Suggesting the use of a recreation drug to combat addiction is very dangerous territory. I'm glad it helped you. I am no stranger to recreational drugs and have witnessed some friends suffer from addiction. One particular friend had a coke problem. That person managed to quit coke and became a drunk. Then eventually was able to quit drinking and got addicted to downers. Through out this person's life they took lots of random psychedelics so that certainly was not a cure for them.

Psychedelics are not necessarily recreational drugs. The ideal way to use them in service of stopping addiction is within the context of therapy: usually a few sessions of talk therapy before and after the long session where the drug is administered in a safe, conducive, and clinically supervised setting.

It’s like the difference between self-medication with a friend’s Xanax vs having a diagnosis and a prescription from a doctor or psychiatrist. Only aside from some promising studies with psilocybin and MDMA, you can’t legslly have a psychedelic experience in that kind of context yet in America.

There are people who do it underground, trained therapists I mean, though I have no idea how one would find them.

Fair enough. I guess I get nervous that people might miss the whole therapy part and think you just have to go tripping on friday night and suddenly all your problems are solved :)

Whoops, I didn’t realize that I was replying to two comments by the same poster! My response above is the better one, and I’d have left it at that. And your note of caution is a good one, I just wanted to provide some additional context. Babies in bathwater and all that.

Yes. I had heard lots of advice from Random Internet People that using the plant kratom was very helpful in killing your desire to drink. Now, I'm addicted to the (opiate-like) effects of kratom. It's actually maybe a bit healthier for me than alcohol, but doesn't feel any better mentally or emotionally.

In case it needs to be stated - please don't take illicit substances because a random poster on an internet forum tells you it's helped in x or y ways.

(For the record, I do believe this class of substances can help a lot of people. Do your own research, know your own body, and think for yourself before making a decision that can have possible adverse effects)

There's no such thing as "illicit" and "legal" substances on the internet - it depends on where each poster and reader is located.

Unless it's LSD. I enjoy LSD as much as anyone here, but it's globally illegal.

And it's pretty unlikely that anyone is posting on HN from the international space station, so it's safe to say that LSD is definitely illicit regardless of their location.

> but it's globally illegal.

Technically true, but it’s decriminalized in a handful of countries and thus “tolerated”.

> And it's pretty unlikely that anyone is posting on HN from the international space station

Wouldn’t matter, it’s illegal there (for US astronauts at least, can’t confirm for Russians, but I’d highly doubt it).

Which is a shame.

I think I used to think like this, but realized it doesn't particularly accomplish anything. Moving our collective walls takes concentrated, but subtle effort.

Can I interest you in some flax? https://www.principiadiscordia.com/bip/1.php

Or weed/cbd.

It's not about a replacement drug, it's about a cure. (Or so it seems). Here's a study where 12/15 people quit smoking after 3 hits of psilocybin:

http://time.com/3399433/quit-smoking-psychedelic-drugs-acid-...

EDIT: I guess the poster who suggested LSD is conflating these two.

It seems like this was therapy that happen to leverage small amount of mushrooms. Maybe this is a good combo, not sure. But I have years of first hand experience with friends who are life long smokers and have taken mushrooms and LSD multiple times a year for decades. I really have not seen a relationship between quiting smoking and mushrooms.

We’re they taking the psychedelics with the intention of trying to quit smoking, or just to get loaded and have a weird night? If it’s the latter, I wouldn’t expect any change in smoking status, outside of a chance epiphany about what it does to the body.

There’s the idea of “set” and “setting” for psychedelic use. A (mind)set of “party time!” and a setting of “party time!” is unlikely to be effective in the way that a set of “i want to quit smoking” and a setting of “quiet, safe surroundings” would be.

Intention and preparation matter with these drugs—though they’re apparently no guarantee either.

In their cases it's always for a fun weird night at a music festival etc. But that's sort of my point is that I don't think quiting an addiction is a inherent characteristic of mushrooms but possibly a complement to therapy.

So you're replacing one substance with another? How is that better?

Isn’t this stance completely dismissive of methadone clinics approach to addiction? If the individual can break a stronger and more dangerous addiction with a less addictive and dangerous substance then it’s a net positive on their addiction journey but not the final stop.

We're right to complain about methadone clinics which show poor effectiveness when compared to other better programs.

Of course it is.

What do you mean? Everything you consume is a substance. Some substances are absolutely better than others.

LSD has dangers too. People have had major mental breakdowns on LSD, and hurt themselves or others.

“No Link Found between Psychedelics and Psychosis: A large U.S. survey found that users of LSD and similar drugs were no more likely to have mental-health conditions than other respondents”

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-link-found-bet...

Those are not small doses.

LSD is not physically toxic the way alcohol can be when taken in excess.

Furthermore, this is more of a matter of opinion but I strongly feel it doesn’t dull your senses / decision making / cognition the way alcohol does.

> LSD is not physically toxic the way alcohol can be when taken in excess.

On the other hand it can result in permanent personality changes / dissociative identity disorder.

The personality changes are real. Psychedelics fixed my autism. Or at least, taught me how to cope with it in a way that’s compatible with a good social life and less suffering.

Base rates, my friend. LSD can trigger dissociative type states in a very, very small percentage of the population. Compare to the far more statistically likely damage of alcohol.

