Magic mushrooms found to lift severe depression in clinical trial(theguardian.com) |
Magic mushrooms found to lift severe depression in clinical trial(theguardian.com) |
But there's precedent, so who knows. Remember a few years back there was several articles about ketamine being discovered to also helping major depressive disorder? These articles still appear in fact:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-one... http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/what-its-like-to-treat-...
From what I am aware, this revelation was a big deal at a deeper level, in that it showed a new pathway to relieving depression -- glutamate. Previously I think almost all anti-depression drugs was based around serotonin. Ketamine on the other hand is an NMDA antagnoist (the NMDA receptor being one of the main binding sites of glutamate) so was completely different than SSRIs.
Hallucinations are honestly considered a "bad side effect" for a clinical anti-depressant, so there has been a fair bit of work in developing drugs that modulate the NMDA receptor / glutamate in a way that relieves major depressive disorder without the psychedelic effects. (http://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/depression/54448) I know that one of them, Rapastinel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapastinel
Has seemed to move rather quickly through the FDA clinical trials, currently phase 3 / FDA fast track.
I suppose you could attempt to gobble ketamine, too, to try to self-medicate your way out of depression. But there are risks with that approach. (Short of waiting for the big pharmaceutical approach, there are "ketamine clinics" which, while definitely "off label" / experimental, are at least a more controlled way of attempting this treatment.)
That said, this study had only 12 participants with no control group -- so it's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions. But as a canary study, it says that there might be something here, so further, more rigorous studies are warranted.
All the legal hurdles they had to pass to make this happen are quite impressive. Hopefully they've eeked open that door a bit for further study.
http://www.tedmed.com/speakers/show?id=526372
Just in case anyone here hasn't already seen this: https://xkcd.com/1462/
Pretty much any treatment that has very aggressive effects is usually done without it.
Even treatments that can be tested using a control group are quite often tested without it if you can isolate your metrics well enough.
But technically you can still use a control group for psychoactive drugs because in every trial the first rule is not to give the test subjects any information about possible effects or side effects in order not introduce bias, you also quite often isolate the subjects from each other completely.
I'm also not sure if the dose that is given in this case is even high enough to induce hallucinations in the first place.
Surely we've been trying to treat people with severe, long term depression by other means and not had success. This surely wasn't the first treatment that these people tried in trying to treat their long-term misery. How are both of those things taken together not as good as a control group that allows you to draw meaningful conclusions. It really sounds to me (although it would be better to see the quantification in the source docs) that this is a strong enough result to rule out noise.
If your results are strong enough, you don't need a control. If all 12 participants died while undertaking the trial would we say that it needs to be re-run with a control to be meaningful?
The results look strong. Go for pre-registered replication right away. Sod the control group. Everyone with severe long term depression outside the study is already suffering enough to be the control.
You always need a control group because you can't control for every externality over the exact time period the study was conducted. Maybe the weather was especially nice for those 3 months and the control group feels happier as well? We need a way to quantify the results and be able to answer those questions.
Always be careful with the conclusions you draw from studies without control groups. Small studies without control groups are very cheap to run, so you can run the same study 15 times and only report on it when you get the results you're looking for. Not saying that's what happened here, but we have to apply the same standards of proof to all drug studies or else they don't mean anything. The purpose of this study was likely not to prove "hallucinogens can cure depression" but rather "mushrooms are potentially effective and don't appear to have any glaring safety issues".
People should be coached in how to have a good mushroom experience and what to expect. Nature + fresh fruit + good music + comfy place to sleep has always been a winning combination for me.
That said, there are obvious risks to glorifying psychedelic use, especially when available psychedelics are usually in the form of LSD. While these synthetic compounds can yield the same results as their organic counterparts, there is no way to verify the amount of LSD in a dose. Overdosing on LSD can trigger schizophrenia and several other mental problems in those who are prone to it. This is why SWIM recommends organic psychedelic compounds that can be clearly measured into an appropriate dosage for the individual's size and past psychedelic experience.
There is also an overwhelming trend amongst unscrupulous suppliers to market doses of DOC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,5-Dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetam...) as LSD. While the observed effect of the two are similar, DOC can be extremely dangerous to those with hypertension and high blood pressure. DOC is also an amphetamine with greater risk of physical addiction.
