
Acid test: on drugs and science fiction (2017) - benbreen
https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/the-acid-test/
======
Nursie
On anoxia -

> In just a minute or two, you’ll discover a vast increase in your mental
> abilities—a sureness of thought, a breadth of understanding, and a rapidity
> and sureness of reasoning you never achieved before…Of course your brilliant
> realizations and mighty discoveries somehow seem to misfire when you come
> down off that jag

I believe this covers quite a lot of the amazing 'realisations' people have
whilst on psychedelics like LSD, as well. And I'm not speaking from ignorance
here, but as one who has tried around 10 different natural and synthetic
psychedelics. They are beautiful, I'm not going to dispute that they can
change the way we think of ourselves and the world around us. But...

The utopianist ideas of "If everyone just tried this, there would be no war,
we could get rid of government and all look after each other, and the world
would be as one!" are wishful thinking. As illustrated by the vast majority of
the communal living projects started in the late 60s and early 70s.

~~~
vokep
The "if everyone just tried this there would be no war..." is absolutely
wishful thinking yes, because it ignores that organization and process is
required for large scale structures to function. And while we may not like
each and every function of the large scale structures we have, we're much
better withem than without.

But as for realizations that are had, typically the value isn't in anything
thought of while on LSD, but from the lasting change of perspective in months
afterward. Realizations can happen on it, but they seem minimal. The closest
thing would be that one point while on it I realized I was fully capable of
holding two contradictory beliefs and simply consciously ignoring where they
contradict. The thing is, a realization like that leads to greater
realizations about how your own brain works.

------
n4r9
Heinlein:

> I know of no work of art, essay, story, discovery, or anything else of value
> created as a result of LSD. When the acid-droppers start outdistancing the
> squares in any field, I’ll sit up and take notice.

Heinlein wrote some decent novels but I keep coming across pretty closed-
minded, strong opinions in quotations of his. Many great musicians were known
to have had LSD inspire their creations. The Beatles, Coltrane, the Beach Boys
to name a few. Some of Huxley's work was influenced by it, and the biochemist
Kary Mullis credits it with helping him develop the PCR method for DNA
sequencing.

~~~
tlb
Heinlein wrote that in 1967, when there wasn't as much evidence of enhanced
creativity as there is today. Sgt. Pepper's came out the same year and PCR
wasn't until 1983. A somewhat square older person (he was 60 then) might not
be expected to appreciate psychedelic music right away.

For a person of his time, that only puts him in the bottom 99% of open-
mindedness.

~~~
scottlocklin
What evidence is there for "enhanced creativity" from taking LSD? I don't
think there is any, other than subjective feelings.

People used to think sniffing ether, taking absinthe or breathing nitrous was
incredibly profound. Until enough people did it that the evidence was
underwhelming.

~~~
tlb
You're right: there are only people's reported subjective feelings. The
question is basically not studiable scientifically.

Michael Pollan's _How to Change Your Mind_ has a good overview of the
attempted scientific research. Early research was tainted by overzealous
experimenters, then research was banned for a long time, and recent studies
have only been approved for serious conditions, like treatment-resistant
depression.

The real problem is that creativity, the long-term generation of valuable
ideas, is basically un-measurable. Scientific studies of "creativity" exist,
but they all pull the ol' research switcheroo by measuring something easy to
measure, rather than the kind of creativity that matters.

So, don't expect good scientific evidence of improved creativity, from any
treatment, ever. That's as true for substances as for, say, whether to write
on paper or at a computer. Most novelists swear by one or the other, but
there's no feasible scientific study you can do to decide which produces
objectively better novels. Same for whether meditation improves creativity.

(If you want to get into this line of research, start with meditation rather
than psychedelics. It's much easier to get approved.)

For making your own plans about how to maximize your mental output, all you
can really do is ask people whose works impresses you (and who are willing to
talk about such things) what works for them, and then try those things to see
if they work for you too. Being careful to compare the results side-by-side
some time later, to reduce bias.

~~~
scottlocklin
I've got the laboratory of "me." In my experience the closest thing to a
creativity enhancer I've found is going without sleep while thinking intensely
about an interesting problem.

LSD is ... frankly, in my experience, a lot of bullshit. I've done enough of
it in my youth to early adulthood to be annoyed I wasted those brain cells
instead of thinking about interesting problems. I've also never seen anyone
who it improved; mostly it seemed to increase people's self-regard.

------
empath75
> drugs pay off in visible ways only for people who have already put in the
> hard work of figuring out how to make and do interesting things.

I agree with this. I’ve known a lot of people who have done a lot of
psychedelics and most of them learned absolutely nothing from it if I’m being
honest, and the few who had what I’d consider to be profound or interesting
insights from it were deep thinkers anyway.

