Study finds no detrimental effects of psilocybin in 10mg or 25mg dose

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/psilocybin-in-10mg-or-25mg-doses-has-no-short-or-long-term-detrimental-effects-in-healthy-people

by geox • 5 years ago

313 361 5 years ago

kcl.ac.uk

01100011• 5 years ago

Just keep in mind you can get a headache the next day.

Psilocybin dose-dependently causes delayed, transient headaches in healthy volunteers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3345296/

j4hdufd83• 5 years ago

The remaining 29 participants acted as the control group and received a placebo, also with psychological support.

How do you do placebo with psychedelics? Doesn't it quickly become obvious that you are tripping (or not)?

ThePowerOfFuet• 5 years ago

Typically they receive something like methylphenidate, and they are psilocybin-naïve so they don't know which they got.

_moof• 5 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_placebo

542458• 5 years ago

Dumb Question: How would you know that you're not just measuring that detrimental effects are identical across both substances?

dasv• 5 years ago

I have read that niacin is used as a placebo, it has a very noticeable physical effect but no psychedelic properties.

skrtskrt• 5 years ago

you can gain psilocybin benefits without taking enough of it to trip

ruined• 5 years ago

short answer, no.

longer answer, dose-response varies, subjects don't necessarily know what the effects should be, or may not be able to identify the experience, and also it's pretty easy to get yourself into an autocthonous psychedelic headspace, especially if you expect "something" to happen

Rastonbury• 5 years ago

It's obvious, I've participated in a such a study (not psilocybin). It has to be done though

letitbeirie• 5 years ago

I wonder if the control group being disappointed they're not tripping has any effect on these kinds of studies

dvngnt_3• 5 years ago

my friend had a psychotic break while on it. we later found out he was bipolar.

The title seems accurate, but you never know what disease you may have until it actually manifests so be careful

jabej2• 5 years ago

Exactly what I was thinking. “In healthy people”… how do you know you don’t have latent schizophrenia?

Slightly related https://old.reddit.com/r/HPPD/

friendly_chap• 5 years ago

Why did you link that HPPD subreddit? I used to have visual snow a lot, does it have anything to do with latent schizophrenia?

wrinkl3• 5 years ago

Afaik HPPD and schizophrenia are distinct conditions, most people with HPPD don't report any symptoms common in schizophrenia.

otherme123• 5 years ago

Funny how intolerable are those "latent" diagnostics for illegal drugs, and meanwhile the totally legal and widely prescribed trazodone (an antidepresant) is known to cause, among others 1) suicidal thoughts, 2) insomnia, 3) hallucinations, 4) and paranoia. Other common drug, bromazepan, turns you into a half zombi, loss of ability to remember and amnesia, hallucinations... And it has a bad widthdrawal.

Of course you have to be careful when taking LSD, psilocybin or whatever. But don't replace info with FUD: just study, legalize and put the info in the box when sold. They are not worse than 95% of widely prescribed drugs. They are illegal just because they are also enjoyable.

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

Psychedelic drugs push anyone towards a psychotic state, and really can teach you something about mental illness by giving you a view into their world. But yes it can cause psychotic break, especially LSD but shrooms too.

j4hdufd83• 5 years ago

are you sure he was unaware of any mental illnesses?

how did he prepare for the trip? was he familiar with set & setting and other such recommendations?

kayodelycaon3• 5 years ago

Psychedelics don’t cause bipolar. What it can do is reveal it. (Or make it worse.)

I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 32 after a massive psychotic break caused by stress, despite mania, paranoia, and depression clearly starting when I was 9-years-old.

My mom suspected but never told me.

dvngnt_3• 5 years ago

Definitely nothing officially, however i wouldn't be surprised if drugs helped him feel better so it was a form of self-medication. With hindsight you could probably find a few signs, but nothing that required hospitalization before the trip.

I wasn't his first time doing mushrooms, but teens don't really use responsibly. I'm definitely not saying that it's common enough for people to be scared, but it's not like teens do full medical assessments before they start to use drugs.

Side note years later he had a seizure due to lsd, but we believe that was because he was on lithium for mood stabilizers. The drugs while helpful have side effects so it's not perfect and we have a long way to go for treatment

wayoutthere• 5 years ago

Yeah, a lot of people try to ascribe a causal link from drugs to mental illness when it’s probably the other way around. People undiagnosed but suffering from early stage mental illness often self-medicate, combined with the fact that there’s a lot of overlap in the ages where people experiment with drugs and when mental illness typically presents itself enough to lead to a diagnosis.

kayodelycaon3• 5 years ago

The thing is… all of these happen because excessive drug use can cause mental illness.

The problem is people assume drug use is always the cause. This isn’t helped by many people treating mental illness as a character flaw.

penjelly• 5 years ago

how do you retroactively determine that he always had it? A psychotic break could be the root cause of bipolar disorder, couldnt it?

misc2134• 5 years ago

Are you able to share the dosage your friend took?

dvngnt_3• 5 years ago

Probably not, but I assume a recreational dose is greater than a therapeutic another friend took the same amount and he was perfectly fine, but my friend became really paranoid (government hiding people to torture, signals sent through TV, people trying to kill him). he was a heavy cannabis and alcohol user in high school which could have been a sign of self-medication, but that was the first time he really had a negative experience.

At the time, we thought he was schizophrenic, but he got a bipolar diagnoses later from doctors.

It's been a struggle with sobriety and mental health for over a decade. Mushroom didn't cause it, but it was definitely a notable moment in his life

ragnese2• 5 years ago

Right. I'm not anti-recreational-drug-use, but this assertion that gets repeated all the time feels damn close to a tautology.

"The drug didn't cause you to go crazy. You just had underlying craziness that never manifested before using the drug and might never have manifested if you never used the drug."

Consider this my raised eyebrow.

Even if it's really technically true, it's effectively a vacuous and unfalsifiable statement when it comes to an individual person, and one can't use the information at all when estimating the risk of their potential recreational activity.

asdffdsa• 5 years ago

What kind of foolish arrogance is this?

Though I've never been diagnosed and live a normal life, I've had mood swings and extended family history of schizophrenia. Because of this, and the knowledge that there are certain triggers that can cause lifelong neurological issues, I'll never try acid or other hallucinogens.

The value of knowing that "underlying craziness" can exist is in inherently reminding us of the actual risk. Let's say someone predisposed toward neurological issues is on the fence, but ultimately decides to follow the reasoning in the comment. What liability are you going to bear for it?

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

Yes one's predisposition does play a role and the environment too, with mental issues.

Note that the most common side effect of amphetamine class drugs is psychosis, emotional problems, which manifest long before physical troubles do.

kmill• 5 years ago

Yeah, it's sort of like saying "the knife didn't cause them to die, they were just an undiagonosed hemophiliac and the wound failed to close properly."

However, teasing out the steelman from this, what they mean is "becoming crazy is not a necessary effect of recreational drug use, but rather a contingent effect."

I've seen studies before trying to study this, for example cannabis and latent schizophrenia. One complication is that recreational drug use goes hand-in-hand with self-medication of undiagnosed issues.

ScoobleDoodle• 5 years ago

I had a friend in high school who took mushrooms and said they never felt like the same person since then. That statement was made in high school and reiterated in their late 20s. I don't know what dosage they took. I don't know if they had other mental health conditions, though it seemed like they had some degree of alcoholism.

I have dealt with depression and have my eye on some form of Psilocybin treatment as a future option. But am weary due to my friend's experience. So I'm waiting for more expertise to be developed and the treatment to be validated and consequences quantified.

blackowl• 5 years ago

Similar experience here, but with a different hallucinogen. It has forever changed me, so I wanted to share. My close friend had a psychotic break due to daily marijuana use and is now on psychiatric drugs to control symptoms. She was always creative, but she could tell the difference between fantasy and reality. During the break, it was like she was rolling constantly and couldn't stop. She was hearing voices. Thinking that 2D images were alive. For months on end. She was ranting, crying, acting uncharacteristically pompous, then crumbling into a heap of shame. This is a professional middle-aged person who was living a full life.

My understanding is that for folks who are genetically predisposed, a life trigger can manifest in a mental health condition that likely never would have surfaced. Triggers may include in utero trauma, child abuse or chemical imbalance due to stress or controlled substances. Hallucinogens can trigger a serious mental health condition in an individual who may have lived an otherwise mentally stable life. Not unlike needing to watch cholesterol in a family who suffers from heart disease, perhaps. So, yeah, when I read "... in healthy people" it made me go hmmmm.

But still, psilocybin is not marijuana. And this is great news for those suffering from treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.

misc2134• 5 years ago

Does anyone know of a resource to help convert from the MG they report to the dried product?

theli0nheart• 5 years ago

There's no surefire way to estimate the actual weight of psilocybin save for extracting it chemically. It can vary widely between species, between flushes, and even between individual fruits.

clsec• 5 years ago

Dried product varies pretty widely in strength, even from stem to cap. Things like strain and spore lineage also contribute to strength of the dried product.

A good place to find more info is here: https://www.shroomery.org/

james_burden• 5 years ago

They are using synthetic psilocybin. It would be impossible to make a translation between grams of dried vs. synthetic. Different species have diff content, liberty cap vs. penis envy etc. also stalks vs. caps typically differ in str.

misc2134• 5 years ago

Dosage guides for dried shrooms are already universal in recommendation of dosage typically speaking in terms of grams without bringing up the individual strain. This leads me to believe that a generally close conversion should be reasonable from the dried natural to that MG number.

mycobuble• 5 years ago

You can look at the default values in the Shroomery Dosage Calculator

https://www.shroomery.org/6257/Magic-Mushroom-Dosage-Calcula...

standardUser• 5 years ago

From what I'm reading, there are 5-20mg of psilocybin in a gram of mushrooms. So the 10mg and 25mg doses from the study are around 1-2 grams worth of mushrooms. The average recreational dose (in my experience) is usually between 1.75 and 7 grams (so anywhere from 10-140mg). But potency varies significantly in real world scenarios.

mediocregopher• 5 years ago

I'd always thought 1g was a single dose. Maybe the people around me are lightweights...

