A family member was a patient in the Psilocybin study dealing with cancer / end of life anxiety and the experience utterly transformed her life in a positive way.
I have a close family member also dealing with cancer/end of life anxiety - to the point where she cannot sleep and gets physical stomach pains from anxiety.
She has tried meditation but I don't think it's been very effective for her. And we are in Australia and so cannot sign up for the John's Hopkins study. Can anyone recommend another effective way to reduce her anxiety?
I spent some years reading on the topic of psychedelics and this book would have saved me a lot of time. It's an enjoyable read, a nice story, and it covers most aspects of the topic.
Lots of revived interest in psychedelics that is finally coming front and center in no small part due to Michael Pollan's recent book "How to Change Your Mind". Rolland Griffiths plays a pivotal role in the book (and in the real life advocacy and study of psychedelics) and Pollan probably seeded the ideas of psilocybin's potential into the right ears around Berkeley and on his book tour [1]. Think there's a ton of potential here and looking forward to what research comes out of this new group.
[1] The center's operational expenses for the first five years will be covered by private funding from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and four philanthropists: Tim Ferriss, author and technology investor; Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress; Blake Mycoskie, founder of the shoe and accessory brand TOMS; and investor Craig Nerenberg.
Suspect Joe Rogan has also been a fair influence too. His podcast has a massive and varied fan base, and he's a pretty consistent promoter of the benefits of psychedelics.
I think it's just the world. Joe Rogan is popular because currently "Joe Rogan Things" are growing (Weed, fitness, nutrition, MMA, psychadelics). These are all trending.
There's likely a feedback loop involved. Commentators who happen to talk about trending topics become popular; their popular platform can bring those topics to a broader audience; that broader audience stokes the hype around the trend and builds the audience further through (social media-amplified) word of mouth.
It's still rare for a celebrity to be as gung-ho and upfront about drug use, while also being very healthy. Usually drug use and celebrities are mentioned together in tabloids along with calls for them to go to rehab.
Pollan's book pushed something that was obviously growing fast over the edge into a lot of popular awareness.
That awareness is probably what is necessary to really get these things started and accepted socially which translates into regulatory acceptance. Sadly everything is a popularity contest.
For those interested, there is a fantastic documentary called, "The Substance: Albert Hofmann's LSD" which was released in 2011 (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2075352/) that covers a lot of the history of how LSD was discovered and then made its way to the US, and then subsequently how the proliferation of the drug shaped a lot of the cultural landscape in the US.
I was very impressed with the info in "Sacred Knowledge: by William A. Richards"
There is so much info about many different issues that can be treated, and the info coming from the doctors / scientists at Johns Hopkins that's in the book, is awesome.
I find it is a great bridge for those who are in the medical community / or lean towards not believing there is therapeutic uses.. scientific proof from JH is proof.
However this book is also extra beneficial to those who already believe or understand some of the 'magical effects' - as it gets into some of the studies and some of the methods - and opens the doors to furthering the use in many ways.
Our nation has been in a fully impaired state since fearmongering the 70s caused LSD to become a Schedule 1 substance, more illegal than Cocaine. Hopefully meaningful research will result in legislative changes allowing more people access to beneficial and potentially lifechanging medicines and experiences. It seems that the cat is out of the proverbial petri dish compared to that era, and now it's only a matter of time before these relatively new pharmacological compounds (and ancient sources like Morning Glories and Psilocybin) are rigorously investigated, either at home or abroad. It is lovely for the most medically advanced nation to grab the reins on such a thing, there's nothing but benefit when we consider we've been at the rock bottom of Psychedelic Research for 4+ decades.
At minimum, those substances would be very useful in a therapy setting with a trusted therapist.
They might also be useful on their own merits, as in, if you have severe depression and eat a bunch of mushrooms maybe you won't be so depressed anymore. Given the current state of anti-depressants, it certainly seems worth a shot.
You are correct. The first usages of MDMA (the defining ingredient in ecstasy) were in therapy.
