Is the psychedelic therapy bubble about to burst?

https://www.wired.com/story/psychedelic-hype-bubble/

by pseudolus • 4 years ago

139 209 4 years ago

febeling• 4 years ago

Let's not forget, the bubble being about getting these substances back from being banned and considered to dangerous for society to research and otherwise deal with responsibly.

Fits the theory that this is a paid hit piece, obviously without evidential support. Remind me, could there be an industry financially interested to get psychedelics back into the box?

eternalban• 4 years ago

The findings were somewhat lackluster: it found that the psychedelic was only marginally better than traditional treatments at relieving depression.

Not a peep about the side-effects of "traditional treatments", which presumably include the designer drugs.

yung_steezy• 4 years ago

I'm not sure this is necessarily a hit piece. There have been a few high profile cases of psychedelic therapists in countries like Canada being investigated for questionable practice. At the moment we're in a bit of a wild west where the actual procedures surrounding the use of these drugs as treatment are not standardised.

BobbyJo• 4 years ago

That feel less like a bubble bursting and more like a cage breaking.

Lacerda69• 4 years ago

Your comment sparked some interest in me and I found this article to be very detailed and nuanced:

https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/09/ending-silence-psychede...

If you know other sources on your comment, I would love to check them out as well!

NoToP• 4 years ago

What industry conspiracy are you trying to insinuate? Is it big pharma? Doubt it. Guess who would ultimately own the labs, run the clinical trials, and be first to market with a safe and precise FDA approved antidepressant based on a psychedelic active ingredient. Let's not forget LSD started as a research chemical in a drug r&d lab in Switzerland. Industry never wanted it criminalized.

It's not a good look to rationalise away all bad news as "paid hit piece".

mandmandam3• 4 years ago

It's not a rare or unheard of thing for an industry to attack solutions that are significantly better than their own (very profitable) solution.

Psychedelics _can_ permanently fix problems - anxiety, alcoholism, depression - that otherwise would make pharma companies huge amounts of money.

LSD is incredibly cheap to manufacture. There's no patent on it. Same with mushrooms and many others.

Now look at how much money those pharma companies made with Lexapro, with Prozac, with Risperdal. Even when they were caught marketing those drugs for unapproved uses, to children; and caught buying academics opinions, they made billions off the stuff.

Compare the list of side effects on their drugs to mushrooms or LSD. Compare the effectiveness. These companies aren't maintaining huge divisions of PR goons for the fun of it; they absolutely are out there on the internet, lobbying, and on traditional media, convincing people to form opinions like yours.

darksaints• 4 years ago

In the case of the recent fast tracked FDA trials for MDMA assisted therapy, I believe those trials were being led by a non-profit organization, and they don't have any interest in patenting the drug, let alone selling it. Their interest is in the therapy aspect of it, for which cheap and readily available MDMA is a high priority. So yeah, the pharma industry isn't going to be profiting off of it, at least for MDMA.

TeeMassive• 4 years ago

What industry conspiracy are you trying to insinuate?

What is wrong with insinuating an "industry conspiracy"? Industries are found guilty by judges and juries in massive lawsuits all the time.

Guess who would ultimately own the labs, run the clinical trials

Big Pharma doesn't run most of its lab experiments. They use contracted research companies to do that. In the past this was done to evade responsibility and it doesn't seem to have changed. See the Pfizer Covid vaccine whistle blower article as an example of that: https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2635

and be first to market with a safe and precise FDA approved antidepressant based on a psychedelic active ingredient

They can't patent molecules found in nature or synthetic molecules they didn't create.

Let's not forget LSD started as a research chemical in a drug r&d lab in Switzerland.

How is one lab in Switzerland representative of al all the other pharmaceutical companies?

Industry never wanted it criminalized.

How do you know that?

It's not a good look to rationalise away all bad news as "paid hit piece".

The health industry is a major source of revenue of all major US news publications.

naasking2• 4 years ago

What industry conspiracy are you trying to insinuate? Is it big pharma? Doubt it.

There was another HN front page article today about how legalization caused a measurable decline in the stock prices of the big pharma companies. There's a long track record of cannabis replacing opioids for pain management. MDMA, psilocybin and ketamine are not patentable, and if they can displace regular, lifelong use of antidepressants with a small number of treatments, that sounds like serious threat to their bottom line. Seems pretty plausible to me.

benevol• 4 years ago

No, it hasn't even started, and it's not a bubble.

There is so much potential in this and so much catching up to do. Many who are familiar with the relevant substances know this.

Our various corrupt systems (political, financial, "health" care, media, etc.) have deliberately prevented this type of therapy from exploding for a very, very long time. It will massively reduce the pharma industry's revenues, among other things.

zozbot234• 4 years ago

There is so much potential in this and so much catching up to do.

And a whole lot of new risks to go with the potential. As the saying goes: it's important to keep an open mind, but not so much that your brains fall out.

derac• 4 years ago

Keeping relatively safe substances criminally illegal is probably not the best solution.

matt89• 4 years ago

Proper and wider research is important. Let's hope that these substances become more popular and available to be researched and tested, so that hopefully in 5-10 years we would know their risks and advantages. Then people could make educated decisions whether or not to try and use them.

spaetzleesser2• 4 years ago

"And a whole lot of new risks to go with the potential"

As long as alcohol is legal and easily available we shouldn't worry about psychedelics. I know plenty of people who have taken all kinds of psychedelics and seem OK. Psychedelics just don't seem very addictive for most people. I also know quite a few people who have been hurt by alcohol. They either hurt themselves or they hurt others while drunk.

AndrewVos2• 4 years ago

It's people like you that keep holding humanity back from really flourishing. Think on that for a bit.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

The health care industry would be overjoyed to administer psychedelics to you for the rest of your life, and politicians and media will be happy to be paid to allow you to do it, to subsidize your doing it, and to convince you to do it.

