depression here. Instead, they are simply mollycoddled into enjoying a more pleasing view of the world that bears no relation to reality.
Smacks of ‘Fu** ing with some crazy guy’s head, as we might have said back in the 70’s. But then we were stoned most of the time so would not be a reliable source of medical information.
I shouldn’t pick up on a spelling mistake, but I think it highly appropriate that Joe Rogan and a choir of otters are trying to improve our access to druuuuuugs, man! (this stuff’s good!)
I know that Joe Rogan loves this stuff, but wasn’t aware that otters were also advocates 🙂
I agree though, there’s a distinct whiff of “brave new world” about this… “Take this pill and you’ll soon see things our way”. Fascinating article.
Nope. This is more to do with a few larger doses to help do a sort of ‘reset’ on some of your thought patterns. Micros-dosing is used by hip silicon valley types to try to enhance their creative edge, and is probably just a placebo.
Instead, they are simply mollycoddled into enjoying a more pleasing view of the world that bears no relation to reality.
Did you read the article? This is about using psychedelics to shift people out of harmful thought patterns. Depression itself bears no relation to reality, pretty much by definition it is unreasonable and not related to outside circumstance.
Yes, I have read the article. Twice. And for much of the last eight years I have been visiting various psychiatric clinics once or twice a week to support a friend with depression (among other issues). My table tennis has come on tremendously…
But it still seems to me that this is just another form of Soma, as someone else has said. Ultimately, these things don’t seem to be ‘curable’, so all you can do is find the least harmful way of alleviating them. That said, there does seem to be a growing inability across the West to acknowledge any form of reality.
But it still seems to me that this is just another form of Soma, as someone else has said.
Given this is a form of therapy that is used infrequently in managed sessions, rather than being used constantly, I find it very hard to understand that viewpoint. Current antidepressants, which one must take regularly to build up a background level in the body, and are effective through constant action, seem a far better match to that particular fictional drug. The pitch here is that a few doses can actually help make longer term changes to someone’s mind, and get them out of the depressive rut, not leave them dependent on dosing every day just to function.
How on earth is that like Soma? Soma is more akin to a benzodiazepine, something that masks anxiety and relaxes you (and is massively addictive…), stopping you thinking about things too much.
If you’re that close to someone suffering from this, you know it’s not a rational or desirable state for them to be in, why would you be so suspicious of something that might knock them out of that and allow them to come to a different view of things? One that may be more aligned with reality?
Ultimately, these things don’t seem to be ‘curable’
So you’re willing to discount new research out of hand because of your preconceptions?
The difference is that soma had to be taken continuously, like alcohol or heroin. As soon as it’s out of your system you are back to where you were before, it worse because you are withdrawing.
The idea of the psilocybin cure is that you only take it once or twice and it has the effect of ‘resetting’ something in your brain that opens your mind to a different (hopefully better) view of yourself and the world.
I’m not sure its as simple as that. I do trips occasionally and benefit from a sense of “reset” or “newness” in the days following. However when i used to do it regularly i developed tolerance quickly, mixed tripping with other drugs and noticed the reset stopped happening. Considering Mennal Elf is often accompanied by brain chemistry disruption, especially serotonin and dopamine, i think advocates need to tread very carefully.
What do you make of Mike Boosh’s “Take this pill and you’ll soon see things our way” comment? I wouldn’t have thought psychedelics, whatever their merits or drawbacks, lent themselves to imposing any particular view on those given them.
I agree – if anything it may make users less likely to behave the way the sheeple behave. It was once thought DMT could do this and some clown thought he’d synthesized a drug called “telepathine” from ayahuasca vine (banisteriopsis sp.) which enabled the control of useres mids. I think the chap was a medico, a “scientist” in the covid sense of the word. Anyhoo it came to naught. There is evidence people are highly suggestable when high on dissociatives like Ketamine, MXP ( rhino- ket) and PCP. It seems “devils breath” is both dissociative and an hallucinogen. AFAIK its a plant based alkaloid and sounds like the effects are similar to DMT. Whatever its active ingredients its pretty evident that the mind control part ends when the drug wears off. Unlike fear, as used by this and other governments recently. Fear can induce long term cognative dissonance, mental weakness and overall bad outcomes for the sufferer and those around them
Wait till bad trips happen. Messing with drugs leaves some people really messed up. Also, you can really mess with a person’s head when they are tripping. I worry this seems good to people who loved tripping, and so bias is very much in the experiment.
