Psilosybin's effect on the brain

[Vraith]

I've gotten pretty interested in the who ayyahuasca thing.

I'm a bit interested in that. More interested in ibogaine, though.

Heh...Ali, one night after a show did a lot of cocaine. It made me feel basically the same as a lot of coffee. An extra double espresso is cheaper, safer, legal, and easier to find.

[aliantha]

Heh...Ali, one night after a show did a lot of cocaine. It made me feel basically the same as a lot of coffee. An extra double espresso is cheaper, safer, legal, and easier to find.

That sounds about right. I remember being more talkative than usual, but that was about it.

[Fist and Faith]

No, I don't think that is possible. The state of consciousness is what it is, even if what it is conscious OF isn't.

Yes, I worded that poorly. Z said the routine, habit, convention, and social roles are illusions.

It seems that we're all wording things poorly, I guess. I should have said "fictions" rather than illusions. But even illusions are real, in the sense that they are phenomena of which we're aware. The illusory part comes in how we frame the phenomenon, understand it, explain it, etc. That wavy watery looking patch on the distant pavement may not be a pool of water, but it's a real effect of heat/air/light.

Social roles are fictions. In some sense, they are valid fictions, relative to certain goals. But we can lose sight of our larger humanity if we think of ourselves as primarily what we do for a living, or who we have married, or what expensive car we drive, etc. In the end, we're all worm food and none of that will matter.

I think the "higher consciousness" that allows one to think of children being tortured and murdered in front of their parents without resentment, aversion, or displeasure is illusory in the same sense.

I feel like you're stretching my point into territory I didn't mean, in order to squeeze a negative out of it. If you saw children being tortured while tripping you'd probably freak the fuck out. But at the same time, our aversion to seeing violence is a biological, evolutionary survival mechanism. The anger it evokes can control us, if we let it. The same "higher" that allows parents of murdered children to forgive the murderer--for their own peace--is what I'm talking about here. It doesn't mean they like it, they simply make peace with it so it doesn't tear them apart inside. The capacity for forgiveness can be applied to all of reality ... it's like forgiving Existence itself for being shitty sometimes. The alternative is to be bitter, to think all humans evil, and to give up on the world because it's not perfect ... which then leads people into the inauthenticity of seeking their meaning in a world beyond this one where they can imagine it actually is perfect.

I understand doubting something you've never experienced. But you should also realize that you're in no position to make a claim about it one way or the other, for the same reason: you haven't experienced it.

For me, the experience was overwhelmingly real. Forget about the visuals, the euphoria, or the other things I've discussed so far. Consider this this instead--we all go through times (daily) when we forget about our existence as existence itself. When we're making breakfast, getting the kids ready for school, we're not pondering the existential crisis, or how amazing it is that we exist at all when a billion little events could have happened differently to lead to us not existing. And there are other times when our awareness of our own Being increases dramatically, sometimes even uncomfortably. So, without a doubt, this kind of awareness moves on a spectrum of intensity, i.e. more or less. If we can agree on that, than consider the possibility that even in your highest awareness of yourself, it could have gone higher. That's what this experience was for me, the most intense awareness of my own Being that I've ever had. All the ways that we typically distract ourselves and lose ourselves dropped away. And since I am not a hallucination, I can say with confidence that an increased awareness of my own Being is indeed a higher awareness.

I wasn't intentionally stretching your point into territory you didn't mean. As you correctly say, I have not experienced it. Even if I had, there's no saying we would have experienced exactly the same thing. Therefore, I can't base any opinion about it on anything other than what you've written. And you wrote:
"There was no longer any resentment, aversion, or displeasure with any aspect of reality. It was all embraced with the 'holy' YES."

I didn't add or expand in any way. It's impossible to add or expand on "any aspect" and "all". I just got specific. They must include things that I consider to be horrific atrocities. Yes, parents can forgive their child's murderer. But even if they do so absolutely - not simply to make peace with it so it doesn't tear them apart inside - as you say, it doesn't mean they like it. How could they possibly like it? They couldn't. I do not see any possibility of embracing the murder with the holy YES.