(legalization so we can accurately dose these things yada yada)

tpfour• 5 years ago

Minimum I've seen was 1.5g. Usually between 2 and 3.5.

The issue with psychedelics is not that their ingestion might kill you, but rather what you will do to yourself or others while on them. No amount of reading and Youtube videos can prepare you for a strong psychedelic experience. Once in it, you have to go through it, and accidents do happen.

I've found that people who do psychedelics in repetition usually _think_ they are some sort of key to their problems, they'll help them fix themselves, yada yada yada. One trip is enough for people for whom that is true. If you have to do them repeatedly, the issue is elsewhere. I am against full-on prohibition, but also skeptical about the "pro-psychedelic" sentiment in vogue.

detritus• 5 years ago

It really does depend upon what strain and type you're talking about.

There's a fundamental world of difference between a gram of dried Cyanescens and a gram of fresh Cubensis, for instance.

dntrkv• 5 years ago

I don’t know who came up with the idea that an eighth should be considered a “standard dose”, but whoever it was, is an idiot. So many people I know have had way too intense of experiences and were turned off from mushrooms.

I’ve had ego death, where I had no idea who “I” was, from an 8th of good mushrooms. That’s generally not the experience most people are looking for. It’s like saying 50mg of edibles is a standard dose (as opposed to 10).

Nowadays, I, along with most people I know, take like 1-2 grams at most. Usually I stay around the 1.5g mark.

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

For readers of this comment a reminder: the study only covers a single take of 10mg or 25mg doses. In case you do that twice with any interval between takes, even years apart, the study results do not apply to you anymore.

fdgsdfogijq3• 5 years ago

Highly highly doubt this. Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done alot of mushrooms knows that they have cognitive "peculiarities". The shift towards peace, love, and hippie-ish personality traits is clearly a neurogloical effect of mushrooms. Its clearly a deterministic effect that nearly everyone who has done them alot converges on.

EDIT:

I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.

I would also describe the effect as "loopy"

One last piece of information, I really dont believe anyone claiming these effects as purely positive have spent time around heavy mushroom users. My evidence is anecdotal, but spans years and tens of people. I was involved in a community that had alot of experience with this. The effects to me were clear, and I am skeptical of anyone, including researchers, who have not seen this first hand. I first hand witnessed the mental changes in friends who went down that path, and really dont think they were the same person at the end.

jchw• 5 years ago

Headline reader here but it does say “detrimental” which I admit may include said personality traits in some eyes but I would expect “detrimental” to mean side-effects that actually negatively impact quality of life.

ErikVandeWater• 5 years ago

I'm sure there are correlations between some life risks and being a hippie vs not being a hippie. Stereotypes say hippies are more care-free, so that may make them more prone to risk taking, and more likely to die of (fun example) ziplining accidents.

If something has detrimental effects (dyeing on ziplines) that are outweighed by positive effects (lower blood pressure), it is not fair to say it has no detrimental effects whatsoever.

However I would say the biggest issue with the title is that it doesn't mention the number receiving psilocybin. 60 people is not a lot to say it has no detrimental effects, even if it weren't turning people into hippies.

usmannk• 5 years ago

is that a detrimental effect?

wombat-man• 5 years ago

As described no. But I think it can affect ones attachment to reality.

It's not going to affect you like smoking cigarettes, or how drinking can hit the liver. But it definitely has some effect on ones thinking. Is this detrimental? I think that's a more subjective question.

Personally though, I consider Psychedelics to be pretty safe unless one starts playing games with high frequency usage, or high dosage. There are also outliers, for example Brian Wilson ended up having a pretty bad time with LSD.

vkou• 5 years ago

It is in the Terran Federation.

blamestross• 5 years ago

Psilocybin has no short- or long-term __detrimental__ effects in healthy people

relaunched• 5 years ago

Can you help me connect the dots on how these are "clearly a neurological effect"?

arcticbull• 5 years ago

Uh, they did say "detrimental effects." Those don't sound detrimental to me.

In fact, knowing as we do that psilocybin has a significant impact on reducing depression for months after a single dose - including for otherwise untreatable major depression - it sounds like those folks may have had some low-level baseline depressive symptoms. [edit] Not to the point of being clinical of course. [1]

I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.

I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.

[edit] > I would also describe the effect as "loopy"

While high, totes. After, no so much.

[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/newsroom/news-releases/...

snikeris5• 5 years ago

I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.

Some spiritual practices aim at direct experience of the true nature of reality. They're about sharpening your mind such that it is capable of intuiting such insights.

mistermann• 5 years ago

I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.

Who among us determines what "reality" is and is not? Science is quite excellent at measuring the materialistic subset of it, but when one gets into the subjective, phenomenological aspects of it (including complex matters like causality, human psychology, emergence, etc), science is not much help (and is even a hindrance to some degree I'd say, since a lot of people (but not all) seem to believe that science is the only lens through which reality can be viewed, and that it sees all of reality, or that which it does not see is irrelevant).

dgs_sgd• 5 years ago

Is it possible the people who regularly use shrooms are already predisposed to those traits?

actusual2• 5 years ago

Or that the culture surrounding them pushes people in that direction?

I do shrooms with people who work in tech (just did them last Wednesday). We talked about the intersection of "intelligence" and "emotional vulnerability", and why are group of friends gravitates toward and attracts people who have a healthy dose of both. No woo-woo love chants...just some deeper conversations, below surface level that provided insight into who we are.

alexk3073• 5 years ago

Oh no! Not peace and love!

You assert evidence of a clear neurological affect, and then edit your post to say that science can't measure it, and it must be "mystic" or "spiritual".

neuro_image27• 5 years ago

It's an unfortunate feature of our culture that a shift towards peace, love and empathy is perceived as detrimental.

quotemstr4• 5 years ago

If you tell someone "this pill will cure your depression" without telling him "by turning you into a hippie", you're doing him a disservice. The zeitgeist right now is that psychedelics cure a broad range of mental illnesses without any downsides whatsoever. That's far, far from true.

It's my right not to be turned into a hippie.

qaq• 5 years ago

detrimental to crushing it!

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

a shift towards peace, love and empathy

The new top comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29799013 describes what I see from shroom users better. People who do shrooms only feel like they are closer to peace, love, and empathy. In reality nothing changes, but they gain ego based on that feeling, which seems to have an opposite effect described in the linked comment (e.g. the idea that the world revolves around them).

MAGZine• 5 years ago

You think that peace and love is detrimental? I assert we could use more of it.

Note, I wouldn't say that such peace and love is blind--people are still very much grounded in reality--but the ability for compassion and empathy is increased. Perhaps you see compassion as a weakness?

misc2134• 5 years ago

I think that's the point.

Isn't the high level plan for this treatment: 1)The psilocybin breaks down the patients ego and 2) the psycho therapist molds it hopefully for the better?

"people who have done a lot of mushrooms..." In my experience those people also take just about anything. How could one say it was the psilocybin

snikeris5• 5 years ago

I believe the therapist is mostly there for support. E.g. hold your hand and assure you that everything is fine. The mind/body heals itself.

rileyphone• 5 years ago

The Aztecs were very fond of mushrooms but definitely not hippies. You’re describing a mimetic cultural phenomenon facilitated by the neuroplasticity the drug confers.

diatomaceous_5• 5 years ago

This is the correct answer; people whose only understanding of psychedelics draws from media portrayals of the 60s have a dramatically warped and puritanical perspective on what is a pharmacological effect vs a cultural effect

gspr5• 5 years ago

Purely anecdotal. Have you controlled for the correlation between those personality traits and the wish to explore drugs like psilocybin?

quotemstr4• 5 years ago

Agreed. It would be a terrible crime to market a substance that causes permanent personality shifts in a direction not necessarily wanted as a "magic cure" for depression, anxiety, and whatever other manifestation of unpleasantness in life. And that's exactly what we're doing now.

Lobotomy was marketed as a magic cure for all sorts of psychological problems too. There is no free lunch. There's no quick and easy way to "fix" someone.

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

As a theoretical: perhaps personality shifts are exactly what is required to treat depression and anxiety.

mwattsun3• 5 years ago

I'm a fan of Psilocybin but anyone who has been around for awhile in a psychedelic culture like my home town knows people who did too many mushrooms. LSD is a thing in itself: acid casualties are a real thing.

fdgsdfogijq3• 5 years ago

This is my point, I think these academic researchers and common people have no idea what they are getting into. There are clearly positives to the drugs, but alot of these articles are very naive

mrtnmcc• 5 years ago

Thinking reality makes sense is pretty loopy too.

bratwurst30002• 5 years ago

There was an interesting article in slatestarcodex that statet that the prime effekt of psychodelics is reducing primers. This can have negativ consequenz on healthy people that take psyhcodelics. A) because primers are your past so somehow they are you. If the primers get erased your personality is gettig erased. B) if primers are reduced they are near primers that arent that evolved and those primers could suck. Usualy there is filter in our brain that prohibits us from thinking dumb shit like the world is flat. But if those primers are reduced, how should one know that the world doesnt end at the horizont?