If you have severe depression (or severe anything really), I would not recommend experimenting without an experienced guide. Think of it like like scuba diving or sky diving: first you learn how with those who already know.
Some say mdma without a guide is still good but you never know . Rick doblin once got a call from a friend who was treating a woman who had depression with mdma and what happened was that she remembered her rape and her being almost murdered ,this memory was complelty blocked by her brain and mdma brought them back . More mdma did not work so Rick doblin decided lsd was better equipped to treat her which worked .
There is a video of her speaking about what happened many years later
They can all still be good without a guide, just like once you've learned to dive you do it on your own.
I think a huge part of having a guide the first few times is just so you experience it all being OK, so that if on a solo jaunt it's starting to not be OK you've got some understanding that it'll pass as, physiologically, so does the substance.
Yes, these drugs show much promise for mental health. I'd love to see them used not only for those suffering from depression, anxiety, smoking, alcoholism, OCD, and so forth, but I'd be interested to see programmers, engineers, musicians, athletes, and all sorts of groups take these drugs and see how it affects their lives. Based on Michael Pollan's book, there's good reason to argue that neuro-typical individuals can benefit very highly, as well as those with disorders in need of treatment.
This probably isn't the place for it, but here's my anecdote to give background to why I think this is a step in a more humane direction than most.
Once upon a time, I chopped up a bag of dry mushrooms and mixed them with some general tso chicken. I really love my general tso.
This particular meal occurred during a point in my life where I was near my lowest. I was depressed, burned out, reeling from failure.
For about an hour, the world remained as it always had. Then, I started periodically feeling something akin to an electric shock pass through my body. Electricity is only a useful explanation in so far as how long the pulses lasted. On and off in an instant.
The shocks were like momentary flashes of comfort. In the time between seconds when those flashes occurred, the chair I was sitting on was softer, my clothes were more comfortable and I felt a glow of appreciation for the people in the room with me.
I decided to set a watch and eat more general tso on the hour.
Eventually the pulses blurred from spikes to rolling hills. I realized they happened when I was stimulated by something beautiful. The mundane became beautiful. The contrast and saturation of my vision increased. My brain streamed my visual frame buffer through a pixel shader that made everything photogenic, perfectly tone mapped. It was like HDR for the eyes.
Beauty is something I had never had a refined eye for. Stuff looked "neat". This felt like a visual sense that perhaps existed normally in other people, but for me I was only borrowing.
Then my alarm went off. Time for more chicken!
While I was eating, we started watching dune. I was stunned by how colorful David Lynch's dune is. Vibrant purple and green matte backgrounds. I would have told you the movie was all desert tone yesterday.
I shut off my alarm until the movie was done.
I ate one more scoop of general tso after that. Then, I laid down in the dark. I was able to visualize incredibly complicated 3d shapes. I could persist those shapes, rotate, scale and modify them while keeping the image at the forefront. This capability was clearly an enhancement. I got up, opened blender and "printed" some of the things created entirely mentally.
After I laid back down, I thought about my childhood. I thought about frayed relationships and trauma I had experienced. Every negative experience I could come up with bounced off simple epiphany after simple epiphany.
Prior to this, I was under a crushing amount of stress. I felt like I was being hunted, under attack in a world devoid of merit. I was misanthropic.
I thought about the situation I was in, and determined I was fine. Everything is going to be okay. We're all bouncing amidst a manifold, influenced by each other. The whole of humanity, even the crabs pulling at our feet, is beautiful. Quite a few people try to pierce the manifold to transcend the chaos. Maybe we'll never do it? It's valuable to try regardless.
The evil in my life became re-framed as force that might send me towards the boundary. Approaching the boundary is the goal.
Even if I fail at everything, I'm better for trying, even after death.
I've used blender for 16 years (rarely get paid to though..). Mind, this was in 2.79. My muscle memory is all wrong now that 2.8 has came out. It's going to take months to train myself out of old habits!
