I would suggest that psychedelics cannot take a person with zero risk of developing psychosis, and make them psychotic. There are many apparent triggers for mental illness eg a failed relationship, a drug binge, losing your job, giving birth etc, and we don’t treat these as causal events. Psychedelics are most likely no different. People at risk of developing psychosis may have a greater willingness to try psychedelics as well, creating a biased sample.
If we ever do get regulated access to psychedelics, it will need some process to exclude ‘at risk’ persons. This will be crude and highly exclusionary at the start. Over time, genomics and brain imaging may allow more careful selection of those who can take psychedelics safely.
Psychosis is an episodic condition caused by metabolic failure. Contributing factors include malnourishment, alcohol withdrawal, chronic stress, certain prescription and OTC drugs, street drugs, etc. People would recover from psychosis if given supportive treatment - good nutrition, B-vitamins (liver, yeast, etc), appropriate pro-metabolic prescriptions, naltrexone to keep them off alcohol, etc.
My observations of the standard treatments forced on "psychotic" patients is that they are only useful for preventing the patient's recovery. My aunt's friend was always sort of 'off', now she's dying of liver failure. Didn't know until now that she's been on maintenance antipsychotics for decades, even though the trigger for her episode concluded decades ago.
If I prescribe penicillin to a patient with a pcn allergy, the fact that I “uncovered an underlying flaw” is irrelevant. Pcn is dangerous to them and should not be prescribed to them.
This is true, in one sense or another, of the majority of adverse effects people have from medications given in therapeutic ranges. It’s basically what having an adverse effect -means-.
It doesn’t mean that medication shouldn’t be given when appropriate, but it’s not a rationale for deflecting attention from the risks of the medication.
Psychedelics bring these issues to the forefront, but they don't necessarily cause mental health issues, as the same issues could happen without LSD. I understand what you're trying to express with your example of penicillin, but it's not the same thing.
In my opinion, it would be more accurate to compare psychedelic drugs to activities like meditation and fasting, which also have a risk of anxiety, discomfort, and bringing out dormant mental health issues in some people.
This is precisely what makes them such useful tools for things like PTSD and why it can be a bummer if someone does Molly at a rave and winds up with a memory of being molested and her friends are too busy doing K to talk with her.
In a safe and supportive setting, this is exactly what can help people heal.
It’s when things get uncovered but not fully released and processed they can occupy ones life.
A good psychedelic therapist or sitter should be able to help someone integrat a current or former bad trip.
I've done all 3 of these (meditation as in mindfulness), and I disagree.
Of these 3, meditation is the most harmless. It is relaxing, not discomforting (I'll hook into this again at the end of my post).
Someone can start meditating or fasting without guidance (though I recommend guidance in both cases, especially concerning fasting) and resume normal life whenever they feel like it. With psychedelics, that one doesn't fly and if you do meditation in a group such as a 10 day Vipassana course or are in a religion or cult being forced to fast then you might also feel the same pressure. But that's an outlier; in general, meditation doesn't have such -or any- pressure. It is relaxing.
Finally, I've followed a mindfulness course for people with autism and there is no such thing as that with regards to psychedelics. The psychedelics also affected my autism, and in some situations made it much worse. All of that while I wasn't aware I had autism!
Meditation practice is not relaxing at all. The effect after meditating might be in part feeling relaxed, but in general meditation is pretty hard work.
This is probably a very common misconception, you see all the pictures of people meditating at the beach in front of a beautiful sunset and think that meditating is like going to the spa, when in fact meditating is much more like the mental equivalent of going to the gym.
Also, in many occasions (especially during a 10 day retreat like Vipassana), it can be very uncomfortable if not outright physically painful (although usually never dangerous).
Especially the effect after it makes that work more fruitful, since for various hours I'll be less tense and more focused. For example, it'd make socializing more relaxing.
