They can trigger a paradigm shift in many other areas, not just mental health care.
Except it's so hard to explain this to a 'normal' person, who's never taken any.
"If God were to permit you a brief voyage into the divine process,
let you whirl for a second into the atomic nucleus or spin you
out on a light-year trip through the galaxies, how on earth
would you describe what you saw when you got back, breathless,
to your office? This metaphor may sound farfetched or irrelevant,
but just ask someone who has taken a heavy dose of LSD."
- Tim Leary, The politics of ecstasy, 1968
It's similar to the 'overview effect' reported by astronauts who've been to space.
Of course it triggers a paradigm shift and 'cures' depression or other mind-loops that we find ourselves in so often.
It's good to see that there are more discussions about psychedelics in the scientific community.
I suspect there are many (more and more) scientists and academics who use psychedelics so
I think we will see more and more material published on this subject, apart from the huge amount of anecdotal material available online.
I also suspect that people use more psychedelics now than ever in our history.
And it's happening globally. And it's a good thing.
Because I believe psychedelics are the mythical 'love bomb' which can stop wars and bring peace to people and other species on Earth.
And they could, in theory, cure cancer - certainly the psychological and spiritual effects of the disease, which could bring remission to it's physical manifestation.
So yeah, there's lots of research still to be done.
Eh this sounds like exactly what was wrong with the early LSD promoters. Psychedelics are the mythical "love bomb"? I do not think the evidence supports that. While I think the world would be far better off if everyone had tried it, I don't think it'd stop wars or anything. At best, it might get people to sit up and think a bit, and turn to rationality for explanations.
But in real life, seeing as how one's predispositions get highlighted with acid, we'd probably end up with a lot of people thinking they now know the answers. Or that their trip showed them that (Allah|Zeus|Quantum Democracy|Whatever) is the True God and go all nuts on that.
Leary and others made up these unsubstantiated claims about the effects of acid and really tried to sell it as something beyond what it is. It's a damn awesome molecule that does really nifty shit to brains, and certainly bears plenty of research and use.
But to say it can cure cancer? Come the fuck on man. That's just new-age heebie jeebie nonsense with no basis in reality. It's why a lot of pro-LSD people are simply not taken seriously, because they forget it's just a molecule messing with brains' perceptions.
(Unless you meant cure cancer in the "well it made you feel better, and feeling good is important to health so it might give you a better chance against some diseases", in which case it's not much of a claim and certainly shouldn't be phrased that way. Hey, Apple products can prevent street crime, because the metal bodies might slow down bullets and make an otherwise fatal shot survivable!)
These chemicals are tools, no more and no less. They should be investigated with intelligence and caution. Take drugs soberly, if at all. I know a few people who have basically ruined their lives though what I would call "abuse" of drugs including MDMA, LSD, cannabis, and nitrous oxide(!) (as opposed to the more obvious drugs like crystal meth, heroin, and crack.)
That said, I know of a few people who had cancer, and no longer have cancer, and the treatment plan they followed involved copious quantities of a kind of goo or tar made from cannabis plants. Those three items are facts: They had cancer, they no longer have it, they used ganja and not chemo or radiation.
I have no interest in arguing with anyone about this, nor am I attempting to condone or evangelize anything. I offer the above as (admittedly anecdotal) data points for consideration. If you want to know more about this please do your own homework online, no one is hiding this sort of thing from anyone (but themselves.)
Those facts, as you put it, really mean nothing other than maybe someone should do a study and see if there's any real correlation. How many other people had cancer, used plenty of cannabis, then died or continued to have cancer?
There's billions of people in the world. That means the frequency of "Bad thing, Weird thing, Good thing" will often be nonzero for all sorts of things.
You should listen what people have to say when they describe it as a "Love Bomb", as "Seeing God", etc -- sometimes a little less quantifying can go very far in resolving problems physical or otherwise; the trick is experience and an open mind. The testimonials describing these substances as powerful healing tools is endless -- there is validity in this fact.
A single trip report could be worth a thousand peer reviewed papers, and a thousand trip reports could create a new science -- if you're willing to listen.
Not everything needs to be objectively verified in order to be agreed upon as useful or valid. Sometimes objective validation comes, by necessity, later.
I would recommend watching this documentary from Alejandro Jodorowsky's son, Christobol. Its important to watch it all the way through. In it he discusses Psychomagic and Psychoshamanism (two fields his father developed) and the relationship between ritual and healing, and how belief plays into the psychological or subconscious mechanism that promotes recovery. That's all I meant by my obviously rhetorical comments above, that there is an enormous amount of power within the belief centers of being.
The way I like to look at it is the odd trip (or even pot to a lesser extent) "exercises" the brain by pulling us out of the mundane, repetitive grind that is everyday life for most people. You see things differently, think about things differently and it acts to keep your brain "on its toes".
No magic, just chemically induced neurological exercise.
> Eh this sounds like exactly what was wrong with the early LSD promoters. Psychedelics are the mythical "love bomb"? I do not think the evidence supports that.
We really don't have that much evidence - at the one Uni they'd done what, 500 trials with mushrooms over 10 years?
It's obviously not guaranteed to bring world peace, but I honestly think it could make a huuuuuge portion of the public wake up and start asking questions of their leaders.
I think asking questions of their leaders is a small byproduct of asking questions about our society in general. Why do we do what we do? When you realize we're all just organisms in a massive terrarium that we all depend upon, some things we do don't make any sense. The leaders are just a manifestation of these behaviorisms that probably started with either ignorance or selfishness.
