Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/TRIP-TREATMENT

by juanplusjuan • 11 years ago

347 110 11 years ago

newyorker.com

Pyret• 11 years ago

“I didn’t want there to be an easy way out,” she recently told me. “I wanted him to fight.”

Attitude that keeps everything stagnant and backwards.

MichaelGG5• 11 years ago

It's repulsive how people think "no pain no gain". I think that might be some of the resistance against sucralose. It's a free ride. Same for the attitude about addiction. It's viewed as intrinsically bad, instead of just evaluating it in context of benefits.

WiseWeasel• 11 years ago

It's a very Catholic mentality, the notion that sin is atoned for with suffering. It would seem entirely foreign to a Buddhist, for example, who would see fortune as a result of accrued karma.

b_emery• 11 years ago

I read that quote as his wife saying that she didn't want him to give up and die. She wanted him to fight the cancer rather than obtain a "profound acceptance" of it.

delluminatus• 11 years ago

I think that's a false dilemma. In my mind, part of "fighting" cancer is trying to mitigate its impact on your everyday life, and acceptance probably plays a key role in that process. It's not like being angry and afraid makes you any better at fighting a disease. If anything "fighting" and "accepting" could be said to go hand-in-hand, especially with respect to illness.

rayiner• 11 years ago

The psychedelics weren't offering him a pain-free cancer treatment. Their purpose was to get him prepared to die.

snikeris3• 11 years ago

Includes an interesting account of Robert Jesse's (former Oracle VP, software engineer) efforts to resurrect this research:

When the history of second-wave psychedelic research is written, Bob Jesse will be remembered as one of two scientific outsiders who worked for years, mostly behind the scenes, to get it off the ground.

Alex39172• 11 years ago

For those who haven't seen them, his talks are highly worth watching and will completely change your ideas about religion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM-yinhpOgQ

http://vimeo.com/10968562

snikeris3• 11 years ago

In the same vein (and including at least one essay by him):

http://csp.org/practices/entheogens/EFR.html

msane• 11 years ago

will completely change your ideas about religion

Sort of presumptive.

bduerst• 11 years ago

Your comment reminds me of Timothy Leary and the Harvard experiments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Psilocybin_Project

benten102• 11 years ago

While this is undoubtedly exciting, lets not forget what should be for us (specially people in the technology who have seen waves of the same 'fad' come over and go) this paragraph from the article:

The first wave of research into psychedelics was doomed by an excessive exuberance about their potential. For people working with these remarkable molecules, it was difficult not to conclude that they were suddenly in possession of news with the power to change the world—a psychedelic gospel[...]It didn’t take long for once respectable scientists such as Leary to grow impatient with the rigmarole of objective science. He came to see science as just another societal “game,” a conventional box it was time to blow up—along with all the others.

Special emphasis on the last sentence.

nemo1618• 11 years ago

Indeed, though I'm a little more optimistic this time around. I think Leary and the rest assumed LSD was more-or-less guaranteed to produce profound spiritual insights in anyone who took it. Therefore, the primary problem was distribution: once LSD was available to the general public, society was guaranteed to "wake up."

Obviously, this was mistaken. Many people did take acid, have direct experiences of divine revelation, and go on to live happier, more fulfilled lives because of it. But many also took it primarily as a deliriant; they took it for fun, saw some neat visual hallucinations, maybe offended some people, maybe got wrapped up in a paranoid delusion. Or, even if they did "wake up," their excited babbling could appear very disturbing to observers, who often had no frame of reference for what the drug-user was going through. I'm sure it scared the hell out of a lot of them.

Clearly, psychedelics aren't a panacea for society's problems. But what we're seeing now is a return to the more reserved approach of administrating these drugs in a controlled setting, and primarily for the purpose of psychotherapy. I think psychedelics have a bright future as long as we avoid trying to "change the world" and focus on just helping one person at a time. I don't fault Leary for his optimism, but ultimately I wonder if he did more harm than good.

clapas2• 11 years ago

Every person is different, and every trip is different. You must learn what helps you.

err• 11 years ago

He came to see science as just another societal “game,” a conventional box it was time to blow up

and here i thought this site championed disruption.

state• 11 years ago

"During each session, which would last the better part of a day, Mettes would lie on the couch wearing an eye mask and listening through headphones to a carefully curated playlist—Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Pat Metheny, Ravi Shankar."