Those are 2 very valid reasons for me to call it relaxing. Then again, I find running and listening to certain music also relaxing. Because after a while, I get in an automated flow ("trance") akin to meditating.
The 3rd reason is that if I'm rather tired, mindfulness can potentially get me to sleep. I often (almost daily) do it before I go to sleep, and it aids me to get to sleep. I much prefer it over: overthinking, fantasizing, or masturbating/sex.
Its already painful for me to meditate whilst sitting instead of lying but one gets used to that. Its just untrained muscles getting trained. As long as you don't strain yourself, you're fine.
Even if it's true that someone has some kind of latent / dormant condition that is ultimately triggered by the LSD, then the act of taking the LSD itself was the catalyst, and the person would have been far better off not ever having taken the drug.
The drug is illegal, and the argument growing up was that the "government was suppressing free thought" or whatever nonsense was being pushed, but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people. Whether connected to a predisposition of mental illness or not, it's not a hard connection and people should be extra cautious when considering whether to engage in such behavior.
We do not know if LSD was in fact the catalyst. We don’t know if the people who got ruined after taking a single tab of LSD actually took LSD or some research chemical (which are quite commonly sold off as LSD).
>but the reality is that such a drug is dangerous and absolutely does hurt people.
With this reasoning, skydiving, base jumping, and even the act of simply driving a car should should also be illegal. We let people do far more dangerous things, yet keep them legal. There is another reason LSD & most psychedelics are illegal. What that is, I don't know.
We can make random guesses all day about what’s a good outcome but how about we leave it to medical researchers to actually figure out what’s safe and beneficial?
Only in certain contexts (ie. some instances of interstate commerce).
I suspect your friend had latent psychotic tendencies. Would be interesting to look at family history.
These are powerful drugs that seem capable of both helping and doing harm. They should definitely be used with care, studied, and not abused.
Of course what the war on drugs did was to ban the scientific study of these things and push them exclusively onto the street where they did get abused.
Family histories are not always clearly diagnosed. That hypothetical uncle you've never met and no one talks about? Unknown mental health flag.
Self-diagnosis of a mental/emotional state that calls for drug-taking is itself a clue that not all is so normal in the individual's mind--or is it something wrong in the world the person wants to relate to better? Who can know but the one supposedly experiencing an unnaccepted state? Observing/deciding/dosing by the selfsame suffering/diagnosing/tripping individual sounds risky, because if the downside is a long future of some degree of insanity, it is only a variety of Russian Roulette.
To allow scientific studies, fund them, possibly create therapies is to also conquer the stigmas involved in substantial ways and that process is tectonically, multi-generationally slow (or impossible).
What was going on in his life at the time?
Who was with him and how did they work with his “freak out”?
It sounds like he lacked the set, setting and support to integrate that experience in a healthy way.
Research chemicals pawned off as LSD is more common than ever. They are dangerous psychotic inducing deugs.
Anyone who has become an ‘acid casualty’ was dosed with these dangerous research chemicals, and everyone who was just fine had legitimate LSD?
Reading the other comments I see that others have expressed the same thought.
This seems to be more lore than fact.
And recent meta analysis shows that psychedelic use has no negative impacts on mental health (and in many cases, is beneficial).
It’s incredibly irresponsible to say it has no negative impacts without more research being done in the area.
I was diagnosed with schizophrneia and Biploar. I found that mdma in a theraputic setting helped me heal the underlying condition and resulted in an elimination of symptoms.
I’ve also had psychosis induced by psychedelics, however I also saw how the psychosis was a result of deeper held beliefs that weren’t serving. The psychosis ended up resolving with a much deeper sense of self and compassion.
That said, with a clear understanding of psychosis, how to work with and integrate it, and a theraputic setting for psychedelic use, folks might want to avoid it.
Psychedelics helped me heal without medication.
Anyway; also a strong proponent, but I’ve seen the potential harm as well. On the balance it seems worthwhile for many people, and good for many people to try a little LSD at least once.
