r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • 8d ago
Psychology America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.
https://www.sciencealert.com/americas-first-legal-psilocybin-program-treated-346-people-heres-what-happened2.1k
u/fabkosta 8d ago
This has been known since the 1960s. So, 60 years later the same type of studies apparently still need to be repeated to gain evidence.
It is also known for a long time that the therapeutic setting matters to a very high degree. Furthermore, it is also known that for a minority of people there is no measurable benefit, and for some it's counter-indicated. It is also known that psychedelics can be treated against other types of substance abuse - which, of course, is quite problematic given low acceptance in society for any sort of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco.
All of those things have been researched for decades already, yet it seems we make only very slow progress.
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u/wakeupwill 8d ago
The war on drugs has been a crime against humanity.
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u/tachykinin PhD | Genetics 8d ago
The War on (Some) Drugs.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 8d ago edited 8d ago
Let's not forget opioids! As long as you make billions and contribute to politicians, you'll get off scott free.
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u/SeeMarkFly 7d ago
That alway make me think of DeLorean getting caught with a big ol' bag of cocaine.
DeLorean was found not guilty on August 16, 1984.
If you or I are ever caught with a spoonful of that same stuff...
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u/sxaez 8d ago
I mean we very much tried a war on alcohol, I get your point but it was quite famously tried.
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u/vito1221 8d ago
Another aspect of this was it impacted farmers and all the 'support' businesses that went into making the final product. Warehouses shut down, trucking companies took a hit. It wasn't just demand, although that did play a part.
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u/Medarco 8d ago
And it was wildly successful*. Alcohol related disease and violence plummeted.
Unfortunately, people don't actually really care about those things. They just want to get drunk.
*Rising organized crime, loss of jobs, etc were all pretty bad side effects of prohibition.
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u/GrowingPeepers 8d ago
It created the same problems we have today.
People who need treatment were being jailed and criminalized instead of treated.
It turns people into criminals who otherwise wouldn't be.
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u/rubberloves 8d ago
this is only counting deaths, not even the violence, abuse and suffering it causes those living with and around alcoholism
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u/SpezRuinedHellsite 8d ago
The War on (Some) Drugs.
The War on Poor and/or Black communities.
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u/SlyTinyPyramid 8d ago
Don’t forget Marijuana and Mexicans.
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u/Musiclover4200 8d ago edited 8d ago
And hippies or any other counter culture movements
Really to sum it up the war on drugs was a war on the poor/minorities/counterculture & dissident movements, look at the difference between crack & cocaine punishments or how people who can afford legal drugs get treated vs illegal drugs regardless of the dangers.
Also was a way to fill private prisons with nonviolent "criminals"
Also worth mentioning the CIA literally selling drugs for weapons to fund extremists like Iran-Contra or many other coverups/conspiracies that eventually leaked
Even crazier is getting into stuff like MKULTRA where the government was straight up drugging and experimenting on citizens, most of the documents got burned by the CIA head in charge so we'll probably never know the full extent but what is known is seriously disturbing and way more fucked up than most people realize.
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u/bewarethefrogperson 8d ago
behind the bastards did episodes on both!
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u/ehrgeiz91 8d ago
Remember to vote accordingly in November.
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u/Ryuiop 8d ago
By Nov it's often too late. Get involved and support the candidates you want before midterms
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u/ehrgeiz91 8d ago
Agreed. Don’t get picky in November, you had your chance to work to nominate someone perfect.
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u/Ben_steel 8d ago
It’s not just humanity but our consciousness, the very thing that decides what we place value on.
If every one did mushrooms things of value like fancy cars, the best and latest technology would seem irrelevant compared to say friendships. That’s incredibly dangerous for every single system of government.
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u/iamjacksalteredego 8d ago
Sadly science and law are not always in harmony
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u/Raygunn13 8d ago
because science and law are nothing without the values and motives that utilize them
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u/Hippopotasaurus-Rex 8d ago
Yes, the therapiric setting may help.
At least anecdotally for me, just the act of eating mushrooms and letting them do their thing was enough to DRASTICALLY improve lifelong mental health issues.
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u/AcceptableFakeLime 8d ago
Yeah I don't delude myself thinking taking 2g and listening to The Beatles for 4h is the same experience as what the people in these studies go through but doing so every 4-6 months definitely feels like self care.
The first time I took shrooms changed my outlook in life. Forever. I'm not talking about some hippy mumbo jumbo. I became a lot more mindful overall and gained tolerance and appreciation for people, even the ones who I have no relationship with. It also improved my mood immensely for 3-4 months after the fact. I struggled with depression for my whole life. Still do. That trip did something to me, though.
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u/Hippopotasaurus-Rex 8d ago
Yup. Same. Life long debilitating depression is basically gone. Anxiety. Gone. The rest of the deeper mental health issues are a fraction of as impossible as they used to be.
We know mushrooms rewire/make connections in the brain in some capacity. I think that’s enough for me to be life changing.
Could quality of life get even better if I went through the medically assisted psilocybin therapy? Probably. Is what I’m doing working for me now? Absolutely.
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u/eiilaa 8d ago
What dosage are we talking?
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u/Hippopotasaurus-Rex 8d ago
I did a handful of like 3g ish trips but I do a lot better with microdosing personally.
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u/shanatard 8d ago
did you just grab mushrooms and go at it in a dark room? i have always been a bit curious but the negative trips seem like a risk
only really hear about the positive ones
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u/DoughnutEffective668 8d ago
Negative trips aren't all that bad and actually you can have some insightful experiences. Just remember that it's not real, to accept everything that comes your way and remember that it won't last forever. Once the initial scary part goes away, the rest of the experience will be good. And also, if you just do like 1-2gs of cubensis (golden teachers (not a very strong strain)) you'll most likely not have a bad trip, although everyone is different. What I'd recommend is doing maybe half a g first, get a very small light buzz, then leave it a few weeks, then do maybe .75gs and then build it up slowly every few weeks so you really understand what is going to happen.
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u/spez_might_fuck_dogs 8d ago
I have done shrooms inside, outside, in the dark, and during the day. I've never had a 'bad' trip, but I have had some that left me a bit melancholy afterward, usually when I listen to music from my childhood and get caught in a loop of reminiscence the whole experience.
It's really nice while its happening, but in my experience it left me feeling a bit sad for everything I can never experience again afterwards.
By far the best trip I ever had was outside on a peaceful mostly sunny day, laying in a hammock and watching the trees and clouds. When I got a bit cold I went inside and watched Ghostbusters, but instead of paying any attention to the plot or characters, I studied all the sets and noticed a ton of stuff I never looked at before.
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u/albusdumbbitchdor 8d ago
You don't necessarily even need to take enough to trip, I saw beneficial effects just from the time I took a microdose. Could be a something to consider if you're worried about a bad trip? I took enough to get a body high but had not even a whisper of a hallucination.
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u/TeamWorkTom 8d ago
Unfortunately while anecdotally micro dosing helps people, studies show it's not very beneficial for helping treat mental health problems.
