Laying around on a couch sounds like a waste of a good shroom buzz. Shrooms are much more fun if you're with a medium-to-large sized group of people who all know and are comfortable around each other, all of whom are on around the same dose. They're so much more of a body buzz and less of a mindfuck than LSD/DMT. Then there's PCP... which is less of a mindfuck and more of a fuckyou.

There aren’t many drug experiences more entertaining than a half dozen people on mushrooms trying to have a conversation.

Reminds me of a reddit thread I saved a couple days after they decriminalized weed in Washington: https://i.imgur.com/9HQ2Si7_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f...

Note that "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like" is a copy-pasted text meme.

I wonder how wise it is to be with other people when you're on psychedelics. It's possible that on psychedelics you're much more susceptible and vulnerable to all sorts of visible and invisible outside influence that you may not be aware of.

This really depends on dosage, reaction, and timing.

I'd always advise folks to be with someone more experience their first time. Just in case. And be knowledgeable about the range of experiences before taking. Once one has a bit of experience, being in public isn't so bad if it is timed right.

I went to see Weird Al coming down from LSD. It was nice.

I had a wonderful talk with a homeless Romanian dude in Amsterdam coming down from truffles sold there. Between the lights of the building at night, being on a vacation without my spouse, and everything combined it was pretty neat. But I'm pretty relaxed and didn't have much to really worry about as most of this was planned (minus the discussion). It isn't really much different than keeping yourself safe while cooking on psychedelics (yes, I've done this stuff).

Note, this mentions coming down - things get increasingly safer after you've peaked and are coming down. Dosage also plays a part in this: You don't have to completely lose touch with reality completely to loosen up your mind or have fun with the drug.

i personally think arylcyclohexamines and really just NMDA antagonists in general have a large amount of untapped therapeutic benefit, especially for individuals suffering from depression otherwise resistant to other forms of treatment. perhaps it's slightly anecdotal but in my experience, a daily to semidaily 150mg dose of memantine combined with cannabis prn as an anxiolytic is pretty much the most effective dosing strategy I have found to control my depression, anxiety, and lapses in attention. however i certainly don't recommend it for others, at least with that high of a memantine dosage because with its insane metabolic half life (60+ hours) it really conpojnds heavily. not to mention a therapeutic dose of memantine for what it's prescribed for (controlling dementia symptoms) is generally like 5-10mg. but I will say if you have the fortitude for it, it's a wonderful experience. you just have to be willing to essentially exist in a 24/7 state of moderate to heavy dissociation and not be too predisposed to panic because ive certainly seen heavy dissociative experiences to be quite anxiogenic for those who don't really get down with that. but I'd certainly suggest regular memantine usage over my old practice of constant high doses of dxm :V

I could have written this paragraph about 15 months ago, at the tail end of attempting to manage my depression with various cocktails of research dissociatives and nootropics.

I've been sober for over a year, and it's now amazing to me how completely terrible my self-perception was. I was laser-focused on measuring my mood and focus and completely blind to my intensely addictive substance use. I made a lot of dangerous choices. The same substances that can heal in small doses are recreational in large ones, and it takes a lot of self control to stay on the right side of the line.

I have had a lot of experience with psychedelics, stimulants, cannabis, and dissociatives. I respect the substances and value my experiences greatly. I believe there is no bad drug, just bad uses of drugs.

Here is a message I wrote to The Listserve in the middle of my using: https://thelistservearchive.com/2016/03/27/methoxetamine-dip...

And here's one I wrote after about 8 months of sobriety: https://thelistservearchive.com/2017/10/16/oblivion/

Have you tried ketamine? Not just for recreation, but as a possible treatment. It definitely is not going to last 60+ hours, more like .75-1.25hr, but it may be useful for acute symptoms. But if you approach an anesthetic dose it is quite enjoyable and calming, especially if you're already accustomed to psychedelic/narcotic experiences and the like.

i have tried it intranasally and it was certainly not the worst experience I ever had but I believe what I had to be of not the best quality as I went through 500mg in about 3-4 hours and didn't feel much other than a minor alteration. i think if it were still possible to find the original formulation of it, methoxetamine would be highly preferable, that was a very powerful experience when I got to try that out.