I agree. A very good friend was given a massive overdose of mushrooms by some hippies as her first trip and has had a massive fear of such drugs since.
Are you one of those otters Frasier keeps on about above? I am off to a wildlife refuge in a bit to get a dog in exchange for a rooster (I have an extra rooster and they have a dog they want to rehome) and they have a orphan baby otter, amazing things to hold. I get otters on my property. Ever read Gavin Maxwell’s books? ‘Ring of Bright Water’? (And best of all, A Reed Shaken By The Wind) where he toured the Great Iraqi Marshes with Thesiger (which Saddam drained to punish the native Marsh Arabs, Shia’s)
I have never seen anyone recover from depression or any other mental health condition by doing drugs. They just end up worse and often addicted. Of particular harm are any drugs ending in the letters “pram” and all benzos. You may as well use methedrine ( if made properly) or even coke, as the harms are no different.
I am not so against benzos, tricky drugs though, but definitely have a place on the counter when used correctly. Remember the old song ‘And she runs to the shelter of mother’s little helper’ that was Valium? That was 60’s – 70’s days when every house wife was going nuts at home and benzos were handed out so easily.
The ones ending with al, Tuinal and numbutal, and pentothals, those were the days…barbiturates everywhere….
Never knew that – always thought it was benzedrine. I agree there may be medical uses for diazapine for mania, anxiety, amphetamine psychosis etc but they are very dangerous and i cannot understand why they are so popular now. Its a good thing we don’t all want the same things!
simply mollycoddled into enjoying a more pleasing view of the world that bears no relation to reality
I think that’s the crux of it though. Depressed people’s perception of reality is already skewed to some degree, hence the depression. So surely something that gently bends their mind to a more relaxed, happier perception is no bad thing. I think the study is interesting to say the least and worth exploring further.
it’s better that people take a natural product like mushrooms instead of whatever concoction the drugs companies come up with
Don’t mean to argue for the sake of it but I can’t agree here either. I accept a scepticism of drug companies is a good thing, but the ‘natural’ part? Nature doesn’t give a flying fig. Anthrax is natural, ebola is natural. Natural doesn’t in itself confer any benefit.
As I understand it, far from mollycoddling you into a pleasing worldview, psychedelics can be quite an unsettling experience, bringing you face to face with deep-seated fears and habits. Which is one reason why a therapist is on hand when they’re given to people suffering from long-term intractable depression.
And why is it ‘obvious’ that mushrooms would be better than synthetic psilocybin, which is what was used in these trials? Do you treat headaches with willow bark rather than aspirin? Is digoxin inferior to foxgloves? Some would say yes to both, but it’s far from obvious to me why.
Aylet Waldmen wrote about the changes brought about by microdosing lsd, though specifically in the context of hormone induced psychosis which i learned is a thing and can be pretty nasty.
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Totally fascinating. One thing this is telling me, about the nature of depression, is something quite uncomfortable. It seems a challenge to the habituated models in our minds displaces depression. But such challenges are inherently uncomfortable. It’s why people have an inbuilt resistance to anything that requires time and effort to chisell away at the existing structures in our heads, say, learning a musical instrument, or grinding away at, I dunno, a book about differential calculus until it makes sense. Breaking models and replacing them with something new that is not quite ‘habit’ yet, is *hard*. And my takeaway is, a perpetual state of this type of discomfort, is the cure for depression.
There’s a school of thought that life is not meant to be easy, and once you accept this and learn to look forward to challenges and treat setbacks as part of the game of life, it actually becomes a lot more satisfying. The problem comes from an entitled mindset that expects a life of limitless wealth, love, ease and leisure which reality cannot supply. That said, genuine depression is a serious medical condition which pop psychology won’t fix…
‘There’s a school of thought that life is not meant to be easy…’ It’s not a school of thought, it’s a fact. The world will always be dominated by unfairness and injustice. You will, mostly, be governed by idiots and psychopaths. The media will, mostly, be lying to you. The meek shall not inherit the earth. (Did Jesus say that? What an idiot).