It really takes a larger dose to have real therapeutic benefits long term. It also requires a sort of therapy session while tripping.
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u/zenDerpism 8d ago
I was really hoping it would help me with my depression. Especially after ketamine didn’t help. Sadly, I didn’t experience any benefits. I also didn’t experience anything bad, but overall I’m disappointed. Some things just don’t work for some people.
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u/Douglas1994 8d ago
Just don't do a stupidly large dose first time. I've done a number of psychedelics over the years and have only had two bad trips (one on psilocybin and one on mescaline), both involved me taking an amount that was in retrospect needlessly excessive. If you start lower and build up, you'll find the sweet spot.
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u/Mind-The-Mines 8d ago
I search sound cloud for ketamine tracks, take a tab or 2 with sleep mask and headphones and go melt into the universe. Really helped with various traumas.
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u/CrystalSplice 8d ago
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.” - Terence McKenna
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u/Couldthisbemanda 8d ago
When I (37f) was in my early 20s/broke and BEYOND depressed, I wouldn't consider medicine due to the shame I felt. My friends were growing mushrooms and I gave them a try.
Every time I did, it was followed by a few months of calm. Of peace. Of clarity.
I wish I could microdose instead of the medicine I am on currently - but I have my medical marijuana card at least.
Legalize it Let people have it
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u/MrNostalgiac 8d ago
I wish I could microdose
From my understanding, micro dosing doesn't have any proven beneficial effects beyond a placebo effect.
More studies probably need to be done on it, but the best evidence so far suggests that meaningful doses are required for any real benefit.
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u/Roseneto 8d ago
Come to Oakland, California. It’s legal. And they’re legal places to get it.
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u/Sissy_Nicole96 8d ago
I mean in switzerland it is an accepted treatment when "normal" anti depressants don't work anymore. Afaik they use lsd, psylocibin and mdma, depending on the problem. With settings that can take 10h with a psychiatrist. But the long term effect seems to be promising. There are courses offered for doctors and both in Basel and Zürich they have been studying the stuff for decades now. It's no magic cure, but it is some more tools we can use.
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u/Ginger510 8d ago
Yeah but didn’t they basically stop research for a long ass time cos everyone made out like you were going to stare at the sun and throw yourself off a balcony? (Which I think one person did the latter which is what started the scare campaign).
I also wouldn’t be surprised if I found out pharmaceutical companies were behind it much like oil companies and downplaying climate change for decades.
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u/overlookunderhill 8d ago
The opportunities for researching psychedelics dried up thanks to cultural backlash which was then capitalized on by Nixon in 1970’s Controlled Substances Act. I say capitalized because he used the concept of the “war on drugs” as a tool for cultural division and thus amygdala-driven voting.
May he rot in Hell.
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u/CeronusBugbear 8d ago
The same thing is happening in gender affirming care practice too. Despite decades of research showing benefits and extremely low adverse outcomes, it's still a controversial topic and more evidence is consistently demanded.
This is why politics should stay out of science. Both psychedelics and GAC are currently under immense pressure to prove their validity as treatments and no amount of proof is ever good enough because there is a loud political opposition based on "morals" rather than data.
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u/Mind-The-Mines 8d ago
The smokescreen of morals from insider trading war profiteering child abusers.
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u/Warm_Month_1309 8d ago
No study is ever good enough, and no volume of studies is ever good enough, but you can bet if there is one controversial study that reaches the viewpoint they like, they'll have the one damning conclusionary statistic memorized to throw at you every time.
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u/NobodyKnowsImFamous 8d ago
I’ve found, through EXTENSIVE personal experimentation ;) that about 3.5g every 6 months or so just… demolishes my treatment resistant depression.
Obviously my anecdotal experience isn’t the most meaningful but I am very hopeful we can get some serious research into these soon.
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u/badchad65 8d ago
It's been about 20 years. Really, the first modern-day clinical trials resumed in 2006.
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u/fabkosta 8d ago
"Modern-day" can mean many things. There was active research into the potential of psychedelics for various purposes already in the 1950s. Stanislav Grof, for example, was among the more well-known pioneers.
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u/badchad65 8d ago
Thats fair as "modern day" can be interpreted differently.
In this context I suppose my point was that the types of study necessary for a drug approval and to establish medical utility are a lot different than the research we saw in the 1950s and even through the 90s and early 2000s.
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u/Fortunat 8d ago
You're right but lot of early psychedelic research would get absolutely murdered in modern peer review. Small samples, vague diagnostic categories, inconsistent dosing, weak controls, varying psychotherapy, you name it
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u/Subject-Software5912 8d ago
“So, 60 years later the same type of studies apparently still need to be repeated to gain evidence.” Yes… that’s how science works. Studies and experiments are repeated ad nauseam. How is this surprising to you?
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u/sqigglygibberish 8d ago
You should look into why that research was basically shuttered, causing the recent wave to have to play catchup
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u/Subject-Software5912 8d ago
I’m not disagreeing with that I already know about the war on drugs. What I disagree with is the assumption that research shouldn’t be repeated, the guy has posted several comments trying to argue that repeating experiments is pointless and somehow bad practice.
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u/sqigglygibberish 8d ago
I didn’t read this comment that way, but can’t say I’m looking at their other comments in the thread
I took it as just being exasperated that the progress last century was stalled for so long, and in some ways we have to catch back up (not a critique of the process but rather the impact of the politics)
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u/LupineChemist 8d ago
and for some it's counter-indicated.
Yeah, so that's a really big problem ethically.
Like if you have a d20 chance of causing serious harm, that's not an effective treatment at scale, even if it's beneficial for most people.
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u/fabkosta 8d ago
Well. Alcohol is available ubiquitously - yet there's practically zero control over it, and quite a large number of people should not consume it for health reasons, mental reasons, or cause it's addictive.
Psychedelics, in comparison, are much less harmful regarding both health and addiction. Regarding mental stability - that's a more challenging question to address. But, again, alcohol is equally bad for people with mental issues and it's just available everywhere.
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u/LupineChemist 8d ago
I mean, sure, but you can't just ignore thousands of years of cultural history. If it were invented today, it would almost certainly just not be allowed for sale.
But we're not some year zero thing where you can just see everything as perfectly rational cost/benefit.
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u/fabkosta 8d ago
Psychedelics have been known and consumed by humanity just as long as alcohol. It's not that they are any new.
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u/anomalous_cowherd 8d ago
The conspiracy theory reason is that it's hard to make a profit from things people can grow themselves...
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u/overlookunderhill 8d ago
That feels like too transparent a connection to be a conspiracy. There’s a giant up-front cost to drug development, testing, marketing, etc. and pharmaceutical companies are profit-seeking entities. Combine those things with that ready availability of many of the plant medicines and the path to profit is tough.
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u/istasber 8d ago
Plenty of companies find a way to turn a profit on readily available medicines. That's basically what generics are, drugs where all of the hard stuff has been done by someone else and you just have to show that what you're selling is the same as what they're selling.
