[somestag]

Agree. Amusingly, the authors found evidence that the drugs work: students spent more time focusing on even the easy version of the task. The impulse to "be done" with something and stop focusing on it is one of the things stimulants counteract.

I'm also not a big fan on emphasizing the "cognitively healthy" part of the equation. My understanding is that stimulants do exactly the same thing in a person whether they're "cognitively healthy" or not; they're not the sort of drugs that target a deficiency or clear up some specific problem. The only difference is that some people have more of a need in this area than others.

This reminds me of an old article I read about how psychedelics don't actually "increase connectivity in the brain" like users thought, as though that had anything to do with why people use psychedelics.

[jdietrich]

>This reminds me of an old article I read about how psychedelics don't actually "increase connectivity in the brain" like users thought, as though that had anything to do with why people use psychedelics.

I don't recall seeing anyone make that argument, but I do tend to avoid woo and pop sci. What is reasonably clear is that psychedelics increase neuroplasticity even in vitro, which is hypothesised as being one of the plausible mechanisms of action for psychedelics as a treatment for mental disorder - they potentially create a window of opportunity for habitual patterns of maladaptive cognition and behaviour to be unlearned.

Some people are very attached to the idea that the qualitative experience of the "trip" is integral to the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, but that is by no means a universal belief; many groups are working on non-psychedelic drugs that exploit this mechanism.

I think it's entirely reasonable to be wary of people justifying their recreational drug use with outsized claims of therapeutic benefits, but in the case of psychedelics there is definitely something of clinical interest happening. I'm quite circumspect about the clinical use of psychedelics, but I think it's highly likely that we are going to see a generation of novel and useful psychiatric drugs emerge based on what we have learned from psychedelics research.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6082376/

[garciasn]

> This reminds me of an old article I read about how psychedelics don't actually "increase connectivity in the brain" like users thought, as though that had anything to do with why people use psychedelics.

That's why some folks say they take psychedelics; they want to justify their drug use for 'fun' as something more beneficial. I wish people were more honest with themselves and others.

[somestag]

Some people take psychedelics for the feeling of connectivity, and there is some talk out there about psychedelics being healthy for the brain and "helping the brain form new connections" (all of that is based on very limited evidence and a lot of woo), but even that isn't what the article was about.

The article just scanned people's brains while they were on drugs and saw that the electrical activity was more erratic and scattered than normal, not more active and connected, and concluded that people were using psychedelics based on a myth.

[ethanbond]

"The drug increases connectivity in the brain" is a completely orthogonal claim to "the drug does something beneficial for me."

In fact a lot of people who have taken (and really cherish) psychedelics would not describe them as fun, and sometimes they're very actively un-fun/terrifying/unenjoyable, and yet can still be beneficial.

What exactly is going on at the level of "brain connectivity" is pretty much unrelated to all of that^

[Levitz]

I've had fun with psychedelics, I also honestly consider they have improved my life.

Yes the trip can be lots of fun, but really, "fun" is widely available once you cross the line and take drugs. MDMA is fun. Amphetamines can be fun. There is no scarcity of "fun" here and I have no issue admitting I've taken those to the possible detriment of my health and for fun.

The difference is that if I had to skip the "trip" part of psychedelics and retain the rest, I'd still do it.

[willy_k]

There are also people who do it because they find it interesting, or spiritual, or healing in some way. They aren’t really ‘fun’, and are generally not addictive, though ones with dopaminergic activity like lsd or to a larger extent MDMA do cause addictive tendencies occasionally.

[samtho]

Let’s say for the sake of argument (because it’s not true) that the only possible benefit of psychedelics is “fun”. Assuming sensible doses do not cause harm, what is the problem with it only being fun?

[renewiltord]

Legality in the US depends on suffering being alleviated. Honesty won’t get you legality. I’m pro legalization so I’ll lie about the benefits if necessary. You’ll then have to pay the costs necessary to detect lies.

[milesvp]

>My understanding is that stimulants do exactly the same thing in a person whether they're "cognitively healthy"

I don’t know a lot about stimulants in general, but I know for caffeine in particular this is not true. As an anecdote, I have a friend that caffeine puts to sleep, she just can’t take it. I’ve come to find out (partly from knowing her) that part of why the FDA doesn’t regulate caffeine, is that it has a very wide range of varying effects on different people.

[somestag]

Well, everyone is different biologically and every drug affects everyone differently, I didn't mean that there's no biodiversity between people. What I meant was that these stimulants don't function differently based on whether you're "cognitively healthy." Methylphenidate doesn't do something different in a person with ADHD versus one without, because it doesn't interact with any mechanisms of the illness, and whether or not you have ADHD you're experiencing similar effects on the drug.

Contrast with, say, SSRIs, which might have some effect in a healthy person but you're looking at a different range of effects compared to someone taking it for depression/anxiety/OCD/whatever.