Translation: I snorted a very large amount over a very short space of time but didn't get much of a buzz out of it.

https://erowid.org/chemicals/ketamine/ketamine_dose.shtml says that 100-250mg produces "the K hole" (depends on body weight) so 500mg over a fairly short period sounds like quite the dosage. That you felt only a mild alteration suggests that either you have quite the tolerance for substances or that what you tried was not in fact ketamine. Also, it appears to me that you're deploying clinical language to mask recreational drug use which could be for our benefit or yours, I can't tell which.

i wouldn't be inclined to say that my choice of verbiage is to have any intent of masking the action or the nature of it. that's just how I generally talk about things. i feel like it leaves less up to interpretation and sort of solidifies the message I'm trying to communicate. which it did as your summary of what I had to say confirms.

also: i can't confirm if it was or wasn't actually ketamine. but i know that I experienced something, just nothing significant. I believe many dissociatives present a cross tolerance with each other and I was heavily tolerant to dxm at the time from heavy usage, so that may possibly have contributed to my tolerance, along with a certain level of inherent tolerance that my mind and physiology express when it comes to mind altering substances. which, and forgive me for sort of changing the topic, but that just sucks

They aren't left alone. As your quote says "You're with two guides, one male, one female."

They could go outside with you, instead of confining you to a room with headphones on.

I suspect the reason that it’s done indoors is that, most places with a high enough density of humans for this practice to be available, the outside is a dangerous place for a tripping patient. Someone driving by blasting a rap album out their window could send a trip in some bad directions.

Also, it’s a clinical study. They need to control the conditions or it’s not science.

When I was at University of Waterloo in the 80s, I went for a couple of talk therapy sessions with a very nice, empathetic woman employed in the Psych department. After a session, she said, "would you like to see something?"

Just adjacent to her office was a "trip room", probably constructed when the building was build in the 70s (?). It was round, completely lined with acid orange fabric, upholstered like a pasha's tent and filled with cushions in every colour imaginable. No doubt it had a superlative quadraphonic sound system installed. It also had a large, smoked glass window, for "observers." Not ideal for mushrooms perhaps but for other things...

It wouldn't be science but at the same time those conditions are horrible in order to study the effects of psychedelics.

The conditions are almost a sure fire way to make someone have a troubling experience if they were given the doses knowen to be taken in those times and did not have prior experience dealing with the reality altering effects of those substances.

Apparently not that horrible, with 25mg of psilocybin: Treatment with psilocybin produced rapid and sustained antidepressant effects. Decreased depressive symptoms were observed in all 19 patients at 1-week post-treatment and 47% met criteria for response at 5 weeks. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-13282-7

Well, the study took on about 20 people with treatment resistant depression and immediately helped about 80% of them, harming no one, so yes, they know what they are doing. The issue with nature is that you can't control the environment, which is critical in a pilot study when you are trying to legitimize a long forbidden research subject.

The podcast goes more in depth. There is preparation before the trip specifically to address any 'bad trips' and the guides are there to calm you down in case that happens.

As side note, this reminds me of the episode of Mad Men where Roger takes LSD [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Away_Places_(Mad_Men)

Bad trips? Or confronting trips. Meeting your edge, and in time, moving past it.

Sure, it’s not great in the moment. But I’ve always felt it rewarding in the long run.

Having experienced many trips in both settings, I would suggest that neither is really better. Being alone with your own mind can be terrifying, of course, but it can also be much more effective at reaching and healing deep traumas. Perhaps similar to how meditation and socializing have distinct purposes in sober life.

Yeah, and it sounds like they were taking very large doses, to the point of having visual hallucinations, which isn't really necessary