I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects. I wish I would have never taken Psilocybin. I didn't even have a bad trip, it was the ideal kind of experience a lot of people seem to strive for. I had the cliche "spiritual awakening" type of experience. It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip. I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out. It took almost ten years to slowly realize what was obvious to me before the mushrooms which is that I am not the center of the universe, and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.
That is a very good example, and thank you for sharing your experience. It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.
If that is what you did you probably would have been more grounded. But it is absolutely crazy to deduce from this very controlled experiment with a very limited single dose of Psilocybin and a lot of therapy after that, that recreational use is ok. This experiment was designed to allow for further controlled experiments to check for Psilocybin potential for treatment of depression and the like. That is all it should be used for.
> It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.
Virtually every modern psychedelic study includes huge amounts of therapy. I actually don’t know if review boards would even approve a study which didn’t have a significant therapy component right now.
This makes the study results non-portable to recreational use. Many of the depression studies use upwards of 20 therapy sessions around the 1 or 2 psychedelic sessions, which is nothing like what happens when taking psychedelics recreationally.
But I think you'd also be quite hard pressed to find any peer-reviewed study that shows a professional therapist yields better results regarding long-term detriment after exposure to psychedelics than mere access to health care when needed along with friends or whatever circumstance people find most enjoyable to take psychedelics in.
There's scant evidence that mandatory therapy sessions are the determining factor of whether or not psychedelics can be taken safely.
This is simply a poorly understood area, scientifically, due in part to government restriction on research. The intertwining of the therapy could mean psychedelics counteracted bad therapy, or the inverse, or neither.
I am going to offer a piece of opinion here that will offend the psychiatrists, psychedelics enthusiasts, and many of those with more conservative views about drug use: what if psychedelic drugs are just another form of entertainment for the mind, like television. What if our ancestors in places like indigenous communities in present-day Mexico actually first started taking them because it GAVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO and a reprieve from boredom, and the spiritual interpretations later just added to the entertainment. What if therapists and psychiatrists, lawmakers, doctors, parents, shaman are making much ado about nothing while injecting their own influence into the mix, particularly for the relatively low risk drugs.
I'm glad they've taken precautions and first of all it seems they went very far to make sure everyone was safe. That is paramount.
That said, the obsession with profession psychologist or psychiatrist as some sort of necessary therapy or guidance in use with psychedelics is just baffling to me. I've tripped a lot, the first several of times of which were completely on my own with no one else around. I'm sure there are people out there who would benefit from these sort of professional guidance but it borders on naive gate-keeping to believe these people are somehow necessary for experiencing altered mental states. I fear some suffered not being able to have the chance to explore psychedelics on their own, but instead influenced by the long traditioned history that medical/mental professionals introduce. It's like they're forcing their own color on the experience.
You're welcome. I was not being treated for anything it was just for recreation and I was under no supervision. I'm all for studying the medicinal effects of it.
Do you think it was psilocybin that gave you those thoughts or do you think the idea of psilocybin gave you good cover to experiment in idealism of youth? Your realism and experience sound more like the practical wisdom a lot of people gain over the 10 years of their 20s.
The psilocybin gave me a God complex delusion due to the hallucinations ideas and feelings I had during the trip. unfortunately I didn't shake the fundamental world view I gained after the trip until objective reality tossed me around enough to snap out of it.
> I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects.
I think it's extremely bizarre that the public narrative has become that psilocybin will:
1) Create an openness to new ideas and flood you with different thoughts and feelings
2) Only create positive changes, thoughts, and feelings.
There's a big push in online comment sections to deny, downplay, or otherwise dismiss negative experiences. Psychedelic enthusiasts will come out of the woodwork and try to argue away any anecdotes that aren't purely positive, blaming them on everything from vague underlying mental health conditions to a misuse of the drugs. But it's almost always victim-blaming.
I'm glad you were able to process your experience and undo the unhealthy changes. Thanks for helping spread awareness that psychedelic-induced changes aren't automatically good or positive.
The public narrative is not that at all. Go ask a few typical midwestern grandmas what she thinks about her grandaughter dropping acid and report back.
Moreover, most of the positive reports I saw were self-reports. If you do psycho drugs, you should not be the one reporting the results. Instead it should be done by your peers/friends who don't do the drugs. Your own report will be extremely biased.
Thank you! I actually logged off my HN account for a day so I didn't see my karma because I assumed I'd be downvoted for my anecdote and didn't feel like arguing with narrative pushers.
Causal attribution is different from the assignment of responsibilities, notwithstanding whether this attribution is correct. Maybe some drug did cause somebody problems, but from the social perspective they may still be "on the hook" and thus "responsible" for all their problems.
> It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip.
That's why it takes a sufficiently mature (in terms of rationality, emotional intelligence and moral values) mind for a trip to be actually safe. One can reach it sooner or later or never but I would consider 25 (when your prefrontal cortex development actually peaks and you have already have gained your fair amount of general experience) a reasonable mean and recommend avoiding psychoactive substances (unless a competent professional decides the opposite and is going to supervise) if you are significantly younger, no matter how legal in your state they are.
BTW the universe actually is on your side. The moment it's not you're dead.
> I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out.
Why do you believe that's bad? I would say a life without goofiness is a horror. A world without idealism is hell. Some choices setting your life and career back occasionally are inevitable and can actually bring immense value you just don't (immediately or ever) consciously recognize. My life/choices has always been a disaster but prepared me to and at some moment "has put" me in a specific place where I have met my soulmate who turnt my life in a paradise (long proven sustainable and, arguably, even antifragile).
> I am not the center of the universe
Well, you can't prove you aren't and numerous philosophers (and some Everett interpretation enthusiasts) would say you are. And this doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.
However you turn it around, you are the Universe experiencing itself subjectively. That's easy to understand without any drugs.
Having felt that during your trip might have led you to the wrong conclusion that your social life will somehow magically be improved by this knowledge alone.
It could be, but not without a lot of good old work and effort.
Even after all of that, there's no guarantee that you'll get what you want and won't get what you don't want.
A lot of people waste their lives with or without the drugs, so maybe it wasn't just this substance that led to those setbacks.
BTW, "the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as "the universe is on my side".
Flippantly dismissing it as "the null hypothesis" is covering up an entire tradition of ideas around secular society's beliefs about the nature of reality. The evidence points to consciousness/subjective experience being the fundamental "matter" of reality, and this is beginning to gain traction again with scientists and philosophers. The "null hypothesis" in your context is built upon the logical positivist framework of the dualist belief that the mind and body are separate, and the objective world can be full apprehended rationally, which involves many a priori assumptions itself and is not a given. Most people are ignorant of the millennia of metaphysics that led to modern ways of looking at the world and just assume it to be ground truth rather than a complex mental construction just like the rest.
You're right, the kids on youtube slowly dying of rabies unable to drink and convulsing in their bed are dying because they deserve it. The world is not a harsh place for them, and they were owed rabies.
It's pretty clear there are people that the universe in practice has offered a shit sandwich. That may not be true for everyone but it could be true to the commenter. Your view is just some self-centered objectivism.
Another flippant dismissal that doesn't address what I said. I said nothing of anyone deserving suffering. Your snap judgement on the nature or reality based on a YouTube video doesn't mean that deep threads and traditions exploring the nature of reality completely ignore the existence of suffering.
> Your view is just some self-centered objectivism.
the irony of projection right here. Sneering at someone to prove your point is an effective technique to convince weaker minds to agree with you, I'll give you that, but it doesn't make you correct.
So you're willing to entertain then that someone could have the objective view that the world isn't on their side? With feelings and a priori opinion removed, factually dying a horrible death of rabies in childhood before reaching even reproductive age cannot possibly be seen as the world/universe being on your side.
BTW, I didn't actually believe you thought people deserve to die of rabies, it was an inflammatory example to drive out how you can possibly defend this viewpoint necessarily being subjective and not objective.
Anyone can have any view they wish about the world. What I'm saying is that it's very easy to take a superficial analysis of the nature of the reality built on gut feelings, personal anecdotes, and "i happen to be born in the right place at the right time in the right cultural tradition that has lock on truth" syndrome, and replace it with another superficial analysis of the reality built on gut feelings and personal anecdotes and "i happen to be born in the right place at the right time in the right cultural tradition that has a lock on truth" syndrome. Flapping from one superficial belief to another doesn't make the latter more true.
>"the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as "the universe is on my side"
Once we establish the validity of "the world is on my side" can be objective (and I think by all factual basis, the world is most definitely objectively not on some people's side), your logical expression now looks like this:
"the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as < objective statement >
Logically put you say
Subjectivity_of("the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything") >= Subjectivity_of (<Objective Statement>)
which is reduced to:
Subjectivity_of("the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything") >= 0
Another words, your statement was meaningless and imposes nothing on the subjectivity of the statement "the world is a harsh place", just lots of word soup about your outrage over perceived ignorance of "millennia of metaphysics that led to modern ways of looking at the world."
Sorry to be blunt, but this sounds like an issue with your thinking, rather than an issue with psilocybin. You were already vulnerable to woo woo and narcissistic thinking, and psilocybin just awakened these traits in you. It's analogous to how hallucinogens can cause snaps in people with undiagnosed schizophrenia. In fact it could be said that it helped you because you became aware of them and flushed them out of your system.
When people are vulnerable to something that doesn't mean they should have to go through it. There are many examples where it will make a human weaker in the end. There are also many examples where it will make a human stronger, but I think in his story it made him weaker because he lost 10 years that he otherwise presumably wouldn't have.
Not only did he lost 10 years, he lost 10 relatively foundational years (i.e. it's less bad to "lose 10 years" in your 60s to 70s compared to your 20s to 30s due to the compound interest effect that early "good years" have).
The reason I posted this is because I went through a very similar experience, in fact for about the same length of time. I did this with a half dozen other people that also had "spiritual" experiences, but didn't fall into the same way of thinking as myself, so there's 7-8 data points that fed into my comment.
Genuinely curious, but how did you all come to this conclusion, are your friends similar? As an engineer with friends who were engineers and scientists, most of us just thought "wow our brain sure is an interesting machine when you manipulate the chemicals" and went on with your lives virtually unchanged.
When I look back at those years I used psychedelics my only real takeaway from use is that the mind is an interesting machine and drugs make me dance funny. Maybe it's because I don't know a spiritual crowd but even my old buddies from rural working class places just found them entertaining, I never heard a single story about spiritual breakthroughs.
It's possible I was vulnerable to this flawed thinking before this. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter too much to me if the chicken or egg came first. And in the long run I don't know if it helped or hurt me due to the butterfly effect. But I do know I regret it and if I had the choice to go back in time I would have stayed away from psilocybin.
I’m a pretty stoic and cynical person after being used as a doormat growing up in narcissistic family. I hope I don’t lose this perspective/lens of not trusting others if I tried psilocybin as my family would take advantage of my altruistic nature as a free labor resource to do work for them if I let my guard down and try to be helpful.
Yeah I think it’s really important to use psychedelics with a therapist. I’ve seen a number of friends go down this path. Having a therapist can help ground you and understand what the experience means to your emotional body.
That being said due to subjectivity you are quite literally the center of your universe =P
That's probably outside the scope of this study. You were probably not in a regulated setting or under the care of a psychiatrist at the time. I'd imagine there's some guidance involved in the whole process that recreational users would miss.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I've reposted below what I wrote to someone else, in the hope that you (or anyone reading) may find this helpful (and hopefully find a way to more peace).
I would point out, in particular that:
1. When using psychedelics, there may be a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.
2. Openness to more creative ideas is a common feature of psychedelic use. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.
-----
Repost:
Psychedelics are very powerful compounds acting on the infinitely complex human nervous system.
It should therefore be expected that the outcomes will be extremely variable and highly contingent on the background and predispositions of the user, the type(s) and dose(s) of the drug(s), the context of the usage of the drug (including related psychotherapy) and other events, practices and influences in the individual's life.
That being said, I have noticed, a general trend towards:
- Less combativeness, agitation and aggression. There is less tendency to want to engage in petty squabbles or incite your own (or others) negative emotional reactions.
- Openness to more creative ideas. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.
- In a similar vein, you may also find yourself exploring spiritual/philosophical topics, especially those related to compassion, empathy, group cohesion and 'reduced ego'. This probably looks an awful lot like hippiness lol. This may include rethinking political, social and economic attitudes.