I'm saying what little evidence we have (mainly that there are many LSD users and they span quite a bit of viewpoints) does not support the idea that they'll all become "love bombed" messengers for peace or whatever. My implication being that the more evidence we get, the more we'll find out that LSD doesn't just deliver some external value like world peace but enhances ideas already in one's mind.
He's saying there's not enough evidence to tell. But with the implication that once we do have evidence, it'll show that LSD really does "love bomb" people.
I tripped with a few buddies I haven't seen in years. I'm happily tripping and my friend tries getting all deep on me. When I didn't engage his silly questions, he felt I wasn't on his level and that he really did have all the answers. It was hilarious and sad at the same time.
I think there is definitely some promising legitimate cancer therapy with cannabis. Although I agree with you in general. If you have experienced the effects of MDMA or LSD it's not too far fetched to say that it really can promote world peace.
> we'd probably end up with a lot of people thinking they now know the answers.
People thinking that they know things that they actually don't is definitely a problem. I find that it happens way more often in people who have never tried LSD though. People use false assumptions and self-lies all the time to survive this world. Here's an example:
> It's why a lot of pro-LSD people are simply not taken seriously, because they forget it's just a molecule messing with brains' perceptions.
How do you know that? Science doesn't even know what consciousness is, so what does it mean that you're "messing with perception"? Based on that - I think that you simply don't know and you have no proof of what you're saying.
... There's zero evidence that consciousness exists outside of the physical world. There's plenty of evidence that it does exist as something brains create. There's plenty of evidence that poking it chemically or otherwise causes changes in consciousness. In some cases, scientists have some ideas about how that might sorta happen (like the release of dopamine or serotonin). No one seems to disagree that taking, say, Xanax, does something to brain chemistry and causes e.g. less anxiety.
LSD is certainly a physical chemical that goes into physical brains. Yet all of a sudden folks want to introduce a separate magisterium and insist that despite having every appearance of acting on the brain somehow, LSD is special and really does something more. And not because of any extraordinary evidence, but because, while they were tripping, they thought up some cool neato thought like, I dunno, all people are one. A thought they can't verify at all, but makes sense while tripping. And because of that, not only is their neato thought true, but LSD itself must be something paranormal because other drugs don't let them think nonsense is true.
That's essentially all of what Leary and others come down to, despite hiding it in a lot more verbiage and nicer sounding ideas.
Just because the understanding of consciousness is rather much in its infancy doesn't give people blank checks to make shit up. LSD-fueled and valid-only-with-acid ideas on consciousness should be given as much weight as LSD-fueled pictures of Pluto.
Think about the song Amazing Grace: "How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see". That was written by a guy who had abandoned his career as the captain of a slave-trading ship after having a spiritual awakening.
The transcendental, mystical, transformative, touching-infinity experiences that people report from psychedelics go far beyond any philosophical concepts about "physical reality" or "consciousness". You don't need to hold any particular dogmatic beliefs to try out and perhaps benefit from psychedelics.
I'd rate psychedelics on-par, impact-wise, around the same level as the birth and death of one of my children. I just don't see the need to say it goes beyond physical reality - there's just no proof of that. Why can't we be impressed and amazed with what our brains are capable of, with chemistry alone?
>I just don't see the need to say it goes beyond physical reality - there's just no proof of that.
What physical reality are you talking about? To the best we can ascertain, we only have subjective experiences of perceptions of electromagnetic phenomena. We don't get to perceive physical reality, only our own interpretation of what is postulated as an image of the physical reality.
It appears that there can be no proof either way whether a physical reality actually exists or not. All we can know is that we have a subjective experience. We can hypothesize that it arises from some other "thing", but there is no way we can know.
Also, I'm not sure anyone in this thread chain has claimed that consciousness goes beyond physical reality. I think you are the only who has assumed a physical reality (also, with no "proof").
Reliable computing technology is as revealing of an objectively existing physical reality as I need. The rules are solidly understood, do not change depending on our perception, and any "evidence" to the contrary that I've heard requires philosophical thought experiments.
>Reliable computing technology is as revealing of an objectively existing physical reality as I need.
What do you mean by this?
All you need is Boolean algebra to derive every reliable aspect of our computing technology.
01~&
Yes, you need a machine that can "execute it", but every reliable thing that a current computing machine will do is predicted by consecutive and parallel applications of the truth table:
a|b|a~&b
-|-|----
0|0| 1
0|1| 1
1|0| 1
1|1| 0
Do you mean that Boolean algebra is the objectively existing physical reality; is a part of the objectively existing physical reality; or, is only evidence of an objectively existing physical reality? If it is only evidence, in what way is it evidence?
You remind me of Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi. He was inspired by LSD to explore the mystical side of Judaism. But aspects of the LSD experience bothered him:
> It also wasn't Jewish enough for me. A universe in which everything was happening, regardless of whether it was kosher or not, wasn't Jewish enough.
Perhaps you are also a bit bothered by some aspects of your experiences that do not totally agree with materialism? Excuse me, but do you possibly feel ashamed to have thought certain things while tripping, perhaps concerned that you were delusional? Or maybe not, not everybody thinks that way.
Are you truly "impressed and amazed" by chemistry alone? Many feel that modern materialism is a cheap and disappointing answer to the question of what is really actually going on in the universe, the sum total of everything that is and will be. But of course chemistry is part of it, and it is really amazing.