I have friends that take ketamin lsd mushrooms etc regulary and they dont seem to have a classical paychosis but something else… the superb ability to believe every shit someone posts on social media. Honestly they are gone and thats this primer effect.

Btw did some shrooms 2 times and it was great

winnit• 5 years ago

I think they refer to ‘priors’ rather than ‘primers’ but otherwise enjoyed your comment :)

wincy• 5 years ago

For those curious, here's the article

https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relax...

hristov2• 5 years ago

Except the ones that go on murder sprees. I guess they converge somewhere else.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Lee_Loughner

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

Hmm definitely the shrooms that made him do it, not the alcohol, or cocaine... That couldn't be it

slibhb• 5 years ago

It's hard to estimate effects like this based on your personal experiences. People who do drugs like mushrooms tend to be a certain way: hippies, left-wing, creative and "open". Unless you're performing rigorous experiments with large samples, it's hard to separate that out as a confounder.

jknoepfler• 5 years ago

"Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done a lot of mushrooms knows..."

As someone in this group, I strongly disagree. The "consensus" you're appealing to doesn't exist.

I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.

The effects of both psilocybin and spiritual beliefs on individual health outcomes is an active, ongoing topic of research. The assertion that there's something intangibly wrong with the mental lives of (of whom exactly? people who do shrooms? Or do you include people who do yoga or practice meditation in this group? What about people who attend Catholic mass?) that "current science can't measure" is precisely the sort of baseless nonsense well-operationalized research is designed to eliminate, so we can rationalize our laws and healthcare policies.

karmakurtisaani• 5 years ago

It is slightly ironic to look down on people who believe "loopy" things while admitting it's not a scientific way to measure people. Sounds kinda loopy to me.

Jaepa• 5 years ago

The plural of anecdote is not data. What you are saying is that there is a correlation, but the causation could be any number of tangentially related things. e.g. a self re-enforcing subculture, predisposition for substance abuse, or tainted sourcing.

basch• 5 years ago

Even with causation something is amiss with the generalization as presented. If a chemical amplifies an experience, and a person experiences a peaceful hippie experience, that doesnt mean the drug made them a hippie, it means the experience did. The same chemical in a violent experience could exasperate violent tendencies. Pinning "I know some people that fell into a culture" on a chemical is very much on the wrong side of nature/nurture and ignores set/setting.

srcreigh• 5 years ago

For what it's worth, spiritual teachers believe psychedelics open people up to spiritual realities. That's pretty much the life story Ram Das (ex psych professor). Orthodox Christian priests tend to say it's spiritually dangerous akin to using a Ouija board or something - they would prefer people use safe methods like prayer to explore the spiritual world.

Scientists could probably measure negative psychological effects, anyways, as you say.

echlebek• 5 years ago

Your personal anecdotes, no matter how significant or varied, don't meaningfully contradict this research. This research happened in a controlled environment. Your friends doing mushrooms and likely other drugs in a recreational setting is different. Science can measure the changes you're talking about, but your friends weren't doing science.

seabird• 5 years ago

A lot of sibling comments here questioning the parent comment's definition of detrimental. Psychedelic drugs can absolutely have a permanent detrimental effect on people.

There is a difference between a positive emotional experience and a warped "revelation" that gives somebody the impression that they're privy to some universal truth or meaning. If the latter happens enough, the results range from the person being pretty fundamentally changed (less like depressed vs. not depressed, more like somebody is wearing a skinsuit of somebody you used to know) to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality. These people may be happy in their own reality, but it's very painful to watch it happen to them.

Headlines like this article's are best left unsaid. A single (or rarely administered) 10-25mg dose in a highly controlled environment may be reasonably safe, and the headline may be true in the strictest sense, but it's going to work out about as well as the "marijuana is not addictive" line of thinking has.

fdgsdfogijq3• 5 years ago

I think you articulated my point much better. The spiritual effect I was describing is definitely also:

"to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality"

What these researchers are doing in a lab on well adjusted humans with no psychedelic experience, and what happens when people take doses recreationally are two completely different things. Its like doing cocaine one time with a small dose and claiming it has no negative effects.

smiley14372• 5 years ago

The dose makes the poison.

The study was testing at 10mg and 25mg which are TINY (microdoses)

Your experience appears to be with people who take macrodoses repeatedly.

I'm not sure these two situations are comparable.

pizzeriafrida• 5 years ago

I wouldn't say those doses are micro. 25mg of psilocybin is equivalent to almost 3 grams of mushrooms.

monopoledance2• 5 years ago

Possibly a heavy selection bias, don't you think?

Shrooms are illegal almost everywhere, or at least not very popular. I assume there is a very significant filter on which type of personalities seek these experiences (unlike e.g. trying alcohol or cannabis, as those are accessible and culturally integrated everywhere).

beeboop• 5 years ago

I think people with those tendencies are simply more likely to use mushrooms. I've used them plenty and I'm still the typical HackerNews cynical nerd that expresses skepticism towards everything.

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects. I wish I would have never taken Psilocybin. I didn't even have a bad trip, it was the ideal kind of experience a lot of people seem to strive for. I had the cliche "spiritual awakening" type of experience. It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip. I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out. It took almost ten years to slowly realize what was obvious to me before the mushrooms which is that I am not the center of the universe, and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.

scarby2• 5 years ago

That's probably outside the scope of this study. You were probably not in a regulated setting or under the care of a psychiatrist at the time. I'd imagine there's some guidance involved in the whole process that recreational users would miss.

notch656a18• 5 years ago

Do you think it was psilocybin that gave you those thoughts or do you think the idea of psilocybin gave you good cover to experiment in idealism of youth? Your realism and experience sound more like the practical wisdom a lot of people gain over the 10 years of their 20s.

diatomaceous_5• 5 years ago

This is the correct answer; psychedelics enhance aspects of your personality that were already quite present

shrimpx2• 5 years ago

Yes, I agree it's quite possible to retrospectively mistake the effects of psilocybin for the psychological evolution that happens naturally.

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

The psilocybin gave me a God complex delusion due to the hallucinations ideas and feelings I had during the trip. unfortunately I didn't shake the fundamental world view I gained after the trip until objective reality tossed me around enough to snap out of it.

gfody• 5 years ago

it's interesting to turn the question around: is it possible to fuck someone up for life w/25mg of psilocybin? with the right set and setting maybe

hristov2• 5 years ago

That is a very good example, and thank you for sharing your experience. It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.

If that is what you did you probably would have been more grounded. But it is absolutely crazy to deduce from this very controlled experiment with a very limited single dose of Psilocybin and a lot of therapy after that, that recreational use is ok. This experiment was designed to allow for further controlled experiments to check for Psilocybin potential for treatment of depression and the like. That is all it should be used for.

notch656a18• 5 years ago

I'm glad they've taken precautions and first of all it seems they went very far to make sure everyone was safe. That is paramount.

That said, the obsession with profession psychologist or psychiatrist as some sort of necessary therapy or guidance in use with psychedelics is just baffling to me. I've tripped a lot, the first several of times of which were completely on my own with no one else around. I'm sure there are people out there who would benefit from these sort of professional guidance but it borders on naive gate-keeping to believe these people are somehow necessary for experiencing altered mental states. I fear some suffered not being able to have the chance to explore psychedelics on their own, but instead influenced by the long traditioned history that medical/mental professionals introduce. It's like they're forcing their own color on the experience.

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.

Virtually every modern psychedelic study includes huge amounts of therapy. I actually don’t know if review boards would even approve a study which didn’t have a significant therapy component right now.

This makes the study results non-portable to recreational use. Many of the depression studies use upwards of 20 therapy sessions around the 1 or 2 psychedelic sessions, which is nothing like what happens when taking psychedelics recreationally.

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

You're welcome. I was not being treated for anything it was just for recreation and I was under no supervision. I'm all for studying the medicinal effects of it.

rb2k_• 5 years ago

Interesting. That almost sounds like mania/hypomania.

(Not saying that it induced a hypomanic episode, just that all of those fit the description)

temp00345• 5 years ago

However you turn it around, you are the Universe experiencing itself subjectively. That's easy to understand without any drugs.

Having felt that during your trip might have led you to the wrong conclusion that your social life will somehow magically be improved by this knowledge alone. It could be, but not without a lot of good old work and effort. Even after all of that, there's no guarantee that you'll get what you want and won't get what you don't want.

A lot of people waste their lives with or without the drugs, so maybe it wasn't just this substance that led to those setbacks.

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects.

I think it's extremely bizarre that the public narrative has become that psilocybin will:

1) Create an openness to new ideas and flood you with different thoughts and feelings

2) Only create positive changes, thoughts, and feelings.

There's a big push in online comment sections to deny, downplay, or otherwise dismiss negative experiences. Psychedelic enthusiasts will come out of the woodwork and try to argue away any anecdotes that aren't purely positive, blaming them on everything from vague underlying mental health conditions to a misuse of the drugs. But it's almost always victim-blaming.

I'm glad you were able to process your experience and undo the unhealthy changes. Thanks for helping spread awareness that psychedelic-induced changes aren't automatically good or positive.

notch656a18• 5 years ago

The public narrative is not that at all. Go ask a few typical midwestern grandmas what she thinks about her grandaughter dropping acid and report back.

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

Moreover, most of the positive reports I saw were self-reports. If you do psycho drugs, you should not be the one reporting the results. Instead it should be done by your peers/friends who don't do the drugs. Your own report will be extremely biased.