This strikes me as sort of funny. For someone completely unfamiliar with this stuff I would imagine encountering it to be pretty trippy on its own.

notmarkus• 11 years ago

I imagined this as, "There's no music here. These are just notes." 45 minutes later -- "Oh."

andrey-p• 11 years ago

Some time ago I listened to a radio documentary on Steve Reich. One bit I remember quite well was a description of the door to the room where musicians were practising for Music For 18 Musicians.

Apparently it had a sign warning people to stay away from that room if they had a history of mental illness.

bunkydoo• 11 years ago

As someone who has done their fair share of psychedelics - I would feel like a coward consuming these substances if I had a terminal illness. If I knew damn straight that I was gonna die, I wouldn't want to numb it up with a substance. I'd want every minute of pain, suffering, and emotional baggage to be taken on with a sober mind.

But that is my personal choice. I would say it's probably a very positive thing on the other hand for people like Patrick who never consumed these substances. DMT might be the best one for someone who is dying, as it is hypothesized that pineal gland floods an endogenous version of this chemical into your bloodstream upon death. Consuming it prior to death could potentially work as a "practice run" to help cope with the real thing as sad as it sounds.

benten102• 11 years ago

I see where you're coming from, but then, I also don't think it's a fair judgment on yourself. Who gets to decide 'the amount of pain, baggage to be taken on'? Would you be okay with getting torture-level pain, instead of say, lesser pain? From the article: >Aldous Huxley concluded from his psychedelic experience that the conscious mind is less a window on reality than a furious editor of it.

What does it matter if your editorial is less strict about filtering reality in? Again, as the article asks:

Psychedelics open the valve wide, removing the filter that hides much of reality, as well as dimensions of our own minds, from ordinary consciousness.

Is that really that much of cowardice?

snikeris3• 11 years ago

I think you've got the wrong idea. It's not about numbing the individual from the suffering they are experiencing; it's about gaining a new perspective and transcending the part of you that perceives your impending death as a cause for suffering.

wyager• 11 years ago

The whole "DMT release upon death" thing has very little supporting evidence. https://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt_article2.shtml

emacsfodder• 11 years ago

Quite, pretty much zero supporting evidence.

DINKDINK• 11 years ago

Why would you be a coward if you had a terminal illness? Because you want to transcend reality beyond your pain? If so, that's the same logic people use to discredit any psychedelic experimentation; saying that people who use substances (often only non state-sanctioned drugs) to alter their experiences.

I'd want every minute of pain, suffering, and emotional baggage to be taken on with a sober mind.

Seeing the broad trend with end-of-life care is to numb this pain, it seems like you're coming from a place of muchisimo-ness. I've been in medical-grade pain before and there is nothing more in the world you care about than ending the pain.

DennisP• 11 years ago

The idea isn't to numb yourself or stay high the whole time. It's to take psychedelics once (or maybe several times) to gain a new perspective, well before dying.

ridgeguy• 11 years ago

I didn't find any aspect of psychedelics numbing. Rather the opposite for me.

saiya-jin4• 11 years ago

exactly!

saiya-jin4• 11 years ago

I had my back tatoo being done on 4 sessions, each was 4-hour long experience. It felt as a pizza cutter running here & there on my back, having areas around spine and sides much more sensitive and thus painful. I can guarantee you, after coulpe of hours of nearly-sustained pain, I was dumbed down to basic creature, which can say yes, no, left, right and that was about it. Imagining 2 years of it... you, not even me, have an idea how crippiling such pain long term is. I can see roughly your point - but it's a point made by boy who has no clue how crippiling constant pain is. Neither do I, but I had at least a glimpse. With pain level high enough, it would cripple your remaining days to drooling struggle to function like a human being. That's why most of those unfortunates end up on high doses of painkillers, which really dumb them down to semi-consious level. That's not what psychedelics do to you.

FranOntanaya• 11 years ago

"The data are still being analyzed and have not yet been submitted to a journal for peer review"

Maybe the NewYorker could have waited for that to happen.

superobserver• 11 years ago

Fascinating research. I just hope the same mistakes aren't repeated and a really rigorous and robust effort is made to find what sorts of applications these substances can be used for. I'm reminded of LSD microdosing by scientists to improve innovation that had been done before, but I am unaware of to what degree it really bore any viable fruit.

kahoon• 11 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelics_in_problem-solving...

