Here's yet another anecdote of near-zero real value to add to the pile: I treated my severe treatment-resistant depression with ketamine infusions. It's obviously not the same as psilocybin, but I believe the current thinking is that psychoelics and dissociatives both have some positive effect on neuroplasticity, and that sorta checks out in my case. I'd say you need to combine it with some good cognitive behavioral therapy - it seemed to make CBT a lot more effective for me where it failed in the past because my brain was more open to rewiring. I haven't been re-treated in a few years now, but I still feel a lot better.

But you're also totally right - my story is just an anecdote, and these sort of headlines that used to have cannabis as a miracle cure for all types of things seem to have been replaced with headlines about psilocybin (or occasionally, ketamine) curing everything instead. I totally get the skepticism, but I'm a believer that we might be onto something w/r/t depression or other things that are treatable via CBT at least - the article mentioned "combined with talk therapy" ... not sure what therapy method was used alongside the psilocybin.

SciAm really should prefer a headline such as:

Psilocybin opens up new pathways to treating anorexia

TIL I learned about Janus words that have two opposite meanings depending on context, also known as contronyms or auto-antonyms:

Cleave: To split apart ('cleave the wood') or to adhere closely ('cleave to one's principles')

Sanction: To give official permission/approval or to impose a penalty/ban

Oversight: Watchful supervision or an unintentional mistake/omission

Dust: To remove fine particles ('dust the shelf') or to sprinkle them on ('dust the cake with sugar')

Bolt: To secure firmly in place or to run away suddenly

Clip: To fasten together ('clip the papers') or to cut off ('clip the coupon')

Fast: Moving quickly or fixed firmly in place ('stuck fast')

Left: Departed (verb) or remaining (adjective)

Screen: To display/show ('screen a movie') or to hide/conceal

Weather: To withstand or endure ('weather the storm') or to wear away/deteriorate over time

Peruse: To read carefully and thoroughly or to skim casually

Trim: To decorate/adorn ('trim the tree') or to cut away excess ('trim the hedges')

Rent: To pay for the use of something or to receive payment for allowing someone to use something

Table: In British English, to propose for discussion; in American English, to postpone or remove from discussion

I guess it depends on what "derail" means (meaning, do you actually know one's internal state and if they are happy?). Is something wrong with living alone in a rural area if you are happy? (This sounds great to me, for reference!).

I've watched hundreds of people take them in great containers with great support. It's never a good idea to make big changes right away, but we take small steps to adjust our lives so we can actually be happy. Yes, even if that is less "productive". Why do we do the things we do anyways?

> just living in some rural area with limited participation in real life

They might say the same thing about your lifestyle. The "reward structure of society" is highly abstract these days, arguably disconnected from "real life". You could say monks are disconnected from "real life."

This is a weird take, I think.

Yes, for me it felt like the substance facilitates it so you do the mental work and introspection, allowing you the capacity to slow down and think through things, which won't miraculously happen if you aren't in a proper headspace.

Why? Because it's not a very accurate stereotype.

I do first aid at music festivals and volunteer at a free clinic that serves a homeless population. I see a lot of spun folks and folks in varying stages of "burned out" (to use the term from the stereotype). I'm still in EMT school, but I've had to work with a lot of folks having adverse reactions to these substances.

Meth and alcohol, simply being poor, childhood trauma, getting into a bad medical situation, losing a job and not finding one; all of those things will put folks into some bad places.

But most substance abuse, in my limited experience, comes down to various traumas folks get into and maybe some chemical predispositions.

That's not how most of the folks I know who have had very adverse psychedelic experiences have gotten into those states. And it is generally a very transitory state.

While there are long-term psychological effects from stuff like acid (and IME, MDMA, Ket, and Nitrous are worse physiologically than things like LSD, C2B, DMT, psilocybin, mescaline, etc), generally psychedelic substances lead people to doing less of those drugs over time and that has a very different effect than, say, alcohol and chronic poverty.

Propaganda about these things has a hard time taking hold in the face of most folks lived reality.

Kary Mullis is known to have used a lot of it and discovered PCR while off psychedelics. There's also the famous Hoffman's bycicle day. The stereotype is just that, and might be a result of lack of mental stimulation rather than LSD abuse, which is possibly the safest drug in terms of toxicity.

