"we ... compare resting-state functional brain activity in 15 healthy volunteers after intravenous infusion of placebo and psilocybin—the main psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. The results show that the homological structure of the brain's functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo."
Psilocybin promotes neuroplasticity/neurogenesis, and the effect isn't subtle. Yet its application is still on the fringe. It's not surprising that this makes a financier salivate. It's more surprising that it isn't yet a gold rush.
Not sure if taking some shrooms can help cure depression but it can really change your perspective on life. Maybe that is what folks are talking about in this article. You are going thru all this pain and suffering, it affects your family , loved ones. It really sucks, we have all experienced something like that. If the patient takes a dose of shrooms (insert mind altering drug of choice) it could help give them a new perspective on the world, their live, and their place in nature.
Considering there's pretty compelling research that ketamine can help people that suffer from depression and MDMA in conjunction with therapy helps those with PTSD, I really think we should take a very hard look at what drugs should be illegal and why. I'm honestly not convinced there's a good reason most of the schedule 1 drugs should be illegal.
They all seem to have lots of therapeutic uses. Throwing that away seems like a huge waste.
I think that is one, of many, exact reasons they are illegal. The government will do anything to protect big pharma and these substances are not patentable. Nor do they need to be taken often for beneficial effects. That scares the living shit out of pharma companies that sell a lot of garbage like anti depressants that aren't even shown to be effective and often lead to worse outcomes like suicide. I'm surprised about what the guy in the article is doing and conflicted on whether I support it or not. Nature already provides this medicine in an almost perfect form. Extraction is trivial. I see no need for synthesis or especially for patenting it to the detriment of the natural mushrooms.
Awesome. Another molecule that is an ongoing target of persecution, now showing commercial value so it can be patented, productized, prescribed (with individuals as medical subjects rather than self-actors), and otherwise subjugated for the matrix's approved use(s). Then we can pat ourselves on the back celebrating fake "progress" while the resulting revenue continues fueling the very root of the problem.
Actually ending the war on drug users means voiding the entirety of its errant laws, full stop. Anything short is just perpetuating this violation of natural rights wherein individuals are restricted in how they may effect their own consciousness.
I was considering taking a trip on magic mushrooms, but a friend mentioned they had an acquaintance have a bad trip where they hallucinated spiders crawling all over their arms and they did significant physical damage to the arms in the process.
I'm not against growing from a bad trip, but I don't want lasting physical damage from the experience. Would love to hear any advice or suggestions experienced users have in how to mitigate a bad trip.
Before I get into mitigation strategies, I’ll get into the two primary reasons that people have bad trips (and they are inherently tied to each other often). The first is the actual catalyst, the second is secondary but usually leads to the first. The primary thing that people describe as a “bad trip” is a positive feedback loop of negative thoughts. I use positive feedback loop in the scientific sense, meaning that when you have a positive feedback loop of negative thoughts, the thoughts feed on each other and create more negative thoughts. The second is feeling physically unwell. Unfortunately mushrooms don’t taste great and people react physically in negative ways oftentimes, including but not limited to puking (most common) but also upset stomach and weird bowel movements. Knowing this, it’s easy to see how feeling physically ill can lead into the primary cause of bad trip, positive feedback loop of negative thoughts. It’s hard to avoid feeling physically ill for a lot of people but knowledge of the physicality of what you are feeling (and contrasting that with the mental aspect) can help people to avoid bad trips. In other words, I can tell myself that the reason I might not feel too hot right now is simply because of the way my body is digesting mushrooms, vs any mental aspect of my psychology.
To mitigate a bad trip:
- Be in a comfortable environment where you feel safe. This is usually where you live or the abode of a close trusted friend. It’s not recommended for the first psychonaut voyage to try something someone hands you at a concert. That’s a risky way to go about things.
- Have several comforting escapes set aside. A warm blanket and a bed are two very easy ones.
- Music that you are intimately familiar with helps. It also helps to have multiple playlists of music style that you enjoy as change of music can help break any positive feedback loop. Under the influence of psychedelics, music enjoyment and perception is significantly enhanced and can act as a complete change of mood and does wonders to break thought cycles.
- An experienced sitter to talk you through what you are feeling. This is the single most important thing that can break the cycle for people, so try and have this if you can, although not everyone will have this luxury.
- I’ve found that I have less negative physical response when dealing with extract vs raw mushrooms. I like to make tea, but there are other ways that are preferable to just eating the mushrooms as they are.
- Depending on your mindset, it’s generally a good idea to avoid mirrors when undergoing your first voyage, as this will send you into a contemplation of self quite easily, and you might not be mentally prepared for that yet. Later on in your voyage of discovery, you might want this though.
Lastly, I want to try and dispel the notion of what psychedelics are based on your post. I cannot speak to your anecdote that you relay in your post, but no one I have known (myself included) experiences mushrooms in the way you describe. I feel like media in general does a very bad job of describing and portraying what psychedelic experience is like. Users typically do not hallucinate things out of thin air like spiders on arms (though I am not saying your anecdote is untrue!). Oftentimes the hallucinogenic experience is more along the lines of completely new life being breathed into things that you normally perceive as everyday objects. For instance, you normally witness much greater depth perception of fractal-like objects (tree leaves/branches are a classic example) or normally static patterns like patterns on wallpaper will begin to move, breathe, and pulsate with life. You can conjure patterns from nothing when you close your eyes, but this is only a much amplified effect of the normal experience you have when you close your eyes and attempt to perceive the patterns that your blood vessels create.
I want to wrap up by saying (and it sucks that I feel like I have to say this) that I’m a well-adjusted member of society who works 9-5 as a software engineer and pays taxes. Jobs was a big user of psychedelics. For a lot of people psychedelics can be a good thing. They helped me conquer a lot of long-standing anxiety issues I developed in my youth and helped me discover my love for dance. Used correctly they are a really powerful and helpful tool for self improvement and just connecting with the world in general.
The idea of achieving peace by drugging the population reminds me of Stanislaw Lem's book "The Futurological Congress", where this interesting concept was turned into a fun to read and thought-provoking SciFi novel.
"we ... compare resting-state functional brain activity in 15 healthy volunteers after intravenous infusion of placebo and psilocybin—the main psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. The results show that the homological structure of the brain's functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo."
Psilocybin promotes neuroplasticity/neurogenesis, and the effect isn't subtle. Yet its application is still on the fringe. It's not surprising that this makes a financier salivate. It's more surprising that it isn't yet a gold rush.