Solutions obtained in the experiment include:[3][5][6]

- a new approach to the design of a vibratory microtome

- a commercial building design, accepted by the client

- space probe experiments devised to measure solar properties

- design of a linear electron accelerator beam-steering device

- engineering improvement to a magnetic tape recorder

- a chair design, modeled and accepted by the manufacturer

- a letterhead design, approved by the customer

- a mathematical theorem regarding NOR gate circuits

- completion of a furniture-line design

- a new conceptual model of a photon, which was found useful

- design of a private dwelling, approved by the client

- insights regarding how to use interferometry in medical diagnosis application sensing heat distribution in the human body

a8da6b0c91d• 11 years ago

Allegedly one of the forces working against LSD research is the popular narrative about how SSRIs work: the idea that higher serotonin is good. The primary mechanism of LSD appears to be serotonin agonism. In a hand-wavy way you can argue that elevated serotonin numbs a mammal and dulls perception of the world, and that reducing it makes thought and senses more vivid. An LSD trip is arguably the experience of removing the filters.

The idea that SSRIs even boost serotonin levels is probably wrong. The mechanisms of action are more complicated than that. But the serotonin narrative is well established and in use by a multi-billion dollar industry.

task_queue• 11 years ago

Agonism isn't antagonism. Though, some of the first and newer antidepressants are antagonists or mixed agonist/antagonist. Some forgo significant SERT binding altogether.

Their simple narrative wouldn't have been torn apart by LSD research anymore than the industries other offerings.

clapas2• 11 years ago

TL;DR I grow magic mushrooms myself and can asure there is a mystic experience on eating them. I do not eat them often, but it helps me everytime with a new perspective.

shanra88• 11 years ago

Mention of "ego-less" state etc sound just like the teachings of hindu masters like Ramana Maharishi, Nisargadatta Maharaj...

avodonosov• 11 years ago

Yes, I noticed that too.

From previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8940650

cubano4• 11 years ago

I took a ton of acid (blotter) in the late 70's and early 80's as a teen, and then again in the late 90's (window pane and liquid eyedrops), and I just have to say, I, personally, have mixed feelings about this sort of thing being heralded as some sort of metaphysical panacea.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I became addicted to opiates in the mid 2000's and lived as a zombified-but-somehow-functional heroin addict for about 4 years.

There is no doubt, in my personal case, that acid and mushrooms (that I often hand-picked in cow pastures after rainstorms here in central Florida) gateway-ed me into harder, destructive "escapes", and for that reason, I cannot fully endorse this sort of thing.

I've had amazing trips where I literally felt as one with the group of friends I was chilling with and created deep, transcendent bonds, and I've had a select few shit ones where I felt totally alienated from every living soul (but not nature, interestingly) on earth.

They did expand my consciousness, but looking back, I see now that it introduced into my psyche a fairly deep distrust of authority and convention which, under sober scrutiny, perhaps did little to help me always successfully nagivate my life.

Treating the very sick and/or terminally ill with psychedelics makes great sense to me; anything to ease those pains, but my own experience makes me want to throw at least a dart of caution into the mix when it comes to making a blanket statement about the benefits of LSD and such.

joshuahhh• 11 years ago

I'm surprised (and disheartened) to hear that psychedelics served as your gateway into harmful drug use. Can you tell a bit more about the role psychedelics played?

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

Different respondent (I'm not him). I can't answer to his personal experience, and it's never happened to me, but I've seen this happen to people. When I lived in Williamsburg, probably 3/4 of the people I saw on a daily basis were regular recreational drug users. It's a nihilistic, icky culture and the negative energy is intense. People are flaky and half-there. This isn't the fault of the drugs, I don't think. They'd be just as icky and nihilistic if running on booze, cocaine, and casual sex alone. LSD and pot and shrooms merely fail to improve those people. The danger is that, in the process of getting access to a drug like LSD, you're likely to associate with that sort of people more.

Also, while I don't consider psychedelics "evil" at all, they do make a person more suggestible. If you're surrounded by a rotten culture and bombed-out people, you're going to suck in a lot of negative energy.