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

Thank you! I actually logged off my HN account for a day so I didn't see my karma because I assumed I'd be downvoted for my anecdote and didn't feel like arguing with narrative pushers.

colordrops9• 5 years ago

Sorry to be blunt, but this sounds like an issue with your thinking, rather than an issue with psilocybin. You were already vulnerable to woo woo and narcissistic thinking, and psilocybin just awakened these traits in you. It's analogous to how hallucinogens can cause snaps in people with undiagnosed schizophrenia. In fact it could be said that it helped you because you became aware of them and flushed them out of your system.

mountainriver2• 5 years ago

I’m not sure I totally buy this. Yes psychedelics illuminate your mind but they also induce spiritual experiences in most people that take them.

For folks who have little real spiritual understanding (most Americans), this can seem very enticing

mettamage2• 5 years ago

I disagree with this.

When people are vulnerable to something that doesn't mean they should have to go through it. There are many examples where it will make a human weaker in the end. There are also many examples where it will make a human stronger, but I think in his story it made him weaker because he lost 10 years that he otherwise presumably wouldn't have.

Not only did he lost 10 years, he lost 10 relatively foundational years (i.e. it's less bad to "lose 10 years" in your 60s to 70s compared to your 20s to 30s due to the compound interest effect that early "good years" have).

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

It's possible I was vulnerable to this flawed thinking before this. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter too much to me if the chicken or egg came first. And in the long run I don't know if it helped or hurt me due to the butterfly effect. But I do know I regret it and if I had the choice to go back in time I would have stayed away from psilocybin.

colordrops9• 5 years ago

BTW, "the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as "the universe is on my side".

Siira2• 5 years ago

Not at all. One is the null hypothesis that is also supported by evidence, and the other is also known as having delusions of grandeur.

mountainriver2• 5 years ago

Yeah I think it’s really important to use psychedelics with a therapist. I’ve seen a number of friends go down this path. Having a therapist can help ground you and understand what the experience means to your emotional body.

That being said due to subjectivity you are quite literally the center of your universe =P

tillmannhgl• 5 years ago

and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.

Which is just another subjective view...

Not sure if your comment concludes actually the opposite: You should do Psilocybin if you want to have a happy idalistic life with less career struggles.

worik3• 5 years ago

. I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out

You are blaming the drugs? I think you should take responsibility yourself!

threatofrain• 5 years ago

Causal attribution is different from the assignment of responsibilities, notwithstanding whether this attribution is correct. Maybe some drug did cause somebody problems, but from the social perspective they may still be "on the hook" and thus "responsible" for all their problems.

whilestanding6• 5 years ago

I 100% take responsibility for the choices I made including the choice to take the drug in the first place.

However, the God complex delusion I attribute to the mushrooms.

2-718-281-828• 5 years ago

that I am not the center of the universe, and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything

that's usually what I take from a trip on mushrooms - seriously

mmacvicarprett• 5 years ago

This is a great insight of a consequence that is unlikely to be considered.

qwerty4561272• 5 years ago

It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip.

That's why it takes a sufficiently mature (in terms of rationality, emotional intelligence and moral values) mind for a trip to be actually safe. One can reach it sooner or later or never but I would consider 25 (when your prefrontal cortex development actually peaks and you have already have gained your fair amount of general experience) a reasonable mean and recommend avoiding psychoactive substances (unless a competent professional decides the opposite and is going to supervise) if you are significantly younger, no matter how legal in your state they are.

BTW the universe actually is on your side. The moment it's not you're dead.

I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out.

Why do you believe that's bad? I would say a life without goofiness is a horror. A world without idealism is hell. Some choices setting your life and career back occasionally are inevitable and can actually bring immense value you just don't (immediately or ever) consciously recognize. My life/choices has always been a disaster but prepared me to and at some moment "has put" me in a specific place where I have met my soulmate who turnt my life in a paradise (long proven sustainable and, arguably, even antifragile).

I am not the center of the universe

Well, you can't prove you aren't and numerous philosophers (and some Everett interpretation enthusiasts) would say you are. And this doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.

neuro_image27• 5 years ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. I've reposted below what I wrote to someone else, in the hope that you (or anyone reading) may find this helpful (and hopefully find a way to more peace).

I would point out, in particular that:

1. When using psychedelics, there may be a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.

2. Openness to more creative ideas is a common feature of psychedelic use. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.

----- Repost: Psychedelics are very powerful compounds acting on the infinitely complex human nervous system.

It should therefore be expected that the outcomes will be extremely variable and highly contingent on the background and predispositions of the user, the type(s) and dose(s) of the drug(s), the context of the usage of the drug (including related psychotherapy) and other events, practices and influences in the individual's life.

That being said, I have noticed, a general trend towards:

- Less combativeness, agitation and aggression. There is less tendency to want to engage in petty squabbles or incite your own (or others) negative emotional reactions.

- Openness to more creative ideas. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.

- In a similar vein, you may also find yourself exploring spiritual/philosophical topics, especially those related to compassion, empathy, group cohesion and 'reduced ego'. This probably looks an awful lot like hippiness lol. This may include rethinking political, social and economic attitudes.

- Generally more positive thoughts and emotions (positive valence). This often follows a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.

- Psychedelics may help in getting through/integrating past trauma. This may be part of what underlies the above. Many of us live with the after-effects of trauma and being able to work past this can be life-changing. This may be a traumatic process in itself, but sometimes psychedelics facilitate approaching these issues in ways that were not previously possible. IMHO many of the most severely affected by trauma are not even aware of the fact that they're affected and this manifests in a plethora of negative outcomes. Psychedelics in a positively reinforced environment (ideally with therapy) can help tremendously here.

There are a lot of really great resources online for anyone who is interested (regardless of your level of personal experience or opinion):

Highly recommend qualiacomputing.com and qualiaresearchinstitute.org (along with the group's online videos), especially for the HN crowd looking for a more multifaceted, more 'scientifically rigorous' (I use the term loosely here lol, but I think you'll get what I mean).

I'd also recommend some of the lectures on the Oxford Psychedelic Society's website: https://oxpsysoc.org/#things

I hope you find this helpful. Psychedelics are a complex topic but overall I believe they have immense potential to help many people, including but not limited to the following. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to learn more.

- Pain syndromes, including intractable, severe, pain syndromes like cluster headaches. - Resolving trauma (including but not limited to PTSD). - Psychological disorders, including depression and anxiety. - Overcoming addictions.

sizzle• 5 years ago

I’m a pretty stoic and cynical person after being used as a doormat growing up in narcissistic family. I hope I don’t lose this perspective/lens of not trusting others if I tried psilocybin as my family would take advantage of my altruistic nature as a free labor resource to do work for them if I let my guard down and try to be helpful.

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

I doubt this, and I think it's detrimental to state so in the long run.

I used Psilocybin, and it was worth it. I would recommand people to give it a try, and I helped people around me, including one parent, to take it.

Yet.

Every time I took it, I could feel my speech ability to decline for a while. The side effects faded slowly, and disapeared eventually every time. But traces of it are noticeable after even a month or two sometimes.

It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive. The deny didn't help at all. I know of several people that are addicted to smoking pot now. It's a negative side effect on their life.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Powerful products have powerful effects, and this means some harm can exist.

Yes, psilocybin is way safer than the reputation is has been given in the 70'. Yes, taking it (in the right conditions) can benefit you a lot.

But pretending there is zero detrimental effects is wishful thinking and will lead to people abusing the thing, believing it's just funny candy, and they may end up damaged.

giantg22• 5 years ago

I think there are some other rare side effects, like vision abnormalities.

The proper way to phrase their findings is that psilocybin has a favorable safety profile and should be studied in more detail with larger numbers of participants.

Quarrelsome3• 5 years ago

It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive.

I quit both weed and nicotine and only the nicotine was the problem to shift. Weed can be habitual, sure but there's a huge difference in physical and habitual addiction.

tudelo• 5 years ago

Quitting nicotine is absurdly overblown. I'm sure me saying this will annoy somebody, but I think it's much more of a habit than a physical addiction and people hide behind the physical addiction as an excuse. Maybe if you smoke a pack a day it is a different beast but daily smoking is really not hard to kick.

gspr5• 5 years ago

It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive.

Marijuana is not physically addictive. That was and is also the reasonable claim made by reasonable people. Then lots of people seems to have conflated this claim with psychological addictiveness.

I claim that HN isn't physically addictive. The fact that it is psychologically addictive doesn't amount to me "pretending".

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

If you smoke daily, and frequently and then quit, you do experience intense cravings and unpleasant physical side effects.

toomanydoubts4• 5 years ago

Isn't the idea of distinguishing between physical and psychological addiction outdated?

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

Marijuana is not physically addictive. That was and is also the reasonable claim made by reasonable people.

That's not true at all. Heavy marijuana dependency and withdrawals definitely produce physical withdrawal effects.

They're not equivalent to, say, alcohol withdrawal, but they will exist.

There's actually a lot of research into various adjunct medications to dampen the physical withdrawal to help addicted marijuana users quit.

But regardless, if you have to qualify the type of addiction, you're not escaping the fact that something is addictive. Too many people have used this false physical/psychological dichotomy to talk themselves into marijuana dependencies, psychological or otherwise.

zepto11• 5 years ago

If people say marijuana is not addictive, this is a false claim.

Psychological addition is just as real as physiological addiction.

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done.

That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms, there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway. I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin.

Sure while you're on them it can be very intoxicating, and temporary loss of speech abilities and all kinds of horrible feelings might occur, particularly in the beginning. Usually you feel better about it later.