Which leads me to ask if, as the drug alters your consciousness in the way you're talking about, it might also give a sense of euphoria the extent of which might not be a good thing?

[Avatar]

I had a friend who told me that some institutions consider you insane if you have taken more than x amount of lsd in your life. Anyone else ever hear that?

Never, but I must surely qualify.

--A

[Zarathustra]

Which leads me to ask if, as the drug alters your consciousness in the way you're talking about, it might also give a sense of euphoria the extent of which might not be a good thing?

I feel like I've qualified my statement in sufficient detail to counter your argument. I've tried to correct my language and wording several times. No, I don't think euphoria--especially tied to a "spiritual" awakening--is a bad thing. You probably don't either, when it happens to you. For instance, during an orgasm, you're not worrying about the Holocaust (hopefully). You're probably just fine with the universe at that moment. Granted, it's not the best way to drive down the road, but I don't see any harm in feeling joy so intense that it makes pain or atrocities pale in comparison.

Let's try one more time: let's say you're looking at a beautiful Hubble photograph of a nebula, perhaps the remnants of some supernova. From this cosmic distance, it's quite lovely. Perhaps even moving or inspiring, if you're feeling particularly reflective that day. But it's one of the most catastrophic events in the universe. There might have been a civilization on a planet surrounding that exploding star. That's a tragedy that far outweighs any single event in our history. And yet, you can still obtain a view--from a sufficient distance--that allows you to see the beauty in this chaotic event.

There's nothing wrong with views like that. If God exists, that's probably how things look to Him.

[Fist and Faith]

I'm trying to understand something that I do not have direct experience with. Something that even those who do have direct experience with sometimes say is difficult to understand, much less communicate to those without. I'm sorry it seems that my intentions are anything other than trying to clear up something about it that strikes me in a bad way.

[Zarathustra]

No problem, FF. Thanks for reading and participating.

I just read this over at Reason.com:

Psychedelic Science

November 2, 2014

Despite steep regulatory barriers, researchers are exploring the therapeutic possibilities of ecstasy, acid, and mushrooms.

In the 1950s and '60s, psychedelic drug research seemed to offer promising paths for treating schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, alcoholism, and other disorders. The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 interrupted legitimate scientific inquiry, but there was a brief renaissance in the late '70s and early '80s, when psychiatrists embraced MDMA as a tool to catalyze the therapeutic process. By 1985, however, MDMA was better known as the street drug "ecstasy" and was added to the list of chemicals that the government defined as having a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical use.

In the early 1990s the tide turned again, as a new wave of research made a serious case that psychedelics should have a role in psychiatry. "This research is no longer seen as uncomfortably fringe," says Rick Doblin, "but is now being accepted more widely as promising and important and opening up a long-blocked avenue of research in psychiatry."

Doblin, executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), has been at the forefront of this wave. His tale is one of the focal narratives in former Washington Post reporter Tom Shroder's Acid Test, a book that weaves intimate biographies of key players in psychedelic research with the stories of the patients they aim to help.

Another important figure in the book is Michael Mithoefer, a psychiatrist with a private practice in Charleston, South Carolina. Mithoefer's research team completed the first major study investigating MDMA as an aid to treating posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study, which was funded by MAPS, revealed its 83 percent success rate in the Journal of Psychopharmacology in 2010. A follow-up study published two years later emphasized that the results from the initial MDMA-assisted psychotherapy sessions were sustained for nearly all of the volunteers. Their symptoms were relieved, on average, for just under four years, though two of the subjects experienced a relapse. This is especially noteworthy because only a handful of psychotherapy sessions involved MDMA, compared to a dismal success rate of treatment with a daily regimen of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and in some cases even antipsychotics and tranquilizers.