Whatever bizarre conspiracy theory that would convince you of the opposite is evidence that there's already lots of money being spent.

HighlandSpring• 4 years ago

Only tangentially related but quite interesting: https://mobile.twitter.com/GraduatedBen/status/1565041582671...

Sometimes I wonder if SSRIs are one of those things that the industry overinvested in and now that there's plenty of momentum (and budget) to support the narrative that they are the cure it's hard to suggest that there may be simpler alternatives

krona• 4 years ago

The SSRI narrative seems to be unwinding, very quickly. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

p_j_w2• 4 years ago

It's not been very quick, the serotonin hypothesis has had huge question marks around it for as long as I've been reading about it, which is 10 years.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

I'm worried that the industry is stampeding into lionizing and monetizing another thing that ultimately statistics say may not be working better than placebo and has harmful side effects, but 20-50% of the population is on and is also responsible for a large percentage of health care spending.

SSRIs are that. Opiates are almost that (for long term pain management.) Statins are suspicious (and also held up as miracles by paid experts suggesting that we might add both them and lithium to the water supply like fluoride.)

I see a future of bare clinic rooms filled with beds, and on each bed someone who is being intravenously fed psychedelics (that are still illegal to grow, or take without a doctor's signoff and a nurse's supervision.) Each of them paying a $10 copay, while the facility bills the government and insurance $500/hr.

It'll be like the methadone clinic model, where we decided that to get people off heroin, we would addict them to a drug far harder to quit than heroin.

edit: I wish we would simply decriminalize psychedelics, and not do this thing again where something gets captured by a couple of oligarchs and sends their worth into the stratosphere, while every media outlet is fanning the flames. Really fucking dreading seeing the psychedelic (completely industry-funded) patients' rights organizations representatives getting interviewed while crying on tv about how party/politician X doesn't take depression seriously and is trying to genocide them by not letting five year olds trip.

devonallie2• 4 years ago

Is this not the opposite of a bubble? It seems like public opinion and public policy are actually making significant shifts into making psychedelic treatments more mainstream. From which I expect a large industry to emerge.

hcks• 4 years ago

You are literally stating what makes it a bubble: the narrative according to which psychedelics are now being rehabilitated into treatments due to very promising results.

But this narrative is getting old now, and the promising results in question are actually quite slim, in a field which is historically riddled with treatments that have a low effectiveness (when they work at all)

devonallie2• 4 years ago

This is true. I should have said that it seems to be a slowly but sustainably growing market. When I think of bubble, I think of a rapid boon followed by a bust. I don’t think this industry will have either.

ad404b8a372f2b9• 4 years ago

I don't think that makes it a bubble. A bubble is when my mom starts talking about it. Who has access to these psychedelics outside of research? They are not mainstream at all. If I wanted some I couldn't get any.

mistermann3• 4 years ago

the promising results in question are actually quite slim

Promising results that occur outside of formal scientific settings still occur, although consciousness (possibly amplified by various pre-existing beliefs) can make it appear as if they do not. As luck would have it, psychedelics can be very helpful in sorting out one's thinking on such things.

MAGZine• 4 years ago

So by your definition, fusion energy is also a bubble?

nocoiner2• 4 years ago

I know an anecdote isn’t data, but I’m a pretty straight laced guy who’s never used an illegal drug other than pot, so no prior experience with any psychedelics (except for taking an Ambien on an empty stomach lol). I started ketamine therapy a few weeks ago, and while I obviously can’t prove that it isn’t the placebo effect at work, my mood was tremendously and noticeably improved immediately after my first course of medication. And it’s had an immediate beneficial effect on my regular/traditional therapy sessions. It just feels like it was a missing piece to a puzzle I’ve been working on for a long time.

I want to see the science continue to study these drugs and psychedelic therapy, but for me there’s no doubt in my mind this has been significantly more beneficial in the short term than any other medication I’ve ever taken (i.e., been prescribed). If the science shows it isn’t right for everyone or most people - so be it. But it has been a game-changer for me.

myshpa• 4 years ago

Personal anecdote: 2 years of "research", 2 trips on psilocybe (one month apart), proper set & setting & guide & a lot of talking about it later with a trusted person ... decades-long cripling neurosis/anxiety disorder gone, addictions gone, depression receding, worldview changed, rated as one of the most influential experiences.

Depression is (imho) not to be healed with "here, swallow a pill", structural changes to one's life are necessary. Psychedelics can help to show the way, not to solve it.

konfusinomicon• 4 years ago

I wonder if the same effects can be attained by someone who has used psychedelics recreationionally their entire life, from say 16 onward. is it the external guidance during the experience that really makes the difference? or is a life of experiences responsible for one not having anxiety or depression on those levels

Ayesh• 4 years ago

Psychedelics, LSD in particular, see their major use being a party drug. Coming from a personal experience, many people decide the "trip" they want to go on way before the trip starts. I am pretty sure there are non-zero amount of people who regularly take psychedelics, but have never been on that kind of "trips" that instead of going deep into your own mind, they just enjoy EDM, a party, perhaps a hike, paint something, watch a movie, play some sports outside, play video games, etc.

mudrockbestgirl2• 4 years ago

It's difficult to explain if you haven't had that kind of experience yourself, but one way to describe it is that psychedelics (some more so than others) open up a window that allows for change. You are no longer stuck in your old ways of thinking that you took for granted.

But the experiences themselves don't change you. You still need to put in the work to make the changes. You can certainly do this without a guide. But if you take these drugs recreationally without such intentions and without putting in hard work pre- and post-session, nothing much is going to happen in the long term. A guide will help you to get the most out of the experience (while also helping with trip safety).