I think it has been shown to be the least harmful drug in studies and has proven itself to be not very harmful to people or society.

emptyfile3• 5 years ago

That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms

nonsense

there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway.

please don't talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. go to any psytrance festival in europe and marvel at people tripping for a week straight

I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin.

and I've met bucket loads of people "addicted" to living in the unreality of psychedelics. I guess that's not being "addicted to psilocybin" but if the end result is eating mushrooms x times per week then the effect is the same

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms

Untrue. People can and do get hooked on the deliriant and escapist effects. Some people get addicted to the idea that the trip is revealing important information that they need to continue receiving.

It may not be common, but it's very much possible.

brnt• 5 years ago

If tourists drown in the canals of Amsterdam, they often did mushrooms (and came from France!).

habeebtc• 5 years ago

Agree that the pro-legalization movement likes to claim "not addictive" but what they always have meant (which if pressed, they generally will acknowledge) is that it is not physically addictive.

It is, of course, psychologically addictive because literally anything can be.

yhorawu8• 5 years ago

If marijuana is addictive how is it I’m able to take weeks and months off each year (I live in a legal state) without withdrawals?

It stores itself in fat and I’ve definitely noticed it takes a few weeks before I’m entirely off the effects.

That’s a lot different than meth where addicts have mental breakdown without it.

Routine interaction with others is chemically stimulating and withdrawal into isolation can hurt. Is having friends addictive? Lockdown isolation has been harder than going without weed when I needed to.

I think the normies should stop trying to be experts. Experience and ability are relative just like physics. Seeing patterns in reality isn’t interesting; we all do it inherently as part of our innate biology.

tyingq• 5 years ago

"Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done."

I agree with this, but I think some of the pushback may be coming from people in recovery from alcohol, meth, cocaine, opiates, etc. We only have so many words to choose from, and those "addictions" more often drive death, divorce, abandonment, insane decisions, and so on. So adding marijuana to the list feels like it might dilute the message, or diminish someone's view of the dangers, etc.

"almost impossible to abuse mushrooms"

No personal experience with that, but I can attest to how different people's experiences with anything are. There's plenty of heavy users of my list of substances above that never seem to slip into the kind of hell that other people do.

spidersouris• 5 years ago

Yes, taking it (in the right conditions) can benefit you a lot.

What are these benefits?

diatomaceous_5• 5 years ago

It obviously needs more formal research, but anecdotal reports of tryptamine-based psychedelics indicate strong potential for stress management and/or general mental health recovery.

https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushrooms

paraph1n2• 5 years ago

Preliminary clinical research shows that it can help with depression and drug addiction, among other ailments.

Anecdotal benefits I've experienced (as a typically healthy person):

- Improved mood for a least a couple months (happier, more awake/aware, calmer, less fatigue, more motivated)

- Reduced feelings of stress and anxiety

- Increased empathy for others

- Increased self-awareness, in particular of bad habits. This in turn helps me improve my diet as well as keep good physical/mental exercise habits.

- Increased creativity and openness to new ideas.

quocanh• 5 years ago

Anecdotally:

It's a drug that sort of shakes up your mind. It lets you make all sorts of connections that you aren't going to sober, unless you spend a ton of time reflecting. At the end, you gain this incredible emotional clarity which helps you regulate your emotions. This is probably why it's being studied for use with depression and anxiety.

buddhistdude• 5 years ago

I don't have data but first hand experience and for me it is truer to say: it enhances your level of consciousness and it allows you to experience reality from beyond your mental-emotional conditioning. Which are two things that may sound very cryptic to many people reading this, as it cannot really be described in words. It is a explaining an orgasms to a person who has never had it kind of thing.

ActorNightly4• 5 years ago

From brain scans regarding psychedelic mushroom use, it shows a huge increase of brain activity, indicating a lot more neural activations, which is why visuals usually involve seeing resemblance of things you know in things like wall or carpet textures. There are also some reports that the blood flow to the region that is responsible for parsing reality is decreased and increased to other areas, which makes your internal thoughts feel more like reality.

If you think about it in terms of neural networks, your day to day life is a set of standard inputs that result in predictable emotions/outcomes. However, on a shroom trip with significant dosage, both the outside effects and internal thoughts get enhanced in both strength and with additional features, which can be enough to start moving your internal synaptic weights enough to effect different thoughts or behaviors.

This is analogous to something like going to a different country with a different culture, and living there, which in turn will change your perspectives opinions and behaviors based on experiencing life differently - after about a month or so you will likely be doing things slightly differently and thinking about concepts in a slightly different way. Magic mushrooms essentially condenses this process in a shorter timeframe.

So given the right setting, this process can provide positive effects. Of course, the trip could also exaggerate negative emotions and thoughts, however, because of no withdrawal symptoms or long lasting effects, people generally just remember it as a bad trip and don't wanna do it again. Even there, sometimes the meta effect is experiencing the bad feeling strong enough during the trip that it doesn't seem as bad when you are sober.

In general, the argument for use is that the probability for negative effects is low, but probability for positive effects is significant. So rationally it makes sense to go through the experience.

emptysongglass2• 5 years ago

Massive neurogenesis for one. [1]

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012800...

BiteCode_dev2• 5 years ago

It's different from people to people, and from session to session.

I've seen a variety of positive effects, but this is annecdotal, as they are reported by the people taking the substance themself.

There is also the problem of long term vs short term. There are plenty of positive side effects that fade away after a few hours, days, or months.

Often though, people report practical insights about oneself or life, that they could not get before, and those can be lasting.

Some people report physical benefits as well. Paul Stamets famously said his speech impediment disapeared after a session.

On a personnal level, what lasted for me were:

- the understanding of some needs I had, and that I was not allowing myself to have.

- the smoothing of autistic symptoms such. E.g: welcoming of physical contact.

Both significantly improved my quality of life.

I have to insist on the right conditions, though. There affect heavily both your immediate experience and the benefits you may get. If you intend to give it a try, get an experimented, serious and benevolent person to assist you.

There are some groups that are specialized in the matter. I've done my first session with the psychedelic society: you pay them, and they organize a whole 3 days seminar for you. They were competent, caring, and amazingly benevolent. Unfortunatly they exist only in Europe.

diatomaceous_5• 5 years ago

Your experience is an anecdotal exception, not the norm.

I encourage you to actually read up on the pharmacology of psilocybin: https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Psilocybin_mushrooms.

aeternum• 5 years ago

It only takes a single but valid 'anecdote' to disprove a thesis as strong as 'Psilocybin has no short or long term detrimental effects'

There is no exception allowed for a statement like that.

aeturnum3• 5 years ago

But pretending there is zero detrimental effects is wishful thinking and will lead to people abusing the thing, believing it's just funny candy, and they may end up damaged.

I think you're mostly reacting to the framing of this headline, which isn't accurately stating the finding of the study.

It would be more accurate to say the study "did not find any short or long term negative effects" which is not the same as a positive assertion that such effects do not exist. This is a similar level of safety as you might find with aspirin or acetaminophen - both of which could be fairly described as not having short or long term negative effects and which can have serious health consequences if used incorrectly [edit: I said "if abused" which is the wrong way to put it].

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Powerful products have powerful effects, and this means some harm can exist.

There's nothing in this study that contradicts this idea - because studies like this don't claim to detect every form of harm. Instead, they look for particular forms of relatively objective harm. Another example to consider would be SSRIs: they tend to increase suicide attempts when patients start taking them. That's the kind of harm this study would find! But - even if a patient doesn't experience suicidal ideation - no doctor would suggest that it logically follows that patient should certainly go on SSRIs. The choice is always more complex than that.

darth_avocado• 5 years ago

did not find any short or long term negative effects

I think what the original comment refers to is that measuring long term side effects is kind of impossible without waiting a long time and wishful thinking.

photochemsyn• 5 years ago

I'd read the study conclusions again, in particular the dosages and circumstances:

"Psilocybin, in 10mg or 25mg doses, has no short-term or long-term detrimental effects in healthy people... The research, published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology, is an essential first step in demonstrating the safety and feasibility of psilocybin – a psychedelic drug isolated from the Psilocybe mushroom – for use within controlled settings alongside talking therapy as a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD.'

Notice that very large doses were not studied, and the studies were conducted under controlled settings, with one-on-one support from a trained psychotherapist, in groups of up to six people simultaneously.

As the study was not flawed, then, under these conditions, psilocybin certainly seems like a safe and effective option for treatment.

druadh• 5 years ago

I'd be curious to know how many mg's an average sized magic mushroom contains. I've taken a stem and had an enjoyable couple hours. I've taken several mushrooms 3.5-7g and had a rather intense set of experiences that I'll never forget, along with some very dark and scary moments -- And I can see how these moments would permanently change someone (even a 'healthy' person).

Ultimately, how many mg's of psilocybin does an average magic mushroom contain? The very first line of text in a google search said 10mg psilocybin per 1g of mushroom. 35-70mg psilocybin for the two standard street dosages - so on the street, your minimum suggested dosage is, at minimum, like 40% stronger than this study looked into? Could make for some less than favorable experiences for people hearing about this 2nd hand and not looking into it.

I wonder if the researchers in this study had people consume mushrooms on an empty or full stomach, as well. Also makes a big difference in terms of intensity and duration (in my experience).

And like you mentioned, those in the study also had 1-on-1 support from a trained professional.. On the street, you've got your goofball friends and maybe one wise, old trip-sitter if you're lucky. And honestly, I'd prefer a seasoned trip-sitter whose taken the drug many times over a trained professional who has is much less likely to have that kind of firsthand experience. The company you keep can have just as much of an impact as the potency of the hallucinogen (again, in my experience).

jklinger4108• 5 years ago

I doubt this, and I think

Wow man, can't wait to read your peer reviewed study on the topic!