- Generally more positive thoughts and emotions (positive valence). This often follows a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.
- Psychedelics may help in getting through/integrating past trauma. This may be part of what underlies the above. Many of us live with the after-effects of trauma and being able to work past this can be life-changing. This may be a traumatic process in itself, but sometimes psychedelics facilitate approaching these issues in ways that were not previously possible. IMHO many of the most severely affected by trauma are not even aware of the fact that they're affected and this manifests in a plethora of negative outcomes. Psychedelics in a positively reinforced environment (ideally with therapy) can help tremendously here.
There are a lot of really great resources online for anyone who is interested (regardless of your level of personal experience or opinion):
Highly recommend qualiacomputing.com and qualiaresearchinstitute.org (along with the group's online videos), especially for the HN crowd looking for a more multifaceted, more 'scientifically rigorous' (I use the term loosely here lol, but I think you'll get what I mean).
I'd also recommend some of the lectures on the Oxford Psychedelic Society's website: https://oxpsysoc.org/#things
I hope you find this helpful. Psychedelics are a complex topic but overall I believe they have immense potential to help many people, including but not limited to the following. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to learn more.
- Pain syndromes, including intractable, severe, pain syndromes like cluster headaches. - Resolving trauma (including but not limited to PTSD). - Psychological disorders, including depression and anxiety. - Overcoming addictions.
> and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.
Which is just another subjective view...
Not sure if your comment concludes actually the opposite: You should do Psilocybin if you want to have a happy idalistic life with less career struggles.
I doubt this, and I think it's detrimental to state so in the long run.
I used Psilocybin, and it was worth it. I would recommand people to give it a try, and I helped people around me, including one parent, to take it.
Yet.
Every time I took it, I could feel my speech ability to decline for a while. The side effects faded slowly, and disapeared eventually every time. But traces of it are noticeable after even a month or two sometimes.
It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive. The deny didn't help at all. I know of several people that are addicted to smoking pot now. It's a negative side effect on their life.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Powerful products have powerful effects, and this means some harm can exist.
Yes, psilocybin is way safer than the reputation is has been given in the 70'. Yes, taking it (in the right conditions) can benefit you a lot.
But pretending there is zero detrimental effects is wishful thinking and will lead to people abusing the thing, believing it's just funny candy, and they may end up damaged.
> But pretending there is zero detrimental effects is wishful thinking and will lead to people abusing the thing, believing it's just funny candy, and they may end up damaged.
I think you're mostly reacting to the framing of this headline, which isn't accurately stating the finding of the study.
It would be more accurate to say the study "did not find any short or long term negative effects" which is not the same as a positive assertion that such effects do not exist. This is a similar level of safety as you might find with aspirin or acetaminophen - both of which could be fairly described as not having short or long term negative effects and which can have serious health consequences if used incorrectly [edit: I said "if abused" which is the wrong way to put it].
> There is no such thing as a free lunch. Powerful products have powerful effects, and this means some harm can exist.
There's nothing in this study that contradicts this idea - because studies like this don't claim to detect every form of harm. Instead, they look for particular forms of relatively objective harm. Another example to consider would be SSRIs: they tend to increase suicide attempts when patients start taking them. That's the kind of harm this study would find! But - even if a patient doesn't experience suicidal ideation - no doctor would suggest that it logically follows that patient should certainly go on SSRIs. The choice is always more complex than that.
> did not find any short or long term negative effects
I think what the original comment refers to is that measuring long term side effects is kind of impossible without waiting a long time and wishful thinking.
I mean, I understand why someone might say that, but I think that's actually a critique of western medicine in general rather than this study in particular. In that I think it's understood that studies like this are measuring harms with commonly understood (but hard to rigorously define because you don't know what you don't know) limits.
We've found new harms for medicines or treatments many times, and in each case we generally had previous studies that missed those harms. It's always possible, so calling it out about mushrooms in particular feels odd because the same critique applies to the western approach to every other medicine.
You keep saying 'western' medicine. Is this to imply that some other method exists to study long term harms? I suppose long traditional use might, but this doesn't seem meaningfully different from running medical testing over a long period of time.
> Is this to imply that some other method exists to study long term harms?
Not that I trust? But I think it's important to note that this study has epistemological value within a certain set of axioms and not everyone in the world agrees with those axioms.
The reason it's important to say is that, to some degree, I feel like BiteCode_dev could be questioning an underlying axiom of western medicine (i.e. how to think about anecdotal harms we can't find in population studies). The western tradition has an opinion about the question, but none of us have to accept that opinion, but if we don't we should be honest that we disagree with the tradition in general as opposed to finding a flaw in this particular study.
I'd read the study conclusions again, in particular the dosages and circumstances:
> "Psilocybin, in 10mg or 25mg doses, has no short-term or long-term detrimental effects in healthy people... The research, published in The Journal of Psychopharmacology, is an essential first step in demonstrating the safety and feasibility of psilocybin – a psychedelic drug isolated from the Psilocybe mushroom – for use within controlled settings alongside talking therapy as a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD.'
Notice that very large doses were not studied, and the studies were conducted under controlled settings, with one-on-one support from a trained psychotherapist, in groups of up to six people simultaneously.
As the study was not flawed, then, under these conditions, psilocybin certainly seems like a safe and effective option for treatment.
I'd be curious to know how many mg's an average sized magic mushroom contains. I've taken a stem and had an enjoyable couple hours. I've taken several mushrooms 3.5-7g and had a rather intense set of experiences that I'll never forget, along with some very dark and scary moments -- And I can see how these moments would permanently change someone (even a 'healthy' person).
Ultimately, how many mg's of psilocybin does an average magic mushroom contain? The very first line of text in a google search said 10mg psilocybin per 1g of mushroom. 35-70mg psilocybin for the two standard street dosages - so on the street, your minimum suggested dosage is, at minimum, like 40% stronger than this study looked into? Could make for some less than favorable experiences for people hearing about this 2nd hand and not looking into it.
I wonder if the researchers in this study had people consume mushrooms on an empty or full stomach, as well. Also makes a big difference in terms of intensity and duration (in my experience).
And like you mentioned, those in the study also had 1-on-1 support from a trained professional.. On the street, you've got your goofball friends and maybe one wise, old trip-sitter if you're lucky. And honestly, I'd prefer a seasoned trip-sitter whose taken the drug many times over a trained professional who has is much less likely to have that kind of firsthand experience. The company you keep can have just as much of an impact as the potency of the hallucinogen (again, in my experience).
I think there are some other rare side effects, like vision abnormalities.
The proper way to phrase their findings is that psilocybin has a favorable safety profile and should be studied in more detail with larger numbers of participants.
Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done.
That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms, there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway. I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin.
Sure while you're on them it can be very intoxicating, and temporary loss of speech abilities and all kinds of horrible feelings might occur, particularly in the beginning. Usually you feel better about it later.
I think it has been shown to be the least harmful drug in studies and has proven itself to be not very harmful to people or society.
>That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms
nonsense
>there just isn't a desire to redo them often and it doesn't work well anyway.
please don't talk about your anecdotes as if they were facts. go to any psytrance festival in europe and marvel at people tripping for a week straight
>I've never heard of someone being addicted to psilocybin.
and I've met bucket loads of people "addicted" to living in the unreality of psychedelics. I guess that's not being "addicted to psilocybin" but if the end result is eating mushrooms x times per week then the effect is the same
> I've met bucket loads of people addicted to living in the unreality of psychedelics.
Same here. I used to be good friends with one person in particular who couldn't go more than a couple days without using psilocybin or LSD to change their reality. That's when we drifted paths. But, I heard a year ago that he had switched to heroin and died due to a fentanyl overdose. Getting addicted to altering your perception of reality is dangerous.
Yeah MDMA is addictive, not very but it is. You can use 2cb and speed quite frequently. I know about that. But with shrooms taking a dose the next day or two hardly works at all, there is extreme short term tolerance. Trying to do it frequently was not pleasant in my experience, you just dont have a magical or interesting trip.
There is no such thing as "emotional addiction" or "physical addiction". There is addiction, and some substances have withdrawal symptoms when discontinued.
Its been proven that repeated use of psilocybin quickly builds up a tolerance to it, along with cross tolerance to LSD. Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect. Festivals feature a wide variety of drug use and taking small dosages of mushrooms for recreation for recreation isn't abuse.
As far as addiction, there is chemical addiction, and psychological addition. The former isn't present for a lot of drugs. The latter is very hard to control for, because it really depends on the individual. People can definitely find comfort in escape from reality that psychedelics offer, which can lead to dependence.
However, given an addictive personality, psilocybin use is still safer than comparable drugs, including weed. First, the method of intake through digestive tract is generally better for health than smoking. Secondly, there are no negative withdrawal symptoms from stopping, even with micro-dosing (so in the case of your festival goers, the supposed straight week of use produces no negative withdrawal effects). Thirdly, the desire to get a stronger escape from reality will involve someone taking a higher dose, which isn't a euphoric experience like weed or MDMA can produce - its fairly exhausting even when you are having a good time.
So in the end, given the society view to alcohol and its comparable effects, psilocybin should absolutely be decriminalized and promoted as medicine for use, especially with therapy.
As I said in another comment, tolerance just means a higher dose each day. It would probably be hard to do with mushrooms for any serious dose, but with LSD it would work.
The point isn't that taking drugs on festivals is abuse, but rather that on festivals I've met people who've been taking psychedelic drugs on a weekly basis for years and their perception of reality is so twisted you have to wonder if they will ever "come back". They are willing participants in all of that, but I have to wonder if its healthy or morally sound to wave them off on their trip with no return.
>So in the end, given the society view to alcohol and its comparable effects, psilocybin should absolutely be decriminalized and promoted as medicine for use, especially with therapy.
Disagree, decriminalisation is not enough, all drugs should be legal.
But that is completely beside the point of our topic of danger.
>but rather that on festivals I've met people who've been taking psychedelic drugs on a weekly basis for years and their perception of reality is so twisted you have to wonder if they will ever "come back".
Research shows that there is a likelihood that if they stop, they will generally be fine.
Andrew Callaghan of the youtube series All Gas No Brakes used psilocybin heavily in his young teenage years, which is dangerous because it affects the brain development, and as a result he suffers from PPD, however he is able to carry on life and have a job, especially one that involves being self employed and producing content.
Like I said, there are personalities for which ordinary common things like video games are "dangerous", but we don't consider video games dangerous as a qualifier. Psilocybin should be viewed in the same way.
> Your statement about festivals in Europe is just plain false, by the end of the week you have to consume significant amount of mushrooms to get the same effect.
You think it's impossible that people at festivals are consuming significant amounts of mushrooms by the end of the week..?
That being said, the vast majority of even the heaviest users probably take a break after the festival.
This is kinda anecdotal, but if you have ever done shrooms/LSD, you would understand how extremely unlikely this is. I generally should never say "false" with absolutism, since it is plausible, but in this case, given the users previous statements, I would bet significant money that he has no evidence of festival goers doing this with mushrooms.
A good trip is usually around the 3.5 gram mark based on average experiences. If you do this, you are going to be fairly "fucked up" as people say. Its not gonna be a purely positive experience like MDMA, where once the effects wear off, you are going to want to do more to get back to your happy place. Most reality warping trips end up with person wanting it over because its so exhausting.
The next day, if you really want to have the experience again, you have to do something like 5 grams to get the effect. The next day its going to be like 8 grams. Over a week, you are going to be ingesting something like 30 grams - in many places where shrooms are illegal, bringing that much to the festival is likely going to get you involved with security as intent to sell/distribute.
LSD is way easier to do this with, as dosages last longer (12 hours on the average), and multiple tabs or it in liquid form is way easier to sneak in. However, again, the reality warping trips are not exactly pleasurable and quite exhausting, and you still have to do a boatload towards the end of the week, to get the same effect, which costs money and is a waste of a drug (and money).
The way people consume psychedelics at festivals is usually in smaller dosages, where they are certainly not disassociated even remotely Doing this for a week is arguably less harmless than drinking enough beers to get a buzz every day.
Weed/alcohol/mdma are much more common things that get used on a repetitive basis since the effects are pleasurable and you can redose to get back to euphoric state.