It's not about whether you use psychedlics or not, it's about how you take them.

nico• 4 years ago

Not sure, but I have a friend who has plenty of experience with psychedelics, and he just had his first session of psychedelic therapy with ketamine (done by a medical professional trained to do it). After the session he said it was very different to anything he had done before and that he felt he made a ton of progress.

My guess is that the intention that you set before “the trip”, really impacts the experience and hence the results. As well as having a professional guide/sitter that knows how to guide you and create a therapeutic setting.

brnt• 4 years ago

is it the external guidance during the experience that really makes the difference?

That's what psychiatrists using psycho active drugs say: without proper stage setting and guidance, the experience can be terrifying and traumatic in itself. Remember, not everybody has good trips, especially not people dealing with depression and trauma.

voisin• 4 years ago

Can you elaborate on your research and how you were able to find the right guide, achieve the proper set & setting?

cainxinth2• 4 years ago

From personal experience, I think one of the reasons psychedelics can help with depression is that when you are severely depressed, it feels permanent, like nothing will ever get better or even meaningfully different.

But then you have a psychedelic experience, and for a brief moment, things are very much different. And if the experience is even slightly positive, it reminds you that it’s still possible to feel something good, and that glimmer of hope can chip away at your entrenched fatalism.

Mezzie5• 4 years ago

I'd agree with this.

I've never done psychedelics (at least not the kind that are experimentally used for mental health; I did Molly once but fuck that comedown), but I spent years depressed, anxious, guilty, etc. and then I started using weed. I went a little TOO hard for a while, because it was the first time in years I'd had my body and brain giving me primarily GOOD feelings.

Which led to me ending up in therapy and actually addressing my PTSD, because then I knew that feeling shitty wasn't just how I was programmed to be biologically because something was Wrong with me.

The 'too hard for a while' is probably why these things should be done under medical supervision. I basically spent 8 months blazed out of my mind.

kingkawn• 4 years ago

Just need some overwhelming novel stimulus

EmilyHughes2• 4 years ago

going by that logic cocaine and heroin should also treat depression in the same way, but they clearly don't.

AnthonBerg• 4 years ago

I agree.

Then there is also this: Classical psychedelics are profoundly immunomodulating. All serotonin receptor 5-HT2A activators (agonists) reduce systemic inflammation. Generally in very beneficial ways.

Systemic inflammation and depression are intimately related.

(Of course, care should be taken not to suppress inflammation when it is needed. People probably ought not to take psychedelics when fighting off an infection.)

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2015.0035...

pdntspa• 4 years ago

That describes my outlook after taking MDMA... anxiety has been a constant through my life, and molly showed me what it was like to not feel it. Ever since I have used that as a benchmark in my own quest for healing, and the closer I can get to that feeling without assistance, the further along I know that I am in my journey.

Of course, it's a nice to visit with molly every once in a while. But the real progress is in how I reframe life. Too bad that finding quality MDMA nowadays is so tough.

webmobdev2• 4 years ago

This is exactly why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications are prescribed - to help people realise what an "undepressed" state of mind feels like. Even with "talk" therapies, like Cognitive Therapy (that have proven to be as effective as anti-depressants, and actually better than it in the long term), psychiatrists still prefer to combine it and start treatment with such medications as it really helps you to understand how different you think and feel when you are not depressed.

Please note that if you are depressed it is better to start with well researched medications like anti-depressants (whose working are still not fully understood) than psychedelics. To be safe, consider shock therapy or psychedelics only as a last resort, after you have exhausted both anti-depressants and Cognitive Therapy under a good therapist and are really desperate.

sharadov2• 4 years ago

But can't that experience be had under different circumstances - like a meditation retreat, or travel to a completely new country?

Meditation practice under a guide, can rewire your brain much like psychedelics.

Not to diss on psychedelics - but there is way too much hype about it being a miracle cure for all your psychological ailments.

Psychedelics are wonderful but dangerous and to be used under the right set and setting, a bad trip can induce psychosis and my fear is people with existing mental ailments will start popping psychedelics - not paying much attention and end up in a far worse place than they started.

Hopefully it is regulated.

pazimzadeh• 4 years ago

That fits with the analogy that I use, that psychedelics are like a helicopter - they allow you to zoom out and realize that there is a path to the top of the mountain (assuming you're stuck/walking in circles). But once the effects wear off it's up to you to remember where to go

BaculumMeumEst• 4 years ago

This absolutely happened to me, except with a physician's prescription of Xanax rather than psychadelics. I was severely depressed, experiencing daily panic attacks, etc.

I stopped taking them pretty quickly because I'm prone to addiction, but your experience mirrored mine completely.

immmmmm• 4 years ago

the second time it cured me from depression, the healing process happened in around 10 minutes where i was taken from the worst to the best. felt like 100's of simultaneous orgasms and was in shock for the next three days.

i have read a single take can increase neuronal connectivity by 10% in rodents, which is not surprising after that experience.

still feeling great more than a year after.

meanwhile my mom gas been on AD for 40 years.

mbesto• 4 years ago

Psychedelics can help to show the way, not to solve it.

The best way I had it described to me is:

Psychedelics are microscopes, not panaceas. A trained psychiatrist is the panacea.

tptacek3• 4 years ago

I'm glad for you, but the researchers involved in this story did an actual RCT with a cohort of patients and measured the effect, and the benefit of psilocybin was shown to be marginal. The study is linked in the first paragraph of the story.

briffle• 4 years ago

I'd probably take that choice compared to the cost and daily dosing of the pharmacy alternative.

yboris3• 4 years ago

The study, a small trial run at Imperial College London

I'm puzzled how a small trial run can derail decades of larger-scale evidence?

ncmncm5• 4 years ago

Almost all RCTs involving depression throw a bunch of people diagnosed with "depression", but suffering a variety of conditions, all given that label, in a tank together. The treatment may help a few, harm others, and have no effect on the rest, and the treatment is then labeled "ineffective".