I'm going to give this thread a few more hours before decide to quit reading Hacker News comments forever.

zepto11• 5 years ago

I'm going to give this thread a few more hours before decide to quit reading Hacker News comments forever.

What do you anticipate happening in those few hours?

cjohansson• 5 years ago

Do you have a peer reviewed study to support your opinion about Hacker News comments?

d1sxeyes2• 5 years ago

I wonder what you think the point of HN is? Do you think that this is a community for sharing peer-reviewed studies?

If you're not interested in reading opinions and comments from an open forum that anyone can join, then maybe it is better for you to stop reading these comments.

For me, I think OP's comment was completely reasonable, and at any rate, the headline with which the conclusions of this study appears is at best incomplete, and deserves to be criticised.

alexnewman2• 5 years ago

Totally agree. No free lunch especially in psychedelics. That being said , great to see the research

washadjeffmad• 5 years ago

Mushroom drawl is a pretty classical tell of usage, but I wouldn't consider it a de facto detriment.

For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts, less likely to be carried away by engagement or perpetuate useless ideas, and more prone to patient reflection.

Mushrooms can't magically confer any of those skills, but some things are easier to learn when we're not leaning on only what comes most naturally to us.

PragmaticPulp7• 5 years ago

Mushroom drawl is a pretty classical tell of usage, but I wouldn't consider it a de facto detriment.
For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts,

It takes some wild mental gymnastics to try to flip a drug-induced speech impediment into a good thing.

It's also fascinating to watch how some of the psychedelic enthusiasts will vehemently dismiss the idea of mushroom-induced speech issues, while others will readily acknowledge that "mushroom drawl" is a classic, well-known phenomenon but it's okay because it's good actually.

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts, less likely to be carried away by engagement or perpetuate useless ideas, and more prone to patient reflection.

I speak fast when my mind is sharp and active, and speak slow when I am tired or sick and can't think straight. Bet you most people do the same. So you probably should read it that he had long term retardation of the brain, not a calm nature.

nimbius• 5 years ago

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of abject confusion in this realm as fifty mind numbing years of the US Drug War sponsored by RAID Shadow Legends has rendered any independent attempt at scientific validation of the conditions applications and hazards of most recreational narcotics a fever dream of retraction, deflection, and outright lies.

For 50 years psychedelic drugs were the devils dingaling and always accompanied by a well-wishing naysayer who insisted the other shoe was filled with the cloven hoof of Mephistopheles himself. This is quality peer-reviewed research, the same kind used to ostensibly validate things like hydrocodone and Flintstones vitamins...but this sort of thing is happening alongside the haggard burro of western drug policy which makes it all the more precious. Any knowledge of the conditions and terms related to something like this as it pertains to PTSD is invaluable as 30 years ago such seditious mumblings would get you branded a communist hippie.

so yeah, terms and conditions apply and just as with everything else, theres a ladder of risk, but castigating the machine shop for their nefarious chainsaw sure to rain terror upon the good fae of the woods is a little silly.

perth• 5 years ago

I think what most people are referring to with cannabis, in terms of it not being addictive, is physiological dependence. Cannabis has very little in terms of withdrawal symptoms, and thus has low propensity towards physiological dependence. I’ve heard people state depression for a few days as one of the few withdrawal symptoms for heavy users. So while the people you may know may be addicted, it’s not because of a physiological dependence but a mental one.

pishpash• 5 years ago

Depression and mental issues are physiological (in the brain). Otherwise there would be no psychiatric medication.

shrimpx2• 5 years ago

marijuana was not addictive

It's "not addictive" in the sense that physical withdrawal symptoms are minimal compared to booze, nicotine, and other drugs. But you can make a daily habit out of anything pleasurable and ruin your life around it. I've seen people ruin their lives with both gaming and gambling habits.

emptysongglass2• 5 years ago

There is no such thing as a free lunch.

This doesn't mean anything. It's not evidence of anything. You can't go to court and argue there's no such thing as a free lunch.

There's free lunches out there, literally, somebody puts a literal free lunch out next to the dumpster for the less fortunate all the time. There's losers and winners with no reason to be found for why. Some guy buys Bitcoin at 5 bucks, becomes a billionaire and doesn't turn into the archetypal power-mad lunatic burning his fortunes on lambos.

Here's the actual woo: desperate attempts to overlay patterns of meaning to a universe that does not subscribe to Abrahamic values.

Some people will take psychedelics and have enduring negative impressions, sometimes for the rest of their life. Others, like myself, will use it to shapechange out of a history of abuse by their parents. No one can know which of the cards they'll pick.

But I can tell you, from the many I have directly known to take it, a fraction succumbed to permanent, negative, distorted beliefs. Some got a free lunch, some few did not.

Stupulous• 5 years ago

No free lunch carries some weight in this context. If there is a chemical that has a very positive effect in humans, there is probably a reason that humans didn't evolve to produce that chemical or exist in the state that the chemical induces.

That reason could be related to what you suggest, that the actual effect is a mixed bag and doesn't wind up worth it. It could be that our environment has changed to make it beneficial and evolution hasn't caught up. It could be that dreams are already the same thing and we're not sleeping enough or the right way, so psychadelics are filling the gap. In general, though, it's that the benefits are outweighed by costs. No free lunch is a reasonable prior in biology.

qwerty4561272• 5 years ago

Every time I took it, I could feel my speech ability to decline for a while.

I would bet big money it will do the opposite to at least some people having speech impairment conditions before they take it.

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

I am willing to take that bet at sufficiently "big money".

usaphp• 5 years ago

10-25mg is nothing, it’s like 5-10x lower than people usually take

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

Nope.

RandomThrow321• 5 years ago

The study used synthetic psilocybin. In some estimate I've found online (I don't know how accurate) it claims 10mg is about 1.5 grams of dried shrooms of common varieties.

yboris4• 5 years ago

I suspect you're thinking of 3.5g amount - which is a typical amount of magic mushrooms to consume. The study is using psilocybin directly.

Wikipedia states "The concentrations of psilocin and psilocybin ... [is] 0.37–1.30% (dry weight) in the whole mushroom".

Assuming about 0.5% concentration, 3.5g of dry mushrooms is about 18mg of psilocybin/psilocin.

rkk3• 5 years ago

Psilocybin, in 10mg or 25mg doses

How does that translate to illicit recreational doses?

89 healthy participants

Not sure how they define healthy... Like others on this thread, have witnessed plenty of seemingly 'healthy' cause a lot of damage to themselves with Psyches.

a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD.

Are they going to test if it has detrimental effects on people with TRD or PTSD? I would imagine they'd be substantially more at risk for adverse effects.

Synaesthesia9• 5 years ago

It's varies in strength but that corresponds to about 1-2.5g of dried mushrooms. So a normal amount.

VeninVidiaVicii• 5 years ago

From my casual reading of these journal articles over the past several years, it's easy to make such statements about "healthy" people. Any underlying psychiatric disease discovered _after_ psilocybin can be retroactively applied to the participant.

"Oh, that guy had underlying bipolar disorder and therefore wasn't healthy."

josephcsible2• 5 years ago

Exactly. These kinds of papers are a great example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. And even if it were just "revealing" mental illnesses in people who already had them latently, most of them probably could have gone their whole lives without it had they never used drugs, so in practice even that's no different from just causing the illnesses.

71a54xd• 5 years ago

This article and the study it's drawing from is certainly cherrypicked or naive. There's been significant research to investigate the known cardiotoxicity of Psilocin [0][1]. Basically, for some unknown reason, micro-dosing too often or for too long with non-perceptive (very small doses, small enough to not elicit any perceptible effects) doses of psilocybin can lead to the degeneration of critical heart muscle tissues (specifically observed in heart valves).

0 - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287756303_Psilocin_...

1 - https://drbillsukala.com/psilocybin-heart-valve-damage/

pfortuny• 5 years ago

I find it honestly strange that 12 weeks is deemed “long-term”, or am I missing something?

pengaru2• 5 years ago

Psychedelic/"breakthrough" doses of psilocybin seem like non-lethal overdoses to me, based on some experience.

It seems both useful and consistently safe/predictable consumed more as a supplement/vitamin, as one already can with OTC Lions Mane. If they legalized psilocybin I'm 100% certain we'd have Lions Mane+Psilocybin combo supplements on store shelves practically overnight. And like Nutmeg, nobody would be reporting ill effects unless deliberately swallowing an excess of them, something we don't bother preventing with Nutmeg or Dramamine despite some pretty nasty potential outcomes.

josephcsible2• 5 years ago

something we don't bother preventing with Nutmeg or Dramamine despite some pretty nasty potential outcomes

That's because Nutmeg or Dramamine don't have as strong of an incentive to abuse.

pengaru2• 5 years ago

I've met a surprising number of people who upon discovering the psychotropic effects of Nutmeg started using it daily as a low-cost alternative to marijuana.

And it doesn't take much digging to find reports of teens accidentally taking lethal doses of the spice, largely due to its exceptionally long "first alerts" delay.

sethammons• 5 years ago

I grew up in a house that loosely held to beliefs that taking hallucinogenic substances could follow you into subsequent lives (reincarnation type thing). You could literally stain your immortal soul by taking it. That was a scary prohibition. I don't follow those views really any longer, but the worry lingers. Humans are strange.

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

“Stain”

Stain has a negative connotation in your context. Maybe adopt less opinionated language.

It can color your mind/soul in positive directions if you take great care in your setting and intention.

if done recklessly it can potentially color it in negative ways.