SWIM also wants to point out that SWIM engaged in countless adventures with varying levels of psilocybin and mescaline dosages, and arrived at the conclusion that psychedelic substances are not necessary for seeing the beauty in life or the purpose that one may have in this world. SWIM's most transformative revelations came about while completely sober at a Taoist monastery of the Wudang mountains in China. It is SWIM's opinion that all can know beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness (Tao Te Ching, chapter 2), and now urges people to pursue safe and well-known techniques (meditation, yoga, tai chi, qi gong) for improving one's state of mind.
Nor psilocybin in a mushroom...
> A logical next step would be to carry out a placebo controlled randomised trial in which the level of therapist contact is consistent between conditions.
http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/pdfs/S22150366...
Depression studies are subject to well-known, powerful placebo effects, rendering this study's conclusions next to useless:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/are-antidepr...
A sense of raw novelty is evoked with our lack of understanding of the world around us becomes focused front and center.
Everything is beautiful in its own right. And the fractals in all of existence thoughts and visions run infinitely deep but we can almost grasp them.
I thought we were making progress...
Also, very possible that the measures that were take to keep people "safe" were a factor. Anyone know if there was a control group given the same treatment (double blind) - but with a placebo? __________
EDIT:
Direct link to the related research paper:
Psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression: a feasibility study
http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/pdfs/S22150366...
I don't think it's possible to do fully blinded studies with psychedelics. However in an older study (Griffiths I think) they gave placebo or psilocybin to the participants on random basis, but eventually everyone had one experience with placebo and one with psilocybin. The measured effects did clearly distinguish between placebo and psilocybin.
I don't know about this trial specifically, but they usually use something like methylphenidate or nicotene.
I am now, well into middle age, firmly in the camp that I missed out, due to fear, propaganda, and mis-information. And that my life might have been much better if I had not bought so heavily into that message and instead had "experimented". Trust your observations; not blind authority.
Anyway... I'm currently trying to overcome a combination of symptoms, thoughts, and feelings, stemming from years of abuse, PTSD, and eventually significant knock-on physical health effects.
In the past, I've tried SSRI's, NSRI's, Wellbutrin. Immediate, horrible reactions to each. The only thing that helped was a small dose of Adderall -- much lower than standard. And St. John's Wort. Almost impossible in the U.S. to find a doctor who will agree to simultaneous use of both -- unlike in Europe, so I understand. And the doctor I found was a jerk who almost cost me my chance to purchase next year's health insurance, due to his lack of response on paperwork. So, no more Adderall.
I'm ready to try magic mushrooms. Maybe a low, pure dose of ketamin. Or perhaps MDMA. Under supervision -- medical or simply experienced and well-intentioned. But, there is no avenue for this.
And big pharma and the "war on drugs" will do their best to keep it locked down.
I simply have no trust left in the Establishment, in the U.S., with respect to medical practice. Or, very select trust, in individual practitioners. Who are often caught in a system that severely hampers their ability to actually practice effective medicine and treatment.
My problem is availability.
Psilocybin experiences can be truly traumatic. If you have existing mental health issues, please be very, very careful before you decide to take it. Do all the research you can. I have one friend who went completely over the edge, reached the point of no return. It triggered a predisposition to a horrible mental illness. It has destroyed his life and his familys. For a small number of people, this can happen.
If you think you might be vulnerable to this but still want to go ahead, please make sure you are responsibly and get an experienced sitter and a safe, familiar setting.
Meanwhile, according to the FDA, there were "56,000 emergency room visits, 26,000 hospitalizations, and 458 deaths per year related to acetaminophen-associated overdoses during the 1990s. unintentional acetaminophen overdose accounted for nearly 25 percent of the emergency department visits, 10 percent of the hospitalizations, and 25 percent of the deaths [per year]." [1]
I'm not saying there's nothing worth exploring here. My personal intuition is that psychedelics could be a huge help in some cases, especially for treatment-resistant depression. But this "study" isn't worth squat.