There are definitely people that abuse psychs in general, but this is more of a personality issue than a drug issue. People can abuse generally harmless things like video games, and ruin their lives.
I think their point is that anecdotes are not very valuable and then gave examples of anecdotes that differ as a way to show that individual experiences / perceptions can be vastly different, which isn't at odds with their original point.
The point being that you can easily summon anecdotes for or against virtually any proposition, so they tell you very little about the incidence of a phenomenon. Emptyfile also pointed out a venue where it would be easy to find counterexamples to Synaesthesia's claim.
IIRC tolerance builds extremely quickly (after just one use) and is cross-tolerant with most other 5-HT2A agonists so I think tripping a week straight is not really possible.
Tolerance just means you double the dose each day. People do it with LSD. Folks do crazy shit with drugs, in all honesty I think most people could hardly believe what kind of stuff drug users get up to.
I appreciate the newfound silicon valley, positive, scientific approach to drugs, but over here on the party continent it's a lot different.
> That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms
Untrue. People can and do get hooked on the deliriant and escapist effects. Some people get addicted to the idea that the trip is revealing important information that they need to continue receiving.
It may not be common, but it's very much possible.
It's important to use precise language when talking about addiction. It sounds like you're interpreting "addiction" as "habit forming", whereas I believe GP means "physical dependency". I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread.
> It's important to use precise language when talking about addiction. It sounds like you're interpreting "addiction" as "habit forming", whereas I believe GP means "physical dependency". I see a lot of people talking past each other in this thread.
I directly quoted the part I disagreed with. They very specifically said:
> That said it's almost impossible to abuse mushrooms,
Trying to change the topic to specifically physical dependency is a straw-man argument. The topic was literally about "abuse".
The canadian report into the misuse of drugs (a pelican book from the 70s) drew a distinction between addiction and habituation which I think has stood the test of time. Addictive things cause change in the bodies own processes, such as the replacement of ?dopamine? by opiod drugs, and a decline in the bodys own production due to homeostasis: this means the withdrawal is a real physiological effect, lack of dopamine until the body restarts production.
Some drugs (I mean drugs in the wider sense not recreational drugs) can cause PERMANENT change in the bodys own hormone cycle and so you cease production of a function entirely. Menopause is an instance of this but there are others I believe, the endocrine system is fantastically complex. I believe some bone anti-demineralisation drugs have this side effect and so deciding to take them has huge longterm consequences (again unsure I have the right background drug issue here)
Habituation is the mental binding of pleasure or some other desired state (numbing, dissociation) to the repeated effect (as I understand it) and is a different thing: It feels good because you've learned the response, might be the way to put it. This is NOT the same as a homeostatic change in body function.
> It's important to use precise language when talking about addiction.
Agreed. Adding to this: GP characterized psilocybin's effects as "deliriant". This word has a specific meaning, and psilocybin doesn't fit -- it's a psychedelic, not a deliriant. There are some mushrooms that produce deliriants (e.g. Amanita muscaria / muscimol), but these are not typically consumed in the same context as psilocybin mushrooms.
"Marijuana is addictive, I know that many people will deny it, just like they say it's not unhealthy to smoke, it is, there is definitely harm done."
I agree with this, but I think some of the pushback may be coming from people in recovery from alcohol, meth, cocaine, opiates, etc. We only have so many words to choose from, and those "addictions" more often drive death, divorce, abandonment, insane decisions, and so on. So adding marijuana to the list feels like it might dilute the message, or diminish someone's view of the dangers, etc.
"almost impossible to abuse mushrooms"
No personal experience with that, but I can attest to how different people's experiences with anything are. There's plenty of heavy users of my list of substances above that never seem to slip into the kind of hell that other people do.
If marijuana is addictive how is it I’m able to take weeks and months off each year (I live in a legal state) without withdrawals?
It stores itself in fat and I’ve definitely noticed it takes a few weeks before I’m entirely off the effects.
That’s a lot different than meth where addicts have mental breakdown without it.
Routine interaction with others is chemically stimulating and withdrawal into isolation can hurt. Is having friends addictive? Lockdown isolation has been harder than going without weed when I needed to.
I think the normies should stop trying to be experts. Experience and ability are relative just like physics. Seeing patterns in reality isn’t interesting; we all do it inherently as part of our innate biology.
Agree that the pro-legalization movement likes to claim "not addictive" but what they always have meant (which if pressed, they generally will acknowledge) is that it is not physically addictive.
It is, of course, psychologically addictive because literally anything can be.
Surprised i had to scroll so far down the comments to see this reply among the sea of “but weed is addictive, despite everyone claiming otherwise”.
You are fully correct, people talk only about the physical component of addiction when it comes to drugs, because, as you said, literally anything can be psychologically addicting. Videogames, movies, tv shows, work, etc., all of those. If it is an activity or something you interact with, it can be psychologically addictive.
In light of that, I am confused by all those “but weed is addicting” comments. It is kind of obvious that the article is talking about physical addiction exclusively.
I think what most people are referring to with cannabis, in terms of it not being addictive, is physiological dependence. Cannabis has very little in terms of withdrawal symptoms, and thus has low propensity towards physiological dependence. I’ve heard people state depression for a few days as one of the few withdrawal symptoms for heavy users. So while the people you may know may be addicted, it’s not because of a physiological dependence but a mental one.
Mushroom drawl is a pretty classical tell of usage, but I wouldn't consider it a de facto detriment.
For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts, less likely to be carried away by engagement or perpetuate useless ideas, and more prone to patient reflection.
Mushrooms can't magically confer any of those skills, but some things are easier to learn when we're not leaning on only what comes most naturally to us.
> Mushroom drawl is a pretty classical tell of usage, but I wouldn't consider it a de facto detriment.
> For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts,
It takes some wild mental gymnastics to try to flip a drug-induced speech impediment into a good thing.
It's also fascinating to watch how some of the psychedelic enthusiasts will vehemently dismiss the idea of mushroom-induced speech issues, while others will readily acknowledge that "mushroom drawl" is a classic, well-known phenomenon but it's okay because it's good actually.
> For some people, being a little slower to speak means they're more careful with their thoughts, less likely to be carried away by engagement or perpetuate useless ideas, and more prone to patient reflection.
I speak fast when my mind is sharp and active, and speak slow when I am tired or sick and can't think straight. Bet you most people do the same. So you probably should read it that he had long term retardation of the brain, not a calm nature.
> It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive.
Marijuana is not physically addictive. That was and is also the reasonable claim made by reasonable people. Then lots of people seems to have conflated this claim with psychological addictiveness.
I claim that HN isn't physically addictive. The fact that it is psychologically addictive doesn't amount to me "pretending".
Anecdotally, I spent ~10 years as a daily pot smoker. I then moved to another country where it's illegal, so I stopped cold turkey in one day. I didn't experience any physical side effects or cravings. YMMV, but at least for me, it was a psychological condition. Once I told myself that I wanted to live in a place where it was illegal, and I wasn't willing to break the law of my new country of residence, that was it.
As a personal anecdote: been smoking for 10 years and everytime I take a break I have huge night sweats for 3 or 4 days until I become normal again.
I'm talking like waking up twice in the middle of the night to change bed sheets and t-shirt so I'm not sleeping in a pool of sweat.
> Flawed drug awareness campaigns of the 1990s claimed that cannabis could be psychologically addictive but not physically addictive like other drugs. However, cannabis does predictably cause physical dependence—the hallmarks of which are tolerance and withdrawal—and heavy users may have great difficulty in attempting to reduce or end their use, leading to compulsive, continued use and related consequences
Prolonged cannabis use produces both pharmacokinetic changes (how the drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized, and excreted) and pharmacodynamic changes (how the drug interacts with target cells) to the body. These changes require the user to consume higher doses of the drug to achieve a common desirable effect (known as a higher tolerance), reinforcing the body's metabolic systems for eliminating the drug more efficiently and further down-regulating cannabinoid receptors in the brain.[7]
Cannabis users have shown decreased reactivity to dopamine, suggesting a possible link to a dampening of the reward system of the brain and an increase in negative emotion and addiction severity.[8]
(...)
Cannabis withdrawal symptoms occur in one-half of people in treatment for cannabis use disorders.[15] Symptoms may include dysphoria (anxiety, irritability, depression, restlessness), disturbed sleep, gastrointestinal symptoms, and decreased appetite. It is often paired with rhythmic movement disorder. Most symptoms begin during the first week of abstinence and resolve after a few weeks.
Whether or not there is strong evidence of physical addiction, the withdrawal experience is very real, and often unpleasant. Couple this with psychological dependence, and quitting can feel quite daunting.
The main issues right away:
- Problems sleeping due to REM rebound (vivid disruptive dreams or nightmares)
- Appetite issues
- General irritability
- Heightened anxiety (especially if using cannabis to treat anxiety)
If you’re using semi-medicinally, it’s extremely easy to hit these roadblocks, conclude “see I shouldn’t quit, weed isn’t so bad anyway”, and fall back into the habit.
I’m convinced that the reality of cannabis addiction/withdrawal is aggressively glossed over by the community of users who are very invested in what they’re doing being just fine. The truth is a bit murkier/darker.
I say this as a recreational-bordering-medical user (it does help calm down my PTSD) who enjoys using it, but who dislikes the inconvenient reality of trying to take a tolerance break.
I recently quit a pretty heavy constant background dose of THC (which I used to leverage myself off a pretty heavy constant background dose of alcohol).
sleeping is a big one
piercing headaches
similar effect to quitting alcohol - heightened sensitivity to light and noise
its also quite an adjustment to be dumped back out into the world again after living for years in your little blanket of quiet satisfaction.
its not the worst, and I've quit weed before without going through anything..but its not nothin
As does gambling addiction. The chemicals being internally generated by a psychological process doesn’t mean there aren’t severe withdrawal effects. Panic attacks and depression can have severe physical side effects. That doesn’t make any of those things chemically addictive substances.
> Marijuana is not physically addictive. That was and is also the reasonable claim made by reasonable people.
That's not true at all. Heavy marijuana dependency and withdrawals definitely produce physical withdrawal effects.
They're not equivalent to, say, alcohol withdrawal, but they will exist.
There's actually a lot of research into various adjunct medications to dampen the physical withdrawal to help addicted marijuana users quit.
But regardless, if you have to qualify the type of addiction, you're not escaping the fact that something is addictive. Too many people have used this false physical/psychological dichotomy to talk themselves into marijuana dependencies, psychological or otherwise.
Based on what? I believed it was common sense that our mental state was a product of the neurochemical interactions going on our brains. If you get addicted to gaming, are you really addicted to gaming, or are you addicted to the huge amounts of hormones like dopamine and serotonin flooding your brain when you win a match? Is this really "psychological" addiction? If the answer is yes, should I decide to inject serotonin intravenously, is it still psychological addiction?
I don't think we are talking about the same thing. I'm specifically talking about addiction, but it seems you're talking about withdrawal, which is related but not the same.
Focusing too much on the distinction can lead to false conclusions like “I can use cannabis without any concerns about addiction.
Ignoring the distinction can falsely equate the severity of dependence with harder drugs.
I think it’s important to leave room for both: 1) Yes, there’s a difference between physical/psychological addiction and 2) Sometimes the end result is still addiction, with all of the negatives that come with it.
Physiological addiction is more real in that your body forms a physical dependency on something that can kill you if you don't have it. This is CRUCIAL to understanding why we need stuff like Methadone or Kratom to help ween people off of Heroin/opioids.
Mental addiction is treated entirely differently and is far less severe.
Both are real? Of course. However: Psychological addiction can drive you to kill yourself but except in the most extreme of corner cases can I imagine how you could involuntarily die. Physiological addiction can straight up execute you (see alcohol or benzo withdrawal).
"Most" seems like a high bar. Corner case I guess is unfair wording because it's totally undefinable. The DTs does choose to execute some people, especially if they can't reach treatment. I guess psychological stress can as well in rare events, although for an otherwise healthy person I would always pick the most crushing psychological stress over suffering untreated DT.
Well for one because alcohol and alcoholics are virtually all over the world and it isn't clear to me that the majority of alcoholics in the world both know about the risks of DT and have access to treatment. But it is my understanding even with EARLY appropriate treatment there is an expectation 1+% of those suffering DT will die.