With a small chance to bring out other forms of latent mental illness.

If you do ever decide to attempt go slowly. I’d recommend going cautiously into these experiences starting at 0.8g. Also have a sober mature person who is experience with shrooms around just in case.

It’s shrooms is possibly the kind of drug that may help loosen firmly held beliefs in the right setting and mind set.

brailsafe• 5 years ago

The effects to those around you are that they have to hear the same story that everyone else has told them about your profound ego-destroying trip and how everyone should try psychedelics for x reason.

/s (truth though amiright)

_zfxr• 5 years ago

I would argue that opening the doors of perception in and of itself can be a detrimental side effect. They don't close. Live without the delusion. forever.

Both are worth it. Its always worth it.

But to act like it hasnt impacted certain areas of my life in a negative way, would be a hunka buncha bullshit.

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

Live without the delusion. forever.

Sounds like a pretty hard delusion right there.

bjt2n3904• 5 years ago

Gosh. Judging by the articles that come up so frequently, HN seems to want...

- Universal Basic Income

- Psychedelic Drugs

- Suicide Pods

And I can't help but feel all three of these are intricately tied together. UBI to pursue legal hedonism, and a "painless" exit when the drugs don't do it anymore.

I don't think anyone who advocates for these things explicitly wants such a nihilistic view of life. They want the freedom to create unbridled, and an end to poverty, hunger, mental anguish, and suffering -- but that isn't the outcome they will get.

dubcanada• 5 years ago

Those are just popular topics of any discussion. Since other "more important" topics are banned via rules (ie politics).

Flankk• 5 years ago

Damn kids and their suicide pods. Back in my day, we hung ourselves using a rope and we liked it that way.

yboris4• 5 years ago

I explicitly want all three things you list. I also would like to see Open Borders ;) https://openborders.info

For psychedelic drug decriminalization: the alternative is status quo, which results in tremendous amount of suffering (thousands of people in jail who are then disenfranchised by their "criminal" record).

You vaguely gesture at the possible good outcomes people like me want, but then boldly claim "that isn't the outcome [we] will get". I'm puzzled why you have such a pessimistic view of it all.

Portugal decriminalized all drugs 20 years ago and they are doing great (by comparison to surrounding countries that have not). Assisted suicide has become legal in several countries with presumably no negative outcomes you are warning us against. UBI has been successful and loved by Alaskans for decades. What problems are you worried about?

the-dude• 5 years ago

You forgot static web blogs.

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

Seeing patterns in unconnected policy positions. You sound like a conspiracy theorist. Are you feeling paranoid?

uptownfunk• 5 years ago

I think the key phrase here is "in healthy people" which ought to mean both physically and mentally healthy people. Now, of course, it becomes complicated. Especially if you are healthy but at-risk for certain conditions (say schizoaffective/schizophrenia). I have seen this compound work miracles, I have also seen it send some very close friends of mine off the deep end. Of course, those friends were always a little different, let's say.

GeekyBear• 5 years ago

There was in interesting UK study done that attempted to quantify how harmful various drugs were to the user and also to others.

Psilocybin was found to be the least harmful drug that they considered.

The study involved 16 criteria, including a drug's affects on users' physical and mental health, social harms including crime, "family adversities" and environmental damage, economic costs and "international damage".

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210

xdfgh1112• 5 years ago

And yet it's still class A. The study has been ignored entirely by the government

stanislavb• 5 years ago

There should be more studies on micro-dosing as well. Many of the modern drugs that one can buy from the pharmacy would have serious bad effects if you take 10-20 pills at the same time. Yet, you take take a small dose from a package, and you are OK. i.e. micro-dosing (1/20 => 1/10 of a "regular dose") could give one all the benefits of Psilocybin without any detrimental effects - at all.

p.s. most probably you won't be "converted" into a hippie (as some people are worried about it) if you are micro-dosing.

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

There are several in progress. Some run by private for profit companies.

Stay tuned.

throwawaypkjhg3• 5 years ago

Anecdotally, I have longterm visual side effects from taking magic mushrooms once 16 years ago (halos around objects, static on the walls, patterns pulsing, etc.) It's possible they were there prior but I didn't notice them, but these are not that uncommon from what I glean (see HPPD). I also had semi ego death for a year or two.

__MatrixMan__2• 5 years ago

I was terrified of HPPD when I was first dabbling in psychedelics. 15 years and many trips later I notice the occasional perceptual oddity, but I feel like this is how my perception has always worked and pre-drug-use-me was just ignoring the debug output.

Not to diminish any accounts of HPPD to the contrary, maybe I'm just lucky.

throwawaypkjhg3• 5 years ago

I think this is a good theory. As mentioned in my other reply, my symptoms didn't start until about a week afterwards when I started having panic attacks. From there, the anxiety caused the visual symptoms (I may have even read about them online).

It's entirely possible that I just inadvertently trained myself to see the unfiltered raw output from my visual cortex, which I previously ignored.

If you read about any HPPD communities it seems inextricably linked to anxiety, but hard to know which is the cause and which is the effect.

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

What was your dosage? Was it a single dose? Age at the time? any other drugs were in play? Have your HPPD faded over time?

I’m curious and if you don’t mind answering.

throwawaypkjhg3• 5 years ago

Thanks for the note. I was 15 and took an eighth in a single dose as tea. I had been smoking a lot of weed too for about a week. Ironically the trip wasn't that intense, but I had a panic attack because my friend (who was also on mushrooms) started having seizures. These side effects also didn't appear for about a week, which adds to theory that most people 'see' these things but their brains ignore them.

I was always extremely sensitive to marijuana too (similar medium-term ego death, etc.)

0000011111• 5 years ago

Psychedelics are the opposite of additive. In general, when a healthy person does a higher dose with the correct set and setting they do not want to do a high dose again for months and sometimes years and in some cases ever.

Do not take my word for it. Research drug addiction statics. Compare Synthetic Opioid overdoes to Psilocybin overdoes.

Look at how the drug war has fueled the industrial prison complex and the expense of POC.

With a broader frame, of the risk profile, it's clear that Psilocybin is low on the list for healthy people.

And that the drug war has manifested as a modern cast system within the united states.

smk_• 5 years ago

Among the people I've talked to that has taken psilocybin, it seems common to believe in nonsense such as reincarnation. That's why I'll never take it, it seems as if you lose grip with reality.

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

Meh. People have all sorts of beliefs about the afterlife. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Unless you know somebody who came back from the dead and reported on it?

tasty_freeze• 5 years ago

I never took any drugs until my mid 50s. Part of the motivation was to experience this spirituality that others report that I've never experienced. I'm a cautious person by nature, so I did a series of stepped doses, spaced a few weeks apart, of various lysergimides and tryptamines. In short: LSD was quite interesting and not at all spiritual for me. 4-aco-dmt (a close relative to psilocybin) was entirely different: much more dreamy, confusing, and it gave me a brief taste of that spiritual feeling. All in all, over a couple years, I did about 20 experiments, and have done only small doses twice in the past two years. I'm not sure if I'll do either again, as I probably have found all I care to see from them.

Experiencing things first-hand has only reinforced my prior beliefs in a material world. If a simple, small molecule can to drastically change your mood and perception, it seems all the more clear that there is no magic. On the flip side, people who were prone to believe in the woo experience the same things I did, but because of their prior framing found confirmation of their own prior beliefs as well.

I don't think you have anything to fear should the opportunity present itself to you.

The main benefit for me was this: I'm very good, too good, at compartmentalizing my emotions. My wife suffers from anxiety and depression. Having experienced hours-long states where my emotions ran loose that my intellect was unable to reign in, I can now empathize, and not just sympathize, a bit with my wife's experiences.

yboris4• 5 years ago

Thank you for sharing! A related experience I had was when I took LSD and smoked weed for the first time. At the time weed would sometimes give me paranoid thoughts (I've only smoked about a dozen times at this point) - and the LSD exacerbated the effects. I had almost an hour of severe paranoia, but as time went on I realized how irrational it was (and discovered useful a strategy of "make a prediction, and if it doesn't happen, stop being afraid - rather than keep thinking the scary thing is just behind the next corner").

The takeaway for me was similar to yours: a better empathy for people who may (without psychedelics) have a higher tendency to be worried/anxious. A realization that despite all the rational thoughts you can have, the fears can persist (as they are irrational - and continue to have force even when the rational side of the brain insists so).

Since then I've been continuing to enjoy both drugs separately and together - now-a-days it's mostly bliss and joy. I particularly recommend LSD & MDMA -- candy flipping ;)

mettamage2• 5 years ago

I've taken it multiple times. Science is still the basis for my beliefs. I know I'm n=1, but I'm also a counter example.

yboris4• 5 years ago

Sorry you have such a reference class. I think the "lose grip with reality" is only temporary - the next day (and even earlier) you have memories of what went on, but your mind is back to "normal". I've had numerous psychedelic experiences (blissful, terrifying, etc) with both LSD and mushrooms, and none have fundamentally changed what I think about the world (believing the general scientific consensus about atoms, etc).

What drugs like this can do is make you more empathetic and understanding, less rigid/dogmatic. I strongly recommend people (with no history of mental problems) try low-dose psychedelics (after careful research, with a great set and setting, and a trip-sitter) and then consider standard-dose psychedelic amounts.

I'm a psychonaut, so I enjoy weird states of mind as experiences. I feel like there is a lot to learn from having had them. An excellent book you could read on this topic is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan.

https://www.amazon.com/How-to-Change-Your-Mind-audiobook/dp/...

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

I’m grew up in a Buddhist family.I flip between agnostic and at times atheism. Science is my compass.