These are still, to be sure, preliminary results. The study was conducted as a "proof of principle" trial, meaning that it focused on a small sample (just 20 volunteers) to show that the experiment could be conducted safely, that the credibility of the therapist training manual could be tested, and that MDMA-assisted psychotherapy could produce favorable results. With successful outcomes for all three objectives, the study provides a strong argument for further research. And indeed, a similar study was completed two years ago in Switzerland. Its outcome was not as dramatic—a third of the subjects experienced a reduction of PTSD symptoms from severe to mild—but it was still deemed a successful trial. Additional trials are still ongoing in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Israel; if they go well, researchers plan to petition the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve phase III protocols, the final step toward making MDMA an approved treatment.

When researchers investigate treatments for PTSD, their chief tool for measuring their results is the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS), a structured clinical interview that measures the severity of the sufferer’s symptoms on a scale of 0 to 130. To meet the criteria for enrollment in Mithoefer's study, a CAPS score of at least 50 had to persist for at least three months while volunteers received antidepressant treatment and at least six months of psychotherapy. Before the MDMA sessions, the volunteers in Mithoefer's study averaged a CAPS score of 80. That dropped to below 30 just two months after their final MDMA session, less than half the average score of the placebo control groups. The dramatic reduction in CAPS score meant that the volunteers no longer met the minimum criteria for PTSD. In other words, they were essentially cured.

While these subjects are left anonymous in the scientific literature, Shroder puts names and life stories to the people behind the numbers: veterans, victims of sexual abuse, terminally ill cancer patients, and others desperate for relief. Nicholas Blackston, for example, served two tours with the Marines in the second Iraq war; he participated in Mithoefer's second MDMA study, which aimed to treat subjects whose PTSD stemmed from war-related trauma. Shroder devotes about half of Acid Test to Nick's story.

"PTSD was like a file folder sitting on a desk not knowing where to be stored, therefore piling up other file folders behind it, creating stress," Blackston tells me. "The MDMA-assisted psychotherapy helped my mind properly file it away, allowing for peace of mind." Blackston still has occasional issues with anxiety, but he says these are easy to manage and are not related to his PTSD. "I experienced some pretty horrific things in war, and those images can never be erased," he says. "Although they're still within my mind, I'm no longer haunted nor debilitated by those traumas. The therapy has allowed my mind to process trauma as information to learn from."

MAPS is not the only organization working to bring psychedelic drugs back into the medical community. The Heffter Research Institute has been funding research with psilocybin—the active compound in so-called magic mushrooms—at UCLA, New York University, Johns Hopkins, and the University of New Mexico. The focus so far has been on psilocybin's ability to trigger a mystical experience, which may be useful in various applications of psychotherapy, from easing end-of-life anxiety to quitting smoking. The U.K.-based Beckley Foundation is partnering with researchers at Imperial College London to examine the effects of psilocybin and LSD on the brain. Additional research with ayahuasca, an Amazonian brew containing the psychedelic drug DMT, and ibogaine, an addiction interrupter from the African iboga plant, are ongoing in Europe, Latin America, and New Zealand.

Earlier this year, The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease published the first clinical trial in more than 40 years that used LSD for psychotherapy. Peter Gasser, a Swiss psychiatrist, conducted a double-blind placebo-controlled experiment in 12 people with debilitating anxiety associated with a life-threatening disease. All 12 subjects experienced significant reductions in their anxiety following only two LSD-assisted psychotherapy sessions, with their relief lasting at least 12 months through ongoing monitoring of symptoms.

Acid Test is a crucial addition to the story of science's psychedelic renaissance. By showing what researchers have accomplished, it makes a strong case against letting regulators close the door on their work again.

So this presents another aspect of the euphoria that leads to one facing horrible aspects of reality in a way that makes them less horrible. It's not about denying their reality, but in getting relief from their life-strangling grip. Sometimes things like depression or PTSD arise from too much attention/fixation on those negative aspects of life. So in this sense, the euphoria (and other effects) allows people to reset their attitude towards these things so they can accept them and let go of their anxiety/stress.