Is it possible to do mathematics while on such drugs? I am working through a textbook on projective geometry and I feel like those visualization enhancements would be super useful.
I was able to visualize four dimensional structures on LSD. I can't see it "instinctually" anymore, but I had a vision of our universe as the 3D surface of a 4D hypersphere, and from that perspective it's subjective whether you consider the entirety of the universe inside of you or outside of you.
After coming down I thought it was probably some nonsense that my brain dreamt up, but I analogized it as a 2D surface of a 3D sphere and it makes complete sense. Drawing a circle on a sphere and calling one side of the line you draw the "inside" is completely subjective—we just tend to call the smaller side inside. If you grow the circle to the greatest meridian of the sphere, which side is now "inside"? Is my brain on the inside and the universe on the outside, or is the universe on the inside and my brain on the outside?
I also kept seeing (when I say "see", it isn't the type of hallucination that appears like a real object in front of you, these all form in my mind's eye but are more vivid than what I can usually visualize) these grid-like, branching "corridors". I'm not sure what the best term for it would be and it may have not been 4 dimensional per se, but I don't think the way it's laid out would work in 3 dimensions. It was like I was floating in an intersection with rows (x), columns (y), and aisles (z) passing through me. A lot of this is hard to visualize when not tripping.
I'm pretty certain I know what you're talking about - your description is so accurate :)
If you still do this, can you verify that you indeed see that clearly? We assume that it's impossible to transfer any thought from the 4d mode into out common 3d mode, simply because our memory in the 3d mode isn't fit for that. Just like a flat pixelated screen can't adequately capture a 3d object. However it's possible to transfer simple forms, like a simple flat drawing or a number. You can imagine some complex 4d form, imagine a section and count something or just remember the shape. Then in the usual 3d mode you can still compute that shape using some equations, although it would take some time, and compare the result with what you've seen.
Personally, I have very limited technical skill when tripping. I'm a semi-professional musician, and I can keep up with folks, but I don't think I sound better or worse. There are a lot of interesting aesthetics that you can pull from that kind of visual hallucination, but IME it's not super "realistic" or "rational".
I've gotten a lot out of psychadelic drugs but the realizations are usually far more poetic than practical.
The longer-term revelations I've found have more to do with realizing that, say, a lot of my relationships have been validated by caring for my partner because I didn't get a certain level of care growing up, and that I've probably worked to find partners who need a certain amount and kind of care... so as long as I keep doing that I will probably keep failing in those relationships.
That's an example of something I realized in my last session, and it holds up well even now that I'm sober. It was also something that I have been working though over the last couple of years, so it's not like big astounding fact... it was just really brought home because it feels (once again, maybe just to me) much more inviting to really examine those kinds of thoughts and conditions in that setting.
On the other hand, I can't program / do calc / do about anything technical... when I look at designs while sober it's all wingnuttery with obvious flaws.
In the 1950s, before the term “Silicon Valley” existed, a handful of engineers at the tech pioneer Ampex were approached by Al Hubbard, the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD.” And with his help, they found that dropping acid could make their jobs easier.
“[Hubbard] wanted to turn on the best and brightest and have the wisdom trickle down to the populace,” Pollan said. “Engineers who were working on chips found LSD very helpful in imagining a structure as complex as a computer chip. Before there were computers, designing a computer chip was much harder! It was a three-dimensional structure, layered, and you had to hold an incredible amount of information in your head.”
The Ampex engineers started a nonprofit called the International Foundation for Advanced Study, giving LSD to people like inventor Doug Engelbart. His first under-the-influence invention was a toy for toilet-training boys, but Pollan pointed out that it was only after this experience that Engelbart did the work he’s most famous for: Inventing the computer mouse, the graphical user interface and key components of the internet.
“Engineers, unlike scientists, deal with irreducible complexity,” Pollan said. “There’s so many variables that, instead of reducing a problem to simplicity like scientists, they have to find patterns in a very complex space. That’s what LSD does — it helps you find patterns.”