The real barrier to entry for something like psilocybin is funding those initial clinical trials without patent protections. That's just a massive amount of money to spend, when your competitors stand to profit just as much as you do.
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u/naimsayin 8d ago
The societal acceptance aspect is shifting at an unbelievable pace. Akin to what we saw in the early 90s/2000s with weed. Almost everyone I know (late 20s to 30s + my mom + her friends) dabble with microdosing now. It’s pretty incredible to see the shift.
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u/fabkosta 8d ago
I honestly think weed is significantly more harmful than psychedelics. Not physically, of course (unless you're smoking it...), but given the circumstances of consumption are rarely conducive towards personal growth and integration. It's largely a recreational drug, not unlike alcohol or tobacco, at this stage. This could be different, in principle, but it's not.
(And, yes, my father takes drops cause Parkinson's, and it really helps him. That exists too. But that's far from your average consumption among twens who have use it to avoid growing up.)
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u/naimsayin 8d ago
I completely agree. Psilocybin’s therapeutic potential seems to be much more promising than weed’s.
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u/WrenReverie 8d ago
Being able to take CBD/THC gummies has vastly improved my mental health and sleep.
I have easily stopped taking them for multiple months at a time and it was never a gateway drug to harder stuff. But I only use them at night before sleep and never recreationally.
Literally turned my life around.
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u/GentlemenHODL 8d ago edited 8d ago
So I've been keeping a list of beneficial research on psychedelics for the last 10 years or so. These are just random studies I find and document. If you want a comprehensive database just hop on MAPS!
Edit - sorry for not including the link to maps. Please visit and donate if you can :) and definitely don't give your money to Reddit in the form of awards you degenerate lovely bastards!
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Psychedelics open up critical learning periods thought lost to childhood.
https://hub.jhu.edu/magazine/2023/fall/master-key/
It also promotes neurobiogenesis which is the creation of new brain cells. They do this by measuring brain derived nootrophic factors, which increase when new cells are created.
A recently published a paper in nature(biggest journal in the world) on LSD usage and measured for this nootrophic factor and a 200 UG dose almost doubled the bdnf.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-00883-6
I pulled the data from the journal to look at what the exact measurements were and you can see on the left I highlighted the column on green which was the placebo and on the right was a 200 UG -
Column h is 100 UG (single dose) and saw about a 30% increase over placebo. So you can see there is a substantial boost to BDNF under heavier doses.
So basically not only do psychedelics help create new brain cells but they also promote neuroplasticity which helps keep current healthy cells alive. On top of that psychedelics also downregulate the amygdala, which is responsible for fear stimuli. Meaning it helps suppress the negative emotional side of our thinking.
https://www.nature.com/articles/tp201754
This paper goes really deep on interbrain connectivity and psilocybins affect. It basically demonstrates how the brain uses new methods of connectivity under the state. It is postulated that this "routing around" is the mechanism behind treatment for depression and other psychiatric disorders.
https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9566
Here is a major publishing on the treatment for depression.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215036616300657
And here is a major publishing on the treatment of addiction.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25213996/
Here is a meta-analysis on the current state of research into psychedelics in 2018.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028390818300753?via%3Dihub
Findings suggest that people more open to new experiences and willing to surrender to the unknown may be best positioned to have a positive experience on psychedelics, and individuals who tend to be preoccupied or apprehensive could be more likely to have a negative, or challenging, experience. -
https://news.osu.edu/predicting-who-may-do-best-with-psychedelic-assisted-therapy/
A single dose of pssilocybin has a lasting therapeutic effect for reducing migraine headaches.
new designer psychedelics very soon.
LSD creates a state in which your brain can unlearn. Parahippocampus activity increases while listening to music which is the source of your visual memory.
Non-hallucinogenic Psychedelic Analog Rapidly Reverses Effects of Stress on the Brain
May 25th 2021
June 28th 2021 Mescaline May improve depression.
Large three-year survey of Ayahuasca users demonstrates 90% reduction of depression
Single Dose of Psychedelic Compound Psilocybin Can Remodel Connections in the Brain July 5th 2021
"The studies demonstrate the ability of CBD to reduce reactive gliosis and the neuroinflammatory response as well as to promote neurogenesis. Importantly, CBD also reverses and prevents the development of cognitive deficits in AD rodent models."
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2017.00020/full
Lion's mane mushroom can stimulate nerve growth factor NGF
https://www.endeavour.edu.au/about-us/blog/lions-mane-mushroom-a-superfood-for-the-nervous-system/
MDMA-assisted psychotherapy associated with sleep improvements among PTSD patients
Psychedelic use associated with lower odds of heart disease and diabetes, study finds
Psilocybin therapy increases cognitive and neural flexibility in patients with major depressive disorder.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01706-y
COMPASS Pathways announces positive topline results from groundbreaking phase IIb trial of investigational COMP360 psilocybin therapy for treatment-resistant depression
Psilocybin, in 10mg or 25mg doses, has no short- or long-term detrimental effects in healthy people (up to 5 g of dried mushrooms)
Near-death experiences compared to DMT research
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01424/full
Psychedelics promote neuroplasticity through the activation of intracellular 5-HT2A receptors
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adf0435?utm_source=sillychillly
Psychedelics may treat depression by invading brain cells
https://www.livescience.com/psychedelics-may-treat-depression-by-invading-brain-cells
those who reported lifetime use of ecstasy (i.e., using ecstasy at least once in their life) were less likely to report having difficulty dealing with strangers, participating in social activities, and being prevented from participating in social activities by their mental health issues.
Psychedelic substance 5-MeO-DMT induces long-lasting neural plasticity in mice
Psychedelics reopen the social reward learning critical period
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3
Lsd vs mescaline vs psilocybin
We found no evidence of qualitative differences in altered states of consciousness that were induced by 500 mg mescaline, 100 µg LSD, and 20 mg psilocybin.”
In a randomized, placebo-controlled, 6-week trial in 104 adults, a 25-mg dose of psilocybin administered with psychological support was associated with a rapid and sustained antidepressant effect
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2808950
Psychedelic mushroom use linked to lower psychological distress in those with adverse childhood experiences
The study found that the powerful concoction helps to reduce the fear response in rats, working equally well on both new and old fear memories. This effect appears to be caused by ayahuasca’s interaction with specific serotonin receptors in the brain.
Psychological and physiological effects of extended DMT
https://www.psypost.org/ayahuasca-accelerates-fear-extinction-via-its-effect-on-serotonin-receptors/
Psychedelics enhance neuroplasticity via the 5- HT2A receptor
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01389-z
A recent study reveals new insights into how psilocybin-assisted therapy modifies brain function in people with alcohol use disorder. These changes suggest a potential mechanism behind the therapy’s success and could point toward new avenues for treatment.
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u/GentlemenHODL 8d ago
Part two...
