>> As psychedelic therapies for mental health go mainstream, companies are recruiting chemists to create patentable versions of hallucinogens.
Same old same old. Let's tweak this molecule to make it "novel" while retaining it's cool properties. Then we can patent it and own the market. In this case they also get the advantage that the existing molecule is illegal.
I can't help but notice that this is basically how we got oxycodone, and even stronger opioids such as fentanyl. Would the opiod crisis have been so extreme if the hardest stuff you could get was raw opium? Not that opium's not a hell of a drug itself, but as I understand it, the risks of serious health issues like fatal overdose are not as high compared to synthetic opiates. Jeet Thayil's semi-autobiographical novel Narcopolis touches on this. Set in Bombay, the opium-addicted characters run into problems when dealers start switch from selling opium to heroin.
I'm not sure how this might play out for psychedelics, which are generally not addictive, but the incentives are similar. I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea, in fact I'm excited to see where those incentives lead things. Will researchers invent a hangover free ecstasy? Acid you can drive to work on? Lovely.
There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or auditory hallucinations.
Talk about missing the forest from the trees.
The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me.
> The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself.
IMHE, it's not, at least in regards to (racemic) ketamine and depression. The benefit doesn't appear until ~24 hours later, and the effect scales with dosage, but not trip intensity or outcome.
I found taking it almost unpleasant at times, but the subsequent effects uniformly profound. Unfortunately, I developed a rare health issue, or I'd still be taking it.
The problem is that Pharma companies can't patent and sell a full spectrum product. They can only make the big bucks by getting a certain compound approved after going through the full FDA process on that one particular compound. It's the same thing we saw with kratom. The FDA had multiple attempts over the last 7 years to ban it, while kratom is basically as harmless as coffee. It took a massive grassroots effort to stop the ban. Then shortly after it comes out that GlaxoSmithKline, who the FDA head (Scott Gottlieb) at the time of the attempted ban sat on the board for just a year prior, was trying to bring synthetic 7-hydroxy-mitragynine (7hm is thought to be a main active ingredient in kratom) to market, which it has a patent on. Follow the money people
It’s like when med chemists trialled a cannabinoid-blocker as an experimental appetite suppressant. Surprise surprise, it gave the participants depression and suicidality.
> Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me.
And I personally know people for whom the exact opposite is the case. I'm very much looking forward to the rise of psychedelic therapy.
Well, I love my therapist, and research suggests that psychedelic assisted therapy is effective. I've never taken a large dose of mushrooms because I am nervous about where it would take me, so personally doing that with my therapist could be pretty nice. Tho expensive lol.
I've only really done LSD once tho and it was interesting, and seemed more low key than shrooms, so maybe I should try that again.
Seems pretty testable. Co administer the LSD with something to knock out the individual, and ideally prevent them from dreaming.
You could determine if the benifit(s) arise from the the process, experience, and dis/associations of the trip or simply the subconscious biochemical fuckery.
Bad trips are not caused by the drug, they're caused by set and setting. You just have to let go and accept whatever's happening to enjoy the trip. Unfortunately, letting go is easier said than done. The Ego is very good at self preservation and it invariably prevents the letting go process.
Good book about the subject matter is [0] How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence by Michael Pollan.
Set and setting are what create the good or bad experience. The therapist prepares the person for the journey while walking them out of any bad paths while on the journey. Layout and design of where the journey takes places must be soothing and relaxing.
Fun fact. Fungi growing closer to humans has higher potency in psilocybin than ones growing deeper in nature.
The thing that bothers me is that anyone who thinks they should decide for other people what (non-poisonous) chemicals they should put in their body is obviously so crazy that their opinion should be excluded from serious consideration on the matter. (This goes double if the person hasn't ever even tried the chemical(s) in question!)
Anti-drug hysteria has caused far more human destruction than all the bad trips and psychotic episodes put together. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people in prison right now for illegal drugs. In some cases they had their lives ruined over nothing worse than a few grams of weed.