The recreational drug use lifestyle is, for most people, pretty awful. Again, I think that the chemicals themselves (if we're talking about psilocybin and LSD) are probably a minor factor. But to get in access, you have to deal with despicable people (such as dealers) and make a bunch of shitty friends who are in access, and there's definitely a lot of the crappy, cliquey behavior associated with American high schools. Oh, and since you're dealing with an scumbag black market, you're not always getting the chemicals that you think you are. And even if you're only interested in exploratory, "spiritual" drug use, you're still surrounded by crass, hedonistic, bombed-out people who also use cocaine (which is an asshole/empty-hedonist drug if there ever was one) and opiates (which can wreck your health and turn you into a lethargic zombie). Most of these people also have undiagnosed mental illnesses (not minor yuppie shit, but severe, unmedicated bipolar and schizophrenia that they are actively making worse) that they are too lazy to take care of [0].

[0] Please don't think I'm a Republican for calling these people "lazy". I'm talking about upper-middle- and upper-class hipsters living on parental funds who've had everything handed to them.

This is, I'd argue, a case where the illegality of these drugs makes them a lot worse in their totality (and that's one reason why I'm really glad to see these compounds being studied for potential beneficial effects, even if I'll probably never again use them). Because LSD is illegal and stigmatized, you have to deal with the dregs of humanity to get it. Now, while LSD and psilocybin may not be long-term harmful under ideal conditions (the jury is still out about that, but evidence suggest that they can do a great deal of good) they are pretty awful when used in the wrong setting... and they are almost never available in the right setting. People who run marathons and write novels and program open-source libraries rarely use LSD, not because they're "above it" (I also know some absolutely wonderful people who've used LSD) but because they're just generally not in access.

Furthermore, these drugs seem to scale poorly. The more often you use them, the less benefit they seem to deliver. I think that it's probably healthy for a normal person to have a psychedelic experience on occasion. It can set a person on a different course, and we all need that on occasion. Dropping acid every weekend is probably not a good idea. When drugs become one's life, or one's lens through which everything good or bad is viewed (note: someone who relates all intense experiences to drugs probably should fucking stop using them)... it gets very unhealthy. At this point, the person has frank psychological problems, has probably lost jobs and friends and relationships, and is exactly the sort of person who will be drawn into the use of drugs that are physically harmful (like coke and heroin).

I hope this helps to explain the pattern. Of course, there's a lot tied into it, and a lot of it's cultural. But some people undergo a subtle shift from self-improvement and learning to "experience chasing", and the chasing turns into escapism, and LSD and psilocybin are rather poor drugs for escape (they intensify life, rather than drowning it out) while alcohol, heroin, and cocaine are good for that. I know many who were irresponsible "psychonauts" in their 20s and turned into boozing alcoholics in their 40s.

All that said, this is just one slice of experience and observation (and a negative one). There are plenty of people I know who use these drugs on occasion and haven't gone wrong or boiled their brains. It's not for me, but I think it's necessarily bad. Legalizing and de-stigmatizing psychedelics would do a great deal of good, in my opinion, for everyone by removing them from toxic cultures.

corndoge• 11 years ago

This is so true. Use of psychedelics (and psychoactives in general) is such a polarizing issue, partially due to the poor drug education that the majority of the public receives, but also due to the force with which drug proponents feel they have to present their arguments in order to be heard. Too often advocates of responsible drug use portray the substances' benefits in the same uncompromising, unbalanced way that the mainstream media goes about deriding their harms.

Psychedelics are not "good" or "bad". They simply modify one's brain chemistry in novel ways that have the potential to be useful. Whether the experiences one has under their influence are useful or not depends entirely on the individual, where they are in their life, and to a moderate degree, chance.

The same goes for gateway theory. Personal experience tells me that the concept of drug use leading to more drug use is valid with some people and not with others. Much like tripping, it is largely dependent on the individual and their life situation at the time. It is not at all black and white (is it ever?).

As usual, balance is key.

heed• 11 years ago

There is no doubt, in my personal case, that acid and mushrooms (that I often hand-picked in cow pastures after rainstorms here in central Florida) gateway-ed me into harder, destructive "escapes", and for that reason, I cannot fully endorse this sort of thing.

A drug may be a gateway, but you are the one walking through it. If you are using drugs irresponsibly it is your fault, not the drugs'.

MichaelGG5• 11 years ago

Sure, but if a drug was truly harmful, we shouldn't encourage it. And if we discover activity X leads to doing something else harmful, it's cause for considering restraint. After all, cigarette ads don't harm anyone directly, yet we make the tradeoff to limit them in order to limit smoking.

(Not that it applies here. Everything I've read and seen indicates the world would be far better off if access to opiates and psychedelics was legal, easy, and well understood/educated.)

cubano4• 11 years ago

Absolutely, I agree...I tried to be very careful in my post(s) not to condemn drug use in any way, and understand that 90% of people who do drugs have no long term issues with them.