[SoulBiter]

I did LSD multiple times as a young adult. After taking LSD for the first time, I remember telling people, if anyone asks you why anyone would do drugs, just take LSD and your question is answered.

Some really strong memories and impressions that last to this day.

One exceptional one for me.
I remember sitting on a back deck of my friends house in the winter at night, (remember that your pupils are dilated so you can see nicely in the dark) the deck is under a Giant Oak. It was lightly snowing. I was sitting down in a adirondack chair looking up through the oak limbs. I fixed my attention first on the snow that was falling into my face. I had an "oh wow" moment as I realized I could change my perception to bring in the limbs/branches individually from the snow, and then took my perception outward to the snow falling through the tree. Then I remember moving my perception toward the sky (I was still very much aware of the snow falling on my face, through the tree, on the tree limb's, through the tree limb's) but I was able to expand that perception outwards and found that I could keep all of it in 'focus'. I remember distinctly seeing how the snow was flurrying out of the clouds and the wind blowing it around long before it got anywhere close to the ground. I was sure I could keep going upward with my perception and had not found a limit. I wasn't 'trying', I was just being curious.

Then my stupid friends came out and made me go in so I wouldn't freeze to death. They literally dragged me inside. I don't think there was a chance that I would freeze. I was trying to explain what I was experiencing but they just thought I was 'trippin'.

[Obi-Wan Nihilo]

Truly a magical moment, SB. In hindsight do you consider that the beginnings of an astral projection?

[Brinn]

Interesting. Never did shrooms but did do LSD twice. First time my freshman year in college and the second time was a few years after college. LSD experience was interesting and very intense. It lasted all night and then spiraled into scary territory the next morning. I think I was still tripping in the morning and wanted to be done. Anxiety spiraled due to my inability to achieve mental clarity and it brought on a full blown panic attack which I had never had in my life before.

Panic attacks recur during high stress times to this day.

I'm very adventurous and I'm certainly no quitter so I tried LSD again a few years later in a much more relaxing environment. ;^)

Unfortunately I essentially had the same bad experience. I don't think I'm wired to be able to give up control of my mental processes to the extent that LSD requires.

On the other hand, I loved doing coke and can see why some would find it addictive. Did it for a whole summer during my college years and had a lot of fun. Loved the feeling of connectedness and euphoria.

Also loved the short intense trips brought on by nitrous oxide (laughing gas or whippits as it is known). I think the fact that the trip only lasts 25 seconds or so allows me to relax and enjoy as I know I will be back in control within a minute.

Strange how different drugs react differently with different people.

[Zarathustra]

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend them for recreational use at all. They should always be done with someone experienced--who is sober--to help guide people through it. I really think of it more like a scientific research tool into consciousness itself. Setting is really important. So is one's mindset going into it. Also, dose is very important. (Set, setting, dose, as Leary says.)

For some reason, TV was nearly unwatchable. I couldn't even be in the same room if it was on. It was like a Hideous Box of Chaos that I was only able to recognize in that state.

And perhaps they're not good for some type of people at all. Really rational/logical types have a difficult time letting go of the Ego and having their Self dissolve into something wider. Once you start to diagnose yourself, you'll convince yourself that something is very wrong and that you need to go to he hospital, etc. It's very much like the angels in Jacob's Ladder (the movie), which seemed like demons only because the main character was resisting where they were taking him.

[aliantha]

The ex-husband's older brother and the guy's friends slipped him LSD on his 18th birthday. The ex had a bad trip that gave him flashbacks for several years afterward. He wouldn't even do alcohol after that.

[Avatar]

I don't think I'm wired to be able to give up control of my mental processes to the extent that LSD requires.

Really rational/logical types have a difficult time letting go of the Ego and having their Self dissolve into something wider.

Brinn you old dog, I would have bet you were totally straight.

See, I never had that. Never felt that I wasn't in control, never felt my ego or self diminished in any way. Quite the contrary in fact. I find it seems to strengthen my ego. Possibly because my ego is incredibly well entrenched.