For morbid depression electroshock is still used. A totally depressed person can get their brain looped. They keep thinking ‘I am so deppressed’ and then think it again, and again, and cannot break this chain. Electro shock scrambles the brain pattern and so breaks the loop and allows them some relief, for a wile, and then it sinks back into the loop….
Yes, it’s about breaking out of habit loops and doing something to stimulate new thought patterns. A lot of the reaction is caused by chemicals (or sometimes lack of, eg thyroxin) , although knowing that doesn’t help – a biological reaction is not so easy to control by the mere fact of knowing the mechanisms. The simplest proof is that different chemicals change the condition, eg depression drugs. Or magic mushrooms. Just biology and chemistry.
mike otter
3 years ago
Microdosing looks promising but to give out a trips worth of psilocybin may be dangerous and unethical given the potential harm of a really bad trip. If only experienced psychonauts are in the experiment group it misses the point as they will have their priors already set to build up, body high, visuals and then introspection. I understand there are ways to curtail psilocybin trips but not sure if they work with the strong stuff like LSD, DMT etc. Someone starting to panic may be talked round by friends but the only sure way to soften a really bad trip IME is heroin (NOT opium) or benzos, both adjusted for tolerance. I think novel drugs like 2CB may well be the best bet, never seen anyone have a bad time with that. Also medicos please learn that regular or high dose use of LSD/DMT/Mescalin can cause massive problems, mental and physical. I used to think it was the vines, cactus or truffles that caused the stomach cramps and loose bowels but got some lab made DMT and can assure you its just as bad. In fact thinking about it further letting the sort of characters that work in our mental or physical health services play with such potentially harmful gear is a big mistake, and that risk is nothing to what big pharma could do if allowed the keys to the doors of perception
Thorazine is used the drug used for someone on a bad acid trip, but only a really bad trip. I am not for messing with peoples heads with hallucinogenics medically, slippery slope in the extreme.
to give out a trips worth of psilocybin may be dangerous and unethical They weren’t exactly given out willy-nilly. Patients were carefully selected according to the protocol, which says, “As in previous trials, we will include patients that have previous experience with psychedelic drugs, although it is anticipated that most will have never had an experience with a psychedelic,” so the group probably wasn’t only experienced psychonauts. Benzos were on hand: “Injectable lorazepam [Ativan], as a ‘rescue medication’, will be available but would only be used in cases of severe panic that were unresponsive to psychological intervention, and where the patient’s behavior was putting themselves and/or staff in danger.” It looks like none was needed.
Psilocybin for major depression: A randomized control trial – PROTOCOL VERSION 1, Imperial College
Never going to believe you can safely mess with other people’s consciousness. Also imperial college IMO should be defunded, razed to the ground and its covenants/bequests diverted into primary school education. Fergusons simulations are correctly coded, but the source data and its assumptions are not correct, specifically for CFR and R:0 for SARS-CoV2. This amounts to using disease as a weapon and IMO is a crime against humanity.
J Bryant
3 years ago
This is an interesting article. I suspect much mild to moderate depression is largely due to becoming stuck in a mental rut. We view the world, and our place in it, in a particular, rather dysfunctional way. If the study cited by Chivers is correct, psychedelics can push the reset button on how we see the world and hopefully get depressives out of their mental slump.
I have known two people who suffered from severe depression. It is a crippling disease and I don’t think a distorted world view was the root of their problem. I believe people like them suffer from a major imbalance of neurotransmitters and they will still need traditional antidepressants, and maybe more severe treatments like electroconvulsive therapy, to deal with their disease.
David Smith
3 years ago
Tom, isn’t this (would you say) a confirmation of the Kantian transcendental idealism?
Is our brain stitching together the real world in a way that we can exist within and understand it – or is it merely stitching together the imperfect views of reality our senses bring to it?
Is the advantage of the psychedelic drug in depression or altered mental states, that we can choose to reorganise our perception of reality or that we can understand that our perceptions cannot be relied upon as reality. It seems tho that even knowing, with convincing evidence, does not allow us to change our perception of reality if the baa baa and hollow face examples are anything to go by. Knowing that I don’t or can’t know doesn’t help does it?