AA specifically works with health care workers specifically because of this and other problems. If "most" is your bar then death is only a corner case of attempted suicide. Although I thought I admitted that "corner case" was just a poor choice of undefinable wording on my part.
~%5% odds of getting DTs and then 25% of death untreated and 1-5% chance treated don't sound great to me. Treated death of all alcoholics rate looks somewhere between flu and covid death rate and untreated death rate is much worse than covid death rate in populaton. People seem worried about covid death and not considering that a corner case.
>You are trying to claim that psychological addiction isn’t as real as physiological addiction, not just for alcohol.
I never said such a thing and this is just a malevolent and calculated lie.
>What isn’t clear is why you want to deny the difficulties of people who have psychological addictions to any kind of drug.
It's not clear because no such denial exists, and it's only alleged as part of a malevolent and calculated lie.
My original comment said they were both real. I'm saying regarding being straight up executed, the numbers game is that psychological addiction doesn't look nearly as likely to straight up execute you. I've said nothing to say psychologist addiction isn't a difficult for some people.
I don't know about you, but I think it's extremely important, ESPECIALLY FOR PEOPLE WITH EXPERIENCE IN PSYCHOLOGICALLY ADDICTIVE SUBSTANCES who have perhaps had insanely hard struggles with things like opiates to understand that no amount of willpower will spare them from the very real chance of involuntary death from benzo or alcohol withdrawal.
You've built a straw man as tall as the wall of china is wide.
I thought it was clear that I said both were real, but I understand maybe it was not interpreted by you that way. I wasn't saying your comment was wrong, I was speaking with thought in mind of some inferences that might be made based on your statement.
I was worried it could be inferred the flat out execution would be the same level of "real" for psychological as it is for the physiological. I was worried someone who has gone through insanely torturous psychological opiate withdrawal for instance would think that if they're both just as real, that means their odds of involuntary death from psychological withdrawal and physiological withdraw looks the same and they can just mentally power through physiological addiction like some strong-willed people may be able to with psychological addiction.
Of course this is wrong. You can't willpower your way out of delerium tremens. You can be executed, no matter what conscious decision you make.
I do not believe this is what you wrote. I was adding to the conversation. Do you believe it is ok to add to the conversation? Not every comment is meant to literally attempt to disprove the person above them. I was not disproving your statement.
This doesn't mean anything. It's not evidence of anything. You can't go to court and argue there's no such thing as a free lunch.
There's free lunches out there, literally, somebody puts a literal free lunch out next to the dumpster for the less fortunate all the time. There's losers and winners with no reason to be found for why. Some guy buys Bitcoin at 5 bucks, becomes a billionaire and doesn't turn into the archetypal power-mad lunatic burning his fortunes on lambos.
Here's the actual woo: desperate attempts to overlay patterns of meaning to a universe that does not subscribe to Abrahamic values.
Some people will take psychedelics and have enduring negative impressions, sometimes for the rest of their life. Others, like myself, will use it to shapechange out of a history of abuse by their parents. No one can know which of the cards they'll pick.
But I can tell you, from the many I have directly known to take it, a fraction succumbed to permanent, negative, distorted beliefs. Some got a free lunch, some few did not.
No free lunch carries some weight in this context. If there is a chemical that has a very positive effect in humans, there is probably a reason that humans didn't evolve to produce that chemical or exist in the state that the chemical induces.
That reason could be related to what you suggest, that the actual effect is a mixed bag and doesn't wind up worth it. It could be that our environment has changed to make it beneficial and evolution hasn't caught up. It could be that dreams are already the same thing and we're not sleeping enough or the right way, so psychadelics are filling the gap. In general, though, it's that the benefits are outweighed by costs. No free lunch is a reasonable prior in biology.
It's "not addictive" in the sense that physical withdrawal symptoms are minimal compared to booze, nicotine, and other drugs. But you can make a daily habit out of anything pleasurable and ruin your life around it. I've seen people ruin their lives with both gaming and gambling habits.
It's a drug that sort of shakes up your mind. It lets you make all sorts of connections that you aren't going to sober, unless you spend a ton of time reflecting. At the end, you gain this incredible emotional clarity which helps you regulate your emotions. This is probably why it's being studied for use with depression and anxiety.
> Virtually all of the clinical trials and robust research studies psilocybin in conjunction with 10 or more non-psychedelic therapy sessions.
Tangential, but I've noticed that all the psilocybin trials I've read about are combined with therapy as well; my knee jerk assumption is that there are legal/moral/funding powers at play causing that. Not sure a study would get funded if it consisted of "we're going to get a bunch of depressed people to take shrooms and see what happens!".
The more scientific approach would be to separate the therapy group from the shroom group.
I agree completely and did not mean to imply otherwise (hence my phrasing of "it can help with" rather than "it can cure"). Yes, that research involved combination treatment of psilocybin alongside psychotherapy.
That said, the anecdotal effects I listed are just from personal use without psychotherapy. But of course they're anecdotal :)
From brain scans regarding psychedelic mushroom use, it shows a huge increase of brain activity, indicating a lot more neural activations, which is why visuals usually involve seeing resemblance of things you know in things like wall or carpet textures. There are also some reports that the blood flow to the region that is responsible for parsing reality is decreased and increased to other areas, which makes your internal thoughts feel more like reality.
If you think about it in terms of neural networks, your day to day life is a set of standard inputs that result in predictable emotions/outcomes. However, on a shroom trip with significant dosage, both the outside effects and internal thoughts get enhanced in both strength and with additional features, which can be enough to start moving your internal synaptic weights enough to effect different thoughts or behaviors.
This is analogous to something like going to a different country with a different culture, and living there, which in turn will change your perspectives opinions and behaviors based on experiencing life differently - after about a month or so you will likely be doing things slightly differently and thinking about concepts in a slightly different way. Magic mushrooms essentially condenses this process in a shorter timeframe.
So given the right setting, this process can provide positive effects. Of course, the trip could also exaggerate negative emotions and thoughts, however, because of no withdrawal symptoms or long lasting effects, people generally just remember it as a bad trip and don't wanna do it again. Even there, sometimes the meta effect is experiencing the bad feeling strong enough during the trip that it doesn't seem as bad when you are sober.
In general, the argument for use is that the probability for negative effects is low, but probability for positive effects is significant. So rationally it makes sense to go through the experience.
It's different from people to people, and from session to session.
I've seen a variety of positive effects, but this is annecdotal, as they are reported by the people taking the substance themself.
There is also the problem of long term vs short term. There are plenty of positive side effects that fade away after a few hours, days, or months.
Often though, people report practical insights about oneself or life, that they could not get before, and those can be lasting.
Some people report physical benefits as well. Paul Stamets famously said his speech impediment disapeared after a session.
On a personnal level, what lasted for me were:
- the understanding of some needs I had, and that I was not allowing myself to have.
- the smoothing of autistic symptoms such. E.g: welcoming of physical contact.
Both significantly improved my quality of life.
I have to insist on the right conditions, though. There affect heavily both your immediate experience and the benefits you may get. If you intend to give it a try, get an experimented, serious and benevolent person to assist you.
There are some groups that are specialized in the matter. I've done my first session with the psychedelic society: you pay them, and they organize a whole 3 days seminar for you. They were competent, caring, and amazingly benevolent. Unfortunatly they exist only in Europe.
I don't have data but first hand experience and for me it is truer to say: it enhances your level of consciousness and it allows you to experience reality from beyond your mental-emotional conditioning. Which are two things that may sound very cryptic to many people reading this, as it cannot really be described in words. It is a explaining an orgasms to a person who has never had it kind of thing.
It obviously needs more formal research, but anecdotal reports of tryptamine-based psychedelics indicate strong potential for stress management and/or general mental health recovery.
an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of abject confusion in this realm as fifty mind numbing years of the US Drug War sponsored by RAID Shadow Legends has rendered any independent attempt at scientific validation of the conditions applications and hazards of most recreational narcotics a fever dream of retraction, deflection, and outright lies.
For 50 years psychedelic drugs were the devils dingaling and always accompanied by a well-wishing naysayer who insisted the other shoe was filled with the cloven hoof of Mephistopheles himself. This is quality peer-reviewed research, the same kind used to ostensibly validate things like hydrocodone and Flintstones vitamins...but this sort of thing is happening alongside the haggard burro of western drug policy which makes it all the more precious. Any knowledge of the conditions and terms related to something like this as it pertains to PTSD is invaluable as 30 years ago such seditious mumblings would get you branded a communist hippie.
so yeah, terms and conditions apply and just as with everything else, theres a ladder of risk, but castigating the machine shop for their nefarious chainsaw sure to rain terror upon the good fae of the woods is a little silly.
> It's like when people claimed that marijuana was not addictive.
I quit both weed and nicotine and only the nicotine was the problem to shift. Weed can be habitual, sure but there's a huge difference in physical and habitual addiction.
Quitting nicotine is absurdly overblown. I'm sure me saying this will annoy somebody, but I think it's much more of a habit than a physical addiction and people hide behind the physical addiction as an excuse. Maybe if you smoke a pack a day it is a different beast but daily smoking is really not hard to kick.
Maybe it is overblown, I can generally go a while without a smoke, and could probably quit with relative ease if I wanted to. Surely it’s no heroin withdraw and certainly not as bad as alcohol withdraw, but it’s the quickest I’ve ever come to developing any physical addiction symptoms. The withdraw is real too, but mostly bearable.
well it took me ~four years to comfortably quit nicotine from wanting to, to absolute zero. Weed is considerably easier to turn on and off whenever. I get that we're all weird but for some people there is a significant difference here.
I wonder how much of that is addiction and how much is just forgetting what something is like. I have 1 cigar a month (never more, occasionally less) and have done so for about 12 years. I suppose some may say that means I'm addicted. Or does it mean I simply enjoy a cigar? I honestly don't know the threshold. When I see a cigar I'm usually reminded of the enjoyment; I guess that is some addiction in and of itself. It calls into question, what is a memory in and of itself -- and if memories and the desire to relive them are just an incarnation of addiction.
IMHO addiction is where you don't feel like you can adequately function without. For a daily nicotine smoker, being without is a negative consequence that seriously alters mood and efficacy. This is what makes that sort of addiction particularly ravenous as opposed to your measured once a month.
I wonder what you think the point of HN is? Do you think that this is a community for sharing peer-reviewed studies?
If you're not interested in reading opinions and comments from an open forum that anyone can join, then maybe it is better for you to stop reading these comments.
For me, I think OP's comment was completely reasonable, and at any rate, the headline with which the conclusions of this study appears is at best incomplete, and deserves to be criticised.
I don't think the point of HN is for people to share scientific articles and then for the comments section to be like "I disagree because of my personal experiences."
Where does a conversation that uses personal anecdotes to refute scientific evidence even go? That's not adding anything to the conversation _at all_.
Hacker News is where I go for intelligent discussion. Literally anyone can hop on the internet and say "hmm...I disagree because this one time..." and I tend to stay away from places that foster those kinds of value-less conversations.
I don't agree. I've never taken psilocybin, and I'm interested to hear the subjective experiences of folks who have, in addition to reading scientific studies, so this does add to the conversation. If I only wanted to read the study, then I'd subscribe to the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
However, there are some (in my opinion) huge flaws in this study and its presentation:
1. This study was conducted on a small sample (60 people who received the psilocybin, and addition 29 who received the placebo - of whom 4 did not actually complete the study).
2. The study looked at short term effects and followed up at '29 or 85 days', (my emphasis). I'm not sure that I would be comfortable saying there had been 'no detrimental effects' after less than a month.
3. The study limits the scope of 'detrimental effects' to cognitive functioning or emotional processing.
4. The study was supervised and all participants took part in mandatory preparation and therapy sessions.
5. All of the participants were self-selected, and 35 participants had already taken psilocybin out of the 89 total participants (including those who had taken the placebo), which is about 13 times higher than the estimated population lifetime use in the UK.
6. Importantly in conjunction with point 5, participants were screened for pre-existing medical and psychiatric conditions, meaning a highly significant proportion of participants had already taken psilocybin without detrimental effect at least once before, and other non-first time users who had experienced detrimental effects previously would have been excluded from the study.