I've come to learn, after intense inpatient treatment, that my "irresponsible" drug use almost surely developed from deep emotional scars inflicted on me in my very, very early childhood.

Over the past two years, since I've cleaned up, I've studied the neuroscience of addiction quite deeply, and there are some rather enlightening studies that pretty much prove, beyond most doubt, that addiction is a brain disorder and not a "will power" (whatever that really is) issue.

In other words, people with a certain type of "neural initialization", created in very early childhood, will almost certainly become addicts of some sort, while others without those disorders, won't (or are far less likely).

All I was really trying to say was this; giving mood-altering drugs to everyone might create problems and should continued to be studied carefully.

lukifer• 11 years ago

Fault is not a useful construct in this context. I would say rather that "it is your responsibility".

MichaelGG5• 11 years ago

There are a ton of very successful opiate addicts. OxyContin alone does around $3BN of sales a year, in addition to other opiates and generics. It's safe to say that not all of that is going to people in hospitals or on workman's comp. While failed users are gonna generate a storyline and visible effects, successful users aren't going to make a big deal out of it.

Heck, the commander of Germany's Air Force was a lifelong addict. Not that he's a good role model, but that should dispel the idea that opiates kill the ability to run a "successful" life (for some values of successful), in the same way that FB using PHP should dispel idea that you can't write a world class service in PHP.

Keep your eyes open in meetings with "successful" white collar people. If you look carefully, you should not have a hard time finding plenty with pinned pupils.

aswanson• 11 years ago

"Failed users are gonna generate a story line and visible effects..." True. But you act as though this is not a serious thing to take into account when weighing fucking consequences. Take a sample of everybody who crosses a busy highway blindfolded and survives. Cause, that's scientific.

meowface2• 11 years ago

It'd be interesting to do an analysis of famous drug addicts and see if any pattern emerges in their work.

For example, do amphetamine and cocaine addicts get more work done in the long run? Are heavy psychedelic users more creative than average (examples like Francis Crick's discovery while on LSD seems to point that way, but the sample size is small)?

curiously• 11 years ago

There are a ton of very successful opiate addicts.

Oxymoron.

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

I, personally, have mixed feelings about this sort of thing being heralded as some sort of metaphysical panacea.

These drugs seem to be karmic accelerators, and they seem to intensify time by factors of 100 to 1000+, which means you can get months or years worth of experience in a few hours. If you're on a path "upward" (ignore the subjectivity of spirituality and growth for now) the drugs will push you along, you'll learn a lot, and have a beautiful experience. If you're headed for, or at risk of, crisis or a disaster, they can bring it forward with a lot of force... and it might be better, for many people, to have more time to deal with such a thing.

Monitored use with a skilled therapist is probably fine for most people (and I wouldn't be surprised if psychedelics were much more safe than what's currently being used for high-grade mental illnesses, because many of those drugs-- legal and regularly deployed in mental institutions-- are nasty) but the recreational/hedonistic use pattern you see in our society (which, for the most part, is materialistic, thrill-obsessed, short-tempered and crass... and using LSD or psilocybin doesn't change that aspect of a person unless he has the right intentions) seems to have minimal expectancy and a lot of variance.

TheSisb2• 11 years ago

I highly doubt there's much any skilled therapist can do to people who are completely hallucinating and on a bad trip.

fnordfnordfnord• 11 years ago

I see now that it introduced into my psyche a fairly deep distrust of authority and convention which, under sober scrutiny, perhaps did little to help me always successfully nagivate my life.

I have one of those too, and I can see where my life could have been easier had I not stubbornly clung to my own principles and instead accepted authority; but drugs had nothing to do with that in my case. I'm not sure that I understand how drugs could have done it in yours.

visakanv• 11 years ago

I remember the point Alan Watts used to make that I agreed with strongly– it's ridiculous to think that LSD is a magical perfect good thing for everyone, because nothing is.