Psilocybin, mdma, weed: not so much. Moderate LSD dose: it’s possible. I had a nice, clear visualization of the Lorentz transform once.
Insights on LSD also tend to be more durable. “Insights” on other psychoactives were often stanzas of gibberish the next day. No idea what the mechanism here is, but it certainly feels like LSD doesn’t derange the rational centers of thought as quickly. Maybe Johns Hopkins can tell us more in a few years.
(Disclaimer: YMMV. Don’t expect superpowers; respect the drug; dose carefully and low at first; “set and setting.”)
I haven't tried shrooms, but I did try once a very small amount of cannabis. I didn't experience anything unusual except that my imagination became very crisp: it's usually hard to visualize complex things, as they tend to float away and vanish, but that time whatever I was imagining, remained surprisingly stable. I was able to visualize complex patterns with very fine structure. FWIW, I have a very strong math background, I'm specially trained to focus my mind and can invoke certain unusual effects without drugs; yet that cannabis definitely did something I wasn't able to do on my own. Edit: There is a way to switch from the "3D" imagination to the "4D" one, like some people say here, and it's indeed hard to transfer knowledge from the "4D" mode to the "3D" one [because our "3d" memory isn't quite fit for the "4d" thoughts, so it's lossy transfer?]. This surprising similarity of experiences makes me think that shrooms switch your brain to that mode, without any special training.
Thank fuck. LSD changed my life. As I bounced around inside the confines of my own mind I became so much of a better person. More cognizant of my failings and the insecurities that made me less than I could be. I came out capable of talking about them as things and not inherent and true parts of me. I came out capable of taking intensity of feeling in any form (shame, grief, anger, pleasure, joy) and directing it towards something good.
It's a travesty that acid is still illegal, but fortunately it's really easy to get. I started using it originally as a party drug, funnily enough. But it's much more than that.
"You're not being asked to believe it," said Dr. Robert. "The real thing
isn't a proposition; it's a state of being. We don't teach our children creeds
or get them worked up over emotionally charged symbols. When it's time
for them to learn the deepest truths of religion, we set them to climb a
precipice and then give them four hundred milligrams of revelation. Two
firsthand experiences of reality, from which any reasonably intelligent boy or girl can
derive a very good idea of what's what."
seven ayahuasca ceremonies and two bufo ceremonies over the course of two years changed my life in the deepest way. Grateful that people are starting to realize this is MEDICINE.
Admittedly I'm very skeptical of big pharma, can't help but read it as we are stuck with innovation, let's just dust this old thing off and give it a facelift. Afterall ingesting psychedelic substances can be made legal when pharma profits from it.
There is now also more research about Ketamine. It looks just as promising and a first drug (nasal spray Spravato) was recently approved by the FDA for treatment-resistant depression.
It's ridiculous, you're paying thousands of dollars for a cheap medicine, to be injected in a medical setting. I mean it's typical of how medical things work. But you can DIY that for like way less if you really wanna. Just do a bit of research.
50 years too late. Of course, 50+ years ago, it was the hippies doing the experimentation. As The Man hated the hippies and the youth culture of the time, they instituted these draconian drug laws we've lived under since making it impossible to determine whether drugs like LSD or psilocybin or cannabis might have beneficial therapeutic effects.
At the same time the people who did take it seriously were also unfairly discredited. There was a legitimate theory of the psychedelic state as a "model psychosis" which was simply rejected during the anti-drug hysteria which followed.
The government (CIA) also used psychedelics in all kinds of horrible, torturous ways with their experiments.
But a lot of comfort to the future millions of the people who would have had the same frustrating experience as the previous generation who couldn't find the comfort in those drugs due to their criminalization.
Fair enough, but then on the other hand who knows where a continuation of widespread carefree usage of psychedelics would have led us....perhaps to a relative utopia, perhaps to societal chaos that would have resulted in a ban that would have lasted far more than 50 years. Either one seems perfectly plausible to me.