Here on the east coast, you can just wait until May comes around and it rains a couple days in a row. Then, you can just go for a walk by your local river/creek and wade through the seas of Japanese knotweed, lesser celandine, and box elder maple while looking for mushrooms growing out of the wet woody debris. Between them and nearby mulch beds, SWIM has allegedly found psilocybe ovoideocystidiata pretty consistently for the past several years, in Minecraft. Just don't try and take any shortcuts with the identification. It's better to throw out questionable specimens than risk needing a liver transplant.

Yeah, Disenfranchise the hippies and the blacks by targeting those communities with heavy policing. Sorta like today where there's similar drug use levels between white and black populations, but one side is more heavily policed than the other.

Always beleive the record...

Whose record?

Sure but "somewhere worse" is usually defined relative to the current societal framework. Society requires almost every adult to participate in labor, if LSD made you want to sit around and make paintings all day instead of work we would consider it a negative even though it would be a positive within other conceivable societal frameworks. For example, if AI removes the need for labor then maybe it would be fine and even desirable for everyone to just be high and make paintings all day. The complete dissolution that some people experience is likewise terrible for society, because people with no ego are poor, unmotivated workers amongst other potential behavioral issues, but in a Tibetan monastery you might be considered a saint. Ramana Maharshi was supposedly found as a young boy living in a pit with flies and bugs eating away at his flesh, he was completely oblivious to even his personal wellbeing much less societal norms and expectations. He was and still is considered one of the greatest Vedic sages in recent history.

I'm not saying that everyone should go do LSD and I don't know the details or stories of the people you saw. Like I said, I understand the perspective of people who feel responsible for maintaining a social order. I'm just trying to point out how relative all of this is to societal frameworks.

As I understand it it can be a lot worse, a lot better, or anywhere in between. Scientifically backed coaching can probably shift it towards the "better" side. This is a new area of research because the whole thing was written off for several decades due to the war on drugs.

> anyone i have met that did Psychedelics more than a few times, permanently changed their brain chemistry in a way that was obvious. sure they dissolve some kind of prison, but many people never make it back from that dissolution and end up somewhere worse

Way to generalise. I also know people who drank water, went to sleep and never woke up.

Ego dissolution is dosage dependent and you don't need to reach that point to get positive benefits.

Also, many people do psychdelics that probably shouldn't.

> did Psychedelics more than a few times

If you want to specify LSD, you should do that, not "psychedelics." There are many, many psychedelics. They have sometimes radical differences. You cannot generalize that word into "many people never make it back." That is flat-out wrong, not to mention harmful.

Co-signed here with psilocybin being dangerous based on direct personal experience, and seeing inumerable issues with party friends. Apologists of psylocybin will sometimes say 'its not as harsh and dangerous as LSD.' Ok, damaging effects of this drug are always apologized away and covered up.

The biggest problem with psilocibyn is people are told its benign, then they go on a 'trip', and sometimes in their come-down delusion completely destroy their lives: leave their families, leave their career, and tend to 'come to' (if they do) several months later.

Bad trips are supposedly 'experiences' (and now your in the realm of metaphysics), and going to jail or hurting yourself and others supposedly just should be washed over, or, you have permanent anxiety while sober now.

The psychadelic apologists make themselves unfalsifiable because they can help people stuck in a purely materiastic mindset - which our souls know is completely false.

Anyone in the party scene, or 'psychonaughts' (as I was, and did massive amounts of mushrooms for years, and had friends doing the same, sometimes 2-5x a week), the consequences of screwing with your brain chemistry cannot be avoided.

Joe Rogan has done immense damage with minimizing risks of monkeying with your brain chemistry. This also relates to weed, which is not the weed of forty years ago compressed bricks with seeds in it, but its incredibly intense.

You'll never hear so many excuses about their drug addiction then from weed smokers who spend hundreds a week, and can't miss a single day of smoking, toking, edibles, oils.

NA and AA would be better paths to start with these trauma's, then fix the underlying trauma itself - which is also a spiritual problem, and not material. We, wealthy-west should theoretically be the most 'happy', and not lead for the last 60 years in depression, suicide, psychologists and psychiatrists, etc. Its not true, which is why nothing is working.

Or to summarize, as the meme goes - something like 'these non spiritual normies taking psychadelics getting one-shot by a seven-dimensional demon, now leave their husband and career, wanting to 'teach about love' in the amazon.'

Pills and white powders get mixed up and adulterated that way, but I think everyone who eats mushrooms and hallucinates ate the right mushrooms. LSD is sometimes but rarely substituted for other hallucinogenic drugs that can be delivered on blotter paper, of which there aren't many.

no these people are deeply tied into the scene