RCTs depend for validity absolutely upon precise, accurate diagnosis for validity. Bad diagnostics => meaningless results. RCTs are not magic. They can be as wrong as anything stupidly performed.

RCTs around depression are worse than most.

johnfn2• 4 years ago

I'm confused how your first sentence appears to say that you completely solved your depression, addictions, anxiety, neurosis and worldview with two trips, and your second sentence says that depression can't be solved with a pill. These seem to be at odds, unless I'm missing something.

birdyrooster• 4 years ago

Even if you take psychedelics it won’t magically fix your problems bc most peoples problems are systemic. The system must change but the psychedelics allow the user to see the value in the change.

MauranKilom3• 4 years ago

"A trip" is more than just a pill - set & setting are just as important. And what it gives you is an alternative perspective on your own life, which you still have to convert into actual change in your mindset/life afterwards.

barrysteve4• 4 years ago

I'm glad you had a good outcome. It's difficult to relate to your experience from the outside. Most of the time people talk about these experiences, they are vague and difficult to understand.

Sometimes in poor cases it can sound like gym-bro science where I should totally pop a supplement because this guy had a good experience on it and trust me bro.

I would love to know more specifically about the subjective experience is like, so we can pick out pieces that have a greater meaning to collective understanding.

Depression is an umbrella term for one experience caused by many, many different problems. Some chronic medical situations are going to allow your body to be re-depressed after a positive drug experience, so being able to see subjective reports in detail can allow the public to decide if it's worth doing a psychedelic treatment.

Not to mention we should probably map this experience out to slowly cut down on the same speculative questions every time drugs come up; about the divine/psychological/medical nature of a drug trip.

josephg2• 4 years ago

Most of the time people talk about these experiences, they are vague and difficult to understand.

I’ve taken LSD a few times. When people ask about it I like to say that the experience is exactly like how people describe it, but nothing like what I expected. Trying to “map it out” in complete detail would be like trying to map out sex. I’m not convinced I can fully explain my experience, and even if I did, I bet your experience would be different from mine.

Maybe the best description I can give is that your mind stops suppressing a lot of thoughts. When I hear music on LSD my brain turns the music into a whole planet that looks like that music sounds. When I look in the mirror I see myself as a fey creature full of animus and life. The things that my sober self stresses about seem ridiculous - like the fears of a 5 year old. And I still feel trapped by my fears at the same time.

It’s a very unique experience. As Sam Harris says, if you take enough LSD it’s impossible to be bored.

Maursault4• 4 years ago

Depression is (imho) not to be healed with "here, swallow a pill", structural changes to one's life are necessary.

Clinical depression rarely has anything to do with what you've done or events in the outside world.

Psychiatry has settled on treating depression with two strokes, a cocktail which is a chemical antidepressent, and a chemical stabilizer, and they expect you to take these daily and stay on it for the rest of your life. I have no evidence for it, but I assume this is some pharmaceutical company's agenda, to keep you a customer for the rest of your life. While it works, chemicals always have side-effects, and with so much exposure, daily, they are bound to compound, making it more difficult to consume.

Therapy alone can cure depression, it just takes a lot of time and effort. I don't think it is possible talk therapy could ever make things worse, but it just doesn't work fast enough. Still, recommended.

But I have discovered a way to cure depression relatively quickly in two ways.

First, chemically, but without a life sentence. I have discovered a substance that will cure depression overnight, not unlike an aspirin cures a headache. You get headaches, too? How would you feel about being told you need to take a daily medication for the rest of your life to cure it? No, one dose will do. The drug is unregulated, and is available OTC in cough gels. You won't find this in any PDR, but depending on the patient's weight, say for a 160lb. man, 900mg of dextromethorphan will cure depression overnight, and it has been for some time in many clinical studies exploring its potential as a fast acting treatment for treatment-resistant depression. You take the large dose with a pepsid, and go to bed, wake the next day depression free, and its depression-killing effects can last up to a year. It is an old and safe drug, and the lethal overdose is estimated, because it is unknown. Though it is an OTC remedy for cough, dextromethorphan has already been approved for treatment of emotional incontinence, which could be seen as sort of a cousin of depression.

The other cure, chemical free, is sunlight. Light in the eyes regulates mood. Not enough light will eventually cause depression. Too much light will cause mania (as we should have suspected from the exploits of Florida Man). Put enough sunlight in your eyes, it will cure your clinical depression. If daylight is not enough, get an artificial light that is an accurate simulator of natural sunlight, which is probably not LED, due to too much blue light, which also damages the eye and slowly blinds you, but you can't go wrong with halogen. Point it at your eyes. You can even close your eyes, light goes right through the eye lids and is still effective at fighting depression.

ncmncm5• 4 years ago

Dextromethorphan is now approved by FDA for treating depression. They use much less than 900 mg, though -- 45 mg -- and coupled with 100 mg bupropion, increasing to twice after tolerance is demonstrated.

bigmealbigmeal2• 4 years ago

Clinical depression rarely has anything to do with what you've done or events in the outside world.

Do you have any evidence for this? This contradicts some studies I've seen on the matter, for example, one where 75% of chronically depressed patients reported clinically significant histories of childhood trauma.[1]

Not to mention that your second cure, sunlight, is literally an example of things we've done or events in the outside world (i.e. time spent outside).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4677006/

hi5eyes• 4 years ago

Psychs often leave oneself with the motivation to make radical changes to improve themselves

implementing those changes over time is the key

ParallelThread• 4 years ago

Are you in the US? Where can I find information about people who can help me be with the experience safely?

molszanski• 4 years ago

People confuse simple with easy. How to quit smoking? Simple. Don’t smoke. Easy? Not so much. Many things require mental willpower to make it happen.