>the liability of visual or auditory hallucinations.
The visual/audio effects aren't what gets you on a trip, though. It's the headspace, the distortion of "automatic self-recognition", and to some extent, the role of the crucial 5-ht2a receptor in the sleep-wake cycle: all 5-ht2a antagonists are soporific, and almost all psychedelics produce insomnia as a side effect. A bad trip leading to worse after-effects practically always proceeds through a sleepless night.
Where does one buy LSD this day and age. Doesn’t seem very popular in my neck of the woods and have not heard anyone having it since I was in high school 20 years ago.
i have tried all the psychadelics that dont provide "trips" . all of them were complete failures yet they show effects on mice for some reason but when did that ever matter.
The only interesting one that was impressive was tabernanthalog but even though it didn't produce a twitch response in mice it clearly had a psychadelic effect
Do we really need new ones? Maybe, we just need to decriminalize nature and let a shamanic class arise to guide us on a spiritual journey of self-awareness.
I recently did LSD. It wasn't my first encounter with psychedelics but none have done what LSD did. I have a good bit of trauma that I'd attempted to work through throughout my life. The thing is, many of those things are settled. I cannot change them, I've course corrected my life away from my actions being influenced by these things, and on the exterior I think most people would find me well adapted. I was pretty miserable on the inside though; those traumas hue the depths of your soul in ways that intentional and advertent action cannot rectify, only mask.
LSD gave me the power to set those things to sea and give them the burial they needed. Not all of them are gone, but I'm in a much better place because of it.
There is nothing different that I need, just make it so I don't have to order it on the dark web.
Edit: Happy to answer questions about my experiences. Can also be reached on Libera if public questions are not what you want.
I think most of us are desperate to see ourselves from a different perspective (whether we realize it or not), but that's really hard to do when success in our day-to-day lives depends on us having a stable vision of ourselves and our place in the world. I think a lot of experiences, including a lot of drugs, can help either provide a temporary new perspective, or even shift our everyday view of ourselves and our lives more permanently. LSD seems to be one of the most effective.
mdma is generally even more powerful for healing trauma.
Or rather MDMA can accelerate healing by released "stored unprocessed memories"
LSD can help you by showing you a possibility of whats possible by dissolving the prision of identity and seeing the world from a non-local perspective.
With the collapse of the SSRI hypothesis, I feel like there was a missed opportunity to interrogate what it is about the affluent, technological society that makes such a staggering number of people so depressed.
It seems that we will instead (characteristically) plow forward with even more powerful drugs.
It's sad that the only way to legalize is to force people to see a qualified therapist and take patented psychedelics in order to benefit from the experience, but that's what the normies want.
I've taken them with a therapist and it was meh because the doctor/patient relationship became weird under the influence. On the other hand I've had peak experiences by myself alone in a redwood forest on a fresh clear morning.
I have a friend who has severe depression, including self harm and thoughts of suicide. So far guided meditation sessions and antidepressants have had little effect.
I have read that some illicit drugs can be effective in treating depression, even after just one or two uses. Can anyone suggest what might be the best option out of ketamine, shrooms, LSD or MDMA?
Please don't give your severely depressed friend random street drugs in hopes it will magically help them.
You are not equipped to purity test them, severely depressed people can become more suicidal on rebounds, and you are almost certainly not equipped to care for them if they hit a major health issue.
Most people I've met who use ketamine at all are addicted to ketamine, and long-term heavy usage has severe negative consequences. It has therapeutic uses and can be used to treat otherwise untreatable depression, but the risks are severe if somebody seeks it out on their own.
MDMA is a good trip, but damn the hangover: I wouldn't suggest your friend endure "suicide Tuesday."
Shrooms and LSD can be effective, but a bad trip can aggravate depression and anxiety.
There are no silver bullets. Therapeutic uses involve therapists. The only advice I can give is that your friend seek out a competent therapist.