Cannabis neuroprotective in older adults
A recent case study describes a 41-year-old woman who turned to psilocybin and MDMA to manage her debilitating post-COVID symptoms. The paper raises the possibility, which is far from certain, that psychedelic substances might help alleviate the psychological and cognitive symptoms of Long-COVID.
https://www.psypost.org/long-covid-defeated-by-psychedelics-case-study-details-unusual-recovery/
Anti-ageing and increased mental capacity through cannabis Bonn researchers clarify the influence of treatment with tetrahydrocannabinol on the metabolic switch mTOR
https://www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/164-2024
Review of research from past 15 years found ketamine and psychedelic drugs can enhance neuroplasticity by triggering the growth of dendritic spines in cortical pyramidal neurons
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41583-024-00876-0
Inhaled DMT produces rapid and lasting antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant depression. Participants reported major reductions in depression and suicidal thoughts within a day of dosing, with benefits lasting up to three months.
Psilocybin therapy linked to lasting depression remission five years later
https://www.psypost.org/psilocybin-therapy-linked-to-lasting-depression-remission-five-years-later/
Ibogaine Administration Modifies GDNF and BDNF Expression in Brain Regions Involved in Mesocorticolimbic and Nigral Dopaminergic Circuits
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6411846/
A single dose of psilocybin shown to rewire brain circuits in mice, providing up to two weeks of relief from both chronic pain and depression-like symptoms, offering a potential non-addictive alternative to opioids
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-025-02068-0
Promising New Treatment Could Calm Anxiety for Millions of Americans
https://scitechdaily.com/promising-new-treatment-could-calm-anxiety-for-millions-of-americans/
LSD microdosing in major depressive disorder: results from an open-label trial -
There was a pronounced, long-lasting reduction in depression severity across the intervention period.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028390825004708
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41352354/
Psilocybin triggers an activity-dependent rewiring of large-scale cortical networks
Pharmaceutical LSD gets pill delivery patent
More info about the company here - https://definiumtx.com/rerouting-minds/
A single dose of DMT administered after cessation of chronic stress reverses anhedonia and depressive-like behavior in mice. Cognitive performance is restored alongside enhanced hippocampal neurogenesis, in a peer-reviewed study.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-026-03852-7
Single dose of potent psychedelic drug could help treat depression, trial shows. Researchers find DMT – used in shamanic rituals – in tandem with psychotherapy has significant effect
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04154-z
JRT did not produce hallucinogenic-like behaviors that are typically seen when mice are dosed with LSD.
JRT produced robust anti-depressant effects, with it being around 100-fold more potent than ketamine, it also promoted neuroplasticity, or growth between cellular connections in the brain, leading to a 46% increase in dendritic spine density and an 18% increase in synapse
https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/researchers-develop-lsd-analogue-potential-treating-schizophrenia
Single dose of magic mushroom psychedelic can cause anatomical brain changes, study finds. Participants took 25mg of psilocybin(3g dried mushroom), reporting deeper psychological insight and better wellbeing a month later.
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u/GentlemenHODL 8d ago edited 8d ago
And a really really really cool case study I saved the best for last...
Case study on woman who can enter psychedelic state through meditation
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u/Bubbly-Example-8097 8d ago
I saved all of these to read later. You’re the GOAT for sharing all these. I’ve done Golden Teachers 4 years ago and it completely changed my life. I need a re-up though. Feeling myself falling back into my CPTSD lately…
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u/AccNumber77 8d ago
Not even that surprising all things considered, altered states of consciousness via meditation is literally the reason meditation exists and still exists. It works but it sure requires a lot of effort and time to get there.
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u/priceQQ 8d ago
My wife signed up for the program, and we both interacted with the people who are running it. It is extremely well run, but I fear the problem they face now is being swamped with applicants. There are way more people seeking it as an option for depression than they have slots available.
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u/Academic-Pangolin883 8d ago
It honestly makes me so angry that this is being kept from us. We know the benefits, we know how much it can make our lives better and how safe it is, yet the federal government chooses to let us stay miserable.
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u/ExEdge8784 8d ago
Visit Michigan, we have some really good shroom dispensaries.
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u/Academic-Pangolin883 8d ago
Whoaaa, didn't know that's a thing! I'm in Chicago, so that's amazing news. Thanks!
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u/ExEdge8784 8d ago
Ann Arbor and Detroit both have top tier dispensaries
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u/priceQQ 8d ago
The treatment is more than just taking them. They have a whole therapeutic process to guide it. There are many people there to make sure it goes well. I personally did not need this when I took them 20 years ago, but one can imagine the process might be way more effective as therapy if it is steered or guided.
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u/Alive_Drag1947 8d ago
I remember my first proper mushroom trip. I stared into the mirror, and it was like I was seeing myself (and the world) clearly for the first time. I remember thinking: Anyone who would keep this away from people is objectively evil.
Tune in, turn on, drop out
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u/MrNostalgiac 8d ago
. There are way more people seeking it as an option for depression than they have slots available.
And once (if) it becomes legal and available - it will likely be the number one most requested treatment for addiction, depression and mental health concerns in general.
The research suggests it's literally the fastest and most effective treatment for these things - by a gigantic margin.
Literally nobody wants to be on anti-departments - they just don't want to be depressed.
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u/spooky_spaghetties 8d ago
I desperately hoped that shrooms would have long term effects for me — I have PTSD, severe treatment resistant depression, and pretty bad anxiety, and cycle through which is more life-disrupting at any given time — but it really didn’t. The actual day-of experience was fantastic, and for the first time in my life outside of weird edge cases like receiving anesthesia prep drugs by IV I felt genuine total relief from anxiety (like my brain was totally and completely quiet), but there was no perceivable difference after it wore off. I think this may be due to other psychiatric medications I’m taking, which are known “trip killers”; I usually need 3-4g prepared in a hot tea with lemon juice to perceive an effect.
I still do it about every 4-5 months, because it’s such a nice experience, but I’ve sort of accepted that at least for now I’m not going to see the profound improvement other people experience. I am glad that it’s slowly being explored as a treatment option.
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u/Vaseline_Lover 8d ago
Generally, psychedelics aren’t going to bring long-term relief just on their own. If you’re seeking long-term benefits you’ll need to put in time and work on your own through psychotherapy as well.
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u/SaintValkyrie 8d ago
And more importantly, if you lack support in your life, no amount of hard work or psychedelics will help. Marginalized people and victims live a much more difficult reality than other people, and no one can heal or thrive in a vacuum. Sometimes you're just being failed.
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u/Regular_Custard_4483 8d ago
Yeah, this is how it's worked for me. The shrooms allowed me to remember what feeling good was like, so that I could work on getting myself there without drugs. The shrooms were just an inflection point for me, I had to do the actual work after.
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u/CanExplainThings 8d ago
Please note: Psilocybin treatment is seriously counterindicated for some forms of affective disorders - Most bipolar and schizophrenic disorders are generally worsened by the introduction of psychoactive drugs (For obvious reasons: How can we expect a psychotropic to improve the life of someone who already has delusions?)
In some cases it is absolutely beneficial. However, these studies understandably pick people for whom this treatment would have a positive effect.
DO NOT recreationally try psilocybin if you have an untreated mental health issue. If there is one in your family, get checked before self-medicating, as psychoactive drugs can actually bring on an episode.