There are ongoing clinical trials, it has been widely covered in media lately, and many major US cities have doctors who run ketamine clinics.
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00088699
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/03/what-its-like-to-treat-...
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/09/28/44320359...
Is it really surprising to anyone that mind altering chemicals could alter mental states? A silly question, obviously.
Check out their publications list from this year alone, a few world firsts in there:
http://beckleyfoundation.org/resources/science-publications/
Gov't doesn't really want jobs, or tax revenue at the expense of their jobs. What would cops do if they weren't locking up kids for a joint?
It's harder to do that in the US because you have more conservative people who see drugs as morally repugnant. My prediction is blue states will continue legalizing and red states will be the last holdout.
It’s easy to keep things the way they are, even if that results in greater long-term cost and harm. This is particularly true if you’re the one in power and you stand to benefit from keeping things as they are—whether because you can make money from it, or just because you think it’s morally right.
You see this also in code: it’s “easier” to keep modifying a clunky legacy codebase than to rewrite it, even if rewriting would result in overall better software. It’s not usually a conspiracy to create inefficiency, but a series of penny-wise decisions often has the same pound-foolish effect.
Of course, I agree that if society’s attitude toward drugs changes, politics will naturally catch up.
That being said, godDAMN how in the hell is anyone ever going to take studies like this seriously when they're being reported as "Magic Mushrooms" in Scientific American of all places? This isn't raver kiddies eating dried who-knows-what out of ziplock bags at raves, this is a controlled dosing of psilocybin in a medical setting for treatment of a serious illness. The stigma around researching these drugs is never going to go away unless the language itself changes.
I am not opposed to drugs but you should know what you are getting into.
I also have more advice for newcomer shroomers: one thought can spiral downward or upward. Try your best to stay optimistic and open to the experience. You will not understand everything that happens (and this is a good thing because it's how people walk away feeling like they learned something), but you need to stay open and firm in your conviction that you're ok. As soon as you tell yourself "I think I'm going to die", you will create your own personal hell.
People think "innocence" isn't a feeling -- it's a judgment. They're wrong. Mushrooms evoke a feeling of innocence that brings the typical user back to a childhood state of mind. And while children are pretty stupid (no fault of their own), their perception is typically void of petty judgments adults cling to (by fault of their own). In this newfound awareness, just like a kid, you feel that anything is possible and yearn for adventure. It's a wonderful experience and is what makes mushrooms my #1 recommended drug.
Instead of leaving me feeling refreshed I am drained and dread the idea of going back to being "normal" where I become blind to those obvious flaws and complacent with living a sub-par life.
<3
For a life changing experience hike a few days into a national forest and drop some shrooms.
Also, increased vitamin C.
Can't go wrong with Messrs. McKenna and Anton-Wilson.
No study or scientific curiosity is "next to useless". You are being intentionally antagonistic and there's no need for that. All research has to start somewhere, and this study is a significant start to this field. In no way is it or its conclusions "next to useless".
However, studies interpreted more broadly than warranted can lead the unwary down deep, expensive, counterproductive dead ends. This happens all the time as the popular media get ahold stories, especially those relating to drug treatments and nutrition.
Consider the headline: "Magic mushrooms found to lift severe depression in clinical trial."
That conclusion is out of line with the way in which the experiment was conducted, especially given the high tendency for large placebo effects in such studies. Without proper controls, the conclusion that magic mushrooms lift severe depression is next to useless.
There's a chasmic divide between the effects of psilocybin and any mental state you can will consciously or subconsciously.
EDIT: unless your hypothesis is that the dissolution of the ego, lack of regard for the conventional, and overwhelming sense of identity with the cosmos are unrelated to depression. Sure a control could tell you that.
That aside, and of course accepting that states induced by psilocybin and other substances are unobtainable by any other means, you are still nowhere near saying that these same substances can _reliably_ be used to treat depression. Furthermore, this course of treatment also needs to _reliably_ not make depression worse or trigger other types of anxiety that could trigger other medical conditions. Clearly, exactly what a aperson does under the influence of these substances can remarkably impact the results of the studies, so the techniques being used are being judged in these experiments just as much as the substances being used.