Feels like those kind of therapies help make that happen. I know one person who was borderline suicidal and this kind of therapy helped her move life into a nice direction.

no_butterscotch2• 4 years ago

2 trips on psilocybe (one month apart), proper set & setting & guide & a lot of talking about it later with a trusted person

What does "proper set & setting & guide" mean? Clinical? Or friend/shaman type thing?

GameOfFrowns• 4 years ago

I'd like to know this as well. I think this is one of the biggest hurdles to a first time user: If you're anxious or depressed, you're by definition not in a good "set". And with psychedelic therapists being rare as unicorns where to find that trip-sitter who isn't just a "That's groovy, man" weirdo that will shape your trip (and your malleable brain) into the bog-standard one with everything experience.

ccooffee• 4 years ago

Is there a book you recommend for getting started with research? There is enough noise in this space that I find "search the internet" to be...difficult.

bambam3000• 4 years ago

I happened to watch the 'Ecstacy' documentary on Prime last night. I was surprised to see the guy who brought MDMA to the world was sad that it had become a party drug as he believes it's primary purpose could have been to help people psychologically. Definitely worth a watch.

mmsnberbar662• 4 years ago

MDMA is underrated. I gained a lot of healing from it in the past. If done responsibly and intelligently it can be very powerful.

yboris3• 4 years ago

People just don't know that MDMA has been shown in careful research studies to cure PTSD in severe treatment-resistant cases.

kristofferR• 4 years ago

There's no mismatch between being a party drug and helping people psychologically [1]. The only people who think so are the same kind of sad, dull people who were upset at the Finnish prime minister dancing - and since MDMA turned out to be an awesome party drug they had to ban it and punish the ones who had fun.

[1] For me, for example, I didn't have any major traumas before I tried MDMA (so therapy would have been pointless), but I were really shy. MDMA at a party setting helped me realize deeply that there's no reason for being scared of talking and connecting with people.

deadbeeves• 4 years ago

No fun allowed.

ChrisMarshallNY• 4 years ago

create a “psychedelic utopia.”

To those of us "of a certain age," this sounds ... familiar.

mistermann3• 4 years ago

Let's hope we screw it up less badly this time, and maybe eventually get it to stick.

derbOac• 4 years ago

Timothy Leary is probably rolling in his grave.

saint_yossarian• 4 years ago

Rolling... on MDMA?

Mordisquitos• 4 years ago

Whether the potential of psychedelic therapy has been overstated or not, I think the bubble cannot be "about to burst" for the simple reason it hasn't had the timeframe nor the scale to even be called "a bubble", let alone for it to finish on such an intense note as "bursting".

«Is the psychedelic therapy spark about to fizzle out?» might have been a more apt analogy.

(I have no reason to opine either way regarding the answer)

flybrand• 4 years ago

I agree, this isn’t yet big enough - or fake enough - to be labeled as a bubble.

mountainriver• 4 years ago

It hasn’t even remotely reached its potential

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

It hasn't even had nearly enough scientific research done on it either, since it's classed as drugs in most areas.

alecbz4• 4 years ago

I’ve dealt with depression for the better half of my life. I tried SSRIs for a decade with moderate results — they definitely helped, but more so in a way where the depression felt manageable than feeling really happy. I went off them at the beginning of the year to experiment with managing the depression other ways: therapy, meditation, exercise.

One day I got to work and noticed that for the first time in a while, I was feeling really happy. In a way where I realized that other times I thought I was happy, I was really just not-too-sad. This was what actual happiness felt like. I was kind of surprised, but thought “wow, I guess the meditation and exercise are finally paying off? It must be that… nothing else has been different recently…”

And then I remembered that I’d tried shrooms for the first time the day before.

So far, trips seem to pretty reliably have this effect for maybe 1-2 weeks. I suspect I’m also seeing some more durable benefits beyond that, but a little harder to be sure.

mattgreenrocks• 4 years ago

I don’t take psychedelics. But I’m convinced meditation and exercise can re-wire your brain.

Meditation trains the mind to learn to see when it is falling into maladaptive grooves. It doesn’t prevent it, just a raises awareness. Exercise for me seems to shift the baseline mood forward a bit. Kind of feels like my hormones are in the right place after 25 years.

kekebo• 4 years ago

I agree, learning to direct focus can shine valuable light onto (often unreflected) self-narrative processing.

Exercise never yielded the benefits I sometimes saw in studies for me but every time I manage to motivate myself to do the healthy/sane/right thing against inner resistance, it leads to a small boost in self-respect that accumulates over time.

elevaet• 4 years ago

As someone who's taken plenty of psychedelics, done lots of meditation, and gets tons of exercise, I'd agree that they can all re-wire your brain.

Psychedelics are very different from the other two tho, just like exercise is very different from meditation.

They are all very worthwhile and can help you grow.

Meditation and exercise are best practiced regularly. Psychedelics are best used for singular cathartic events, saved for special occasions.

Psychedelics can change your outlook overnight, while meditation is a more gradual process. Excercise won't really change your outlook palpably, it will just keep you in a better head and body space.

They all can be difficult and rewarding. Its possible to harm yourself with any of them, but generally you come out well ahead if you do them responsibly. They can all make you a better person.

alecbz4• 4 years ago

I think exercise is closer to improving hormonal balances than really “rewiring” your brain, but for sure I notice that it can help a bit. Maybe it does have some “rewiring” effects.