No, I'm not bothered. I find it richly rewarding. I just know that the real world, nature, is worth admiring and being totally impressed and blown away with. As an example, I find life explained in natural terms and diversity of life via evolution to be far more inspiring and impressive (and elegant) than life explained via divine will. Not that you're suggesting that but just as a comparison.
I think it's worth encouraging people to be impressed with physical reality, with the amazing stuff that gets produced that way, rather than needing to discard reality as if it wasn't sufficient enough.
For an even simpler and perhaps baser phenomenon: the female form, for me. Without going into details, I find it rather amazing how something so "ordinary" can, at times, produce such powerful emotion/experience (not even referring to actual sex). Sure, perhaps it's not quite as strong as psychedelics, but I've yet to hear anyone seriously suggest that physical attraction needs explanations beyond materialism. Why should acid be qualitatively different? (I've experienced real delusions, too - all seems perfectly in line with a materialistic view of the mind.)
>> any feel that modern materialism is a cheap and disappointing answer to the question of what is really actually going on in the universe, the sum total of everything that is and will be.
And these many have no better answer, in fact all they ever, ever have is some handwaving about feelings and a dietary supplement to sell you.
To understand, you have to get out of your current 'reality context'.
It's very easy actually.
A powerful psychedelic trip leads to a couple of simple realisations:
- you are God that created this Universe experiencing the sensation of being separate, weak and mortal within this body
- all living beings are the same - God experiencing himself subjectively. Including the cells in your body - God in a different 'vehicle'. Hence 'we are one'. Hence the necessity to be respectful towards all of nature - they're all you and you will experience all the interactions with your 'current' self.
- you have been here since the beginning of time and will 'exist' forever.
- Life is a trip, a story, a simulation. You will wake up from it one day. It's hard to believe it, because it's so 'real'.
But everybody will get 'it' when they die.
Of course, the correlations between these "realizations" and any actual reality may be zero. That is, "realization" implies that there is some truth that you are realizing is true. But these things may well be not actually true, just impressions from using chemicals to temporarily alter your brains. They may not even be true on the next trip!
Acid trips as a way of actually discovering truth (rather than perception) seems to me to be hopelessly naive.
> Just because the understanding of consciousness is rather much in its infancy doesn't give people blank checks to make shit up.
Exactly. That's why you can't say things like "it's just messing with your perception" because you really don't know what "it's just" doing.
I didn't say anything about consciousness existing outside of the physical world. All I said is that "you don't really know". But, whenever I say something like that people tend to project some other argument onto me, like I'm here to defend everything any LSD user ever said.
So... have you known people who've undergone this chemical love carpet-bombing who are tremendously peaceful, between themselves or with people who were not similarly treated?
Because I've known a lot of people who used a variety of drugs and many who swore by LSD, mushrooms, ecstasy or a combination, and they weren't a teeny bit less likely to start petty fights over pretty much nothing than the rest of us, nor were they more free from prejudice towards specific groups of people, etc.
I've known about thirty people who have used Lsd routinely for years, and I have to agree with you. The only significant difference is that some of them talk like it drammatically changes them. The effect doesn't seem much different from the people I know who really like a hobby and exxagerate its effects. I of course know lsd is something serious and psychedelically powerful, and agree it should be studied.
I am pro drugs. I actually feel most drugs, except antiboiotics, should be available over the counter.
That said, the one drug I have seem people injest, and come back slightly different people is LSD. I have never taken the drug, but I had two close, intelligent friends in high school go off to U.C. Santa Cruz and literally come back different people. We were all so young, and still finding ourselfs, but the differences in their behavior was stark, and didn't go away like I thought it would. I still like both individuals, but we don't hang out anymore.
One friend asked me why we don't hang out any more, and I never told him the truth. The truth is I didn't mind he was different. I didn't hang with the guy because it took him 30 minutes to review a movie, or offer to work on my computer and screw it up; it was this--he didn't have a verbal filter anymore. He would say weird hurtful things, and I couldn't predict when he would say something beyond weird. I just couldn't overlook what he said anymore.
He's actually doing well in the computer industry, and has a family, so maybe it was just me?
(I'm am probally the last one who should comment on Psychadellics, I've never tried them. Even when I went through a reckless stage--Psychidellics scared me. Hell, even marihuana has brought on slight panic attacks. Maybe I'm not psychologically adjusted enough to fool with these drugs?)
You probably know many other people who have tried psychedelics. Around 20% of young and middle-aged men in the US have tried LSD or magic mushrooms, but people tend to not discuss this in public. (People who publically talk about their personal psychedelic use are, as a group, more likely to not care about social approval. This has fueled stereotypes about psychedelic users. But this is rapidly changing as more people 'come out' and the psychedelic users realize that we are everywhere.)
Maybe try talking about psychedelics with your friends and colleagues and you may get some new perspectives on the topic. (I would recommend to not immediately mention that your overall personal impression of psychedelic users is negative. That could scare people from opening up to you.)
>One friend asked me why we don't hang out any more, and I never told him the truth.
Maybe this is the problem? He probably didn't view the things he said as weird or hurtful. If you never told him you viewed them that way, how would he know?
>So... have you known people who've undergone this chemical love carpet-bombing who are tremendously peaceful, between themselves or with people who were not similarly treated?