One shouldn't be dismissive of these studies, but also one should understand that the techniques used aren't the end-of-the-line in terms of potential these substances may have. on the other side of the token, we must also tread carefully. We must first do no harm!
Secondly, if a placebo has a really high rate of success, and less side effects than currently available medication, then it could still be interesting.
And thirdly, it's going to be really, really hard to test against placebos. They're using quite strong doses to get these results, and I think it would be very hard to not realise you weren't getting the psychedelic effects unless you went into the test with literally no prior understanding of what effects the non-placebo drug would have.
But yes, a lot of research still to do. I'm rather optimistic, though.
This is the reason for the depression lifting, by the way.
Depressed people are stuck in infinite loops mostly involving their 'social self'.
When they trip, they realize that "I" has so many more facets than just the social self (ego) - that "I" is also part (and at the center) of an infinite stream of energy - "Universe" , that time is an illusion, that all living beings are part of the same organism, etc, etc.
There is so much more to "I" than just our "problems", "goals" and "aspirations", but we tend to forget that. Psychedelics help you remember - and that's why they are so powerful and also scary for the establishment.
It helped me a lot more now (in my late 30s) than it did when I was younger. Now, when you understand "life" a lot better, you can really integrate the experience and derive positive and useful conclusions from it.
That's the entire point in my opinion. It's the closest I've ever come to feeling like I "took the red pill".
I can't speak for others but from my own experience there aren't bad trips. There are only uncomfortable trips. Uncomfortable because they're reveling a truth you don't want to accept.
Something like that. This is actually a pretty common sentiment. I know a lot of people who experimented with psychedelics in their 20s who in their 30s have said some variation of, "I don't think I'd want to do them now. I have too many things on my mind."
These responsibilities often entail dealing with a great deal more ethical ambiguity and have far fewer simple answers.
In addition to that, over the years I've learned many new facts about the world which indicate that I'm not as nice or good a person as I had previously understood myself to be.
At least in my case as, I get older I feel have both fewer options and the world is more complex than I had thought it was when I was when I was younger.
So my assumption has been that saying "I don't need to deal with XYZ" is probably far more common as folks get older.
And this doesn't seem to be a bad strategy.
On one hand, most large issues either resolve themselves are outside of any person's actions. On the other hand, I may gain even further insight about things as I age.
So I think that "hiding more from ourselves as we age" is probably normal.
I sure as hell don't have the optimism to look at the world with a head full of acid at this point in my life-- it's a horrible shit show of violence and greed even when I'm sober, and every year the possibility of doing much about it via individual action becomes less tenable.
But who knows, maybe I'll age into having some clearer understandings that will leave me more optimistic as I move into my 40s and 50s. Or get better at ignoring the vast problems.
I am in my late 30's now, and luckily I'm in a position to take a trip to Amsterdam every year or two - and that is after not doing it for years and years. I now find it a part of keeping myself psychologically healthy. I come back with a slightly altered life outlook. The worst part, for me, is that I usually can feel daily anxiety coming back as I come back down - but even that has become less over time and it gives me a better perspective on what those happen to be.
I have a friend who had strikingly similar experiences as a child. She quit school for a while and got high daily -- mostly weed, as I understand it. About the age of 21 or 22, she got herself back into school and now has a very successful professional career.
Drugs may indeed destroy some people. But, the messaging is far too simple -- and simplistic.
And, those people often are not helped. They are simply castigated and ostracized.
I don't mean, at all, to make light of such circumstances. And, I have currently been helping someone -- help to the tune of dozens of hours per week and hundreds of miles driven, and hundreds of dollars -- who came darned close to being lost, herself.
I'd still trade my life for hers. She's lived hers -- mistakes and all.
Have any details you're comfortable sharing? Particularly the mental illness, what happened when they were triggered and how often they dosed?
The next few days he was still recovering, but thoughts still very scattered and incoherent. Unfortunately this didn't taper off. I had not seen him for a few weeks until his family were in contact. The behaviour had become drastically worse, violence and paranoia. Eventually he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
From what I have read, with a certain kind of predisposition it would have probably manifested itself later in his life if he was unlucky.
I don't want to put people off Psilocybin as it can be an incredible thing. Just be damn careful and do your research.