I’d be curious to know how much you understood the background of the beliefs held by the people you’ve talked to.

If I had similar thoughts about the idea of reincarnation after a trip. Am I a nonsensical person?

It sounded like your aversion is to mystical thinking or spiritual thoughts?

let me know if I’m too off base here.

randie63• 5 years ago

But the thing is, only just because we can't prove it now, doesn't mean it's false. You sound like the people who would have believed that the earth is center of the universe in the middle aged. And most people thought that, even "scientist". So you would have been perfectly right to believe it. You would not sound crazy. But yet wrong. What i want to tell you, don't be ignorant and don't form opinions on stuff you don't understand. Try it in lower dose. Imagine sober real life like folders browsing back and forth. But on shrooms (or LSD, DMT etc) it's like viewing a whole folder tree. You are able to make connections to thoughts you never would have connected in real life, because they are not directly related. So called "Ahh" moments. I will never give up drugs because of that greater understanding of own knowledge. Remember, knowing is not understanding. Such drugs allow you to truly understand. And as a side note, i had the same view as you when I was young. Now i know that i just was ignorant. In the end of the day, fuck what others say. You need to think for yourself and understand the world for yourself !

stevebmark• 5 years ago

This smells like when society generally thought weed had no long-term effects and wasn't addictive. Mushrooms anecdotally seem to have dose dependent long term effects, including disconnecting from reality, sometimes in destructive ways.

umvi• 5 years ago

no short- or long-term detrimental effects

And yet, all my friends who started using mushrooms now post pseudo-spiritual/pseudo-philosophical/pseudo-mystical yet completely nonsensical thoughts on social media. You can tell they think it's super deep and meaningful, but for us sober folk it just seems a little nutty. Stuff like: "We are the UNIVERSE. For the universe is within us." or "The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. The very minds of the people that need to be saved are not ready to be unplugged. They will fight to protect their truth, as they should. The saving can only come from within." From my sober perspective, it seems like psilocybin causes some users to lose a degree of grip on reality/rationality which I consider "detrimental" (though the users themselves claim it's "enlightening")

zozbot234• 5 years ago

You can tell they think it's super deep and meaningful, but for us sober folk it just seems a little nutty. Stuff like: "We are the UNIVERSE. For the universe is within us." or "The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. The very minds of the people that need to be saved are not ready to be unplugged. They will fight to protect their truth, as they should. The saving can only come from within."

Sounds exactly like what "us sober folks" would say after an intensive meditation retreat in the Vipassana tradition. Maybe the entheogen users are just taking a convenient shortcut.

literalsunbear• 5 years ago

Do you reject the idea that you and I are both the universe experiencing itself? You seem overly concerned with how often people decide to engage in the positive and apparently harmless practice of indulging in the idea. Are you this scrutinizing toward other spiritual practices such as Christianity or Islam? Not trying to do a whataboutism or anything, just trying to get a good read on exactly how humorless you are.

aqme28• 5 years ago

And anecdotally i've found shroom use more common among my smartest friends.

And the people posting antivax facebook memes or whatever are a totally different set of people.

superfamicom• 5 years ago

A few comments pointing out the correlation to spiritual / mystical communities. I know many engineers who use or have used and have fallen deeper into their hustle life style. I would say that it helps you explore yourself, be that chakras or crypto.

gringoDan• 5 years ago

This study lasted 12 weeks. That is not a good definition of "long-term".

I'm reminded of this recent ACX post about the phrase "No Evidence". It means 2 very distinct things:

1. This thing is super plausible, and honestly very likely true, but we haven’t checked yet, so we can’t be sure.
2. We have hard-and-fast evidence that this is false, stop repeating this easily debunked lie.

Different people will read the same article and choose their interpretation based on their previous bias.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

theptip2• 5 years ago

Just to be clear, the title is incorrectly editorializing the article. Lots of people in this thread are correctly objecting to the unsupported overly-broad claim that there are no long-term effects.

What the paper actually tested:

The trial is the first of its kind to thoroughly investigate the simultaneous administration of psilocybin. 89 healthy participants with no recent (within 1 year) use of psilocybin were recruited. 60 individuals were randomly picked to receive either a 10mg or 25mg dose of psilocybin in a controlled environment. In addition, all participants were provided with one-to-one support from trained psychotherapists. The remaining 29 participants acted as the control group and received a placebo, also with psychological support.
Participants were closely monitored for six to eight hours following administration of psilocybin and then followed up for 12 weeks. During this time, they were assessed for a number of possible changes, including sustained attention, memory, and planning, as well as their ability to process emotions.

So the study did not find any deleterious effects in N=89, from _one_ dose, in a supportive environment, over a fairly short follow-up period. This not surprising to me and I'm not updating my model of the world in any way.

This does _not_ prove that Psilocybin has no detrimental long-term effects. It just suggests that if they occur, they probably don't occur frequently enough to show up in the cursory glance that this study gave to the issue.

Psilocybin is an exciting treatment for mental health issues; it's great that it's being destigmatized. It should be decriminalized, and it is much safer than alcohol and many other recreational drugs. However, like any drug, it has risks and can be misused. We need to be honest about the risks, understand that nothing is safe, and particularly, understand how to detect and respond to those risks when they do occur.

edit: The title has now been changed, so this comment will read weirdly.

dang2• 5 years ago

Ok, we've revised the title above to try to make it more accurate about what's being reported here.

theptip2• 5 years ago

Thanks @dang!

lostmsu12• 5 years ago

It still unfortunately says "doses" not a "single dose"

worik3• 5 years ago

Psilocybin is very safe.

It is short acting so the distress that often accompanies major psychedelics is short and wears off quickly (unlike, say, mescaline which drags on for hours)

There does seem to be a effect where taking magic mushrooms several days in a row produces deleterious effects, I am not sure that is due to the psilocybin but it is unpleasant physical side effects that are not apparent if doses are spaced.

Repeated use (even when spaced enough to avoid the above physical effects) usually resulted (in my anecdotal observations of other people) in sever paranoia developing. That faded as quickly as the effects of the drug.

It should be available and it should be widely used. Psychedelic drugs are good for the mind, which is why people take them.

handsaway• 5 years ago

"In healthy people" seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I've done mushrooms three times and the first two were fun (but not enlightening or life-changing) experiences. The third time I had a bad trip. It was "my fault" in that in retrospect I did not have the right set/setting to take them, but it triggered a massive panic attack that spiraled me pretty severely into a months long anxiety episode. Before the mushrooms I was fine and after them I was having nightly panic attacks that lasted hours. I have a panic disorder but it was "in remission" previously.

Now having a panic disorder may disqualify me as a "healthy person" but given that the study is analyzing it as a treatment for mental disorders it seems that that's not what they mean. I don't know if panic/anxiety is included in "a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD". I'm just saying that it definitely _can_ be harmful to your mental health based on my experience. I don't know whether or not complementary talk therapy would have changed my outcome.

fdwizard• 5 years ago

As someone who invests in psychedelic-assisted therapy companies and follows the space pretty closely, I am shaking my head at some of the comments here. A lot of anecdotal stories wrapped up as "wise" warnings against psychedelic use. Recreational use does not apply in this clinical setting context, at all. Nor can it be extrapolated back to a recreational scenario. Granted, the title of this article reads click bait-y and I can see why there were visceral reactions. Additionally, the article lacks some context which I'll try to provide.

I've been following Compass Pathways for about a year now, and what I can tell you is this:

1. The purpose of this study was NOT to prove psilocybin has no deleterious effects in healthy subjects. It's purpose is as a supplementary/complementary study to their ongoing clinical trials for treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Basically, the more "ammo" they have surrounding psilocybin's safety the better, as they are headed into meetings with the FDA on their upcoming phase 3 trials.

2. The second purpose of this study was to prove that one therapist can administer doses to multiple patients at the same time. Cost is a huge, ongoing concern for commercialization in this space. To have a therapist watch over one patient for a 6-8 hour trip makes this treatment difficult to scale, and this gives Compass possibly a little more leeway and broadening in their treatment protocol.

3. Mystical type experiences are currently believed to bring about a greater chance of positive outcome in patients treated with psychedelic-assisted therapy. This is NOT dictated by what you thought was a "mystical" experience - it is determined by the MEQ (Mystical Experience Questionnaire) that is sometimes administers in these studies.

4. "Healthy" subjects - please keep in mind that in this context, the definition is narrow and shouldn't be interpreted in any way other than what the trials' inclusion/exclusion criteria listed. In these studies, it usually means no history of mental illness, ESPECIALLY schizophrenia. Beware of applying "healthy" to any other marker.

5. I urge people here to read Compass' recently completed phase IIb study on treatment-resistant depression (= patients who've failed at least 2 antidepressants). There absolutely are mild adverse - serious adverse events that occur, even in controlled and supportive settings. Please take this current studies statement as strictly as it reads "The results also showed there were no short or long term detrimental effects on thinking patterns or processing of emotions".

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

Thanks for your viewpoint on the underlying reason why this study exists.

How do you stay informed in this space?

What companies are on your watchlist?

baroninthetrees• 5 years ago

As a suburban dwelling dad, where on Earth would I find some? I have been intrigued for a while.

stephenitis8• 5 years ago

If you know someone who buys weed illegally they might have a source.

Darknet.

A ridiculous amount of drugs are just delivered using usps.

I grew mine from a small kit from the Netherlands. I’m in the EU.

It’s legal to grow them for decorative purposes here but not consume them.lol.

Study finds no detrimental effects of psilocybin in 10mg or 25mg dose

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