It's a horrible idea. Beyond the obvious ethical problems with dosing people without their consent, you aren't guaranteed to have a good experience. In fact a positive experience is probably pretty unlikely if you have no idea what's happening to you or why.
Uses of psychedelics to treat depression or PTSD are happening during a counseling session, and has apparently had some promising results. Although I'm not sure if they've used a comparable length counseling sessions as a control.
I meant that they willingly took it themselves, not that it was administered forcefully. I called it "bombing" because the original comment called it a "love bomb", in all likelihood because of the assumed magnitude of the effect and not because he suggested to force people to take it.
I swear, one of the most import pieces of research that needs to be done on them is their capability to induce a false sense of the profound, and make people believe psychedelics will fix everything about the world.
Yes, they can be useful, they can make you see yourself differently and see people differently. But they can equally be a pretty blinkenlight show that makes you giggle for hours with friends. Or be distressing for people.
More than that, nobody has yet been able to tell me how this post-acid utopia is going to function any differently from what we have now.
There's a reason that the majority of post-summer-of-love communes failed.
It's so refreshing to see a critical take on psychedelics. While psychedelics can make you feel like some insight or thought is incredibly profound, often times it turns out to be incredibly banal when revisited with a sober mind. Don't get me wrong - I've some incredible trips on mushrooms and acid, some of which completely shattered my ego and made me see the world from in a totally different light. But when the afterglow wore off, my "insights" turned out to be really dumb. As in, "the whole world is connected" type of stuff... pretty bland.
About 5 years ago my friend tried acid for the first time and enjoyed the "profound insights" a little too much. I know this isn't common but he ended up getting addicted to acid, and proceeded to go on a 10 day long acid fueled frenzy. At the peak of his trip he believed that he was Jesus and that he was here to save mankind. Being the good modern Jesus he thought was, he proceeded to spread his Gospel by trying to friend EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON FACEBOOK. He at one point even posted his credentials online so that anyone and everyone could use his account to add more friends. His behavior was absolutely insane but the acid made him feel like it was "profound".
The point I'm trying to make is that while psychedelics can make you feel extraordinary feelings, there's no evidence that the insights gained from tripping have any use in reality.
One suggestion to increase potential practical benefit and decrease chance of "banal" generalities might be to go into the trip with a specific question or problem that you are working on.
Some examples from the recent CNN Money story about Silicon Valley executives who take LSD:
> An employee of one of the biggest Silicon Valley companies said he recently made a pivotal career decision while under the influence of magic mushrooms -- changing course from a management track and moving into product security.
> Meanwhile, in the late '90s, a former high level employee of a major software company (who asked not to be named) said he was taking psychedelics with the "specific intent of working on software problems." On one highly successful trip, he came up with design ideas, features and architectural improvements to a piece of software today used by millions.
Sorry to hear about your friend. It is very important to get some sleep if you feel manic. Also its a good idea to give yourself a few days or more to think before implementing any ideas obtained on psychedelics.
> one of the most import pieces of research that needs to be done on them is their capability to induce a false sense of the profound, and make people believe psychedelics will fix everything about the world.
Not only should that be studied, but it should be more generally studied in regard to anything. How often does a politician, company, or product make similar claims? How many people then believe those claims to be true, even if they can be demonstrably shown to be false?
There's a reason the majority of civilizations failed.
Hmm. Love-Bomb=Ego Loss. Taking that 'to the office' is sustained ego loss.
Most people have big egos. Many people have big ego's and low self esteem or high self esteem. That is the problem, and the ego absorbs the new information.
Once off the drug, that 'paradigm' shift will be integrated into the same type of thinking they had before, except now they are 'enlightened' and act in a superior way because they have seen the light.
You seem to be a seeker, and are not self centered in the way many others are. Do not assume just because you have this experience of the world, men like Jeb Bush, Mao zedong, etc are seekers to a greater truth and will then abide by that. No, they will justify their power seeking behavior.
These chemicals will serve great purpose in practiced medicine, just as they have for tens of thousands of years in many societies. Recreational use vs self medicating might get some people there, but ritualized religious use in the context of insight, healing does work in many cases. But to bring a love bomb upon the globe? Not sure about that
Cancer of the liver; cancer of the rectum; cancer of the [insert body part], has nothing to do with the actions that psychedelics have on your body.
Psychedelics are for the brain and mind, not the abnormal cells attacking your rectum.
The only mention of cancer in the article is treating cancer related anxiety. Getting high and curing cancer at the same time wasn't part of the research. Mentioning such ridiculous ideas only poisons the discussion, and drags the legitimate scientific effort through the mud of false belief, back down to the bottom of the reputation barrel.
I'm not defending the GP's statement about curing cancer, but could you explain your position that "things that affect the brain/mind" cannot affect "insert body part"?
How do you know that? Are you saying that the brain/mind have no effect on the body?
Please point to the scientific research that states that psychedelics definitely do not affect your rectum. At that point, your statement will be more valuable to me than the GP's. As of now, it's at equal value.
> Please point to the scientific research that states that psychedelics definitely do not affect your rectum.
Proving a negative isn't typically the best scientific approach. It'd be on the person making the dramatic claims to offer evidence. There's a lot of evidence about how cancer cells work and little (if any) gives reason to suspect some sort of conscious connection would affect it.
Though I think there is some data that people are more likely to recover if they feel more confident or at least not hopeless, but can't remember where I read about that. There was also something recently about an unexpected immune 'tube' to the brain or something and I think there's a positive correlation with being happy and getting sick less often. All this is still a pretty far cry from claiming that psychedelics are likely to cure cancer.