I do think meditation rewires your brain in a way that’s similar to psychedelics (there’s common themes you experience with both, like ego death), but I think it just takes much longer to achieve similar effects. I’d meditated daily for close to a year straight, and while it helped, I didn’t feel like I got anywhere close to how I felt either during tripping (kinda obviously maybe) or after tripping.

That said, while so far psychedelics seem safe, they’re at the very least more logistically “disruptive” than meditation, not to mention social stigmas, difficulty getting them, etc. Meditation does seem like a more sustainable long-term practice.

Some of the above is why I’ve become interested in trying ketamine therapy instead.

spaetzleesser2• 4 years ago

I have had the same after trips. For a few days I just felt good which is usually rare for me. It was good to experience how feeling good feels. I had almost forgotten.

mistermann3• 4 years ago

It was good to experience how feeling good feels. I had almost forgotten.

Good point.

I wonder what kind of interesting experiments could be designed around psychedelics, skilled counsellors & mediators, and people who've ended up with various "extreme" beliefs, political or otherwise.

nocoiner2• 4 years ago

This sounds very similar to my experience. I have persistent depression - usually pretty minor, but sometimes worse than others - and social anxiety, and recently started psychedelic therapy with ketamine (I’m still on my SSRIs, which keep things in check, but certainly aren’t a cure).

I didn’t experience any psychedelic effects, but my mood was significantly improved during the weeks after. Anxiety greatly diminished, confidence greatly increased and I for the first time in a few years, I feel like I have a path to conquering my impostor syndrome.

I’m not yet totally comfortable telling my social circle that I’ve been prescribed horse tranquilizers, but I’ve been an immediate convert to the possibilities of these courses of treatment. I can’t say it isn’t psychosomatic or the placebo effect at work, but I’ve been frankly shocked at how quickly it worked for me and how well it has seemed to work.

jp0d• 4 years ago

How is this a bubble if it's actually helping people with mental health issues. A lot of universities have begun studying this. These should never have been illegal in the first place.

Kalanos• 4 years ago

right, "only slightly better than existing drugs."

jasonhansel3• 4 years ago

A lot of people here are claiming that Big Pharma is suppressing the truth about psychedelics so that they can make money from SSRIs. But remember: Big Pharma isn't making much money on SSRIs anymore, now that they've gone generic. If anything, it's the movement against SSRIs and in favor of new treatments that may be motivated by profit.

eluketronic• 4 years ago

Psilocybin is still something that can be grown/synthesized outside of a lab. Sure, major pharmaceutical companies could synthesize pure psilocybin and sell that as a new treatment in some kind of ideal form but it seem that from a lot of anecdotes posted here as well as many other stories I’ve heard, “normal”, non-lab-produced psilocybe mushrooms can have a profiundly positive effect. This might be what big pharma is seeing as a potential opportunity loss and therefore funding studies that skew results in a less positive way.

jasonhansel3• 4 years ago

The issue is that your doctor can't write a prescription for the mushrooms themselves, so those aren't likely to become a mainstream treatment.

The more likely outcome is that the industry will create a synthetic analogue of psilocybin, conduct the trials needed to get it FDA-approved as a depression treatment, and then market it widely, making it more readily available and widely known than psilocybin itself.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing: such an analogue might (say) have fewer side effects or work more reliably. But it will result in the pharmaceutical industry getting the bulk of the profits.

smt88• 4 years ago

Big Pharma has more money to make from psychedelics than from suppressing them. They're already selling ketamine and ketamine-adjacent drugs for depression.

gnz11• 4 years ago

A drug becoming available as a generic doesn’t mean end of shady practices to maximize profits. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/pharmaceutical-companies-pay-...

34679• 4 years ago

The headline presupposes that a bubble exists. I would argue it doesn't. A psychedelic therapy bubble would have many commercial products that do basically the same thing, all competing for the same dollars.

Begging the question:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

tony_cannistra2• 4 years ago

I was totally struck by the sexual abuse perpetrated by therapists within research studies that this article talks about. It belies a need for much more careful scrutiny of the whole research enterprise, if you ask me.

I can't believe someone who wants to help someone else (and, by the way, try to demonstrate the power of psychedelics that they no-doubt believe in) would jeopardize the whole enterprise that way.

Why has nobody in this thread commented on that?

AndrewVos2• 4 years ago

Probably because sexual abuse is a bad thing that happens, but not something that invalidates taking drugs to cure depression?

tony_cannistra2• 4 years ago

Forgive me, but have you driven a car?

Surely you wouldn't suggest that research into the efficacy of automobile safety technology should continue unchanged were it determined that humans were being irreversibly harmed by said research.

ravenstine• 4 years ago

Is the pop science journalism bubble about to burst?

Unfortunately, Bettridge's Law applies here.

ghostpepper• 4 years ago

The core complaint here seems to be that therapists abuse patients undergoing pyschedelic therapy - but I don't see any claims of evidence that abuse is more prevalent than abuse in any other therapeutic setting.

throwpsychosis• 4 years ago

If anyone with mental health issues is considering psychedelics on their own, outside a clinical setting: please be careful and do your research beforehand. They nearly completely ruined my life. Definitely do not do them if you are on an SSRI.

I am bipolar but was diagnosed incorrectly with depression and OCD, taking an SSRI. I was a regular marijuana smoker and took DMT which resulted in acute psychosis that lasted months. I'd had what I now recognized as hypomanic episodes before, but nothing this bad.

I will not get into details for privacy reasons but had to take months off of work or school. I alternately thought I was famous, being followed, could control cameras that were following me at all times - the works. I had visual and auditory hallucinations days after the DMT experience, auditory weeks to months later. I told friends strange things about my mental health history that were misperceived. It is a bit of a blur.