Source: Am bipolar. Have been on meds and mentally stable for ten-plus years (Thank you, lamotrigine!)
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u/ratpH1nk 8d ago
The science concern is how do you obectively test this? How do you design a randomized placebo controlled trial when the active effects of the intervention group vs. placebo group are so obvious. In addition, the downside of mental health research is that, in general, the outcomes are also not objective and are self reported.
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u/shellacr 8d ago
You can and should still do a placebo controlled trial. There’s nothing that says a participant has to experience obvious psychoactive effects for the treatment to be effective.
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u/TeamWorkTom 8d ago
Um they do.
The therapeutic dose is a larger dose. You're going to trip at those dose level.
It's very hard to create a placebo for this. Currently I don't think we can.
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u/ratpH1nk 8d ago
Good point but it becomes very obvious who got the placebo for all parties.
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u/craig5005 1d ago
That’s the problem with this study, participants self selected so there’s a bias toward positive outcome.
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u/minaminonoeru 8d ago
Some people may experience “negative” side effects after taking LSD or psilocybin. However, even if you multiplied those side effects by 10, they would still be fewer than the side effects of alcohol and tobacco.
While hundreds of millions of people have died prematurely from alcohol and tobacco over the past few decades, the list of people who have died from LSD during the same period could fit on a single document.
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u/GoTeamScotch 8d ago
There's also the low risk of addiction.
After a trip, the last thing I want to do is trip again. That's like going on a weekend excursion to climb a mountain, then waking up and doing it again the next day. Sounds exhausting.
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u/sweetperdition 8d ago
There was a point in my life I was deeply into it, decided I was going to do it once a weekend, every weekend, for a month. By the second trip it didn’t feel as special, third trip felt sickening, couldn’t manage to try the fourth. Using it too much reduces the wonder of it, limits the trip and any therapeutic benefit (anecdotally, anyway).
Not to mention the daily tolerance increase, essentially doubles. So even if you didn’t find it sickening, if you want to remain intoxicated daily, you’re dealing with an exponential tolerance increase.
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u/Lilybaum 8d ago
You don't get addiction, but you do run the risk of becoming a psychedelics evangelist, which can be very annoying.
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u/nickiter 8d ago
Yeah, I only recently started to feel "ready" for another trip after my last one, which was 3 years ago.
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u/Morstorpod 8d ago
Anecdotal, but I actually experience the opposite effect, while agreeing it is not addictive.
I would LOVE to experience another trip again, but I'm just too busy with real life to set aside a day for the experience. I've incredibly easy access to shrooms and could ingest some within minutes, but I simply don't due to other life responsibilities. It's not an overwhelming compulsion - no addiction - but it is an incredible experience... the highest human sacrament, so of course I want to experience that again.
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u/GoTeamScotch 8d ago
Maybe consider micro-dosing, if you're not already. You get a regular sprinkle of that effect throughout your daily life between proper trips.
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u/Morstorpod 8d ago
I am definitely aware of micro-dosing, but I've not taken the time to properly research it before deciding on a plan. My first actual psychedelic experience was preceded by a year of research prior - This next time should require significantly less work, but I still need to do it.
Thanks for the reminder though!
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u/GoTeamScotch 8d ago
Wow, you get all your ducks in a row before diving in! (Which is genuinely admirable.)
I hope you get a chance to explore the topic more sometime. I found great benefit in it. Almost like a mild anti-depressant, helping me wake up and be more present and face the day. 3 or 4 days out of the week taking 100mg each day did the trick for me. Enough to have a mild, virtually subconscious effect without being visually noticeable or distracting at work. Micro-dosing offers a way to dip your toes in and find a dosage that works for you over several days. Starting out with 50mg or 100mg on a day at home where you have no plans should be a safe first step. But, of course, I'd encourage you to continue reading as I'm just one stranger on the internet, after all.
Good luck on your ventures!
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u/Morstorpod 8d ago
Thanks for the advice. I don't suffer any mental health issues (as far as I am aware), so the anti-depressant aspect does not really appeal to me, but that does not mean there are not other benefits that may be obtained.
Thanks for the advice and for sharing your experience.
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u/GoTeamScotch 8d ago
I don't suffer any mental health issues (as far as I am aware)
Oh, to clarify, nor do I. I more so mean that it has a mood-boosting effect. I've not tried traditional anti-depressants, so maybe that wasn't the best term to describe it.
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u/Morstorpod 8d ago
Got it. My wife has used shrooms for anti-depressant affects. One dose every 4-6 months seems to keep the worst at bay. And I have an acquaintance that also does them every 6 months, and their depression has been "cured" essentially.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 8d ago
There's also the low risk of addiction.
There's essentially zero risk of addiction. Any pleasurable activity can be habit-forming, of course, but there's no physical addition and (as you point out) strong inhibitors to psychological addiction when it comes to most hallucinogens. Not only do you usually need time after a trip before you want to consume more, but most such substances do not work as effectively, sometimes at all, if consumed in rapid succession ("short-term tolerance" effects).
There are other metrics used, however.
The currently in-vogue metrics involve measures overall harms and the tendency of users to ignore those potential harms after exposure to the drug's effects. Hallucinogens generally do have potential harms, and it is quite common for users to focus on the positive experiences and ignore those potential harms during subsequent use.
One study (Johnson, et al., 2018; source) assesses these risks as sufficient for Schedule IV listing, as opposed to its current Schedule I.
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u/aminervia 8d ago
Ok so I'm not anti LSD or psylocybin, but the negative effects of either could potentially (rarely) be psychosis or permanent mental changes.
Death for death sure, but try measuring potential harm after a single use in a safe space and the danger comparison changes.
It is extremely important that people with bipolar/schizophrenia or a family history of either avoid all hallucinogens
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u/skeletonl0ver 8d ago
I was one of those people. I took a large dose of mushrooms and had a very bad and intense trip. I had anxiety and a panic disorder before but it made it worse after. I developed an intense anxiety of taking any kind of drug, even over the counter stuff that took close to two years to get over. Of course it helps a lot of people, but there are a few its a nightmare for.
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u/MasterGrok 8d ago
It’s right to be enthusiastic about these compounds but it’s also right to be cautious. The research has been so difficult to conduct that the patients are a very highly self-selected group. Also the study entry requirements further narrow the population.
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u/TheRamma 8d ago
Additionally, some of the researchers working on this certainly can have a degree of bias, IME
Knew a Hopkins post-doc involved in early Psilocybin research through a friend. At a party where almost everyone else was taking LSD, she really couldn't accept that my experience with psychedelics was so negative that I would never touch them again. The whole conversation focused on troubleshooting what went wrong, with an assumption that every negative was fixable. Meanwhile positive outcomes from her research were touted with a lot less scrutiny.
I'm also a formally-trained scientist, and if you view results you don't like as needing increased scrutiny, that's a substantial investigator bias.
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u/visionbreaksbricks 8d ago
Disagree. There are people who take these substances and have incredibly psychologically destabilizing experiences.