Speaking very broadly, ketamine has shown positive effects on depression, MDMA on PTSD, and psychedelics on grief and to some extent anxiety. So it really depends on what your friend is dealing with in their personal life.
>Major findings were (a) adolescents who had been physically assaulted, who had been sexually assaulted, who had witnessed violence, or who had family members with alcohol or drug use problems had increased risk for current substance abuse/dependence; (b) posttraumatic stress disorder independently increased risk of marijuana and hard drug abuse/dependence; and (c) when effects of other variables were controlled, African Americans, but not Hispanics or Native Americans, were at approximately 1/3 the risk of substance abuse/dependence as Caucasians. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
It seems like we should find ways to excite people about life and discovery rather than drum about the worker bee life. That's why people want drugs so much.
Go build something interesting - physical, not on the computer, stop doing drugs.
Sad really. As this headline might as well be: "Big Pharma: Patents Equal Profits."
There are plenty of cultures and associated history to support using what we already have available.
The only reason to invent anything new would be to control access and make a buck. We're going through that with the Covid vaccine. What does it take for us to learn from our mistakes?
> The line tops out at a dose of 10 mg/kg, or “mig per kig,” as chemists pronounce it.
So that would make the sweet-spot dose for someone my weight about 800mg, which doesn't sound very 'potent' to me. I haven't read PIHKAL, perhaps that dosage is in line with the kind of substances Shulgin tested.
[+] [-] phkahler|3 years ago|reply
Same old same old. Let's tweak this molecule to make it "novel" while retaining it's cool properties. Then we can patent it and own the market. In this case they also get the advantage that the existing molecule is illegal.
[+] [-] notjulianjaynes|3 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how this might play out for psychedelics, which are generally not addictive, but the incentives are similar. I don't necessarily think this is a bad idea, in fact I'm excited to see where those incentives lead things. Will researchers invent a hangover free ecstasy? Acid you can drive to work on? Lovely.
[+] [-] xyzwave|3 years ago|reply
0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act
[+] [-] NickC25|3 years ago|reply
Talk about missing the forest from the trees.
The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me.
[+] [-] heap_perms|3 years ago|reply
I couldn't agree more. In fact, the trip itself is not a nice side effect, it's the precondition to get measurable, long-term positive changes.
[+] [-] WalterSear|3 years ago|reply
IMHE, it's not, at least in regards to (racemic) ketamine and depression. The benefit doesn't appear until ~24 hours later, and the effect scales with dosage, but not trip intensity or outcome.
I found taking it almost unpleasant at times, but the subsequent effects uniformly profound. Unfortunately, I developed a rare health issue, or I'd still be taking it.
[+] [-] user90323432|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Scoundreller|3 years ago|reply
Like, what did you expect?
https://www.nature.com/articles/nrcardio.2010.148
[+] [-] danaris|3 years ago|reply
And I personally know people for whom the exact opposite is the case. I'm very much looking forward to the rise of psychedelic therapy.
[+] [-] TaylorAlexander|3 years ago|reply
I've only really done LSD once tho and it was interesting, and seemed more low key than shrooms, so maybe I should try that again.
[+] [-] s1artibartfast|3 years ago|reply
You could determine if the benifit(s) arise from the the process, experience, and dis/associations of the trip or simply the subconscious biochemical fuckery.
[+] [-] braindead_in|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yndoendo|3 years ago|reply
Set and setting are what create the good or bad experience. The therapist prepares the person for the journey while walking them out of any bad paths while on the journey. Layout and design of where the journey takes places must be soothing and relaxing.
Fun fact. Fungi growing closer to humans has higher potency in psilocybin than ones growing deeper in nature.
[0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36613747-how-to-change-y...
Edit: wording
[+] [-] carapace|3 years ago|reply
Anti-drug hysteria has caused far more human destruction than all the bad trips and psychotic episodes put together. There are thousands, perhaps millions, of people in prison right now for illegal drugs. In some cases they had their lives ruined over nothing worse than a few grams of weed.