> What does society look like when science starts investigating consciousness with a more eastern philosophy lens?
I doubt that will happen to any effective or substantial degree, "science" is concerned with the quantitative and objective reproducibility. It is impossible for a scientist to fully assimilate the state of someone who is experiencing a "satori", without them either being that person or also experiencing a satori themselves. And if they achieve that, which is unlikely, they are back at square one: how are they going to relay the satori to other scientists for documentation and further research: what is there to research with regards to inner experience when the only known modes of knowledge in science are all outward?
Rather, scientists look for effects with whatever physical tools are available to them, such as changes in brain center blood flow; and then they tend to conflate the effects as the causes. IE. it's the changes in the brain causing the satori, not the satori causing the changes in the brain!
Several recent books on the topic present psychedelics as a tool for Science. Most link to the famous quote from Stan Grof on psychedelics as the "microscope" for the mind (or telescope). It really does not look like getting through the Eastern philosophy lens... And the new center's backers seem motivated by the tooling potential too...
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The books I refer to include Pollan's recent book (cited several times in this thread), some of Grof publications, "A Really Good Day" by Ayelet Waldman, a plethora of "reports" from people's experience on Medium, and preview on Consciousness Medicine from Françoise Bourzat.
There certainly is a large overlap between people who are advocates of one or the other. Though I think, coming from the eastern philosophy side of things, the association is kind of strange. Literally, withholding from intoxicants is part of the five householder precepts in Buddishm & Taoism, maybe in others as well . With good reason (my opinion). At least from a vipassana perspective, anything like psychedelics will just get in the way.
That being said, I like the idea of using these kind of tools in a controlled setting for treating certain psychological issues. I hope they're careful in not getting too many people zonked out on newly created mental constructions. Though I suppose its better to be happy than depressed, regardless of the conditions surrounding it.
The key word here being, "intoxicants". All medicines are not intoxicating. Giving one access to pure nondualistic states of consciousness, in a safe, controlled, and intentional setting, as many entheogenic medicines are capable of doing, is the exact opposite of intoxicating.
Also, the Buddhist lineage it sounds like you are referring to is one of many. Because you mention vipassana, I'm guessing Theravada / Hinayana. There are other vehicles that have different precepts & ontologies, e.g. Mahayana and Vajrayana.
That being said, I do firmly believe that having a solid foundation will benefit any experience in expanded states of consciousness induced by psychedelic medicines. This foundation can be nurtured and supported through myriad means such as meditation, therapy, and other forms of mindfulness-based, somatically-oriented practices.
With this foundation in place, it is not uncommon for people to reach much deeper states of meditative capacity and awareness through the careful use of these substances. This is why, within the guide communities, it's often said that a single daylong guided experience can be equivalent to attending a 1-month silent meditation retreat, or 5 to 10 years of psychotherapy.
Sure, there are different points of view and you have pointed that out. My point was that the conflation of meditation and psychedelics is not something which is universally true, or at least not universally accepted.
From my personal view, there is no comparison to 'that' and getting my every day perspective closer to it. I think psychedelics can be interesting to see that change is possible, that things are not set in stone, least of all your mind, but it's ultimately proven to be no real solution (for me :) )
> Though I think, coming from the eastern philosophy side of things, the association is kind of strange.
I think the primary common interest is the meditation aspect due to the similarities in effects, but then out of that often comes similar viewpoints on life.
> At least from a vipassana perspective, anything like psychedelics will just get in the way.
No doubt they have an effect, but in what way do you think they "get in the way"?
I believe that to some degree it can give one somewhat of a sense of what meditation can achieve without expending serious effort. The "pushback" from the meditation community is puzzling to me, but then all of this is human nature isn't it, so it shouldn't be surprising I guess.
A bit of a contrarian view. This stuff tends to go like a pendulum and it could very well swing too far in the other direction, and a lot of people will get fucked up in this case.