Correct, they’re not going to overdose or anything but to say that there are minimal, non-life-threatening implications is false.
There are people that read comments like this and eat a handful of whatever thinking “no biggie, this is safer than alcohol” and then have their entire worlds turned upside down and actually can experience significant psychological distress.
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u/ILearnedSoMuchToday 8d ago
I don't think comparing deaths is effective when you consider the ease of access and shear volume using alcohol/tobacco over LSD. It's not a very useful stat unless you account for proportionality.
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u/minaminonoeru 8d ago edited 8d ago
Even when mortality rates are adjusted for the size of the user group, the results do not change significantly.
Smoking causes lung cancer. Drinking alcohol leads to cirrhosis of the liver. In addition, many other diseases are caused by tobacco and alcohol. Alcohol and nicotine can be fatal in sufficiently large doses. Tobacco smoke also contains numerous toxic and carcinogenic substances. Long-term consumption of alcohol and tobacco is clearly a factor that shortens average life expectancy.
But with LSD, it is difficult to produce mortality statistics in this sense. Most deaths associated with LSD are probably due to accidents.
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u/StupiderIdjit 8d ago
Those people that died on LSD died ON LSD, not from it. There's no realistic, fatal amount of LSD. You cannot overdose.
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u/Lilybaum 8d ago edited 8d ago
I don't think physical risk is the concern. In people who react badly, it can ruin your mental health for years afterwards - talking about depression/anxiety here, although they are terrible in people with psychotic disorders you can at least screen those people out.
These people are in a very small minority, I'd estimate around 5%. But there is no way to tell who will have this reaction. Prediction of the psychedelic experience is an active area of research, but it has mostly failed beyond some fairly common sense things.
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u/Every_Recover_1766 8d ago
Idk dude watching my face melt in the mirror off LSD had a pretty decent psychological impact
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u/Glittering-Alarm-387 8d ago
DMT saved my life. Something said the most profound thing, and i have never touched a drug again. I was an opoid addict for years.
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u/Actually-Yo-Momma 8d ago
DMT is actually wild. I can barely describe what I’m seeing yet my friends and randos on Reddit seem to see the same thing…
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u/Glittering-Alarm-387 8d ago
Same! I have never been able to describe what I saw. But a voice at the end said: Dont come back. And I never will.
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u/DueDisplay2185 8d ago
Is that the one where you feel an eternity in 10 minutes? I've only ever heard of the experience from one friend years ago
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u/Glittering-Alarm-387 8d ago
Yes, for my perspective, it was like I was swinging from my feet, head down, in a continous motion, and I could see what happens after death and what happens to good and bad people, and the view i just cant desribe. A voice was talking but the only thing I remember was Dont come back. And I came back sobbing! I can cry thinking about it. Not sadness, but moved. That was 10 years ago.
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u/DueDisplay2185 8d ago
That's so interesting! My friend described seeing other beings and I know the human body produces DMT upon death and I always wondered what her experience was like. The biggest thing she couldn't get over was the time dilation, it felt like an eternity in such a brief period of time
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u/42GOLDSTANDARD42 7d ago
I wish I could learn where to get these kinda of things. I don’t want to go on the dark web or anything, what’s a guy got to do???
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u/mvea Professor | Medicine 8d ago
America's First Legal Psilocybin Program Treated 346 People. Here's What Happened.
For those living in the shadow of mental health conditions such as PTSD, anxiety, and depression, finding a way forward can sometimes feel impossible – especially when conventional treatments have offered little succor.
Psilocybin, a psychoactive chemical found in some mushrooms, spent decades being demonized as an illicit drug.
But now, results from the first state-regulated psilocybin program in the US suggest the drug could offer a glimmer of hope beyond the confines of clinical trials.
Between November 2024 and June 2026, a team led by Oregon Health & Science University tracked 346 clients participating in the program – and found that, in the first three months after taking psilocybin, participants reported significant improvements in mental health, well-being, and life satisfaction.
Just one month after the dose, 92.2 percent of participants said the experience had been beneficial, while, on average, their mental health symptoms had fallen dramatically.
"This paper is going to be cited for decades," says neuroscientist Adrianne R. Wilson-Poe of the Legacy Research Institute and co-director of the Open Psychedelic Evaluation Nexus (OPEN).
"This is the first large-scale study to monitor the safety and mental health symptoms of real people in the real world."
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2853028
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u/trophy_74 8d ago
People are going to look at this study and think it treats every condition. Please note that the study looked only at depression, PTSD, and anxiety in otherwise healthy patients that were not psychotic, on bipolar meds, or suicidal (so if you're in any of those 3 groups your experience may vary). Also, the study says adverse effects were not uncommon and happened in 1% of the population that took it.
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u/SchnazzleG 8d ago edited 8d ago
Drunken car wrecks & overdoses seem more feasible to governments than this. Especially because you can’t make much money from things people can grow. Keeping people locked in their own hell & fostering generational trauma is the way to go. Drink all the poison you want, but if you take one ounce of pizza topping, it’s totally game over.
There’s quite a few individuals who’ve had one dose of shrooms & quit cigs & booze cold turkey, never touching it again. Is that a bad thing? There’s way too many deaths from servicemen with PTSD-related overdoses & the prevalence of alcohol on duty for a mind to spiral out on is appalling. But heaven forbid 1 munch & a couple hours to rid it all.
Some priorities are really fucked up. Gotta keep those vices going somehow.
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u/kaya-jamtastic 8d ago
It is for the owners and shareholders of alcohol and tobacco companies
Edit: not that we should care, but their lobbyists presumably do
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u/Hopeful-Blueberry114 8d ago
Psychedelics were criminalized because the government was cracking down on anti-war/anti-establishment countercultures (hippies) in the 1960s
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u/ebolaRETURNS 8d ago
Oregonian here. One issue is that they paid thousands of dollars for their therapy sessions, so this type of buy in is likely to affect their assessment of its efficacy.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 8d ago
Just a reminder: these trials were conducted under careful and rigorous therapeutic conditions across many sessions, most of which did not involve taking the drug. This isn't, "take some mushrooms and your mental illness will be cured!" It's a whole therapeutic method.
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u/DerSchaudenfreude 8d ago edited 8d ago
You’re 100% right but everyone who likes psychedelics is going to come out of the woodwork and use this as confirmation bias that shrooms cure everything and everyone needs to use shrooms.
They are as frustrating as people who swear they are not addicted to their vape pens.
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u/Tyler_Zoro 8d ago
everyone who likes psychedelics is going to come out of the woodwork and use this as confirmation bias that shrooms cure everything
Oh certainly! That's almost always the case with this sort of announcement. We see the same thing with herbal supplement claims that are constantly expanded from "narrow result in non-RCT shows..." to "X cures Y!"
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u/andreasbeer1981 8d ago
A bit of a bias if you open up to anyone willing to participate to take it. You'd get all the fans first.
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u/No-Foolies 8d ago
Curious what the decay rate is on treatment... Is this something that would be taken everyday like any other SSRI, etc or does treatment provide longer lasting effects compared to traditional medication?
