
Cary Grant's LSD Therapy in the 1950s - pmoriarty
https://www.vulture.com/2017/06/cary-grants-lsd-therapy-the-inside-story.html
======
PragmaticPulp
I think we're approaching the peak of the hype cycle for psychedelics.
Articles like this one glorify LSD as a wonder drug without exploring any of
the associated risks.

Readers skim over the details of the associated intensive guided therapy
sessions. They assume that they can get the same exaggerated results by dosing
darknet-sourced LSD at home, alone, without the concomitant therapy sessions
used in clinical research studies. The articles are so focused on the drug
that the associated therapy sessions feel like a neglected footnote.

Meanwhile, journalists and internet commenters both ignore the very real risks
of framing psychedelics as a DIY miracle cure for people with difficult to
treat mental health issues. Before this current phase, the universally
accepted advice for psychedelic experimenters was to never use psychedelics if
you had underlying mental health issues and to always have a sitter present to
monitor and guide your trip. The reframing of psychedelics as a miracle cure
has triggered a wave of people ignoring that advice, dosing alone at home
without any form of supporting therapy to frame their trips.

If you spend some time browsing Reddit, it's not hard to find bizarre stories
of people triggering week, month, or even year long episodes of worsened
depression, derealization, PTSD-like symptoms, or HPPD from psychedelic
experimentation. If "big pharma" produced a drug with possible side effects
like that, we'd be hearing a very different story. Yet LSD and other
underground treatments get a free pass in the media at this point in the hype
cycle.

Psychedelic research is very interesting and potentially promising, but I hope
the current wave of one-sided glorification comes to an end soon. If we want
to see proper psychedelic research continue and for the field to be taken
seriously, it's important that we stay grounded in our reporting of the topic.

~~~
RankingMember
I think what we're seeing is similar to what we were seeing during the push
for legalization of marijuana- a crowdsourced P.R. campaign that highlighted
the positives and neglected the negatives in an effort to try and
counterbalance the negative inertia that decades of "reefer madness" hysteria
had wrought.

~~~
saiya-jin
LSD/mushrooms are way more powerful, you can't compare those. What's next,
mescalin or ayahuasca?

I've done shrooms couple of times, it was profoundly mind-and-life-changing
experience and in many ways the most intense and beautiful event in my life.
But I wouldn't recommend it to maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of people I know, simply
because I wouldn't be sure it wouldn't mess them up badly, like really badly.
At least not under professional supervision and adequate gradual dosing.

You make everybody smoke weed few times, not much bad can happen. You make
everybody trippin', and consequences are unpredictable. Show some respect for
the stuff, it very well deserves it.

~~~
CodiePetersen
Shrooms are not way more powerful. To put shrooms on lsd level is kind of
ridiculous. They're all different from each other of course but most are very
mild compared to LSD. The very common ones are just serotonin reuptake
inhibitors. I've seen some people say they see shimmers of light or visuals
but I've taken the same ones and all I get is super happy and motivated. It's
great but it's not on lsd level. I'd say it's same level of weed.

I know everyone acts different to everything but I've had trippier experiences
with weed where my memory was so short I thought I was just appearing in
places and forgot what my arms felt like. So I think the concerns of shrooms
are greatly over exaggerated.

~~~
saiya-jin
Then you didn't have proper dosage. I did, few times. Full out-of-body
experience, complete dissolution of ego and personality, my physical self,
losing all the senses. For few hours. Of course I wasn't running around
partying, but laying in the bed alone listening to some soft shamanic music.
It wasn't a big dose, according to web it was +- 1 full dosage, nothing over.

I mixed dried shrooms with fresh lemon juice, horrible taste but made trip
much more intensive, and shorter (which was actually good because I got
massive headache afterwards, feeling like keeping my brain in red revs for
hours).

And then gradually coming back, composing my mind atom by atom, retrieving my
senses, limbs and so on. Very profound experience. You need to know how to do
psychedelics.

Even literal overdose on weed from very strong milk brew where all of us ended
up vomiting and tripping super high was nothing compared to this.

------
FriendlyNormie
[https://outline.com/Xu7nwv](https://outline.com/Xu7nwv)

~~~
neonate
[https://archive.md/ZfcTU](https://archive.md/ZfcTU)

~~~
worldburger
This and above comment: what is the purpose?

~~~
FriendlyNormie
I was annoyed that when I swiped left to quickly check something from the
previous page and then swiped right again to go back to the article, my scroll
position on the page was completely lost, and a bunch of random ads kept
loading as they came into view and shifting text around as I scrolled to try
to find my spot again. I’m filled with murderous rage when things like this
happen so I wanted to spare others from having a similar experience.