~~~
armitron
LSD primarily teaches you to see things from multiple perspectives. It blows
away the consensus and is most effective when trying to see through
conditioning of any sort. I think anyone with a modicum of self-awareness and
self-insight can gain a lot from these, baseline, effects. One doesn't need to
be a creative genius.

There are multiple difficulties when talking about LSD experiences, especially
to others, given the enormous degree of subjectivity and variability in these
experiences. Sometimes, the transformative effects take time to manifest or
time for one to realize that they did manifest. Most importantly, given that
LSD plays tricks with one's notion of what constitutes one's self, one can be
rewired in major ways and never himself realize it.

Psychedelics in my view are a supremely useful tool. They can lead to
unveiling hidden potential, intelligence amplification, wilds bouts of
creativity, confronting and healing traumatic events, breaking free of
conditioning, resetting and transforming one's mind. These are baseline
effects, there is also the spiritual/shamanic domain which - for some - is by
far the more interesting one.

~~~
jordandeang
> LSD primarily teaches you to see things from multiple perspectives.

Hard agree. The least anyone can take out of it is a new perspective which
does not come often to many.

------
lostgame
LSD and Ketamine were incredibly healing experiences for me that seriously
broke through a lot of deep-seated trauma and helped me deal with PTSD that
was debilitating my life beforehand.

They’ve also been incredibly great experiences for benefiting my poetry and
musical compositions.

I believe they are great tools that require education to use. It’s a shame
that education is more or less forbidden knowledge.

------
yboris
A worthy read on the subject of psychedelics: _How To Change Your Mind_ by
Michael Pollan:

[https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-
Transc...](https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-
Transcendence/dp/1594204225/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=change+mind&qid=1547744331&sr=8-2)

------
ken
> Campbell believed that the real problem with marijuana is that a teenager
> who learns to doubt what adults say on the subject is likely to become
> equally skeptical when it comes to cocaine, heroin, and LSD

There's some merit to this, but by the time they were teaching us about drugs,
teachers had already lied to us about countless other topics. I wish they
hadn't lied about the severity of marijuana, but that alone would have hardly
changed my skepticism regarding everything else.

------
mirimir
Campbell:

> Marijuana ... is not an aphrodisiac ...

No, but it _does_ improve sex.

~~~
sametmax
Depends for who. Personnaly, it makes me sleep, and sex with a sleeping guy is
kinda limited.

~~~
stronglikedan
Indica makes you sleep. Sativa improves enjoyable experiences. Sativa by day -
Indica by night.

~~~
kylek
"Indicas" tend to be more tactile. (I use quotes because indica/sativa doesn't
mean anything. The subjective effects are really a matter of the
ratios/amounts of cannabinoids and terpenoids and the manner of ingestion)

~~~
grawprog
I upvoted your comment. I'm not sure why you were downvoted. This is correct.
Even different plants of the same strain will have different levels of these
depending on growing conditions, drying, curing and other factors. Even two
clones grown in different conditions can vary greatly in cannibinoid ratios.

There was also an excellent study i read a while back on the effects of
different terpenes on the kind of high you have and how they interact with thc
and various other cannibinoids.

This article summarizes the study pretty well:

[https://lift.co/magazine/terpenes-cannabis-
strains](https://lift.co/magazine/terpenes-cannabis-strains)

~~~
kylek
A bit off-topic but I thought this video was neat [0]. Cannabinoids produced
by GMO yeast! (Your reference to the variance in ratios reminded me of this.
An interesting answer to mass production and standardization)

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gUXtBuI-
tY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gUXtBuI-tY)

------
xkcd-sucks
It's a little surprising Dune isn't mentioned in the article, seeing as the
spice is basically a proxy for LSD

~~~
beat
Frank Herbert explored drugs an a SF context in several novels, as well as
Dune.