He developed schizophrenia and had to drop out of college (a very good one). Never found out what became of him. His parents were extremely embarrassed and apologetic, having to pay for all of the destroyed property. Most of the monetary restitution went toward replacing textbooks that were ripped to shreds.
My wife got that for a year, and I was quite unimpressed. It's not that detailed, mostly, and there's a lot of not very rigorous editorializing, from what I recall. Also, their 'please renew' campaign was quite deceiptful, sending us some kind of "you owe $$$!!!" notice that was really "you owe $$$ if you want to resubscribe".
It amazes me how the entire magazine industry is like this. The most staid and respectable publications have circulation departments that make my local used car dealer look like a saint. It's a huge disconnect, and has always bothered me.
I subscribed for several years until I got tired of their political agenda. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was a feature article on cleaning up landmines in southeast asia. Now, surely this is an important topic, but it's not what I come to a science magazine to read about.
From there I moved to American Scientist magazine, which I found a bit deeper in many cases, and much better regarding editorializing.
> Whenever pot-culture words come up in "reporting" about medical treatments I immediately tune out
Ever think that you're contributing to the problem? Just ignore the editorializing.
So "cutting all stuff that's potentially giving by-effects" is idealistic and not currently possible without reducing the efficacy of the cannabis.
I'm sorry that 420 culture causes your bias, but that's not a fault of the plant.
Because of the propaganda to science ratio, this had the awkward effect on people who nevertheless ended up trying weed that they sometimes assumed that the authorities must have been lying about the other drugs as well. So, "Weed didn't kill me. I guess the other stuff is a lot less harmful than they made it out to be as well".
Still, I think it is a plausible treatment, so hopefully there will be some better trials.
- Everything was more confusing and uncertain back then so it was less of a stretch. With age, I've spent time developing new pathways, habits, and ways of thinking/dealing that I don't take their upheaval lightly.
As a counterpoint, I'd imagine that this is still why they can be useful as well as intimidating. The more set in our ways we get, the less flexible you are during future periods of stress.
- Association of psychedelics with a less certain and more anxious period in my life. I wasn't terribly depressed or anything but looking back...man, those years can be rough and stressful.
I think on some level I can only guess at, the desire to seek new thought patterns and perspectives feels both less appealing and less necessary. Additionally, it carries feelings and associations with the upending of a hard-won equilibrium (or at least relative stability). Not something I take lightly.
Now, that said, I'm pretty sure a mild trip would be enjoyable and I'd probably be fine doing it if the time/place was right. One thing I still stick by: the intense psychedelic journey clearly holds power and appeal for some, but there's really nothing wrong with a mild trip.
I never understood friends who would eat a strip of blotter or a bag of shrooms each. Sure, you get "totally fucked up, dude" but I personally enjoyed feeling like everything just felt a bit novel and looked a bit off rather than not being able to tell where I was at a given time.
It's more than sad that this can happen to people. I'm someone who has had beautiful experiences with mushrooms, but also have a family history of schizo-* disorders. It's put me off from taking psychedelics again. It's a risk I don't want to take now that I'm old enough to realize the possible consequences. I recently "lost" a cousin in his late 30s to drug induced schizophrenia after he experienced psychosis on cocaine.
Psychedelics are amazing substances, but family mental health history and set/setting are crucial to keep in mind before ingesting.
How? The articles aren't for me. I'm fine with pot being legal for medical purposes or otherwise. The articles usually seemed to be aimed at (probably older) people who think marijuana is the devil's weed, and using stoner slang as part of an article to illustrate the positive side effects is counterproductive, in my opinion. Why does it matter if I ignore the article at that point?
giving people psychedelics without telling them seems pretty irresponsible to me even in a controlled setting.
Researchers will sometimes use a substitute to create some effect that a naive participant may believe to be the real thing, but it can be difficult to be convincing. This can damage the integrity of the control group because they would know they hadn't gotten the real thing (and thus possibly negating the placebo effect).
People who know they got the real thing may see benefits that are actually the placebo effect, and if your control group isn't able to control for this effect, it lowers the quality of your study.