7. Four participants in the placebo arm did not complete the study, meaning the control group was only 25 people.
8. Efficacy of blinding was not assessed, and given the nature of psilocybin and the fact that up to 41% of the people who completed the study had taken psilocybin before, it seems quite likely that a significant proportion of the participants were unblinded.
9. Particularly worrying in the study is the statement: "An AE [Adverse Event] of substance induced psychotic disorder was reported for a participant who became behaviourally disinhibited during the acute drug experience. After a medical assessment, 2.5 mg oromucosal midazolam was administered. This event was not considered to be an SAE [Serious Adverse Event]." It would be unusual to administer buccal midazolam to someone who was not experiencing any 'detrimental effects'.
In a study which is potentially only looking at 25 people taking psilocybin for the first time[0] at low doses, I don't think we can really discount personal anecdotes, especially when they're clearly and properly presented as such.
[0]: Admittedly worst-case scenario where all of the placebo group turn out to have never taken psilocybin before.
> I'm interested to hear the subjective experiences of folks who have
Okay, I have taken psilocybin and I agree with the study wholeheartedly.
Thanks for the second part of your comment which is much more of what I go to Hacker News for but not really relevant to my comment. Plus, since my personal experiences reaffirm the study, I'm going to ignore all of those critiques and just stick to my personal opinion.
Highly highly doubt this. Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done alot of mushrooms knows that they have cognitive "peculiarities". The shift towards peace, love, and hippie-ish personality traits is clearly a neurogloical effect of mushrooms. Its clearly a deterministic effect that nearly everyone who has done them alot converges on.
EDIT:
I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.
I would also describe the effect as "loopy"
One last piece of information, I really dont believe anyone claiming these effects as purely positive have spent time around heavy mushroom users. My evidence is anecdotal, but spans years and tens of people. I was involved in a community that had alot of experience with this. The effects to me were clear, and I am skeptical of anyone, including researchers, who have not seen this first hand. I first hand witnessed the mental changes in friends who went down that path, and really dont think they were the same person at the end.
The Aztecs were very fond of mushrooms but definitely not hippies. You’re describing a mimetic cultural phenomenon facilitated by the neuroplasticity the drug confers.
This is the correct answer; people whose only understanding of psychedelics draws from media portrayals of the 60s have a dramatically warped and puritanical perspective on what is a pharmacological effect vs a cultural effect
Uh, they did say "detrimental effects." Those don't sound detrimental to me.
In fact, knowing as we do that psilocybin has a significant impact on reducing depression for months after a single dose - including for otherwise untreatable major depression - it sounds like those folks may have had some low-level baseline depressive symptoms. [edit] Not to the point of being clinical of course. [1]
> I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.
I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.
[edit] > I would also describe the effect as "loopy"
> I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.
Some spiritual practices aim at direct experience of the true nature of reality. They're about sharpening your mind such that it is capable of intuiting such insights.
> I hate to break this to you, but mysticism and spirituality isn't grounded in reality no matter what.
Who among us determines what "reality" is and is not? Science is quite excellent at measuring the materialistic subset of it, but when one gets into the subjective, phenomenological aspects of it (including complex matters like causality, human psychology, emergence, etc), science is not much help (and is even a hindrance to some degree I'd say, since a lot of people (but not all) seem to believe that science is the only lens through which reality can be viewed, and that it sees all of reality, or that which it does not see is irrelevant).
The new top comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29799013 describes what I see from shroom users better. People who do shrooms only feel like they are closer to peace, love, and empathy. In reality nothing changes, but they gain ego based on that feeling, which seems to have an opposite effect described in the linked comment (e.g. the idea that the world revolves around them).
Psychedelics are very powerful compounds acting on the infinitely complex human nervous system.
It should therefore be expected that the outcomes will be extremely variable and highly contingent on the background and predispositions of the user, the type(s) and dose(s) of the drug(s), the context of the usage of the drug (including related psychotherapy) and other events, practices and influences in the individual's life.
That being said, I have noticed, a general trend towards:
- Less combativeness, agitation and aggression. There is less tendency to want to engage in petty squabbles or incite your own (or others) negative emotional reactions.
- Openness to more creative ideas. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.
- In a similar vein, you may also find yourself exploring spiritual/philosophical topics, especially those related to compassion, empathy, group cohesion and 'reduced ego'. This probably looks an awful lot like hippiness lol. This may include rethinking political, social and economic attitudes.
- Generally more positive thoughts and emotions (positive valence). This often follows a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.
- Psychedelics may help in getting through/integrating past trauma. This may be part of what underlies the above. Many of us live with the after-effects of trauma and being able to work past this can be life-changing. This may be a traumatic process in itself, but sometimes psychedelics facilitate approaching these issues in ways that were not previously possible. IMHO many of the most severely affected by trauma are not even aware of the fact that they're affected and this manifests in a plethora of negative outcomes. Psychedelics in a positively reinforced environment (ideally with therapy) can help tremendously here.
There are a lot of really great resources online for anyone who is interested (regardless of your level of personal experience or opinion):
Highly recommend qualiacomputing.com and qualiaresearchinstitute.org (along with the group's online videos), especially for the HN crowd looking for a more multifaceted, more 'scientifically rigorous' (I use the term loosely here lol, but I think you'll get what I mean).
I'd also recommend some of the lectures on the Oxford Psychedelic Society's website: https://oxpsysoc.org/#things
I hope you find this helpful. Psychedelics are a complex topic but overall I believe they have immense potential to help many people, including but not limited to the following. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to learn more.
- Pain syndromes, including intractable, severe, pain syndromes like cluster headaches.
- Resolving trauma (including but not limited to PTSD).
- Psychological disorders, including depression and anxiety.
- Overcoming addictions.
For any complex system such as brain you should expect any noticable effect to be negative. Brains are designed to work in a narrow corridor of environmental states and any shift away from it is likely causing a malfunction. This should be pretty obvious for anyone who understands information/entropy.
As for your list, I am yet to see any unbiased proof for any benefits beyond good mood (and even that one is still doubtful in longer term).
In my opinion like most other psychodelics users you are doing a lot of damage by providing your personal experience without also providing how non-participating users see your experience from an unaffected standpoint. As I mentioned above, you might think you are more open and empathetic, while peers might see you as a close-minded jerk.
You certainly sound like a nutjob to me because the part of your comment about expecting varied outcome contradicts even common sense about complex systems. E.g. if you insert pretty much anything into a running motor, that is not supposed to be there, the motor performance will likely drop sharply and chances are the damage will be permanent. And a motor is basically primitive in comparison to a human brain.
That's a surprisingly disparaging and unsupported reply (but I welcome the discussion).
You may want to review your comments and question whether they're a fair response to what I've written. I also wonder why you find it necessary to be so adamant and pejorative. You clearly have a strong negative bias on this issue (without any demonstrable knowledge on the topic).
I'm a physician with subspecialty qualifications and publications across multiple fields in neuroscience, so I would strongly argue against your points on the nervous system (you seam to be talking from the position of someone without biological or neuroscience training).
There is substantial 'non-biased' evidence for the utility of psychedelics. Here are just a a few publications, which may interest you:
Did someone who uses mushrooms steal your girlfriend? You clearly have no medical, biological or neuroscience background, yet keep spewing the same bad faith arguments.
I've taken a look at some of your previous posts - you come across as consistently obnoxious and uninformed yet willing to post an uncompromising opinion. Google scholar is great if you actually want to search for evidence that may counter your view (which you don't seam to).
For anyone interested in a good faith discussion on psychedelics and creativity, there are several articles (although the reductionist approach may not be the best one on this topic), but here's an example:
What is it with you starting ad-hominem? You basically don't like that I consider your comments on the topic plainly wrong and therefore dangerous, and you think that stating it along with reasons as to why they are wrong makes me a kind of bad person.
You have not pointed out any of my statements to be wrong with any kind of evidence supported contradiction.
UPD. Even that last link points out that research into creativity being boosted by psychedelics is so far inconclusive, which should be read as "does not support the statement, that psychedelics increase creativity". Considering you somehow read it as supporting your point, this kinda proves your point is based on wishful thinking rather than careful reading of research.
May I just sidekick this link into this argument.
There it states the, eventual, benefits and disadvantage of psychodelics.
The science on psychodelics is still a new thing and something maybe worthwile or not. The articles explains the relaxed belief under psychodelics theorie very well. Which is in my opinion the downside of psychodelics…but others are free to disagree and time will tell but time didnt told until know.
'Brains are designed to work in a narrow corridor of environmental states and any shift away from it is likely causing a malfunction.'
This runs completely contrary to everything we know about the structure and function of the brain. The brain's function is in no way similar to that of a motor engine.
Maybe everything you think you know (btw, what is it do you think you know exactly that supports your claim?).
I know when temperature goes up 1C the brain gets sluggish. I know food is filtered before going into blood, and is further filtered by blood-brain barrier to reduce chances of contamination thus breaking its delicate function.
Also, it does not matter if the brain function is similar to a motor, the point applies to any complex system.
I take mean spirited any time over harmful, which I believe your comments are.
If you see a problem with my statements, point to it. If we were discussing programming where my main expertise lies, I would not be directing people to read a "C++ for beginners" book, but pointed to a specific statement in one.
What exactly do you expect me to find in that course that would contradict my comments?
If you tell someone "this pill will cure your depression" without telling him "by turning you into a hippie", you're doing him a disservice. The zeitgeist right now is that psychedelics cure a broad range of mental illnesses without any downsides whatsoever. That's far, far from true.
Nothing that you have said here defends the claim of that the effects themselves are detrimental. You just claimed that not telling someone the effects is a disservice. Which, while I agree, is irrelevant to the original claim. Having effects and having detrimental effects are two different things.
The claim in the article is categorical. The claim is that there are no detrimental side effects. In order for that to be true, it must be the case that everyone prefers his personality to be shifted towards being a peace and love hippie. If I don't want my personality shifted that way (and I certainly don't), then that effect of psilocybin counts as detrimental for me, and therefore, the categorical claim being made is simply false.
This recent fad for "fixing" people by taking them on psychedelic trips is creepy.
> The claim in the article is categorical. The claim is that there are no detrimental side effects.
That is not the claim made in the article. The article claims that no detrimental side effects were found over the course of the study, which had participants take small dosages of psilocybin in a clinical setting. That's a very specific scenario and is a world away from habitual recreational use.
> This recent fad for "fixing" people by taking them on psychedelic trips is creepy.
When looked at in isolation, yes, it can appear creepy. However when you look at the known side effects of other pharmaceuticals commonly used to treat mental illness, the case for psychedelics becomes a lot more compelling. Right now, most pysch medication really sucks, so if something sucks a little bit less, that's a win.
Your paranoia of “hippies”, denigration of people who are “too peaceful”, and basic understanding of psychedelic pharmacology are wholly subjective, unscientific, and warped by media portrayals
A hippie is a caricature, it is not a sub-species of human being. You can't be turned into a hippy. You'll still be yourself w/ some traits tweaked. For example, maybe you'll be more open to new experiences than you were before.
> For example, maybe you'll be more open to new experiences than you were before.
Maybe so. Maybe that version of myself would even approve of that change. My current self, however, very much does not want that change. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. Unwanted personality shifts are negative drug side effects and the people running around pitching psychedelics as miracle cures without downsides are harming people.
Yeah so hypothetically, if you were depressed and no other treatments worked, your current self would have to decide if the "negative" side effect of altered traits is worth a shot at making your life worth living again. Perhaps some of those traits are even implicated in the depression and they need to be changed for it to lift.
I do agree that patients should be briefed about trait changes, but again, perhaps that's exactly what they need.
Do you think it's common that psychedelice change people who don't want change?
It's all anecdotal of course but I've seen quite a few life-course-changes inspired by psychedelics (most of them non-spiritual: change jobs, go to college, break up, quit smoking, that sort of thing) and in most cases the openness to that possibility is why people were taking them in the first place.
From what I've seen, people who take them without a willingness to change don't typically find the experience to be meaningful or transformative.
Your personal anecdotes, no matter how significant or varied, don't meaningfully contradict this research. This research happened in a controlled environment. Your friends doing mushrooms and likely other drugs in a recreational setting is different. Science can measure the changes you're talking about, but your friends weren't doing science.
You think that peace and love is detrimental? I assert we could use more of it.