About a week after taking DMT, I was involuntarily hospitalized and only sent home with family supervision. They put me on strong antipsychotics with nasty side effects. They didn't help at all. I only got better months later, after I got off of all psychiatric drugs, and realized when talking with a friend that I was not famous. I then entered into a nearly year long depression and perceived that I had lost almost all my friends, although I now think that was not the case.

Now, I've been stable for almost 10 years, and am married with a great career. We have a dog, a house, and are looking to have kids soon. I'm incredibly happy and only recovered with the support of family, friends, and great doctors. I've been taking lamotrigine daily for bipolar. For me, it is a wonder drug. Bipolar is incredibly hard for psychiatrists to diagnose. It took them years to identify it.

Another friend of mine had acute psychosis due to another psychedelic drug and had a similar experience to mine with a hospitalization.

If you have any family history of schizophrenia or bipolar or are on psychiatric drugs, please really carefully consider the possible consequences of using psychedelics.

kirel33• 4 years ago

Lamotrigine has been a wonder drug for me, I'm still early days on my treatment but can already notice the massive improvements!

just adding my comment so people see that getting help is perfectly fine (if you get the right treatment/diagnosis, it's a life changer for the best!) - mental health is still a bit taboo in some circles and I remember reading about the good experiences of people online made me finally jump into treatment :)

fritztastic• 4 years ago

Thank you for sharing that. That's a valid concern- people trying psychedelics on their own also run into the risk that what they're getting is altered, not what they wanted at all, or unintentionally taking a dose that will bring them bad outcomes. Even with cannabis, back when it was completely illegal, I knew people who would sometimesb unknowingly get their hands on batches that had been laced with something else and end up having wildly unpredictable (and sometimes frightening) experiences.

ncmncm5• 4 years ago

Yes. Anyone borderline schizophrenic should be very, very careful around psychedelics.

But I have seen good results (treatment-seeking, successful) in borderline schizophrenics after exposure to MDMA.

huetius• 4 years ago

A friend of mine has a similar story. Still searching for his good ending. I’m glad you’re better.

I feel like we’re at the beginning of the opioid wave again, and the obvious and foreseeable negative consequences are just being shunted aside. We never learn anything.

jamal-kumar• 4 years ago

I made friends with a woman who does something called integration therapy. She deals mostly with people who have gone and dosed themselves in the hope of finding themselves or whatever and just end up needing professional help because that's a very hard thing to do to yourself if you're already messed up.

The way I've always seen it is this - Learning your lesson with these things is kind of like learning your lesson because you just got your ass handed to you in a fist fight, except with psychedelics it's like getting cosmically beaten into a pulp by having your consciousness put into a cannon and fired across the universe and back. Some people are really attuned to this kind of thing and can just shake it off while laughing the entire time. Others, who have no idea what they're getting into, with stuff like pre-existing anxiety conditions? If anyone really thinks them going solo on these kind of journeys is going to make them better then they might as well send them down some rapids with no boating or swimming experience for a 'therapeutic' prank show.

The key thing this article and the researchers touch on is that it's the integration part of the therapy that works, the drug is something like a catalyst, and any hype around treatments which work without that component is likely to turn out to be a dangerous disappointment. I don't disagree with this at all.

braindead_in• 4 years ago

Afterward, participants received aftercare, known as “integration,” in which they process everything that happened during the trip.

Integration is definitely the key step. Without integration, the trip is no different than recreational use for fun. Integration requires sustained effort and guidance. If you don't have professional help, then meditation is the best DIY method. It usually leads to Spirituality. Pyschedlics tend to go very well with Buddhist and Vedantic spiritual practices. I think it best complements with Neo-Advaita. If Advaita is the theory, then psychedelics are the practicals.

Ambolia• 4 years ago

Never cared about psychedelics, but if it's only "marginally better" than antidepresants, and has less side effects, that sounds like a huge win.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

The first bloom of the rose being marginally better than current antidepressants is a bad sign, seeing as right now it's going to be getting the most biased and cherry picked selections of studies it's ever going to get. SSRIs started off as miracles before they became possibly no more effective than placebo. Psychedelics are starting as marginally better than possibly no more effective than placebo.

michaelwww3• 4 years ago

1) This is nothing compared to when Prozac® was introduced in the 90's. The idea that Prozac was going to cure Western mental health ills was quite popular and viral. It was a dawn of a new age according to some. Now SSRI's are still used when appropriate, but no one thinks they are a cure all for depression.

2) There's a distortion at work here. Many people, including myself, thing that natural growing mushrooms or other plants containing hallucinogens should not be illegal. The problem is that it appears the only way to legalize at the current time is to force them into a doctor/patient therapeutic relationship. This is causing people to twist themselves into a knots trying to explain why this small step towards legalization should be allowed. Many exaggerations and false claims are being made. And who wants to always have to do their trip with a doctor sitting by their side?

My hometown of Santa Cruz California is on the right track. Decriminalize for personal use and move on to more important issues.

Santa Cruz decriminalizes magic mushrooms and other natural psychedelics, making it the third US city to take such a step

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/us/santa-cruz-mushrooms-psych...

yboris3• 4 years ago

Other cities have followed, for example Ann Arbor in Michigan - making mushrooms the lowest priority for police (effectively decriminalizing them).

One thing stands out: Oregon decriminalized all drugs in 2020 - it feels like a not well-known fact.