We're seeing this with marijuana right now. I live in a state where it's legal, I voted for legalization, and I think it's wonderful that people aren't being thrown in jail for possession anymore. But I categorically DO NOT want this shit to be aggressively marketed to the public and normalized. It is harmful in most cases. Smoking MJ is not that much better than smoking tobacco, if at all. Certainly not great for the lungs. You can get really ill from THC if you consume a lot for an extended period of time, especially if you're fat, which most people are nowadays. Long term impact of TCH on the brain is poorly understood, etc.
Now, granted it's better than alcohol in most ways. You're very unlikely to even contemplate driving a car while stoned, for example, let alone be able to do so successfully. You're unlikely to be aggressive. You're unlikely to destroy your liver by smoking weed, and so on.
But that does not mean that it should be something people just do willy nilly IMO. Same with psychedelics. I'd be more OK with it if it's legal but socially frowned upon, and all marketing is forbidden.
I'm not a fan of cannabis, but I'm living in a state where it is legal. I'm really not seeing any worse effects, I think. It's just as available to me as it has ever been... I've never not been able to find it and that's pretty common among the people I know.
Unlike cannabis, most folks I know who don't have a lot of other pathologies will quit doing psychedelics. That's purely anecdotal, but I know quite a lot of people who've worked with both these drugs.
Also, it's not the kind of stuff that markets well. It's incredibly cheap to produce... in the case of mushrooms they are easy to grow. The market is more or less already saturated, because the folks who really want that experience just go find it.
I guess my main thought is this: tripping is often quite scary, and most people who do it a lot eventually give it up for that reason. At the same time, of the literal thousands of people I know personally who've used psychedelics, none have had their lives ruined over a single, first trip.
So I'm skeptical that even if it were marketed like weed, it would actually result in a problem.
We can legalise drugs and still regulate them. Don't expect to see ads for California Sunshine and Willy Wonka's Golden Tickets plastered on billboards as you drive down the interstate. Don't expect to head to the corner store and pick up a sheet of acid along with your morning paper and orange juice.
If you are in the Bay Area, and are interested in Fungi checkout the debut of renowned Mycologist Paul Stamets film called Fantastic Fungi. He will be speaking afterwards as well taking questions.
It will be great to finally find out whether psychedelics are able to help people, and/or vause harm.
Anecdotes like 'I tripped hard and it cured my stress/depression/whatever!', while interesting, are not data points.
Bit of a contrarian take here, but this is the first step towards capitalism getting its grip on a transformative and disruptive thing and coopting it for its purposes. I'm all for decriminalization, but I get nervous when something subversive becomes just another commodity.
The process you’re describing is called recuperation[1] and I believe your skepticism is well-founded. The effects of these drugs on the human mind and culture is more powerful than any other drug in history. The effects may not be immediate but I believe they will be more dramatic than any other pharmaceutical society has experienced so far.
Is it that, or could it be reasonable anxiety about powerful substances becoming an avenue for corporate profit? Opioids are a useful class of drugs, but they've been managed by the profit motive and that's caused havoc that's killed thousands and may leave people who should be on them in terrible pain because of an over correction.
That's a valid concern, but psychedelics aren't really physically addictive the way opiates are. And given the possible use cases described by e.g. Michael Pollan, it's hard to imagine them being heavily overprescribed by doctors, if they ever even reach the stage of being a generally prescribable drug at all.
This has been a major topic of conversation in the psychonaut community. It seems like the community is better prepared to stave off the capitalist take over. The existence of organizations such as MAPS and others already conducting studies and preemptively creating 'prior art' is a good sign.
If you are curious about the topic, I couldn't recommend the Psychedelic Salon podcast enough.
In a similar vein, I recently read this piece on the imaginary of "acid communism" and why it might be desirable. I can't say I was convinced by it, but I did learn a lot from it.
Seeing this center open brings tears to my eyes.