Stating that the negative can't be proven either does not make both arguments equivalent.
It's not hard to make a somewhat reasonable hypothesis.
Cancer is not a binary category. In the natural course of a human life it can be observed that some "cancerous" cells cease to exist / be problems, not from some external intervention, but merely through other signals and interactions within the body. Maybe some process detected something was wrong and set in motion another process that corrected it.
What controls these processes? Likely complex electro-chemical reactions that can only occur in certain environments. If a suitable environment does not exist, the reaction does not occur (how can it?).
Now, consider that the human consciousness can be observed to seemingly create complex changes throughout the body, including numerous electro-chemical reactions, and even changes of local environments (e.g. release of neurotransmitters and more general hormones).
If the appropriate environment is created for the appropriate reactions in the appropriate places to "resolve a cancer", then it will happen.
Yes, you can argue about how much fine control a consciousness can have over it's body. You can also argue about what reactions happen in which environments.
>There's a lot of evidence about how cancer cells work and little (if any) gives reason to suspect some sort of conscious connection would affect it.
Such as? You can only find something if you look for it. You would never expect to suspect a consciousness at work if you weren't looking for it.
Stating an unproven negative holds the same value to me as stating an unproven positive. That's a fact and that's exactly what I said.
Stating an unproven negative as if it were a fact is also not the best scientific approach.
(Also, saying something like "the mind has no affect on the body" is a positive statement of fact. Quibbling about the word "no" or "not" is just semantics IMO.)
"Please point to the scientific research that states that psychedelics definitely do not affect your rectum"
Scientific research doesn't work like that. Scientists don't set out to prove that links between arbitrary things don't exist.
Because there's no research that disproves any link between toothpaste and baldness, doesn't mean we can't use common sense based on what we know about toothpaste and baldness to all but rule out any link in the absence of that research. What we do know about toothpaste and baldness, does not point or suggest any link between the two.
Likewise, what we know about psychedelics and cancer of the rectum, is that the two would unlikely be connected. From the extremely small amounts of drugs needed to affect consciousness, to the aggressive disease attacking your cells. Even in a biological sense they are worlds apart.
Finally, the "mind over body" idea is more about our minds over our healthy bodies - keeping things such as blood flow and other systems healthy. Once those cancerous tumours start growing, there's no scientific data or even a reasonable theory to suggest "the mind", be it under the influence of drugs or not, has any fighting ability to repair localised cancerous cells and prevent further spreading.
Thank you for the great explanation of an instance where stating a negative is not useful.
However, in this case, I don't think one can say there is there's no scientific data or even a reasonable theory to suggest that "the mind" has any affect on the healing abilities of our bodies given that the placebo effect is our rule of measure for whether a drug works or not.
Well you did ask "please point to scientific research...", so an explanation was needed for why that wasn't going to happen. Didn't mean to annoy you with that.
Placebos, sure. The thing that bothers me about placebos is the time variable. A course of placebos or drugs is also a course of time. Things heal in time, healing may have happened anyway in that time if nothing was done for those patients. Our immune system is pointed in the healing direction by nature, but significant momentum in that direction is another matter.
My own opinion on mind over body is not one of miraculous healing but of providing good conditions or foundation for healing to happen. I'm not convinced the mind on its own can deal with something like cancer without significant help (proper help, not placebos or psychedelics).
No problem! Not annoyed in the slightest, I enjoy exploring this subject. However, since you mentioned the phrase "miraculous healing" I get the feeling that you're ascribing an opinion to me that I do not have. You probably think most people who talk about the mind/body connection to be miracle-believing nut-bags, but that's not me. To me - a miracle is just a misunderstood event.
Saying that things heal in time/nature is just another way of affirming that "your body indeed has the ability to heal itself". But also consider the fact that placebos statistically quicken healing faster than nothing at all (e.g. just the passing of time). There's just no way that placebos would be used as a reliable control measure without having tested them against the theory that the passage of time is enough. I believe that most clinical trials also include or are compared against groups of people that take no placebo and no drug.
It's also been proven that the emotional pain in the mind can cause physical pain. And it's been proven that depression can cause you to actually get sick. So, I don't think it's a far leap to imagine that the mind can directly and significantly affect things in the opposite direction.
Well, Tim Leary isn't exactly an objective source for making a case of psychedelic drugs being a tool of human emancipation, not that I have any particular conviction in either direction regarding the topic.
Your penultimate paragraph just screams of magical New Age thinking, though.
From what I understand they do help with the anxiety of end of life care.
What I think happens is that you take mushrooms/LSD for the first time in that condition and then you fully realize the size and scope of yourself and the universe, and get the giggles, and everything's a little easier to take.
A spiritual effect of cancer is it reminds the organism of its impermanence. We walk on earth without acknowledging the true significance of impermanence, but of course, it does not necessarily need to take to something as earth shattering as cancer to remind oneself of impermanence. As far as remission, OP could be alluding to 'mind over matter', etc. I could say more, but skeptics gonna skeptic. In these matters there are usually opposing sides which never meet in the middle. One side emphasizing the importance of direct experience and the other side first demanding proofs of that experience before themselves exploring (as if certainty is communicable), a fear based reaction to not simply plunge into the unknown and see beyond recurrent thinking.
I fail to see how what you're describing can be distinguished from a psychological effect.