Note, I wouldn't say that such peace and love is blind--people are still very much grounded in reality--but the ability for compassion and empathy is increased. Perhaps you see compassion as a weakness?
Headline reader here but it does say “detrimental” which I admit may include said personality traits in some eyes but I would expect “detrimental” to mean side-effects that actually negatively impact quality of life.
I'm sure there are correlations between some life risks and being a hippie vs not being a hippie. Stereotypes say hippies are more care-free, so that may make them more prone to risk taking, and more likely to die of (fun example) ziplining accidents.
If something has detrimental effects (dyeing on ziplines) that are outweighed by positive effects (lower blood pressure), it is not fair to say it has no detrimental effects whatsoever.
However I would say the biggest issue with the title is that it doesn't mention the number receiving psilocybin. 60 people is not a lot to say it has no detrimental effects, even if it weren't turning people into hippies.
I'm a fan of Psilocybin but anyone who has been around for awhile in a psychedelic culture like my home town knows people who did too many mushrooms. LSD is a thing in itself: acid casualties are a real thing.
This is my point, I think these academic researchers and common people have no idea what they are getting into. There are clearly positives to the drugs, but alot of these articles are very naive
Did you ever notice how the shroomers have a different look in their eyes than the acid heads? There's a lot more warmth to the former as you noted, but there's a tendency to believe really far out things. One friend of mine was convinced she was immortal so she worried a lot about how she was going to replenish the sun with hydrogen so it didn't burn out. The acid heads have a look in their eyes like they are lost in a void and are struggling to get back.
Edit: I should note I'm talking about people who do a lot of mushrooms. For example, my friend lived on a commune in England for several years that did high doses of mushrooms on a weekly basis as a community bonding thing (like a Sunday church ritual)
I think the articles are similar to most articles on a "new" pharmaceutical. They overblow the benefits, misinterpret the underlying study, and just generally want to seduce the reader.
In this case, the phase 1 trial found that psilocybin has a favorable safety profile in a small study, clearing it for larger studies to find rarer side-effects and evaluate efficacy as a treatment. That's basically it. They can't legitimately claim "psilocybin has no short- or long-term detrimental effects" in a study that small. But it's commonly done for this and other pharmaceuticals.
> This is my point, I think these academic researchers and common people have no idea what they are getting into.
I don't think that's true. Most people knew smoking was bad for you long before the medical establish said so, ditto for opiates. The only folks who "don't know what they are getting into", are recreational users lying to themselves. That's no reason to dismiss a whole class of drugs that could potentially help people.
I'd be the last person to dismiss the benefits, but as the old adage goes "all things in moderation" and there's also no reason to dismiss long-term effects because you did a small study. You could run this study exactly as is except with low doses of alcohol and also find there are no short of long-term detrimental effects.
A lot of sibling comments here questioning the parent comment's definition of detrimental. Psychedelic drugs can absolutely have a permanent detrimental effect on people.
There is a difference between a positive emotional experience and a warped "revelation" that gives somebody the impression that they're privy to some universal truth or meaning. If the latter happens enough, the results range from the person being pretty fundamentally changed (less like depressed vs. not depressed, more like somebody is wearing a skinsuit of somebody you used to know) to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality. These people may be happy in their own reality, but it's very painful to watch it happen to them.
Headlines like this article's are best left unsaid. A single (or rarely administered) 10-25mg dose in a highly controlled environment may be reasonably safe, and the headline may be true in the strictest sense, but it's going to work out about as well as the "marijuana is not addictive" line of thinking has.
I think you articulated my point much better. The spiritual effect I was describing is definitely also:
"to them being almost completely fried/detached from reality"
What these researchers are doing in a lab on well adjusted humans with no psychedelic experience, and what happens when people take doses recreationally are two completely different things. Its like doing cocaine one time with a small dose and claiming it has no negative effects.
> "Anyone who has spent significant time around people who have done a lot of mushrooms knows..."
As someone in this group, I strongly disagree. The "consensus" you're appealing to doesn't exist.
> I assert it is detrimental. There is a "mystic" "spiritual" shift as well, that I really dont think is grounded in reality. Just because current science cant measure these changes dont mean they dont happen.
The effects of both psilocybin and spiritual beliefs on individual health outcomes is an active, ongoing topic of research. The assertion that there's something intangibly wrong with the mental lives of (of whom exactly? people who do shrooms? Or do you include people who do yoga or practice meditation in this group? What about people who attend Catholic mass?) that "current science can't measure" is precisely the sort of baseless nonsense well-operationalized research is designed to eliminate, so we can rationalize our laws and healthcare policies.
It is slightly ironic to look down on people who believe "loopy" things while admitting it's not a scientific way to measure people. Sounds kinda loopy to me.
You assert evidence of a clear neurological affect, and then edit your post to say that science can't measure it, and it must be "mystic" or "spiritual".
Isn't the high level plan for this treatment: 1)The psilocybin breaks down the patients ego and 2) the psycho therapist molds it hopefully for the better?
"people who have done a lot of mushrooms..." In my experience those people also take just about anything. How could one say it was the psilocybin
Or that the culture surrounding them pushes people in that direction?
I do shrooms with people who work in tech (just did them last Wednesday). We talked about the intersection of "intelligence" and "emotional vulnerability", and why are group of friends gravitates toward and attracts people who have a healthy dose of both. No woo-woo love chants...just some deeper conversations, below surface level that provided insight into who we are.
For what it's worth, spiritual teachers believe psychedelics open people up to spiritual realities. That's pretty much the life story Ram Das (ex psych professor). Orthodox Christian priests tend to say it's spiritually dangerous akin to using a Ouija board or something - they would prefer people use safe methods like prayer to explore the spiritual world.
Scientists could probably measure negative psychological effects, anyways, as you say.
Shrooms are illegal almost everywhere, or at least not very popular. I assume there is a very significant filter on which type of personalities seek these experiences (unlike e.g. trying alcohol or cannabis, as those are accessible and culturally integrated everywhere).
The plural of anecdote is not data. What you are saying is that there is a correlation, but the causation could be any number of tangentially related things. e.g. a self re-enforcing subculture, predisposition for substance abuse, or tainted sourcing.
Even with causation something is amiss with the generalization as presented. If a chemical amplifies an experience, and a person experiences a peaceful hippie experience, that doesnt mean the drug made them a hippie, it means the experience did. The same chemical in a violent experience could exasperate violent tendencies. Pinning "I know some people that fell into a culture" on a chemical is very much on the wrong side of nature/nurture and ignores set/setting.
As described no. But I think it can affect ones attachment to reality.
It's not going to affect you like smoking cigarettes, or how drinking can hit the liver. But it definitely has some effect on ones thinking. Is this detrimental? I think that's a more subjective question.
Personally though, I consider Psychedelics to be pretty safe unless one starts playing games with high frequency usage, or high dosage. There are also outliers, for example Brian Wilson ended up having a pretty bad time with LSD.
I think people with those tendencies are simply more likely to use mushrooms. I've used them plenty and I'm still the typical HackerNews cynical nerd that expresses skepticism towards everything.
There was an interesting article in slatestarcodex that statet that the prime effekt of psychodelics is reducing primers. This can have negativ consequenz on healthy people that take psyhcodelics. A) because primers are your past so somehow they are you. If the primers get erased your personality is gettig erased. B) if primers are reduced they are near primers that arent that evolved and those primers could suck. Usualy there is filter in our brain that prohibits us from thinking dumb shit like the world is flat. But if those primers are reduced, how should one know that the world doesnt end at the horizont?
I have friends that take ketamin lsd mushrooms etc regulary and they dont seem to have a classical paychosis but something else… the superb ability to believe every shit someone posts on social media. Honestly they are gone and thats this primer effect.
The concept of “flattening an energy landscape” resonates a lot with me. I feel like the filter on which internal and external impressions make it into the consciousness varies in people, like an island's extend depending on sea levels. I always thought of it as a uniform, plane threshold, so the idea of a "rule based" filter of priors is inspiring to me. However, the article extends this to other things than just the "event horizon" of the unconsciousness, while my intuitive understanding relates more to the experience, but not quality, of cognition.
When I close my eyes, I can usually "see my brain thinking/sorting/searching" (closed eye hallucinations), a visual soup of (random) associations, patterns and transformations, and experience visual snow in dim light, most of the time. Although I got used to it, I do suffer from that "meta experience", when gravely exhausted and stressed - makes reality a bit unreal at times. According to wikipedia, closed eye hallucinations occur to most people only when tripping, so, assuming I am not psychotic, I guess the threshold/prior-filtering varies.
I had this as long as I can remember, but I fear smoking weed in my youth didn't help (HPPD). Not sure, if I should experiment with psychedelics... I see a possible benefit and great danger, too.
It's hard to estimate effects like this based on your personal experiences. People who do drugs like mushrooms tend to be a certain way: hippies, left-wing, creative and "open". Unless you're performing rigorous experiments with large samples, it's hard to separate that out as a confounder.
Agreed. It would be a terrible crime to market a substance that causes permanent personality shifts in a direction not necessarily wanted as a "magic cure" for depression, anxiety, and whatever other manifestation of unpleasantness in life. And that's exactly what we're doing now.
Lobotomy was marketed as a magic cure for all sorts of psychological problems too. There is no free lunch. There's no quick and easy way to "fix" someone.
Just to be clear, the title is incorrectly editorializing the article. Lots of people in this thread are correctly objecting to the unsupported overly-broad claim that there are no long-term effects.
What the paper actually tested:
> The trial is the first of its kind to thoroughly investigate the simultaneous administration of psilocybin. 89 healthy participants with no recent (within 1 year) use of psilocybin were recruited. 60 individuals were randomly picked to receive either a 10mg or 25mg dose of psilocybin in a controlled environment. In addition, all participants were provided with one-to-one support from trained psychotherapists. The remaining 29 participants acted as the control group and received a placebo, also with psychological support.
> Participants were closely monitored for six to eight hours following administration of psilocybin and then followed up for 12 weeks. During this time, they were assessed for a number of possible changes, including sustained attention, memory, and planning, as well as their ability to process emotions.
So the study did not find any deleterious effects in N=89, from _one_ dose, in a supportive environment, over a fairly short follow-up period. This not surprising to me and I'm not updating my model of the world in any way.
This does _not_ prove that Psilocybin has no detrimental long-term effects. It just suggests that if they occur, they probably don't occur frequently enough to show up in the cursory glance that this study gave to the issue.
Psilocybin is an exciting treatment for mental health issues; it's great that it's being destigmatized. It should be decriminalized, and it is much safer than alcohol and many other recreational drugs. However, like any drug, it has risks and can be misused. We need to be honest about the risks, understand that nothing is safe, and particularly, understand how to detect and respond to those risks when they do occur.
edit: The title has now been changed, so this comment will read weirdly.
And yet, all my friends who started using mushrooms now post pseudo-spiritual/pseudo-philosophical/pseudo-mystical yet completely nonsensical thoughts on social media. You can tell they think it's super deep and meaningful, but for us sober folk it just seems a little nutty. Stuff like: "We are the UNIVERSE. For the universe is within us." or "The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. The very minds of the people that need to be saved are not ready to be unplugged. They will fight to protect their truth, as they should. The saving can only come from within." From my sober perspective, it seems like psilocybin causes some users to lose a degree of grip on reality/rationality which I consider "detrimental" (though the users themselves claim it's "enlightening")
> You can tell they think it's super deep and meaningful, but for us sober folk it just seems a little nutty. Stuff like: "We are the UNIVERSE. For the universe is within us." or "The Matrix is a system. That system is our enemy. The very minds of the people that need to be saved are not ready to be unplugged. They will fight to protect their truth, as they should. The saving can only come from within."
Sounds exactly like what "us sober folks" would say after an intensive meditation retreat in the Vipassana tradition. Maybe the entheogen users are just taking a convenient shortcut.
Do you reject the idea that you and I are both the universe experiencing itself? You seem overly concerned with how often people decide to engage in the positive and apparently harmless practice of indulging in the idea. Are you this scrutinizing toward other spiritual practices such as Christianity or Islam? Not trying to do a whataboutism or anything, just trying to get a good read on exactly how humorless you are.
longer answer, dose-response varies, subjects don't necessarily know what the effects should be, or may not be able to identify the experience, and also it's pretty easy to get yourself into an autocthonous psychedelic headspace, especially if you expect "something" to happen
Right. I'm not anti-recreational-drug-use, but this assertion that gets repeated all the time feels damn close to a tautology.