The point is that it's a tool, like a car or a chainsaw. It should be used responsibly, with supervision, safely, around people who know how to help you, etc. Without regulation/licensing, when it's driven underground, it goes to the black market and that's where things get terrible.

bladecatcher• 11 years ago

I agree. Psychedelics give access to altered states of mind. Very often, these altered states are mistaken to be transcendental states (like what yogics and other saintly beings experience). It's best to avoid these shortcuts to the mind, unless one is feeling adventurous and is willing to face the consequences of the unknown that lies beneath

chez17• 11 years ago

It sounds like you're blaming your problems on the drugs and not yourself. Did you smoke cigarettes before any of this? Why isn't that the gateway drug? People tend to like yellow mustard before they move on to dijon. People tend to like light beers before they move on to IPAs. There is a natural progression there and to blame the drugs for your clearly addictive personality is wrong. Yes, they can be dangerous and because of that demand respect, but you have "mixed feelings" of people seeing if these drugs can help humans who are sick? Honestly, that is extremely extremely selfish. It's like the people who are against pot and refuse to even let sick people use it even though it's fucking magical for stomach issues and nausea (think of cancer patients going through chemo), great for glaucoma, proving to be amazing for seizures, etc... Your mistakes mean we should be hesitant to give sick people relief? Do you have "mixed feelings" morphine drips for people in intense pain? I don't understand how you can be so short sighted and selfish.

StavrosK• 11 years ago

I was about to upvote you, and then I realized that that's not what the OP is saying at all. Hell, his words were that it "makes great sense to him", and he just cautioned against treating LSD as a panacea.

Therefore, I must downvote you for the straw man.

dwaltrip• 11 years ago

With the proper approach and care, these substances can be incredibly powerful and beneficial. I can't wait until the research eventually forces the hand of those who mistakenly believe otherwise. Psylocybin and perhaps LSD should be legal on some level in our lifetime hopefully.

kbart• 11 years ago

"I can't wait until the research eventually forces the hand of those who mistakenly believe otherwise."

I wouldn't be so optimistic, we still can't even "prove" to some that vaccination is beneficial. Even if research found a valid application for hallucinogens, I doubt they will be legal or widely available in anytime soon except, maybe, as carefully dosed therapy drug in extreme cases (pretty much like opiates).

lsdaccounthn6• 11 years ago

The vaccination situation proves that there are idiots in the world, if you take those people as example of "can't prove X" then we might as well stop all scientific research right now. There's also people who believe the world is only a few thousand years old.

To get societal (and legal) change, you don't need to convince 100% of the crazies. Convincing most of the sane people is enough.

(I'm not saying only crazies are against psychedelics, just that the vaccination comparison isn't useful.)

joncooper• 11 years ago

If you're interested in this, check out MAPS: http://www.maps.org/

They are doing a great deal to push this research forward and have been for decades.

DonHopkins3• 11 years ago

John Gilmore, founder of the EFF, is on the board of directors, as is David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps and grandson of Dr. Bronner himself. Dilute! Dilute! Dilute!

lorddoig• 11 years ago

With other recent news in mind, I wonder what effect compounds like these might have on religious extremists. I wonder whether - assuming some kind of method of administration is figured out (a love bomb?) - they might stop burning people alive in cages after a decent trip.

michaelochurch3• 11 years ago

Unfortunately, it would probably make them worse. While mysticism and political extremism are loosely correlated and probably zero-to-negatively correlated once one controls for a general "religiosity" variable, at least some of these assholes in extremist movements are clearly not strangers to altered consciousness... and they're still extremist assholes.

Intention (set and setting) plays a major role. These drugs aren't "evil" and don't seem to corrupt good people, but when bad people use these drugs, they become more bad. (Source: lots of personal observation. I lived in Williamsburg for a few years.) I've seen plenty of people turn for the worse after using MDMA, LSD, psilocybin. All that said, I don't think it's just the drugs; it's also the environment, and probably the combination of the environment and the drugs in truth. Being around unhealthy people, often with bad intentions, makes for poor health.

A skilled therapist may be able to use the suggestibility of a willing person in a psychedelic state to purge him of harmful ideas... but that starts getting into a territory that some people find uncomfortable (sounds like "brainwashing").

I'm not saying that these drugs shouldn't be studied. There's no good reason for us to be 40 years behind in our understanding of these compounds and their effects on the mind. I think that they can clearly do a lot of good; but they aren't panaceas and, while I wish they could cure us of "the problem of evil", I'm not quite that optimistic.

lsdaccounthn6• 11 years ago

Using a throwaway as while I'll talk openly to some friends/family, I don't want my handle and lsd to show up together on Google.

This is a story, an anecdote, and while my view on LSD is positive as a result, definitely shouldn't be read as an endorsement of my actions.