There are also moral issues with tough studies such as last ditch experimental studies on stage IV cancers. Even in a double blind study, the research will know they are giving placebos to some of the participants, and thus have no chance of helping them.
If I'm not mistaken, the psylocybin group wasn't given "tripping balls" dosages but rather more modest ones.
So, firstly, I'm not qualified in science, medicine or research, and as such I'm completely open to being wrong in anything I said/will say. (But I have been following this area, and these specific researchers, with great interest.)
Secondly, since they released their results a couple of days ago I haven't yet read the entire paper, just highlights from mainstream press. I'll be reading the full paper over the weekend if not today, in case you're interested you can find it at http://www.thelancet.com/pb/assets/raw/Lancet/pdfs/S22150366...
Now as to my uneducated thoughts on the matter:
1) Maybe they will figure out a good way to do placebo controls. My mother has never tried any drugs other than weed, which was ~40 years ago in university. She swears that the first time she did it, she witnessed a third arm grow out of her body, but also acknowledges that weed doesn't have such effects. Maybe she actually smoked something other than weed, but that long ago I suspect it was just a very strong placebo. There are many, many anecdotes of for example people drinking non-alcoholic beer and seeming to become drunk, or smoking inactive things like tea leaves and thinking they are high. So perhaps, at least for drug-naieve people (i.e. those who don't already know what psilocybin effects feel like) they might not be able to tell the difference between a placebo and the real thing.
2) Given the background of the people in this trial, who have all failed to see improvement in their depression after multiple attempts, even if psilocybin was helping them only by way of placebo... wouldn't that be great in itself? These people who showed improvements had all tried at least two different types of currently-approved anti-depressants, I suspect most/all had tried therapy, etc. (Will have the exact details once I've read the full report, but one line I saw was that one of them had made 11 failed attempts to get rid of it before.) Given psilocybin made a big difference compared to every other option available, it makes me think that this being a placebo is less likely, given all of their previous attempts didn't work at placeboing (is that a word?) them out of depression.
3) If the success rate seen in this admitedly very small trial were to scale up, my gut reaction would be... cares whether it might be a placebo? I read quite recently that Pfizer tried running trials to see if viagra could increase the sex drive of women (this was shortly after they discovered it's now-used benefits for men) and abandoned them because 85% of the women on the placebo reported positive results, so they couldn't draw any data about actual non-placebo effects. Psilocybin is very low on a scale of risk of negative effects, especially when used in such conditions with experts on hand as trip sitters, if it cures $bigpercentage of people with depression who weren't getting cured by SSRIs or anything else, then I say who gives a flying fuck whether it might be caused by the placebo effect, if it works, use it.
4) Previous anecdotal experience. There are many stories of people finding either temporary, or in some cases even permanent, relief from their depression after using psychedelics (not just psylocibin). I'd hazard a guess that these are less likely to be caused by placebos, since these are people who used the drug without any expectation, i.e. without anyone saying "maybe this will cure your depression".
TLDR: Maybe they can figure out a way to do placebo controlled studies, and in my opinion even if they can't it's not neccessarily the end of the road for this research. Another disclaimer is that it's early in the morning and I now need to go do other stuff so I haven't proof-read this comment. Nor have I had my first cigarette of the day. If you get notified of HN replies, and would be interested to see if I have any different thoughts once I've read the study, I'd be happy to comment here again when I get round to doing so.
Without (1), you'll never get (2) and believe me, as someone who smokes everyday, (1) will come up from time to time when things aren't going well with your life. That's when you gotta smoke and mentally sort out what's going on.
Weed leaves you in a slightly-crippled state insofar as your self-defenses don't work as well. As a result, thoughts from the subconscious creep upwards to the conscious level. As much as it "hurts", it's good to be fully aware and honest with yourself.
But what people in their 30s really mean is they are unable to relax because they have so many more obligations and problems on their mind.
But believe me -- this problem is remedied by hanging out with good, positive people you trust and removing yourself from a stressful environment.
I agree that thoughts can spiral out of control, which is to some degree what depression is for me. Trying to stay optimistic and open is a standard day when I'm having a low period.