I don't think anyone disputes the fact that (summed up and oversimplified) attitude matters; but it's not as if attitude matters to the extent that it is more important than the cancer processes themselves.
I don't think it's quite as you describe though; the side demanding proofs do emphasize experience (which is what empiricism is built upon), but it demands a certain standard (which is what skepticism is about).
Not being so generous towards the other "side", I would suggest that it has a problem with regards to bothering with metacognition, as its sympathizers are often more occupied with speculation and imagination - running their mouths, rather than ensuring that what they say makes any sense.
While the adventurous streak in the "experience side" is somewhat admirable, it simply isn't up to par with regards to (standards for) credible claims of truth and knowledge - not to mention that the approach of mindlessly plunging into every unknown might lead to certain death in some cases.
Massive drug use is usually a symptom of unsatisfying social conditions. Personally, I would find it less than satisfying if civilaztions culmination was drug induced contentednes to poor living conditions instead of actually fixing those conditions to be humanly satisfying. Instead of recreational tripping because everyday life is so mentally stunting I would dream of a world where everyday life is personally satisfying to most.
That said, I have nothing against medicational nor recreational tripping - but I would be aware that those are not necessarily fixing the conditions but only changing the perception of them. And sometimes it indeed is only our perception that needs fixing. But in some cases it would be good to fix the source of angst as well.
Oh, but that's the whole paradox of this life - 'satisfaction' is a moving target, not a fixed point.
In fact, this is what life is about - getting from the current 'not so satisfied' point to the next 'a bit more satisfied'.
First we have our bodies - which need food and shelter and can get sick and hurt.
So one of our tasks in life is to constantly keep our bodies satisfied - hunger, thirst, piss, shit, cold, hot, pain, horny.
This takes a lot of our energy/time.
Then we have the effects of mortality - parents, children, friends, pets - every living being dies eventually and this generates suffering inside us (unless we are the one dying, which generates suffering inside everyone we love).
Then we have the whole of our society - competition, job, class struggle, bugs in our software... too many to enumerate.
Total satisfaction ('bliss') is only possible for short periods of time (until hunger strikes or the bladder's full) and it's a function of a realisation, of letting go, of simplifying the requirements for 'satisfied'.
This is what the monks do - they let go of everything 'worldly' in exchange for a much simpler achievement of 'satisfied'.
But then, of course, we don't want to live like monks, so we want more comfort and hence a more complex problem to solve.
I think that's a bit anecdotal. Sure, there is the lore of the systems programmer who took LSD (I wonder if he reads HN :) ) and solved his design task elegantly. But to actually claim that psychedelics makes one more creative would require psychological studies with blinds. You take the sugar pill, I'll eat the mushroom - and vice versa. Which could be done, there are metrics and tests for that - if and when the stuff becomes less controversial.
A lot of people also get new ideas and solutions to problems after a good nights sleep. I knew a person in university who swore hangovers were the most creative period for him. Humans are capable of pretty friggin amazing things au naturel - drugs can modulate performance, but to draw any conclusions in the large would require actual science to draw a distinction between personal learned habits and reproducible effects.
Psychedelics are a lot like taking a vacation. You may have an experience which will impact your life in some (perhaps significantly better or worse) way. You may gain new perspectives on life. You may gain insight into yourself and travel companions. You may develop an ugly tendency to be that annoying person who always talks about their trip to ___ and always find a way to interject it into conversations.
That's a risk for just about anything that's interesting. Reading up on a new (to you) philosophy. Finding a new (to you) diet, or exercise or yoga. Learning a new programming paradigm. And on and on. People naturally want to share experiences they found exciting/stimulating/useful/etc. I don't think that really provides much judgement or insight into whether a specific activity tends to be good or bad.
Pretty tangential, and i've no idea yet as to it's accuracy, but i loved the idea that the human race's "emergence into consciousness was triggered by our ancestors encounters with visionary plants". From an ironically, as otherwise i probably wouldn't have stumbled on it, Ted Talk by Graham Hancock:
McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.
Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.
There are numerous ways in which we're similar to apes and other organisms, and then there's also numerous things that have nothing even close in the animal kingdom(that we're aware of, anyways). So if nothing but a larger language center explains that, then it's a far bigger difference than you make it sound:
If you're looking to say humans are categorically different from every other animal -- that is, that we have something none of them do -- then you're operating with such a level of granularity that it's necessary that you overlook small differentiating factors. The issue is not "why are humans unique, just like every species is unique" but "why are humans unique in a way no other species is?"
And if you take a human and ignore their facility for language, you will essentially have a regular ape. If you take away our capacity for culture and technology, you don't have an animal that rules the world uncontested. Whatever other differences we have are moot in comparison. (Take Stephen Hawking as an example.)
I suggest you watch the talk either way. It's well-paced, witty and above all extremely fascinating. It centers around both the things that we previously thought were unique to humanity(but discoveries have shown we're not), as well as the ways in which we are unique("why are humans unique in a way no other species is?").
I don't see how if it was clinically manufactured and administered the risks couldn't be acceptably mitigated. The interviewee seems confident the government is on board and things are going down a new path though so I guess this could be a thing now.
This is strong medicine, but the reports around ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin, DMT and peyote all indicate the possibility of deep and lasting positive psychological shifts. I'd personally submit to treatment in the safety of a psych/medical clinic rather than a secret Peruvian yoga retreat but the fact that so many centers are popping up indicates some kind of global hive-mind desire for change. I'm supremely interested in the official and unofficial studies taking place all over the world right now in these domains.