"The drug didn't cause you to go crazy. You just had underlying craziness that never manifested before using the drug and might never have manifested if you never used the drug."
Consider this my raised eyebrow.
Even if it's really technically true, it's effectively a vacuous and unfalsifiable statement when it comes to an individual person, and one can't use the information at all when estimating the risk of their potential recreational activity.
Though I've never been diagnosed and live a normal life, I've had mood swings and extended family history of schizophrenia. Because of this, and the knowledge that there are certain triggers that can cause lifelong neurological issues, I'll never try acid or other hallucinogens.
The value of knowing that "underlying craziness" can exist is in inherently reminding us of the actual risk. Let's say someone predisposed toward neurological issues is on the fence, but ultimately decides to follow the reasoning in the comment. What liability are you going to bear for it?
My last sentence wasn't worded very well. I was speaking in a hypothetical context of someone having a mental issue revealed by drug use and some hypothetical person defending the drug as not being the "cause" of the mental illness.
My point was that the person who pedantically highlights that some drug didn't technically cause a mental illness is being anti-helpful. To go around and preach that XYZ drug doesn't cause mental problems is dishonest in any colloquial understanding of the situation, unless you state VERY clearly, at the same time, that it may TRIGGER or reveal underlying issues.
So, I was basically saying exactly what you said.
If you read my entire comment in one piece, I'm pretty sure it's clear enough that I meant that there's no actionable difference between "drug causes schizophrenia" and "drug activates latent schizophrenia" on an individual, human, level. Academically, it's a meaningful distinction, but not for an individual evaluating whether they want to try something.
What kind of question is that? They said some stuff on the internet. None, of course, as it should be.
Their point was that if you weren't gonna go crazy and you took a drug and went crazy, then in every sense of the word, the drug _caused_ you to go crazy. Whether you had some latent condition or not is irrelevant.
Yeah, it's sort of like saying "the knife didn't cause them to die, they were just an undiagonosed hemophiliac and the wound failed to close properly."
However, teasing out the steelman from this, what they mean is "becoming crazy is not a necessary effect of recreational drug use, but rather a contingent effect."
I've seen studies before trying to study this, for example cannabis and latent schizophrenia. One complication is that recreational drug use goes hand-in-hand with self-medication of undiagnosed issues.
Psychedelic drugs push anyone towards a psychotic state, and really can teach you something about mental illness by giving you a view into their world. But yes it can cause psychotic break, especially LSD but shrooms too.
Funny how intolerable are those "latent" diagnostics for illegal drugs, and meanwhile the totally legal and widely prescribed trazodone (an antidepresant) is known to cause, among others 1) suicidal thoughts, 2) insomnia, 3) hallucinations, 4) and paranoia. Other common drug, bromazepan, turns you into a half zombi, loss of ability to remember and amnesia, hallucinations... And it has a bad widthdrawal.
Of course you have to be careful when taking LSD, psilocybin or whatever. But don't replace info with FUD: just study, legalize and put the info in the box when sold. They are not worse than 95% of widely prescribed drugs. They are illegal just because they are also enjoyable.
Similar experience here, but with a different hallucinogen. It has forever changed me, so I wanted to share. My close friend had a psychotic break due to daily marijuana use and is now on psychiatric drugs to control symptoms. She was always creative, but she could tell the difference between fantasy and reality. During the break, it was like she was rolling constantly and couldn't stop. She was hearing voices. Thinking that 2D images were alive. For months on end. She was ranting, crying, acting uncharacteristically pompous, then crumbling into a heap of shame. This is a professional middle-aged person who was living a full life.
My understanding is that for folks who are genetically predisposed, a life trigger can manifest in a mental health condition that likely never would have surfaced. Triggers may include in utero trauma, child abuse or chemical imbalance due to stress or controlled substances. Hallucinogens can trigger a serious mental health condition in an individual who may have lived an otherwise mentally stable life. Not unlike needing to watch cholesterol in a family who suffers from heart disease, perhaps. So, yeah, when I read "... in healthy people" it made me go hmmmm.
But still, psilocybin is not marijuana. And this is great news for those suffering from treatment-resistant depression and PTSD.
I had a friend in high school who took mushrooms and said they never felt like the same person since then. That statement was made in high school and reiterated in their late 20s. I don't know what dosage they took. I don't know if they had other mental health conditions, though it seemed like they had some degree of alcoholism.
I have dealt with depression and have my eye on some form of Psilocybin treatment as a future option. But am weary due to my friend's experience. So I'm waiting for more expertise to be developed and the treatment to be validated and consequences quantified.
Yeah, a lot of people try to ascribe a causal link from drugs to mental illness when it’s probably the other way around. People undiagnosed but suffering from early stage mental illness often self-medicate, combined with the fact that there’s a lot of overlap in the ages where people experiment with drugs and when mental illness typically presents itself enough to lead to a diagnosis.
Psychedelics don’t cause bipolar. What it can do is reveal it. (Or make it worse.)
I didn’t get diagnosed until I was 32 after a massive psychotic break caused by stress, despite mania, paranoia, and depression clearly starting when I was 9-years-old.
> Psychedelics don’t cause bipolar. What it can do is reveal it. (Or make it worse.)
AFAIK, we don't know enough about the mechanics of bipolar disorder to rule out anything that causes you to transition from not meeting the diagnostic criteria to meeting them as being a cause rather than a revelation of some existing underlying problem. If it makes you transition to meeting the diagnostic criteria, it causes the disorder as best we understand it now and anything else is speculation.
Does the reveal make bipolar treatment possible that was otherwise not being provided previously? It almost sounds like it can be used as a diagnostic tool for surfacing certain neurological disorders that otherwise might go untreated.
Psychotic breaks can be extremely damaging. I'm still recovering from the one I had in August 2018. There are less dangerous ways to diagnose possible disorders. (Family history is a major red flag.)
Good to know. I believe the genetic markers are pretty well known for some disorders; perhaps a component in diagnostics besides family history (which can be an issue if your parent was never diagnosed, died young, you’re adopted, etc).
Definitely nothing officially, however i wouldn't be surprised if drugs helped him feel better so it was a form of self-medication. With hindsight you could probably find a few signs, but nothing that required hospitalization before the trip.
I wasn't his first time doing mushrooms, but teens don't really use responsibly. I'm definitely not saying that it's common enough for people to be scared, but it's not like teens do full medical assessments before they start to use drugs.
Side note years later he had a seizure due to lsd, but we believe that was because he was on lithium for mood stabilizers. The drugs while helpful have side effects so it's not perfect and we have a long way to go for treatment
Probably not, but I assume a recreational dose is greater than a therapeutic another friend took the same amount and he was perfectly fine, but my friend became really paranoid (government hiding people to torture, signals sent through TV, people trying to kill him). he was a heavy cannabis and alcohol user in high school which could have been a sign of self-medication, but that was the first time he really had a negative experience.
At the time, we thought he was schizophrenic, but he got a bipolar diagnoses later from doctors.
It's been a struggle with sobriety and mental health for over a decade. Mushroom didn't cause it, but it was definitely a notable moment in his life
From what I'm reading, there are 5-20mg of psilocybin in a gram of mushrooms. So the 10mg and 25mg doses from the study are around 1-2 grams worth of mushrooms. The average recreational dose (in my experience) is usually between 1.75 and 7 grams (so anywhere from 10-140mg). But potency varies significantly in real world scenarios.
I don’t know who came up with the idea that an eighth should be considered a “standard dose”, but whoever it was, is an idiot. So many people I know have had way too intense of experiences and were turned off from mushrooms.
I’ve had ego death, where I had no idea who “I” was, from an 8th of good mushrooms. That’s generally not the experience most people are looking for. It’s like saying 50mg of edibles is a standard dose (as opposed to 10).
Nowadays, I, along with most people I know, take like 1-2 grams at most. Usually I stay around the 1.5g mark.
Minimum I've seen was 1.5g. Usually between 2 and 3.5.
The issue with psychedelics is not that their ingestion might kill you, but rather what you will do to yourself or others while on them. No amount of reading and Youtube videos can prepare you for a strong psychedelic experience. Once in it, you have to go through it, and accidents do happen.
I've found that people who do psychedelics in repetition usually _think_ they are some sort of key to their problems, they'll help them fix themselves, yada yada yada. One trip is enough for people for whom that is true. If you have to do them repeatedly, the issue is elsewhere. I am against full-on prohibition, but also skeptical about the "pro-psychedelic" sentiment in vogue.
For readers of this comment a reminder: the study only covers a single take of 10mg or 25mg doses. In case you do that twice with any interval between takes, even years apart, the study results do not apply to you anymore.
This article and the study it's drawing from is certainly cherrypicked or naive. There's been significant research to investigate the known cardiotoxicity of Psilocin [0][1]. Basically, for some unknown reason, micro-dosing too often or for too long with non-perceptive (very small doses, small enough to not elicit any perceptible effects) doses of psilocybin can lead to the degeneration of critical heart muscle tissues (specifically observed in heart valves).
Psychedelic/"breakthrough" doses of psilocybin seem like non-lethal overdoses to me, based on some experience.
It seems both useful and consistently safe/predictable consumed more as a supplement/vitamin, as one already can with OTC Lions Mane. If they legalized psilocybin I'm 100% certain we'd have Lions Mane+Psilocybin combo supplements on store shelves practically overnight. And like Nutmeg, nobody would be reporting ill effects unless deliberately swallowing an excess of them, something we don't bother preventing with Nutmeg or Dramamine despite some pretty nasty potential outcomes.
I've met a surprising number of people who upon discovering the psychotropic effects of Nutmeg started using it daily as a low-cost alternative to marijuana.
And it doesn't take much digging to find reports of teens accidentally taking lethal doses of the spice, largely due to its exceptionally long "first alerts" delay.
Anecdotally, I have longterm visual side effects from taking magic mushrooms once 16 years ago (halos around objects, static on the walls, patterns pulsing, etc.) It's possible they were there prior but I didn't notice them, but these are not that uncommon from what I glean (see HPPD). I also had semi ego death for a year or two.
I was terrified of HPPD when I was first dabbling in psychedelics. 15 years and many trips later I notice the occasional perceptual oddity, but I feel like this is how my perception has always worked and pre-drug-use-me was just ignoring the debug output.
Not to diminish any accounts of HPPD to the contrary, maybe I'm just lucky.
I think this is a good theory. As mentioned in my other reply, my symptoms didn't start until about a week afterwards when I started having panic attacks. From there, the anxiety caused the visual symptoms (I may have even read about them online).
It's entirely possible that I just inadvertently trained myself to see the unfiltered raw output from my visual cortex, which I previously ignored.
If you read about any HPPD communities it seems inextricably linked to anxiety, but hard to know which is the cause and which is the effect.
Thanks for the note. I was 15 and took an eighth in a single dose as tea. I had been smoking a lot of weed too for about a week. Ironically the trip wasn't that intense, but I had a panic attack because my friend (who was also on mushrooms) started having seizures. These side effects also didn't appear for about a week, which adds to theory that most people 'see' these things but their brains ignore them.
I was always extremely sensitive to marijuana too (similar medium-term ego death, etc.)
Gosh. Judging by the articles that come up so frequently, HN seems to want...
- Universal Basic Income
- Psychedelic Drugs
- Suicide Pods
And I can't help but feel all three of these are intricately tied together. UBI to pursue legal hedonism, and a "painless" exit when the drugs don't do it anymore.
I don't think anyone who advocates for these things explicitly wants such a nihilistic view of life. They want the freedom to create unbridled, and an end to poverty, hunger, mental anguish, and suffering -- but that isn't the outcome they will get.
I explicitly want all three things you list. I also would like to see Open Borders ;) https://openborders.info
For psychedelic drug decriminalization: the alternative is status quo, which results in tremendous amount of suffering (thousands of people in jail who are then disenfranchised by their "criminal" record).
You vaguely gesture at the possible good outcomes people like me want, but then boldly claim "that isn't the outcome [we] will get". I'm puzzled why you have such a pessimistic view of it all.