I just wrote this as something to ponder
I know that I don’t know
My interpretation or paraphrasing – from Sinead Murphy’s Zombie University – pages 24-26
The modern human raises themselves to the level of potential deity by saying ‘I know that I don’t know’ therefore never assuming truth, for truth would be the end of knowledge. Knowing that I don’t know allows us the concept of a potential for continuous and unending (intellectual) growth, unto gods, with the infinite capacity to fulfil that prophesy and manifest it in ourselves
Unfortunately allowing that fantasy paradoxical denies us the reality because, since we are, ipso facto, excluded from knowing, it denies us the ability to know that we don’t know.
Following GK Chesterton’s proclamation on the fate of the sceptic undermining his own mines, CS Lewis said
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. The very cry of skeptical objection often betrays the skeptic himself. And yet, I have no doubt that the peculiar act of undermining one’s own mines is hardly a skill left only to the skeptic.”
julian rose
3 years ago
…”professor David Nutt”…
Some people do get an apropiate name for their professional careers.
Is it nominative determinsim or coincidence? – as for MDMA being safer than horse riding have you ever tried to snort or swallow a horse? In fairness Nutt seems wise but like Jordan Petersen, Jeremy Corbyn etc he seems to think you can treat public life like an undergrad seminar, then wonders why he gets slagged off. I wonder if he realises why Blair, Cameron etc al had their knives out for him? How the hell can we keep the funny money coming in to UK if we stop people buying coke and heroin? You will not build much of a financial empire with molly and weed, not really habit forming and cheap to grow or make.
The article is about psilocybin, not LSD. The title should be changed.
When I read the title, I thought it was about LSD, but I updated my priors and climbed out of the valley. And all I’ve had is half a cup of coffee.
Maybe the title has been changed since you and mike lyvers posted your comments. Right now, it reads “The joy of magic mushrooms”, which doesn’t immediately suggest LSD to me! Nor does the subtitle, “Science is finally explaining how hallucinogenics can trick your mind” – both psilocybin and mushrooms containing it are commonly referred to as hallucinogens.
Yes they have changed the title since it was first up
But not the URL for the article, which still reads “…how-lsd-might-cure-depression/”
The title has changed itself ? Freaky, man
What colour was the cup?
The article could well be ‘Guys who loved tripping as University students find tripping is good for curing stuff.’
written by a writer who tripped as a young guy, and also liked tripping, with free cod-psychology thrown in. ‘its like your perception thinks you are a pencil, but you know you are not, so tripping makes things seem like paper, and so…
Is this all part of the micro-dosing thing that Joe Rogan and otters have been going on about for some time? Obviously, it’s better that people take a natural product like mushrooms instead of whatever concoction the drugs companies come up with. However, it seems to me that nobody is really ‘cured’ of their depression here. Instead, they are simply mollycoddled into enjoying a more pleasing view of the world that bears no relation to reality.
Yes, it smacks of Soma.
How?
Because Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and The Doors of Perception, so Soma and psychedelics must be the same?
Smacks of ‘Fu** ing with some crazy guy’s head, as we might have said back in the 70’s. But then we were stoned most of the time so would not be a reliable source of medical information.
I shouldn’t pick up on a spelling mistake, but I think it highly appropriate that Joe Rogan and a choir of otters are trying to improve our access to druuuuuugs, man! (this stuff’s good!)
I normally wouldn’t either, but Fraser did it to me last week so I leapt on this like a tramp on a bag of abandoned chips. 🙂
I now have images of otters playing table tennis – see Fraser’s other response here below. Perhaps I don’t need mushrooms….
Otter Kotaro & Hana || Kotaro the Otter loves to play with Ping Pong Ball Shooter
Facebook video
amazing!
Otters are known for their love of playing, and by playing i mean getting wasted, maan.
I know that Joe Rogan loves this stuff, but wasn’t aware that otters were also advocates 🙂
I agree though, there’s a distinct whiff of “brave new world” about this… “Take this pill and you’ll soon see things our way”. Fascinating article.
Nope. This is more to do with a few larger doses to help do a sort of ‘reset’ on some of your thought patterns. Micros-dosing is used by hip silicon valley types to try to enhance their creative edge, and is probably just a placebo.
Did you read the article? This is about using psychedelics to shift people out of harmful thought patterns. Depression itself bears no relation to reality, pretty much by definition it is unreasonable and not related to outside circumstance.