Psychedelics are, I think, a genuine example of a suppressed technology. They're one of two major suppressed technologies of the 20th century, with the other possibly being nuclear power.
To expand on your point, psychedelics have been suppressed even before that. Witches burnings in Europe for example, have been related to those "witches" taking psychedelic plants and potions. The Christian missionaries explicitly banned Indians from taking peyote and magic mushrooms as it was considered a "communion with the devil" in their eyes.
"The exciting thing isn't just that these drugs work for something that we already have treatment for. It's that they're getting big effects on disorders for which we have very poor treatment."
It sounds to me like it may imply that much of what we call "mental health" disorders are really somatopsychic conditions.
The only reason they are not, as far as I can tell, is nearly universal drug schedules in the west - rather than lack of promise or interest among researchers.
I was surprised the article didn't mention Ayahuasca, maybe the original source did. I know a few people that used it to get off heroin for good after going through several Regan-relapse cycles.
Not exactly. Ayahuasca actually refers to the vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which is a powerful MAOI, but contains no DMT.
Traditional preparations often (but not always) contain other components which contain DMT, the effect of which is normally metabolized by a mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase. Since the ayahuasca vine inhibits the activity of monoamine oxidase, a preparation of ingested DMT taken with, or after, an MAOI will allow the DMT to reach the brain.
The vine taken on its own, however, has an intense effect which is said to be mildly psychedelic, and a preparation of just the ayahuasca vine qualifies as ayahuasca.
I just finished reading "Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal" by Tom Shroder. It was parallel tour of the history of influential people (primarily Rick Doblin of MAPS), and a Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD that was treated later in the book with MDMA. http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/014751...
Rick Doblin at MAPS has said he's funding the medical research of psychedelics and MDMA partly to change their public perception. It's a good strategy. "Medicinal alcohol" during Prohibition and medicinal cannabis during Prohibition 2.0 both helped sway a skeptical public.
Strategic concerns aside, psychedelics clearly are powerful medicines and can yield profound insights, and their relative safety makes their Schedule 1 status morally repellent.
The man made the "unreliable narrator" his main device, but I think "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" should put to rest any idea that such trendy chemical amusement aids have much therapeutic value in the general case.
It least puts such ideas in a position of having to work a lot harder to make their case.
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Although there are reasons to believe the incidents in the book are to some degree real, it is a story told with a purpose of entertaining, not a medical evaluation of chemical action.
Have I mistaken your purpose, and if not, can you clarify the reasoning?
No, I think the book makes something akin to a moral point. That Our Humble Narrator was as much victim as perpetrator of the Better Living through Chemistry era.
It's precisely the opposite of a medical evaluation. It's a reductio ad absurbum on the idea that there's a potential Utopia within us revealed by drugs. Drugs apparently make you a new man but the new man may not be perceptually ... congruent with the old man.
I think he's describing the collapse of the experiment that included the Summer of Love.
"And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”
Can the medicos provide structure to ameliorate this?
Triggering psychosis != causing longterm mental illness. I think parties on both sides of the debate over the safety of psychedelics would agree that they can and often do trigger psychosis. And both parties probably agree, at this point, that they do not cause mental illness.
One episode of psychosis is not a life long psychotic illness.
When people say "psychedelics cause mental illness" that could mean:
* Someone with no underlying mental illness takes a few doses of LSD and is left with a life long psychotic illness
* Someone with no underlying mental illness regularly takes huge doses of LSD, and ends up with a life long psychotic illness
* Someone with underlying mental illness has that illness surfaced by LSD use, when it would have gone un-known if they hadn't taken psychedelics
* Someone with underlying mental illness has that illness surfaced by LSD. But it probably would have happened anyway.
* Someone with mental illness has that illness temporarily triggered by LSD.
Because LSD is illegal and it's very hard to research we don't know much about the interactions of LSD and mental illness.
While I'm strongly pro-legalisation I do find it problematic when people dismiss any possible harms of drug use, when it's fine to say we don't know, but should legalise anyway.
What if doctors could prescribe drugs for recreational reasons? Then you are getting them from a setting where can be informed about the dangers, and a professional can tell you if you have personal risk factors (for example, I have a friend with a heart condition who is at very high risk of heart attack under the influence of cocaine).
And then the professionals can help measure dependency and long term effects, and people can participate in studies and contribute to the science of recreational drug use. Drugs are always medical grade, never laced with other substances, and doctors can recommend safe alternatives to the dangerous recreational drugs.
Power dynamics between a doctor and an addict may pose ethical problems, but if the doctor has the proper oversight these problems can be mitigated.
No, doctors should have less power. It's absolutely embarrassing and disgusting that individuals must seek approval of another person just to get permission to buy certain medicines. Outside of things that require coordination (like antibiotics), there should be no prescription requirements. (There may need to be waivers and a statement of understanding before purchasing things, sure.)
Doctors already regulate recreational and personal-enhancement via their strangehold on opiates and stimulants. We don't need to further this system.
Yes, but the dividing criteria is completely arbitrary. The medical term would be chronic. To me psychosis means a form of mental illness, so it looks like the GP doesn't have a clue.
Thats like saying heart palpitations is an illness and therefore when someone takes a large dose of cocaine and gets an irregular heartbeat, they have a heart problem.