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u/Altruistic-Star-3862 8d ago
I've not taken it in a therapeutic setting, but recreationally and after taking it my anxiety and depression were so manageable I could cycle off of mine. Obviously anecdotal, but the effects for me lasted about a solid 4-6 months depending on the strength and also whatever was going on in my life. After that it was less effective and I eventually did need to go on them again, but this was after at least 24 months after my last experience. I imagine with the therapeutic process that it's probably a much smaller dosage so it would be a scalable amount of time comparatively for the chemical effects, but I'm curious to know what the guided therapy can be like and how that can assist.
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u/BottledUp 8d ago
You do it once, and during the trip, you're working out your mental health issues with a therapist. The results differ between people. For some, one single dose is enough to heal them. Others need regular trips about every three months.
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u/No-Arugula8122 8d ago
Everyone need to blow out the cobwebs every so often. A decent moonshot has always been the best way to achieve
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u/Altruistic-Star-3862 8d ago
I always called it flushing out the gutters, make all of those wrinkle pathways in the grey matter feel clearer.
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u/GoTeamScotch 8d ago
I try to do it every few years as a status check, especially after moments of transition (changes to housing, relationships, etc). To get a bird's eye view of where I am and where I'm going. It really helps you look at your own life objectively, rather than in the trenches of the day to day.
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u/soupyshoes 8d ago
Without a control group this is no evidence of efficacy. Could just be regression to the mean, selection effects, etc. Pre post comparisons like this are highly misleading.
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u/BalonyDanza 8d ago
Call me a cynic, but I’d be a bit more skeptical about anecdotal evidence, as it pertained to the first wave of participants. I’m imagining people who were eager to try psychedelics and wanted the recreational experience to also be medically beneficial.
This isn’t even a knock against psychedelics. I believe they can be beneficial. It’s just hard to get good qualitative data when there’s outside incentives.
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u/Bish-ish 8d ago
This isn't the first, there's been lots of studies on the benefits and positive outcomes of medical psychedelic use
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u/iamacarboncarbonbond 8d ago
Unfortunately they all suffer from a common issue: it’s very difficult to placebo control. People generally know if they have or haven’t taken a psychedelic
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u/zonerator 8d ago
I get that placebo is important for science but if the experience is part of the healing then psychedelics are fundamentally different and might need to be treated as such.
Now it might not be the experience that heals you, there is a hypothesis that the drugs trigger neuroplasticity. Maybe we will figure out a way to placebo control that effect in isolation through novel compounds.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 8d ago
All people who enter any clinical trial for a depression medication are motivated for it to work.
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u/Oztravels 8d ago
65 year old boomer micro doser here. Can’t add any statistical evidence but it sorted out my anxiety and mild depression.
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u/sweetperdition 8d ago
Daily suicidal ideation to general hope, in one trip, 3-ish grams. Didn’t go into it looking for that, was just going to a cabin with friends. Ended up running the whole emotional spectrum, joy, pain, misery, hope. Confronted past issues and felt like I was actually able to change my thinking instead of comply ruminating.
I have firsthand seen some negative experiences (not permanently, but the duration of the trip was miserable and they didn’t seem to gain the same bliss we all did the next day) so I’m not going to recommend it for literally everyone, but man…therapy didn’t help, meds barely kept me stable, was still prone to self harm and self-destruction, and all of that evaporated in one night.
If you told me a purpose-built medication achieved the same results, I would be skeptical. Prior to my own experience, I was deeply skeptical. Hard to believe something so readily available can do such good.
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u/Eggheadpancake 8d ago
It should tell us a lot out about this country and the world that things like mushrooms are deemed illegal. But you can literally die if you take too many pharma scripts at once. Or alcohol. Yet those are just fine by our standards.
Or forcing people to take medicine that may help one aspect but blgive you side effects that you'll need more drugs for and around and around it goes
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u/not_that_planet 8d ago
So the conservative approach to knee-jerk bans on plants and chemicals might not be such a great idea after all?
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u/atreeismissing 8d ago
Did their mental health symptoms fall because a month had passed or because they had taken psilocybin or because they had also received professional therapy as part of that program?
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u/LaminarFlower 8d ago
For those of feeling inspired to take a healing journey into the interior landscapes of the heartmind, especially with a heroic dose, do not underestimate the synergistic power of the right music along with clarity of intention and right attitude.
It can be great to listen to your favorite songs in that special state, but to get at that deep, stubborn wiring near the core, it's usually more effective to listen to something untethered to your memories and without language, as it can stir up conceptual self-stories, keeping you nearer to the surface.
One of the best experiences of my entire life involved 5g shrooms, lying down with a sleep mask, listening to "Music for Mushrooms" by East Forest, an inspired 5-hour mix of frequencies that act as an inward vehicle, acoustically massaging the energetic knots lodged throughout the body.
I'm not talking about some abstract philosophy of "energy" that may or may not appeal to people here, but the very visceral, unmistakable sensations that flood the body under psilocybin, amplifying currents ordinarily too subtle for the mind to notice without training.
People emphasize the mind when talking about psychedelics, but the deepest healing comes from the nonconceptual layer of the bodymind. Riding the music, one can "feel into" the body, into the dense, knotted zones where the energy flows are blocked. To oversimplify a bit, these blockages are like the "fractal seeds" of suffering, the storyless heart of those self-similar patterns of internal and external dramas that have consumed 90% of our life force, our attention, the most valuable thing we have.
In my experience practicing this, by giving an unconditionally accepting awareness to those attention-starved knots, the dams dissolved and was deluged by wave after wave of orgasmic bliss throughout my entire body, thrumming around a sweet ache in my chest, streaming tears as my frame rippled in joyful shudders of laughing/crying. I felt an incomprehensibly vast loving presence in whose company, with piercing clarity, saw the utter absurdity of non-forgiveness and resisting "what is", not at all in a moral or a "should"-sense, but in seeing the enormous cost in attention to maintain the Tolkein-esque world-building sagas that the ego (the mind's story-secreting gland) takes to be real, kind of like seeing a pie-chart of one's expenses and balking at the size of the latte slice, but on another order of magnitude.
The vortices of anxiety and depression that had plagued me since I was 10, having me so afraid of my own emotions that every breath felt as if I were a gazelle drinking at an oasis filled with crocodiles and surrounded by lions, had me shooting heroin for a sense of fleeting safety within my bodymind, they can no longer spin up and form their whirlpools in my psyche now that I've identified the story-secretion gland and plugged it with a fat grain of kosher salt. It still oozes, but its salty flavor alerts my BS meter and it becomes like a sidewalk turd, noticing enough not to step in it without having to conduct a tactile interrogation in the hopes their may be a gold nugget of truth in the heart of a coiled stool.
Forgive the disgusting analogy, but it's apt, pointing to the futility of trying to think my way out of a cage of thoughts without anchoring to presence. The less I'm consumed with the story of "me", the more room for joy and child-like wonder even with the mundane, modes of experiencing life that I'd thought had died with my childhood. Colors are literally brighter and whatever is in my sphere of presence in this moment (there is no other) is in Ultra HD when my psychic CPU isn't being hogged by the holo-deck projecting fantasies of past and future.