Never had a bad trip, (had some frightening experiences, but never a bad trip) and I have the most amazing come-downs from acid. The next day the whole world feels new made and fresh.

(I used to love my coke too. To the extent that I decided to give it up for my own good. As much fun as it was, I didn't much like the person it made me into. In retrospect that is. I didn't notice that until I stopped.)

--A

[Savor Dam]

The ex-husband's older brother and the guy's friends slipped him LSD on his 18th birthday. The ex had a bad trip that gave him flashbacks for several years afterward. He wouldn't even do alcohol after that.

To my way of thinking, this was a violation as profound and disturbing as drug-assisted rape. If you understand what these substances do to a person, you do not let anyone trip except by explicit and informed consent and with a responsible buddy...much less induce someone to do so without their knowledge of what is happening, nor anyone who has their back.

At 18? [shudder!]

[SoulBiter]

Truly a magical moment, SB. In hindsight do you consider that the beginnings of an astral projection?

Honestly, I never looked at it that way. But funny enough, I always thought it would be cool to be able to astrally project. Perhaps I was on the verge of that and if so I always misunderstood astral projection (not that I know that much about it). I didn't feel like I was having an out of body experience at all, but more that I was perceiving so much more than normal. It was as if my 'awareness' and 'focus' was incredibly magnified.

I never had a 'bad' trip. It was always fun for me. The next morning I was never quite sure if I had snapped what I consider 'reality' back into 100% but that feeling faded as the day progressed. Plus I could tell that I didn't want to do this stuff often because of the way it changes your perception. If you ever got 'stuck' that way, you would never be able to relate to our reality the same way and might end up in a rubber room.

[Vraith]

Never felt that I wasn't in control, never felt my ego or self diminished in any way. Quite the contrary in fact. I find it seems to strengthen my ego.
--A

I'm somewhere between you and Z, perhaps. I didn't feel a diminishing of control or a dissolving so much. But didn't feel an ego strengthening, either.
It was more like feeling connected/interwoven...heh...now that I'm thinking about it, "distributed network/processing" is maybe a pretty good description. And my ego didn't feel weakened or strengthened...just supported in a different way? Like a well-made and hung hammock supports your body. Or...I don't know how many folk have experienced this...like the way you float in really high-salt content warm water.

On secretly dosing someone with a hallucinogen [or any other drug/substance]...that's a nasty thing to do. Really ugly. It's a violent assault, even if the weapon is chemical.

[Brinn]

Brinn you old dog, I would have bet you were totally straight.

Nah, I've had more than my fair share of fun. Still do...just in different ways.

[Avatar]

Haha, good to hear Brinn.

And my ego didn't feel weakened or strengthened...just supported in a different way?

As I also said somewhere above, I tend to feel isolated, ni a good way. As if what is "supporting" my ego is myself.

Oh, and also totally against spiking anybody. Definitely not cool. (FWIW, I was 17 when I took my first trip.)

--A

[Ananda]

The ex-husband's older brother and the guy's friends slipped him LSD on his 18th birthday. The ex had a bad trip that gave him flashbacks for several years afterward. He wouldn't even do alcohol after that.

To my way of thinking, this was a violation as profound and disturbing as drug-assisted rape. If you understand what these substances do to a person, you do not let anyone trip except by explicit and informed consent and with a responsible buddy...much less induce someone to do so without their knowledge of what is happening, nor anyone who has their back.

At 18? [shudder!]

I have been surprised drugged with it, too by an idiot friend at the time. He thought it would be fun. I had done it many times before so I understood what was happening, but the situation was not really conducive to it and it really was not something I would have chosen to do then. It was not the greatest experience ever. Not to mention that I was already on other drugs...

[aliantha]

The ex's brother was fairly heavily into drugs at the time, as I understand it. Then he went and joined a commune. Now he's some kind of Tea Partyer. I can't explain it.

But yes, slipping somebody drugs without their consent is a rotten thing to do.