Yes, I have read the article. Twice. And for much of the last eight years I have been visiting various psychiatric clinics once or twice a week to support a friend with depression (among other issues). My table tennis has come on tremendously…
But it still seems to me that this is just another form of Soma, as someone else has said. Ultimately, these things don’t seem to be ‘curable’, so all you can do is find the least harmful way of alleviating them. That said, there does seem to be a growing inability across the West to acknowledge any form of reality.
Given this is a form of therapy that is used infrequently in managed sessions, rather than being used constantly, I find it very hard to understand that viewpoint. Current antidepressants, which one must take regularly to build up a background level in the body, and are effective through constant action, seem a far better match to that particular fictional drug. The pitch here is that a few doses can actually help make longer term changes to someone’s mind, and get them out of the depressive rut, not leave them dependent on dosing every day just to function.
How on earth is that like Soma? Soma is more akin to a benzodiazepine, something that masks anxiety and relaxes you (and is massively addictive…), stopping you thinking about things too much.
If you’re that close to someone suffering from this, you know it’s not a rational or desirable state for them to be in, why would you be so suspicious of something that might knock them out of that and allow them to come to a different view of things? One that may be more aligned with reality?
So you’re willing to discount new research out of hand because of your preconceptions?
The difference is that soma had to be taken continuously, like alcohol or heroin. As soon as it’s out of your system you are back to where you were before, it worse because you are withdrawing.
The idea of the psilocybin cure is that you only take it once or twice and it has the effect of ‘resetting’ something in your brain that opens your mind to a different (hopefully better) view of yourself and the world.
That’s a huge qualitative difference.
I’m not sure its as simple as that. I do trips occasionally and benefit from a sense of “reset” or “newness” in the days following. However when i used to do it regularly i developed tolerance quickly, mixed tripping with other drugs and noticed the reset stopped happening. Considering Mennal Elf is often accompanied by brain chemistry disruption, especially serotonin and dopamine, i think advocates need to tread very carefully.
What do you make of Mike Boosh’s “Take this pill and you’ll soon see things our way” comment? I wouldn’t have thought psychedelics, whatever their merits or drawbacks, lent themselves to imposing any particular view on those given them.
I agree – if anything it may make users less likely to behave the way the sheeple behave. It was once thought DMT could do this and some clown thought he’d synthesized a drug called “telepathine” from ayahuasca vine (banisteriopsis sp.) which enabled the control of useres mids. I think the chap was a medico, a “scientist” in the covid sense of the word. Anyhoo it came to naught. There is evidence people are highly suggestable when high on dissociatives like Ketamine, MXP ( rhino- ket) and PCP. It seems “devils breath” is both dissociative and an hallucinogen. AFAIK its a plant based alkaloid and sounds like the effects are similar to DMT. Whatever its active ingredients its pretty evident that the mind control part ends when the drug wears off. Unlike fear, as used by this and other governments recently. Fear can induce long term cognative dissonance, mental weakness and overall bad outcomes for the sufferer and those around them
I think datura and DMT experiences are radically different.
Wait till bad trips happen. Messing with drugs leaves some people really messed up. Also, you can really mess with a person’s head when they are tripping. I worry this seems good to people who loved tripping, and so bias is very much in the experiment.
I agree. A very good friend was given a massive overdose of mushrooms by some hippies as her first trip and has had a massive fear of such drugs since.
Are you one of those otters Frasier keeps on about above? I am off to a wildlife refuge in a bit to get a dog in exchange for a rooster (I have an extra rooster and they have a dog they want to rehome) and they have a orphan baby otter, amazing things to hold. I get otters on my property. Ever read Gavin Maxwell’s books? ‘Ring of Bright Water’? (And best of all, A Reed Shaken By The Wind) where he toured the Great Iraqi Marshes with Thesiger (which Saddam drained to punish the native Marsh Arabs, Shia’s)
I have never seen anyone recover from depression or any other mental health condition by doing drugs. They just end up worse and often addicted. Of particular harm are any drugs ending in the letters “pram” and all benzos. You may as well use methedrine ( if made properly) or even coke, as the harms are no different.
I am not so against benzos, tricky drugs though, but definitely have a place on the counter when used correctly. Remember the old song ‘And she runs to the shelter of mother’s little helper’ that was Valium? That was 60’s – 70’s days when every house wife was going nuts at home and benzos were handed out so easily.
The ones ending with al, Tuinal and numbutal, and pentothals, those were the days…barbiturates everywhere….