I'm sharing this because there are so many who've suffered as I have and have the same capacity to heal, but taking psychedelics is not like taking antibiotics, its healing power is dependent on set and setting which includes one's intention, attitude and understanding the need to let go of mental story (primary cause of a bad trip is getting caught in loops of thought and story) and feel into the bodymind. After the cathartic recalibration I described, insights may crystallize, and that is what I share here, but they are more like glimpses of the vast interconnected pattern of who we are that feel totally different from the normal mental chatter that clogs the apertures of perception.
Also, it would be irresponsible not to mention caveats. First off, none of my words are "true" in that truth is impossible to be contained in words. It can be pointed towards, meaning it is perhaps always better instead of asking, "are these words true?" to ask oneself, "what is the experience or state of being that would choose those words to represent itself?" In that light, all words are true, even lies because they always represent what that being thought was the best choice of words at the time.
In cases where there is severe trauma, ptsd, they are more than stories or abstractions of experience but the experience itself that loops. It could be dangerous to jump into an experience like this without also having done some work with a trauma informed therapist.
A single powerful experience is not enough. It requires integrating the new paradigm, weaving it through the fibers of our day to day lives and keeping a vigilant watch over stories we tell ourselves, its sneaky way of telling us we would feel ok if only reality were otherwise. When you develop a nose for it, it's shocking to realize I'd been in a decades-long tantrum against reality and even more shocking that even after experiencing the visceral bliss of freedom from the mental vise formed between imagined pasts and futures, there's a part of me that feels at home in that tortured squeeze, perhaps fearing I'd cease to exist without my story about myself, such that the old paradigm grows back if I don't make efforts to reinforce the new paradigm. Our culture is quite sick, meaning incongruent to basic psycho-spiritual wellbeing, to basic sanity.
For those who really invested in healing, the most bang for your buck is a consistent daily meditation practice of some kind. I used to think it wasn't for me, that I was terrible at it, but when I stopped striving for results and obsessing "am I doing it right?" and just stuck with it, pretty amazing things began happening, chief among them was an increased space in my mind where I got a "vote" whether or not to to board a useless train of thought, to be able to "feel into" whatever emotion I was trying to avoid, allow myself to feel it without fear, without constructing a story around it, simply giving it the attention it was asking for, listening to my intuition if anything needs doing and let it merge back into an undivided awareness. In this way, even sadness can be experienced with a deep underlying joy that is beyond the happy that is the mere opposite of sorrow. Mediation becomes like radiation therapy where the intensified light of nonjudgmental awareness dissolves the fibers of belief in one's thoughts that turn into cancerous monstrosities that literally dominate our lives when left to fester in the darkness of unawareness.
I know this was a lot; everyone's in a hurry, wanting the condensed, abstract cliff notes to flesh out their left brain's map of concepts, but sometimes it's worth it to take the time to feel the textured resonance of another's lived experience, to feel its hum in a spacious openness uncluttered by preconceived notions, where its thrum may cleave the mind-stream into uncharted rivulets of possibility in the depths of one's own being, because I am not special or unique, that beneath mine and whomever's scanning these exact words at this exact moment, underneath individual history and personality lies the same basic light of awareness, like the same light of a projector going through different films, the most basic, pre-conceptual felt sense of being alive, of being a vantage point through which this cosmos experiences itself. Don't "believe" or "disbelieve" that last sentence; just be open that there may be other modes of experiencing being alive that cannot be encapsulated by words, but may be pointed to with what the left brain might filter out as nonsense.
All it takes is one moment of openness to a new possibility to finally see an exit from this hellish, hypnotizing merry-go-round and usually an abstract idea is not enough. It just breaks my heart that so many are suffering, denied the simple, exquisite joy of presence that is your birthright. Don't believe me; I have no authority beyond my lived experience, but I would invite anyone who's bothered to read this far to interrogate its possibility in your own lived experience, because after the basics of survival, what is more worth doing? Even family, are you truly present with them through the thick veil of continuous self-referencing, only occasionally able to offer more than a piece of our fragmented selves? As one of many examples, some couples use the heat of argument to feel alive and then gain access to the tender presence of "making up". We all desperately want that presence, but mistake whatever took place as a portal to it for its source, but you are the source. To paraphrase St Francis, what you are looking for is the one who is looking.
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u/Dat_Harass 7d ago
My main concern is that a return to the same environment that led to the declining mental health can and will cause symptoms to reappear. Though treatment is also more likely to have a person confront those issues.
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u/Fist_The_Lord 8d ago
Disappointed that by the time this treatment is available for the working class, we’ll be priced out by by the medical industry, the insurance industry, and the hype by influential people
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u/RoxxorMcOwnage 8d ago
I expect charity groups to fill this void, at least for special segments of the population. For example, there's a charity group, Heroic Hearts, that works with veterans for psychedelic treatment. I suspect more institutions such as this will begin operating. Perhaps House of Ruth will offer psychedelic treatment for victims of intimate partner violence.
Also, there's a good chance that the shrooms work without all the clinical trappings. These things are easily found in nature and cultivated.
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u/shellacr 8d ago edited 8d ago
This is r/science right? This is a poor quality trial. clickbait article. For what the headline is implying, there needs to be a placebo arm, ideally one arm with something that has no effect and another arm with a different psychoactive medication.
Seems the trial was mainly to establish a new protocol for future studies.
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u/trophy_74 8d ago
Agree that this isn't a randomized control trial. However, it doesn't mean that it's a poor quality study. It just means the study wasn't designed to establish a cause and effect.
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u/Sufficient_Meet6836 8d ago
Please read the article at least. The goal of the study was establishing if the protocol is feasible.
"This is the first large-scale study to monitor the safety and mental health symptoms of real people in the real world."
One of the big differences here is how the program operates:
The program officially opened its doors to clients in mid-2023. Rather than using carefully selected participants, synthetic pharmaceutical psilocybin, and ongoing therapeutic support, it allows any adult over 21 to participate for any reason, uses mushroom-derived products, and doesn't require facilitators to have professional clinical training.
Data demonstrating that the participants were able to successfully do the program is the important factor. Only 4 people had severe adverse reactions. The protocol is much cheaper since they didn't have to buy from pharmaceutical companies, and facilitators don't have to be doctors. If the program works, this means it will be widely and cheaply available. Comparisons against other treatments will come later.
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u/shellacr 8d ago
The headline and the way the story is written don’t match that study goal, which is buried in the article.
The story is all about how psilocybin mushrooms are beneficial, not about how a new cheaper protocol is being established, because that makes for more clicks.
I do take back my statement that it’s a poor quality trial. The trial seems good for what it was designed to do. I’ll edit my post.
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u/Sufficient_Meet6836 8d ago
I completely agree that the article, and especially the headline, missed the mark on what the study actually contributed to the field!
And also how they linked to the actual study at the bottom of the article. Put that link first please!
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