They’re mostly all synthetics derived from amphetamine class of drugs like MDMA.
2CE. 2CB. 2CI. Etc. and countless others. No one taking them know what it truly is.
They are dangerous. And more ubiquitous than LSD-25.
You can never be sure what you’re getting. You can OD and have a psychotic episode.
I do not classify them as therapeutic psychedelics, and always advise against.
If you ever take a tab of LSD and it’s bitter or metallic, or anything but absolutely flavorless or just paper, do not take. Spit it out.
2C-E, 2C-B, and 2C-I are what they are, single compounds, just as LSD-25 is. They are phenethylamines, related to mescaline, the substance for which the term "psychedelic" was coined.
They are synthetic, as is LSD, and have a wide therapeutic index. Being less potent by weight, it is easier to measure a specific dose than with LSD, which is commonly put on paper or taken in liquid form.
Getting "puddled" from a bottle of LSD is a more likely route to a psychotic episode than anything 2C-I or 2C-B have to offer; 2C-E is a different beast.
It's fine that you have these opinions, I guess. It's just that most of them are wrong and I wouldn't want others to be mislead.
Obviously there is no research on long term effects at this point, and there may never be, but for my personal therapeutic rituals it’s affectiveness is the same.
It’s also worth noting that I’m not microdosing, which you may have assumed from my doses over time. I’m taking it once a week at an average dose of 300-600mcg with a 1-2 week break every 4 weeks (obviously I didn’t start at this dose when I first tried it). Along with other health supplements and exercise just so were clear.
I am an experienced psychonaut, but I’m not a doctor, and I’m not here to champion 1P-LSD nor my personal rituals. But this is my experience.
>It has been theorized that 1P-LSD may act as a prodrug for LSD. While 1P-LSD shows only 38% the potency of LSD in mice, LSD is detected via LC-MS when 1P-LSD is incubated in human serum. Follow-up studies are currently being conducted to compare the affinity and selectivity of LSD and 1P-LSD at 5-HT receptors, and to determine whether 1P-LSD is hydrolyzed to LSD in vivo.[1] Otherwise, it is possible that 1P-LSD may be capable of exerting its own psychedelic effect.
NBOMEs are something you did see sold as acid especially a few years back, so I'm not saying you shouldn't be careful. The difference in effect is fairly easy to tell, though, and I have no doubt most stuff sold is the real thing. There are some closely related and nearly indistinguishable compounds, but as far as I know, they are about as hard to synthesize and should have a similar risk profile as LSD.
The real danger of Research Chemicals is the large amount of cheap drugs of other classes produced that have similar effects and are labeled and sold as LSD. Very few people are buying those type of drugs and taking them on purpose. And they are incredibly dangerous.
One can be sure of what one is getting with proper testing. Some are dangerous, others less so.
Personally I enjoyed my experiences with some of them.
that is CERTAINLY false.
You did not emphasize in any profound way.
You did imply though that it invariably changes everyone, and never was anyone you know changed for the worse. So it changes everyone for the better. But you ask, surely because you are not sure, whether those who were crazy afterwards had to be crazy to begin with. So, the only thing you really emphasized was your ignorance. What does that mean to you? Everyone is a little crazy to begin with. Thus estimates about sanity are rather distorted and a small sample group not enough, especially if you are biased by preoccupation.
Anyway, you're probably right in the sense that there are only a handful of original sources for it. But once you get the production going, you quickly end up with a crapload of doses.
But I know they need to be respected and understood.
I also realize that some people with a family history of mental disorders like schizophrenia, would be better off staying away.
Like, some people have used psychedelics, and they go crazy. But how many of those people were crazy to begin with? How many would end up like that if they never tried psychedelics to begin with?
I tend to think that the fear is over dramatized.
But I do emphasize respecting its use in a profound way.
It changes you.
The upside is that real LSD is so rare, the chances of people finding it are slim to non. It’s distributed by so few people.