Never knew that – always thought it was benzedrine. I agree there may be medical uses for diazapine for mania, anxiety, amphetamine psychosis etc but they are very dangerous and i cannot understand why they are so popular now. Its a good thing we don’t all want the same things!
Withdrawal from both benzodiazepines (‘pam’s) and barbiturates (‘al’s) can be life threatening.
True dat – i’ve sen them ruin many lives, and on rare occasions help – eg for alcys + junkies going through withdrawal.
I think that’s the crux of it though. Depressed people’s perception of reality is already skewed to some degree, hence the depression. So surely something that gently bends their mind to a more relaxed, happier perception is no bad thing.
I think the study is interesting to say the least and worth exploring further.
Don’t mean to argue for the sake of it but I can’t agree here either. I accept a scepticism of drug companies is a good thing, but the ‘natural’ part? Nature doesn’t give a flying fig. Anthrax is natural, ebola is natural. Natural doesn’t in itself confer any benefit.
As I understand it, far from mollycoddling you into a pleasing worldview, psychedelics can be quite an unsettling experience, bringing you face to face with deep-seated fears and habits. Which is one reason why a therapist is on hand when they’re given to people suffering from long-term intractable depression.
And why is it ‘obvious’ that mushrooms would be better than synthetic psilocybin, which is what was used in these trials? Do you treat headaches with willow bark rather than aspirin? Is digoxin inferior to foxgloves? Some would say yes to both, but it’s far from obvious to me why.
Aylet Waldmen wrote about the changes brought about by microdosing lsd, though specifically in the context of hormone induced psychosis which i learned is a thing and can be pretty nasty.
Totally fascinating. One thing this is telling me, about the nature of depression, is something quite uncomfortable. It seems a challenge to the habituated models in our minds displaces depression. But such challenges are inherently uncomfortable. It’s why people have an inbuilt resistance to anything that requires time and effort to chisell away at the existing structures in our heads, say, learning a musical instrument, or grinding away at, I dunno, a book about differential calculus until it makes sense. Breaking models and replacing them with something new that is not quite ‘habit’ yet, is *hard*. And my takeaway is, a perpetual state of this type of discomfort, is the cure for depression.
There’s a school of thought that life is not meant to be easy, and once you accept this and learn to look forward to challenges and treat setbacks as part of the game of life, it actually becomes a lot more satisfying. The problem comes from an entitled mindset that expects a life of limitless wealth, love, ease and leisure which reality cannot supply. That said, genuine depression is a serious medical condition which pop psychology won’t fix…
‘There’s a school of thought that life is not meant to be easy…’
It’s not a school of thought, it’s a fact. The world will always be dominated by unfairness and injustice. You will, mostly, be governed by idiots and psychopaths. The media will, mostly, be lying to you. The meek shall not inherit the earth. (Did Jesus say that? What an idiot).
To quote Jasper Carrott: “the meek can have it. I don’t want any hassle off the meek.”
Point taken though.
For morbid depression electroshock is still used. A totally depressed person can get their brain looped. They keep thinking ‘I am so deppressed’ and then think it again, and again, and cannot break this chain. Electro shock scrambles the brain pattern and so breaks the loop and allows them some relief, for a wile, and then it sinks back into the loop….
Yes, it’s about breaking out of habit loops and doing something to stimulate new thought patterns. A lot of the reaction is caused by chemicals (or sometimes lack of, eg thyroxin) , although knowing that doesn’t help – a biological reaction is not so easy to control by the mere fact of knowing the mechanisms. The simplest proof is that different chemicals change the condition, eg depression drugs. Or magic mushrooms. Just biology and chemistry.
Microdosing looks promising but to give out a trips worth of psilocybin may be dangerous and unethical given the potential harm of a really bad trip. If only experienced psychonauts are in the experiment group it misses the point as they will have their priors already set to build up, body high, visuals and then introspection. I understand there are ways to curtail psilocybin trips but not sure if they work with the strong stuff like LSD, DMT etc. Someone starting to panic may be talked round by friends but the only sure way to soften a really bad trip IME is heroin (NOT opium) or benzos, both adjusted for tolerance. I think novel drugs like 2CB may well be the best bet, never seen anyone have a bad time with that. Also medicos please learn that regular or high dose use of LSD/DMT/Mescalin can cause massive problems, mental and physical. I used to think it was the vines, cactus or truffles that caused the stomach cramps and loose bowels but got some lab made DMT and can assure you its just as bad. In fact thinking about it further letting the sort of characters that work in our mental or physical health services play with such potentially harmful gear is a big mistake, and that risk is nothing to what big pharma could do if allowed the keys to the doors of perception
Thorazine is used the drug used for someone on a bad acid trip, but only a really bad trip. I am not for messing with peoples heads with hallucinogenics medically, slippery slope in the extreme.