[+] [-] scythe|3 years ago|reply
The visual/audio effects aren't what gets you on a trip, though. It's the headspace, the distortion of "automatic self-recognition", and to some extent, the role of the crucial 5-ht2a receptor in the sleep-wake cycle: all 5-ht2a antagonists are soporific, and almost all psychedelics produce insomnia as a side effect. A bad trip leading to worse after-effects practically always proceeds through a sleepless night.
[+] [-] 14|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkoryak|3 years ago|reply
If you had a bad trip, you might feel differently about it.
[+] [-] ngold|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jokowueu|3 years ago|reply
The only interesting one that was impressive was tabernanthalog but even though it didn't produce a twitch response in mice it clearly had a psychadelic effect
[+] [-] LocalH|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] turdit|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathgladiator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] engineer_22|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodah|3 years ago|reply
LSD gave me the power to set those things to sea and give them the burial they needed. Not all of them are gone, but I'm in a much better place because of it.
There is nothing different that I need, just make it so I don't have to order it on the dark web.
Edit: Happy to answer questions about my experiences. Can also be reached on Libera if public questions are not what you want.
[+] [-] standardUser|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mysore|3 years ago|reply
Or rather MDMA can accelerate healing by released "stored unprocessed memories"
LSD can help you by showing you a possibility of whats possible by dissolving the prision of identity and seeing the world from a non-local perspective.
[+] [-] randomopining|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huetius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] labrador|3 years ago|reply
I've taken them with a therapist and it was meh because the doctor/patient relationship became weird under the influence. On the other hand I've had peak experiences by myself alone in a redwood forest on a fresh clear morning.
[+] [-] 8bitsrule|3 years ago|reply
At least the article 'tuned in' to Shulgin. More on Sasha and Ann's prolonged studies, along with a big bibliography, here (Web 1) [https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/shulgin_alexander/...]
[+] [-] throw819352119|3 years ago|reply
I have read that some illicit drugs can be effective in treating depression, even after just one or two uses. Can anyone suggest what might be the best option out of ketamine, shrooms, LSD or MDMA?
[+] [-] vorpalhex|3 years ago|reply
You are not equipped to purity test them, severely depressed people can become more suicidal on rebounds, and you are almost certainly not equipped to care for them if they hit a major health issue.
[+] [-] klyrs|3 years ago|reply
MDMA is a good trip, but damn the hangover: I wouldn't suggest your friend endure "suicide Tuesday."
Shrooms and LSD can be effective, but a bad trip can aggravate depression and anxiety.
There are no silver bullets. Therapeutic uses involve therapists. The only advice I can give is that your friend seek out a competent therapist.
[+] [-] scythe|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MonkeyMalarky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DJ-P|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] cannaceo|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BLO716|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|3 years ago|reply
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2000-13544-003
>Major findings were (a) adolescents who had been physically assaulted, who had been sexually assaulted, who had witnessed violence, or who had family members with alcohol or drug use problems had increased risk for current substance abuse/dependence; (b) posttraumatic stress disorder independently increased risk of marijuana and hard drug abuse/dependence; and (c) when effects of other variables were controlled, African Americans, but not Hispanics or Native Americans, were at approximately 1/3 the risk of substance abuse/dependence as Caucasians. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
[+] [-] MonkeyMalarky|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mateja|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akimball|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coding123|3 years ago|reply
Go build something interesting - physical, not on the computer, stop doing drugs.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|3 years ago|reply
There are plenty of cultures and associated history to support using what we already have available.
The only reason to invent anything new would be to control access and make a buck. We're going through that with the Covid vaccine. What does it take for us to learn from our mistakes?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/13/1111137...
[+] [-] denton-scratch|3 years ago|reply
So that would make the sweet-spot dose for someone my weight about 800mg, which doesn't sound very 'potent' to me. I haven't read PIHKAL, perhaps that dosage is in line with the kind of substances Shulgin tested.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] AnimalMuppet|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] patientplatypus|3 years ago|reply
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