Portugal decriminalized all drugs 20 years ago and they are doing great (by comparison to surrounding countries that have not). Assisted suicide has become legal in several countries with presumably no negative outcomes you are warning us against. UBI has been successful and loved by Alaskans for decades. What problems are you worried about?
This smells like when society generally thought weed had no long-term effects and wasn't addictive. Mushrooms anecdotally seem to have dose dependent long term effects, including disconnecting from reality, sometimes in destructive ways.
I grew up in a house that loosely held to beliefs that taking hallucinogenic substances could follow you into subsequent lives (reincarnation type thing). You could literally stain your immortal soul by taking it. That was a scary prohibition. I don't follow those views really any longer, but the worry lingers. Humans are strange.
Stain has a negative connotation in your context. Maybe adopt less opinionated language.
It can color your mind/soul in positive directions if you take great care in your setting and intention.
if done recklessly it can potentially color it in negative ways.
With a small chance to bring out other forms of latent mental illness.
If you do ever decide to attempt go slowly. I’d recommend going cautiously into these experiences starting at 0.8g.
Also have a sober mature person who is experience with shrooms around just in case.
It’s shrooms is possibly the kind of drug that may help loosen firmly held beliefs in the right setting and mind set.
There was in interesting UK study done that attempted to quantify how harmful various drugs were to the user and also to others.
Psilocybin was found to be the least harmful drug that they considered.
>The study involved 16 criteria, including a drug's affects on users' physical and mental health, social harms including crime, "family adversities" and environmental damage, economic costs and "international damage".
There should be more studies on micro-dosing as well. Many of the modern drugs that one can buy from the pharmacy would have serious bad effects if you take 10-20 pills at the same time. Yet, you take take a small dose from a package, and you are OK. i.e. micro-dosing (1/20 => 1/10 of a "regular dose") could give one all the benefits of Psilocybin without any detrimental effects - at all.
p.s. most probably you won't be "converted" into a hippie (as some people are worried about it) if you are micro-dosing.
How does that translate to illicit recreational doses?
> 89 healthy participants
Not sure how they define healthy... Like others on this thread, have witnessed plenty of seemingly 'healthy' cause a lot of damage to themselves with Psyches.
> a potential treatment for a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD.
Are they going to test if it has detrimental effects on people with TRD or PTSD? I would imagine they'd be substantially more at risk for adverse effects.
From my casual reading of these journal articles over the past several years, it's easy to make such statements about "healthy" people. Any underlying psychiatric disease discovered _after_ psilocybin can be retroactively applied to the participant.
"Oh, that guy had underlying bipolar disorder and therefore wasn't healthy."
Exactly. These kinds of papers are a great example of the no true Scotsman fallacy. And even if it were just "revealing" mental illnesses in people who already had them latently, most of them probably could have gone their whole lives without it had they never used drugs, so in practice even that's no different from just causing the illnesses.
"In healthy people" seems to be doing a lot of heavy lifting here. I've done mushrooms three times and the first two were fun (but not enlightening or life-changing) experiences. The third time I had a bad trip. It was "my fault" in that in retrospect I did not have the right set/setting to take them, but it triggered a massive panic attack that spiraled me pretty severely into a months long anxiety episode. Before the mushrooms I was fine and after them I was having nightly panic attacks that lasted hours. I have a panic disorder but it was "in remission" previously.
Now having a panic disorder may disqualify me as a "healthy person" but given that the study is analyzing it as a treatment for mental disorders it seems that that's not what they mean. I don't know if panic/anxiety is included in "a range of mental health conditions, including treatment-resistant depression (TRD) and PTSD". I'm just saying that it definitely _can_ be harmful to your mental health based on my experience. I don't know whether or not complementary talk therapy would have changed my outcome.
I would argue that opening the doors of perception in and of itself can be a detrimental side effect. They don't close. Live without the delusion. forever.
Both are worth it. Its always worth it.
But to act like it hasnt impacted certain areas of my life in a negative way, would be a hunka buncha bullshit.
A few comments pointing out the correlation to spiritual / mystical communities. I know many engineers who use or have used and have fallen deeper into their hustle life style. I would say that it helps you explore yourself, be that chakras or crypto.
The effects to those around you are that they have to hear the same story that everyone else has told them about your profound ego-destroying trip and how everyone should try psychedelics for x reason.
Psychedelics are the opposite of additive. In general, when a healthy person does a higher dose with the correct set and setting they do not want to do a high dose again for months and sometimes years and in some cases ever.
Do not take my word for it. Research drug addiction statics. Compare Synthetic Opioid overdoes to Psilocybin overdoes.
Look at how the drug war has fueled the industrial prison complex and the expense of POC.
With a broader frame, of the risk profile, it's clear that Psilocybin is low on the list for healthy people.
And that the drug war has manifested as a modern cast system within the united states.
I think the key phrase here is "in healthy people" which ought to mean both physically and mentally healthy people. Now, of course, it becomes complicated. Especially if you are healthy but at-risk for certain conditions (say schizoaffective/schizophrenia). I have seen this compound work miracles, I have also seen it send some very close friends of mine off the deep end. Of course, those friends were always a little different, let's say.
It is short acting so the distress that often accompanies major psychedelics is short and wears off quickly (unlike, say, mescaline which drags on for hours)
There does seem to be a effect where taking magic mushrooms several days in a row produces deleterious effects, I am not sure that is due to the psilocybin but it is unpleasant physical side effects that are not apparent if doses are spaced.
Repeated use (even when spaced enough to avoid the above physical effects) usually resulted (in my anecdotal observations of other people) in sever paranoia developing. That faded as quickly as the effects of the drug.
It should be available and it should be widely used. Psychedelic drugs are good for the mind, which is why people take them.
Dried product varies pretty widely in strength, even from stem to cap. Things like strain and spore lineage also contribute to strength of the dried product.
They are using synthetic psilocybin. It would be impossible to make a translation between grams of dried vs. synthetic. Different species have diff content, liberty cap vs. penis envy etc. also stalks vs. caps typically differ in str.
Dosage guides for dried shrooms are already universal in recommendation of dosage typically speaking in terms of grams without bringing up the individual strain. This leads me to believe that a generally close conversion should be reasonable from the dried natural to that MG number.
There's no surefire way to estimate the actual weight of psilocybin save for extracting it chemically. It can vary widely between species, between flushes, and even between individual fruits.
Among the people I've talked to that has taken psilocybin, it seems common to believe in nonsense such as reincarnation. That's why I'll never take it, it seems as if you lose grip with reality.
I never took any drugs until my mid 50s. Part of the motivation was to experience this spirituality that others report that I've never experienced. I'm a cautious person by nature, so I did a series of stepped doses, spaced a few weeks apart, of various lysergimides and tryptamines. In short: LSD was quite interesting and not at all spiritual for me. 4-aco-dmt (a close relative to psilocybin) was entirely different: much more dreamy, confusing, and it gave me a brief taste of that spiritual feeling. All in all, over a couple years, I did about 20 experiments, and have done only small doses twice in the past two years. I'm not sure if I'll do either again, as I probably have found all I care to see from them.
Experiencing things first-hand has only reinforced my prior beliefs in a material world. If a simple, small molecule can to drastically change your mood and perception, it seems all the more clear that there is no magic. On the flip side, people who were prone to believe in the woo experience the same things I did, but because of their prior framing found confirmation of their own prior beliefs as well.
I don't think you have anything to fear should the opportunity present itself to you.
The main benefit for me was this: I'm very good, too good, at compartmentalizing my emotions. My wife suffers from anxiety and depression. Having experienced hours-long states where my emotions ran loose that my intellect was unable to reign in, I can now empathize, and not just sympathize, a bit with my wife's experiences.
Thank you for sharing! A related experience I had was when I took LSD and smoked weed for the first time. At the time weed would sometimes give me paranoid thoughts (I've only smoked about a dozen times at this point) - and the LSD exacerbated the effects. I had almost an hour of severe paranoia, but as time went on I realized how irrational it was (and discovered useful a strategy of "make a prediction, and if it doesn't happen, stop being afraid - rather than keep thinking the scary thing is just behind the next corner").
The takeaway for me was similar to yours: a better empathy for people who may (without psychedelics) have a higher tendency to be worried/anxious. A realization that despite all the rational thoughts you can have, the fears can persist (as they are irrational - and continue to have force even when the rational side of the brain insists so).
Since then I've been continuing to enjoy both drugs separately and together - now-a-days it's mostly bliss and joy. I particularly recommend LSD & MDMA -- candy flipping ;)
But the thing is, only just because we can't prove it now, doesn't mean it's false. You sound like the people who would have believed that the earth is center of the universe in the middle aged. And most people thought that, even "scientist". So you would have been perfectly right to believe it. You would not sound crazy. But yet wrong. What i want to tell you, don't be ignorant and don't form opinions on stuff you don't understand. Try it in lower dose. Imagine sober real life like folders browsing back and forth. But on shrooms (or LSD, DMT etc) it's like viewing a whole folder tree. You are able to make connections to thoughts you never would have connected in real life, because they are not directly related. So called "Ahh" moments. I will never give up drugs because of that greater understanding of own knowledge. Remember, knowing is not understanding. Such drugs allow you to truly understand. And as a side note, i had the same view as you when I was young. Now i know that i just was ignorant. In the end of the day, fuck what others say. You need to think for yourself and understand the world for yourself !
Sorry you have such a reference class. I think the "lose grip with reality" is only temporary - the next day (and even earlier) you have memories of what went on, but your mind is back to "normal". I've had numerous psychedelic experiences (blissful, terrifying, etc) with both LSD and mushrooms, and none have fundamentally changed what I think about the world (believing the general scientific consensus about atoms, etc).
What drugs like this can do is make you more empathetic and understanding, less rigid/dogmatic. I strongly recommend people (with no history of mental problems) try low-dose psychedelics (after careful research, with a great set and setting, and a trip-sitter) and then consider standard-dose psychedelic amounts.
I'm a psychonaut, so I enjoy weird states of mind as experiences. I feel like there is a lot to learn from having had them. An excellent book you could read on this topic is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan.
Meh. People have all sorts of beliefs about the afterlife. Nobody knows what’s going to happen. Unless you know somebody who came back from the dead and reported on it?
As someone who invests in psychedelic-assisted therapy companies and follows the space pretty closely, I am shaking my head at some of the comments here. A lot of anecdotal stories wrapped up as "wise" warnings against psychedelic use. Recreational use does not apply in this clinical setting context, at all. Nor can it be extrapolated back to a recreational scenario. Granted, the title of this article reads click bait-y and I can see why there were visceral reactions. Additionally, the article lacks some context which I'll try to provide.
I've been following Compass Pathways for about a year now, and what I can tell you is this:
1. The purpose of this study was NOT to prove psilocybin has no deleterious effects in healthy subjects. It's purpose is as a supplementary/complementary study to their ongoing clinical trials for treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Basically, the more "ammo" they have surrounding psilocybin's safety the better, as they are headed into meetings with the FDA on their upcoming phase 3 trials.
2. The second purpose of this study was to prove that one therapist can administer doses to multiple patients at the same time. Cost is a huge, ongoing concern for commercialization in this space. To have a therapist watch over one patient for a 6-8 hour trip makes this treatment difficult to scale, and this gives Compass possibly a little more leeway and broadening in their treatment protocol.
3. Mystical type experiences are currently believed to bring about a greater chance of positive outcome in patients treated with psychedelic-assisted therapy. This is NOT dictated by what you thought was a "mystical" experience - it is determined by the MEQ (Mystical Experience Questionnaire) that is sometimes administers in these studies.
4. "Healthy" subjects - please keep in mind that in this context, the definition is narrow and shouldn't be interpreted in any way other than what the trials' inclusion/exclusion criteria listed. In these studies, it usually means no history of mental illness, ESPECIALLY schizophrenia. Beware of applying "healthy" to any other marker.
5. I urge people here to read Compass' recently completed phase IIb study on treatment-resistant depression (= patients who've failed at least 2 antidepressants). There absolutely are mild adverse - serious adverse events that occur, even in controlled and supportive settings. Please take this current studies statement as strictly as it reads "The results also showed there were no short or long term detrimental effects on thinking patterns or processing of emotions".
The study used synthetic psilocybin. In some estimate I've found online (I don't know how accurate) it claims 10mg is about 1.5 grams of dried shrooms of common varieties.