IMO thorazine, dilaudid etc are scary – BTH or Irani brown are safe by comparison.
to give out a trips worth of psilocybin may be dangerous and unethical
They weren’t exactly given out willy-nilly. Patients were carefully selected according to the protocol, which says, “As in previous trials, we will include patients that have previous experience with psychedelic drugs, although it is anticipated that most will have never had an experience with a psychedelic,” so the group probably wasn’t only experienced psychonauts.
Benzos were on hand: “Injectable lorazepam [Ativan], as a ‘rescue medication’, will be available but would only be used in cases of severe panic that were unresponsive to psychological intervention, and where the patient’s behavior was putting themselves and/or staff in danger.” It looks like none was needed.
Psilocybin for major depression: A randomized control trial – PROTOCOL VERSION 1, Imperial College
Never going to believe you can safely mess with other people’s consciousness. Also imperial college IMO should be defunded, razed to the ground and its covenants/bequests diverted into primary school education. Fergusons simulations are correctly coded, but the source data and its assumptions are not correct, specifically for CFR and R:0 for SARS-CoV2. This amounts to using disease as a weapon and IMO is a crime against humanity.
This is an interesting article. I suspect much mild to moderate depression is largely due to becoming stuck in a mental rut. We view the world, and our place in it, in a particular, rather dysfunctional way. If the study cited by Chivers is correct, psychedelics can push the reset button on how we see the world and hopefully get depressives out of their mental slump.
I have known two people who suffered from severe depression. It is a crippling disease and I don’t think a distorted world view was the root of their problem. I believe people like them suffer from a major imbalance of neurotransmitters and they will still need traditional antidepressants, and maybe more severe treatments like electroconvulsive therapy, to deal with their disease.
Tom, isn’t this (would you say) a confirmation of the Kantian transcendental idealism?
Is our brain stitching together the real world in a way that we can exist within and understand it – or is it merely stitching together the imperfect views of reality our senses bring to it?
Is the advantage of the psychedelic drug in depression or altered mental states, that we can choose to reorganise our perception of reality or that we can understand that our perceptions cannot be relied upon as reality. It seems tho that even knowing, with convincing evidence, does not allow us to change our perception of reality if the baa baa and hollow face examples are anything to go by. Knowing that I don’t or can’t know doesn’t help does it?
I just wrote this as something to ponder
I know that I don’t know
My interpretation or paraphrasing – from Sinead Murphy’s Zombie University – pages 24-26
The modern human raises themselves to the level of potential deity by saying ‘I know that I don’t know’ therefore never assuming truth, for truth would be the end of knowledge. Knowing that I don’t know allows us the concept of a potential for continuous and unending (intellectual) growth, unto gods, with the infinite capacity to fulfil that prophesy and manifest it in ourselves
Unfortunately allowing that fantasy paradoxical denies us the reality because, since we are, ipso facto, excluded from knowing, it denies us the ability to know that we don’t know.
Following GK Chesterton’s proclamation on the fate of the sceptic undermining his own mines, CS Lewis said
“If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it had no meaning. The very cry of skeptical objection often betrays the skeptic himself. And yet, I have no doubt that the peculiar act of undermining one’s own mines is hardly a skill left only to the skeptic.”
…”professor David Nutt”…
Some people do get an apropiate name for their professional careers.
Is it nominative determinsim or coincidence? – as for MDMA being safer than horse riding have you ever tried to snort or swallow a horse? In fairness Nutt seems wise but like Jordan Petersen, Jeremy Corbyn etc he seems to think you can treat public life like an undergrad seminar, then wonders why he gets slagged off. I wonder if he realises why Blair, Cameron etc al had their knives out for him? How the hell can we keep the funny money coming in to UK if we stop people buying coke and heroin? You will not build much of a financial empire with molly and weed, not really habit forming and cheap to grow or make.