~~~
James_Henry
Do you have a reason that you don't use an adblocker?

~~~
skyyler
It's pretty similar to theft of services.

------
ggm
Supervision of use of strong psycedelic drugs is possibly about the
supervision as much as the drug.

For example the use of drugs for near death terminally ill patients is not
just "get stoned and chill" it's an orchestrated experience.

Strip the hype, retain a clinician with a qualification in mental health and
clinical psychology, use metered doses. Why not?

Leary is not the story. Or should not be the story

------
haolez
I'd probably try LSD recreationally if I could buy it from credible sources.
But I can't understand people who buy synthetic drugs from street dealers and
take them. How the hell do you know what you are actually ingesting?

~~~
monocasa
There's only so much that fits on blotter paper. There are chemical tests you
can do at home to explore that state space.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" There's only so much that fits on blotter paper."_

Unfortunately, some of those are the potentially lethal NBOMes.

Yes, you could test, but tests from ecstasydata.org cost $100, and only tests
that one sample you send. It also takes a couple of weeks to get results.

That kind of outlay of time and money is only going to be acceptable to a
small minority of users, and the unfortunate fact is that most users will not
test.

The real solution is to get LSD legalized and then safety and purity could be
assured.

Another alternative is to try some other psychedelics, like:

\- _Salvia Divinorum_ , which is legal in many places

\- _MDMA_ , which is likely to be rescheduled next year and then can be used
legally under the supervision of a therapist (which can already be done under
limited circumstances)

\- _Psilocybin_ , which will probably be rescheduled within the next 5 years,
and can then also be used legally under the supervision of a therapist

\- _Ketamine_ , which can be legally prescribed for depression right now
(search around for Ketamine clinics)

\- _Peyote_ or _Ayahuasca_ , if you're part of certain religious groups

\- _Psilocybin mushrooms_ , which you could pick (be careful!!!) or grow.

\- _Psychedelic cacti_ , which you could grow. But, unfortunately they take a
really long time to grow, and over-harvesting of peyote (for example) is a
very serious sustainability problem.

\- _Cannabis_ , which can have psychedelic effects at high doses.

Being part of a legitimate medical research study can also get you access to
pure LSD, and a limited amount of such research is now ongoing and planned.

~~~
aqme28
You can (and should) test with home test kits for a lot less than $100.

~~~
pmoriarty
The reagent tests that are in those DIY kits aren't as reliable as the Gas
Chromatography / Mass Spectrometry tests that ecstacydata runs.

It's easy to misread a reagent test[1], and they won't tell you all the
substances that are in a sample, just the particular sample(s) they test for.

GC/MS is much more definitive, in that it'll tell you every known substance
that's in your sample (though, unfortunately, ecstasydata is forbidden by the
DEA from telling you the amount of each substance they find[2] -- another
stupid and harmful result of the War on Drugs).

Still, reagent testing (when done carefully, knowledgeably, and properly) is
definitely a whole lot better than no testing at all.

[1] - For example, was that color you saw black or dark brown or dark violet?
Did you wait long enough for the color to change? Did you look at the reagent
color under the same lighting as the light you looked at the reference under,
and was that lighting adequate enough to differentiate between all the
different colors properly? It matters!

[2] -
[https://www.ecstasydata.org/about_data.php#quant](https://www.ecstasydata.org/about_data.php#quant)

------
ficklepickle
Guided meditation therapy provided me with all the benefits that are
attributed to psychedelic therapy. It helped me let down my guard and make
true progress. The benefits continue, years later. I'm still alive, and I
probably wouldn't be without it.

The psychedelics aren't necessary. It just appeals to people because everyone
wants a magic cure.

As an added bonus, it made achieving a meditative state much easier for me.

Society is too preoccupied with the conscious mind. It's not meant to be
running and in control all the time. Through meditation I've learned to
communicate with my sub/unconscious mind. I can query it and it responds not
with words, but more with feelings/emotions. It really kinda scared me the
first time. Now, it is how I figure out what is really going on with me, what
environmental factors are causing me malaise.

I'm now extremely grateful for the challenges I faced, as I wouldn't have been
forced to grow otherwise.

I call it guided meditation therapy, but it is also know as hypnotherapy. I
didn't use that name because I thought it would receive an immediate negative
response from many here. There are quacks out there, but it doesn't invalidate
the entire concept.

A closed mind will ensure no mental health progress is made. I'm so glad mine
was forced open.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Guided meditation therapy provided me with all the benefits that are
attributed to psychedelic therapy. ... the psychedelics aren't necessary."_

Have you actually ever had a powerful psychedelic experience?