Another side-note: because mushroom spores do not contain the psychoactive ingredient, they are not illegal to ship across state lines, so it's entirely legal to purchase spores on the internet ("for microscopy use only"), and then use "Uncle Ben Tek" to grow your own mushrooms (this part is illegal).

michaelwww3• 4 years ago

Thanks for the tip! I've been thinking about growing my own.

pessimizer4• 4 years ago

If only 2) were true; the process that pot went through didn't turn out that badly. My fear is that it's exactly the opposite, and medicalization will turn psychedelics into the new class of drugs that a medical degree anoints you to deal, like opioids. Still very illegal, but everyone is on them.

michaelwww3• 4 years ago

That's what I was trying to say. They want to do it differently than they did with pot. With pot you could easily get a doctor to write a prescription and you used THC and CBD as needed in the comfort of your own home. With hallucinogens it sure seems like they want you to take them under the supervision of a therapist, who will guide your experience in a therapeutic direction. A few reasons come to mind for why they might be doing this

- To reassure the legal authorities that the use of them is properly supervised and safe

- To bring them to a wider audience, such as a depressed grandma who needs to accept her approaching death but would never take them on her own

- For their own status, power and money needs. It worries me that once they achieve this, they will fight legalization for recreational use

That's all fine, but don't tell me I can't take them for my own pleasure and purpose when I want, such as at a music festival, on a hike in the woods, or just because. I really don't need a therapist to guide my trip, thank you very much.

Edit: Another thing, I've raised the issue on Twitter that doctors and therapists who used them in therapy settings should have some experience with hallucinogens. They shut me down really quick. It's the elephant in the room apparently. How are you going to guide someone when you have no experience with them?

photochemsyn• 4 years ago

It's a bit odd that this article doesn't even mention the fact that psychedelic treatments for depression, if widely successful, would likely destroy a major fraction of anti-depressant sales across the United States. That's an obvious reason the pharmaceutical industry would be pushing back against this.

mousetree• 4 years ago

If they were widely successful, why wouldn't the pharmaceutical industry offer psychedelic treatments?

akomtu2• 4 years ago

Because it would be wildly efficient and cheap. All your permanently depressed clintee would be gone and with them your profits.

LouisSayers• 4 years ago

The problem is barriers to entry. If made legal there'd be very little barrier to entry for people (or companies) to grow mushrooms.

There's a lot stopping people from producing patented drug concoctions.

jscipione• 4 years ago

The SNRI therapy bubble has already burst, now druggists are looking for alternatives. The tragic part is that psychologists have been prescribing mind-altering drugs for years that didn't treat depression. What makes psychedelics any different?

darawk• 4 years ago

The findings were somewhat lackluster: it found that the psychedelic was only marginally better than traditional treatments at relieving depression.

Err, what? What could possibly be lackluster about that? A one time (or few times) treatment does marginally better than a daily pill? Even if taken at face value, that's a spectacular result.

nostromo• 4 years ago

The actual paper states things more clearly.

In this trial the primary outcome did not differ significantly between the trial groups.
Secondary outcomes generally favored psilocybin over escitalopram; however, the confidence intervals for the between-group differences were not adjusted for multiple comparisons, and no conclusions can be drawn from these data.

p_j_w2• 4 years ago

It's also just one single study. Maybe there's more out there, but this article doesn't even remotely make the case that its headline implies.

mtalantikite• 4 years ago

Another thing that stood out to me is that all participants actually received psilocybin, it’s just that one group took 25mg vs the ssri group that took 1mg. It’s certainly a very small dose, but it’s a powerful chemical that seems to have effects even at these microdose levels. It would have been nice to see a group that had no psilocybin at all.

mw888• 4 years ago

It seems like the bubble that’s been bursting for the last couple of years obvious to anyone paying attention is that microdosing is not equal to the sum of its doses.

The studies which show inspiring results on hard problems like PTSD and depression involve high dose, singular experiences, and because of the nature of that high dose, a lot of preparation takes place, weeks or months sometimes and a lot of care planned out via therapist.

I believe it was a Roland Griffiths study that showed that if the subjective and measured (brain scan) experience was not consistent with a deeply spiritual experience, the positive long term effects did not come.

akomtu2• 4 years ago

What psychodelics seem to do, based on all the accounts of "feeling of connectedness" and "higher vision", is it does something to epiphysis cerebri in the brain to mute the lower triad of the human - body, emotions and mind - so the quiet voice of the true human, aka its soul, can be heard. There, above, connectedness of everything, as well as the clear vision of purpose and practical invincibility, are self evident realities. It gives you a glimpse into what the normal state of consciousness of a saint looks like. Meditation is a slow and safe way to get to the same state eventually, with an important difference - that state won't depend on a whim of some chemicals.

adultSwim• 4 years ago

I don't think psychedelics need to be a miracle cure-all to have value in our society. Prohibition should end immediately.

lawrenceyan• 4 years ago

I think you need some kind of framework in order to utilize psychedelics properly. Buddhist or other meditation oriented practices are very popular, but not the only path.

The important thing is to have something you can cultivate because otherwise what might happen is that you accidentally heighten your existing feedback loops, which are likely negative, leading to a bad trip and in the worst case possibly psychosis.

Having strong foundational positive feedback loops that you can use as a anchor or bedrock are useful not only during chemically altered brain states, but in general life as well in protecting your mind (a Patronus for your “defense against the dark arts” you might say).

chiefalchemist• 4 years ago

The findings were somewhat lackluster: it found that the psychedelic was only marginally better than traditional treatments at relieving depression.

This is said early on. But then the article continues and the gist is that it's still early days for psychedelics. That is, they compared well tested therapies with a new one (i.e., it's possible the dosage isn't optimized yet).

Given that psychedelics have been around much longer, then it's actually the newer (propriety Big Pharma) therapies that are coming up short.

xor99• 4 years ago

Just decriminalise possession.

dunemaster• 4 years ago

I don’t think that anecdotal evidence benefits the evidence behind psychedelic therapies. I lost a lot of weight by eating gummy bears around the same time I started to exercise and eat less. Is that a convincing argument for gummy bears as a weight loss tool? They weren’t keto either.

Is the psychedelic therapy bubble about to burst?

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