I'm the perfect example of somebody who shouldn't go near psychedelics. I've suffered depression most of my life, and was recently diagnosed as bipolar, though I've only had two real manic episodes. But.. I'm also someone who does stupid things, possibly because of not just despite those things. I've abused coke, benzodiazepines, mdma, alcohol and weed. But never to an extent people around me might notice a problem.

A little while ago, I fell in love with my best friend. It was really fucking hard to deal with (after a few months of hoping it would go away I told her, talked it through and we set about trying to get rid of the awkwardness of staying friends), harder than any other life/love problems I've had. For 6 months I was depressed, had no appetite.. I was forcing myself to eat one meal a day because despite never getting hungry I knew I needed to. Friends told me the appetite was related to my feelings, but I stubbornly dismissed that as pop science - meanwhile I was kind of happy about the appetite, as I was losing inches from my waist.

Then I took LSD for the first time. It was nothing like I'd expected it to be (in my imagination it would be like entering a new world, not just altering the way your mind works in the current world), but it was lovely. A few hours into that trip, I started thinking about my friend. I realised that while I still felt the same way about her.. it didn't hurt any more. It was like this clarity just appeared over the situation that there's nothing I can do about it, so I shouldn't let it hurt me. While under the influence I realised it would probably be back to normal when I woke up the next day, but then it wasn't. I woke up feeling the same way I had while tripping, went into the office, and by lunchtime I was feeling hungry for literally the first time in half a year.

Now I'm in a slightly different place. I'm no longer abusing <something> on a daily basis (the last thing to go was daily weed smoking). I've no interest in benzos or MDMA. I still love coke, but hardly ever do it (twice in the last 18 months, both times someone else's suggestion, both times I didn't want more the next day). And psychedelics... I haven't done them much lately, but have an order on-route from dark net markets of LSD and DMT, largely motivated by wanting some more internal soul searching.

I was hugely grateful to the LSD for that effect it had on me. I've used it quite a few times since then, though it's never made such an impact since. But lately I've been starting to feel down about her again. I don't know if it can help me again.

Long story short... I'm not saying any of my actions were/are sensible or the results deserved. Nor that LSD would help everyone who was in my situation. But as a single anecdote (and hopefully interesting story), it opened my eyes to believing in the sort of trials being described by this article. My pre-existing mental conditions mean I'm probably unlikely to get approved for anything like this, even when it reaches wider access, but if I could, I'd jump at the chance to go through psychedelic therapy with expert scientists guiding me rather than doing it on my own.

(Incidentally: who knows, maybe my next tab will turn me into a schizophrenic: but in the ~15 trips I've had on acid, I'm yet to have a single "bad trip". Same goes for the few times I've tried DMT.)

eli_gottlieb• 11 years ago

I'm sure the drugs can have therapeutic uses. I'm also just as sure that they don't reveal any kind of metaphysical Higher Reality, and we should stop addressing them as if they did. They merely alter your brain functioning in certain ways.

skidoo3• 11 years ago

I learned more about the world from DMT than in all my years of school.

lsdaccounthn6• 11 years ago

Tell a story? :)

skidoo3• 11 years ago

My last biggie voyage also involved an anointing with Abramelin oil, and I was trying to focus on a copy of the Hermit card from a Tarot deck. By this time I was very deep into using DMT as a meditation tool, and on this occasion I was really pushing my luck.

I sat on the back deck of a cousin's cabin, fairly removed from the modern world, and a massive electrical storm was slowly gathering through the evening. For most folks I've spoken with DMT trips last 10 to 15 minutes, but for me they last hours. I'm still unsure as to whether this was due to a stronger variety of crystal we were growing, or because I was giving myself to it that much more.

Suffice to say, on that night the world around me became pulsating molecules, everything connected like neon blueprints going 3-D and contorting and revolving around themselves, extending into and beyond everything. The raindrops were merely pulses, the colors like waves flowing softly around me. It grew to be a violent storm, but the passivity I felt, especially from the benevolence of the bright Felix-the-Cat-like elves whose eyes would at times appear in the arrangements of atoms about me...I knew that no matter what happened around me, I had a strong center, strong enough to enable my survival of virtually anything. I was the only stillness in the universe.

It sounds silly, I'm sure, but I have known fear by no means and in no circumstances since that night, almost two years ago. Religion strengthens the soul for some. DMT reinforced my spine, and my faith in myself.

Research into psychedelics, shut down for decades, is yielding results

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