Any definition you're thinking of that places any psychotic episode as a definite indicator of mental illness is completely irrelevant as soon as the subject is under the influence of a mind-altering drug.
Definitely a fantastic read. Terrifying, but incredibly interesting. The author seems like an otherwise fairly well-adjusted person now - but it must be incredibly weird to look back at memories from when you were that completely out-to-lunch.
How do they work, and how reliable? Seems like a pretty difficult thing to determine which healthy people are predisposed to mental ilness and which aren't.
You have to be skeptical of psychological screening after Lisa Nowak passed some of the most stringent screening out there and still did her diaper drive:
Since we don't have reliable screening for basic mental illnesses, I find it implausible that we have "reliable" screening for these kinds of vulnerabilities. I must be missing something; any thoughts?
Since the beginning of the era of modern psychedelic research, no one has developed any serious longterm mental illness as the result of taking psychedelics in a research setting. And this is out of thousands of people.
I think part of the reason is that it's actually a lot easier to determine if someone is predisposed to mental illness than it actually is to determine if the person sitting in front of you has a mental illness. E.g. if one of your parents was bipolar or you had a relative who committed suicide then you'd be immediately excluded from any trial. And because they are only doing this research on adults, this means that participants would have all had 20+ years to figure out if their parents have signs of mental illness or whatever.
Look in the references:
"Four additional studies found post-LSD psychotics with prior psychosis but also patients in whom the drug precipitated psychosis without a prodrome ... One group reported cases of psychosis following a single dose, suggesting a peculiar vulnerability to the drug in certain individuals. A review of this problem concluded that prior illness was evident in many, but not all, psychoses following LSD "
Your general gist seems to be correct (that it's a rather low risk for people without history), but "no one" seems to be incorrect. Which makes sense - LSD's a powerful medication. And for comparison, this happens with stuff they give to kids, like Ritalin and speed.
When I said since the beginning of modern psychedelic research, I meant since Rick Strassman began studying DMT in 1991. In the 50s and 60s there were lots of cases like this, but that's not really analogous to modern research. (In many cases back then they were actually purposely trying to cause mental illness.)
That article's only reference is a study I linked to earlier, which concluded, "We did not find use of psychedelics to be an independent risk factor for mental health problems."
From the end of that article: "While the experiment is quoted as evidence of LSD's toxicity, it seems most likely that the Thorazine or the combination of drugs killed Tusko, not the acid. Lending credence to this, in 1984 psychologist Ronald K Siegel repeated the experiment with two elephants, using LSD only. Both survived."
It's not my specialty, I was just pointing out something mentioned in the article, by a researcher in the area. If you have references that contradict his claim, I'd be interested in seeing them.
No, that's not what the article says. It says they can carefully screen for "people with active psychotic disorders or a strong predisposition for such disorders should not receive these treatments".
Take note of active and strong predisposition. They're saying if someone is obviously having problems, or seems like they might (e.g. many family members have had issues), they can find those folks out.
It is not in any way suggesting they can detect psychotic dispositions in general.
TA: "The fact that the effects last beyond the time that you take the medication -- that's really a new paradigm in psychiatry."
I have no doubt that psychedelics are capable of producing lasting changes in behaviors, habits, or outlooks. Actually, I'd be surprised if that particular point is at all controversial.
However, prespcribing a psychedlic that could have lasting impacts on a person for "reasons we don't understand" seems... unnecessarily dangerous, whenever an alternative exists. Which of course is only an argument for more research.
Isn't this the state of most mental medicines? That is, "reasons we don't understand"? Hence the typical search for the right med combo of anti-depressants, stabilizers, and stimulants to make someone OK?
Sure SSRIs might have lots more study than LSD and they might know how it affects certain neurotransmitters. But it seems a far cry from really understanding it.
I know a lot fewer people who have started taking SSRIs and then started taking SSRIs every weekend and got involved in cults centered around taking SSRIs and experiencing enlightenment and then ended up broken shells of people.
SSRIs have a very specific method of action, and it's drastically more limited in scope than these recreational drugs.
SSRI's have impacts (albeit not as long lasting) for reasons we don't understand yet they get dolled out like bread. Sure, you don't see visions while taking them but the side effects are no less profound. After years of personal experience with them I think they're WAY over prescribed. But the fact that they're legal at all, to me, is justification for legalizing psychedelics for research at the very least.
"If God were to permit you a brief voyage into the divine process, let you whirl for a second into the atomic nucleus or spin you out on a light-year trip through the galaxies, how on earth would you describe what you saw when you got back, breathless, to your office? This metaphor may sound farfetched or irrelevant, but just ask someone who has taken a heavy dose of LSD." - Tim Leary, The politics of ecstasy, 1968
It's similar to the 'overview effect' reported by astronauts who've been to space. Of course it triggers a paradigm shift and 'cures' depression or other mind-loops that we find ourselves in so often.
It's good to see that there are more discussions about psychedelics in the scientific community. I suspect there are many (more and more) scientists and academics who use psychedelics so I think we will see more and more material published on this subject, apart from the huge amount of anecdotal material available online.
I also suspect that people use more psychedelics now than ever in our history. And it's happening globally. And it's a good thing.
Because I believe psychedelics are the mythical 'love bomb' which can stop wars and bring peace to people and other species on Earth. And they could, in theory, cure cancer - certainly the psychological and spiritual effects of the disease, which could bring remission to it's physical manifestation.
So yeah, there's lots of research still to be done.