More generally, it's easier to hate than love in this world. Why is that? What purpose does it serve? Why are thoughts utilized this way? Understanding this is like a key to which you will unlock the gate to your true happiness. Yet be sure not to slip to temptation and justify attack or hatred. The same thoughts that project hatred or attack upon others will be used against oneself as both sword & shield (you will attack yourself for [x] and also start to become defensive about [x]).
Should add: Would meditation experience help? I feel that my experience helps me dealing with fearful situation. The fear is there but I can watch it and it doesn't define me.
Yep meditation is yet another form of strengthening the resolution within yourself that you have power over your mind. Psychedelics show you this insofar as your effects are felt almost immediately -- this is why I said your thoughts can spiral up or down. Negative feelings must be taken responsibility for with one self and that is all. Even if you were burning at the stake, fear has no utility.
Fear is the ego's chief instrument in ensuring its command over your mind. Humans have not woken up yet to the deeper Life inside of them, and as a result feel victims, and as a result believe fear (and attack) is justified. Veiled in one action or another is the constant reminder that you will die, and it is this idol you serve when you are experiencing fear.
When one is completely silent in meditation, their identification is slowly dissolving from ego to Life. You are sinking into your mind and realizing more & more that your feelings come from your own valuations upon your projections. When this is recognized, the great game you play of devil & angel on each shoulder becomes meaningless and conflict (and thus fear) is dissolved with it. Yet to those who cling to their body for identification and purpose will have a sad life indeed for it is guaranteed to fail.
Now, if you really want to take it even further, I would explain that this world is not real but rather a dream of Hell that we have summoned after purposefully forgetting our creator ("biting the apple", "great fall") so we could be our creators in complete opposition to God. As a result, all fear is rooted in the fear of God and serves as witness that you are what you are not (you are life; you cannot be not life `A != !A`, but having infinite power you can will yourself to forget and live out a dream). Sleeping dreams are merely re-enactments of the great fall we took as one and you get to play out your egotistical desires & fears. In short, fear is never justified because of who you are and any value system with it as its underpinning is not to be trusted.
Meditating an hour or so before ingesting your substance of choice and then continuing to meditate until you come up helps to ease the stress of going into a trip.. Stress and trips are bad so making that as limited as possible is always good. Set and setting are key here.
[1] http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... [2] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=NMRI%2CMRI%2C+... [3] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=nuclear+magnet...
(See the decomissioning section on the 1964-1969 Oak Ridge thorium reactor if you think they are problem free https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten-Salt_Reactor_Experiment...)
The problem with most of that 'waste' (at least the non-byproducts kind) is that it's exactly that, actual waste instead of burnt fuel.
It can also be argued that THC sounds more like a synthesised or refined version consisting of the active ingredients.
You are merely be defensive against the greater Truth, and your ego is smug in its defense. I walk the holy path that only healers walk -- what path do you take? Smug dismissals that offer nothing of value? What path is that a part of?
Forgive me if I came off as dismissive, that was not the intention. I only meant to suggest that there may be a better way to accomplish your goal, one which is more subtle and gentle.
Tolerance and gentleness are not absent in my message. However, it's bound to be misunderstood if it comes across as if I am tacitly attacking religions and promoting my own unique one (the connotation I would say proselytizing has behind it). I'm not because there's no point in this kind of behavior. Truth will always be true, and the journey toward it is going to be unique for each individual but the destination will always remain the same.
If you do know what I speak of, you will also have learned that ideas only increase by sharing and that learning necessarily involves teaching. You are potentially misrepresenting tolerance as acceptance; the two are not one in the same. There is only one truth, but that does not mean you accept falsehoods out of tolerance. It means you tolerate them in your perfect forgiveness, which does not judge. I have no idea how my message could be construed as not gentle, but tip-toeing around what it is you truly believe out of fear of offending others is not the definition of gentleness. God has ordained my mission and that was just something that came to me to write -- it probably took me 5m because I didn't have to do much thinking. I only wish the best for everyone and the +8 upvotes meant it clearly resonated with a few people. This is enough for now and certainly does not backfire on my purpose here.
The only proselytizers that get on my nerves are those desperate to be agreed with. It makes we wonder - what do they want of me?