LSD does cause permanent personality changes. That's what makes it such a beautiful compound. For me, it permanently altered my openness to experience, made me more intuitively empathetic, and improved my communication skills (the last two are two sides of the same coin). As a result, I am more well-adjusted, better able to communicate, more in tune with people's unspoken emotions and better at dropping into that unique state of vulnerability that we often call love. *

Your mileage may vary.

* Actually, psilocybin mushrooms were my first psychedelic so I credit them with that more than LSD per se. LSD was like the icing on top, really.

> As a result, I am more well-adjusted, better able to communicate, more in tune with people's unspoken emotions and better at dropping into that unique state of vulnerability that we often call love. *

I find it difficult to call someone well adjusted when they are dependent on a hallucinogenic drug to cope with reality.

I can’t speak for the person you are talking to, but I feel the same way he does so I think I can help explain. I don’t depend on psychedelics on an ongoing basis. They taught me how to think in a different way. They are part of my education.

I’ve seen the damage that drug addiction can do, so I understand your caution. But they are nothing like addictive depressants or stimulants. The drugs are actually somewhat unpleasant while the effects take told, and you feel better from the after-effects when they wear off. You also get a lot of tolerance after a single dose. This means that the compulsive redosing behavior that leads to dependence simply doesn’t happen.

You hit the nail on the head. Once you've "gotten it", you don't need to continually re-dose psychs. You always carry a piece of the experience with you.

Let me give you an example.

A relative of mine is a drug addict. It started with light pill abuse in his late teen years. Then turned into a serious opioid addiction a few years later. There is wide debate on susceptibility to addiction in terms of things like personality or genetics and so on. Whatever the case his personality certainly seems aggressively directed at being easily prone to substance/drug abuse and to seeking it out. Once he became a full-blown opioid addict, the ability to control his general problem with addiction of course went out the window, it pretty well destroyed his life.

His mother refuses to help him get treatment via for example Suboxone, because she says that's just a crutch that keeps you addicted (equivalent to your reference of replacing one substance with another). Meanwhile, instead, the out of control opioid addiction continues threatening his life. The core of this issue is that not all substances are created equal in their consequences. Suboxone may be a form of crutch, and crutches are often very useful when you have a broken leg.

I've known a few people with opioid addictions, the only ones I've ever seen able to control it had to use treatments like Suboxone. In that case, replacing one substance with another, means regaining control over your life (while you hopefully pursue long-term therapy to permanently kick the addiction) and being able to live mostly normally.

One of those people was a fairly close friend. She had a problem with addictions over many years. Alcohol, cocaine, lighter pain killers, and so on. She was always able to walk back the addictions, until opioids. Once she became an opioid addict, there was no walking that back, it took over every aspect of her life. All of her thinking shifted to short-term obsession to fill the craving. Her entire life became a fireball of destruction: thieving, lying, anything necessary to get the next fix. When you're consumed by that addiction, there is no long-term thinking, there's no next month or next year, there's only sating the drug addiction. When the doctors began cutting off her drug access one after another, she eventually even turned to getting various prescriptions for her dogs. Then buying opioids illegally on the black market. The person you used to know, no longer exists while this is going on, they're an addiction zombie that can hardly be reasoned with (they'll say anything at any time to avoid a discussion or intervention). That whirlwind went on for a year plus, until one day she took Suboxone. I'm sure it's not for everyone, I'm sure it doesn't work for everyone; in this case, it was like a miracle. One day she was an out of control drug addict, a week or two later she was back, normal, able to think long-term again, able to hold a job and reason normally. It was almost as though the prior year had never happened. It's wild to witness that transformation occur in such a short amount of time. So long as she took Suboxone on schedule, she was no longer an out of control opioid addict. She could then pursue a long-term strategy of opioid addiction therapy. Sometimes substituting one substance for another, is about managing addiction in the relative short-term through a better process, so you can work toward the long-term goal of ending the addiction.

Your mention of susceptibility to addiction reminded me of a sad irony. The population that's among the most susceptible to addiction are those with untreated ADHD. ADHD impairs your ability to consciously choose your actions -- many doctors think ADHD is a misnomer and Executive Functioning Disorder would be a better one. It drastically increases one's stimulation-seeking behavior, since adrenaline acts as a form of natural medication. (This is why you find higher-than-expected numbers of first responders and military personnel with ADHD, and why they tend to be so calm in a crisis.)

Unfortunately, recreational drugs are a one-two punch. First, the activity of taking recreational drugs is highly stimulating in and of itself, due to its risk, which means that the simple act of taking something, anything, can become damn near irresistible. Second, the effects of many of these drugs actually do end up acting as a quasi-medication. Cocaine, for instance, is quite chemically similar to Ritalin; meth is an amphetamine like Adderall; opiates seem to act almost as stimulants for many with ADD (including me), and also help to deaden the hyperactivity a bit; alcohol mercifully slows down your thinking; and so on.

The irony then is that many drug addicts would significantly benefit from a prescription of Adderall or Ritalin, but unfortunately these medications are very difficult to have prescribed if you have a history of addiction. I understand why this is the case, but I can't help but feel sad for those who unfortunately may never get the treatment (or even the diagnosis) they need to rein in their lives.

There's replacement, and then there's using it as an actual fix:

http://time.com/3399433/quit-smoking-psychedelic-drugs-acid-...

The poster seemed to conflate the two.

On the face of it, I supposed it depends on the relative downsides of the two substances.

You would either take one or two high levels and stop both or a low level lsd over a few months and then stop both.

Reminds me of antibiotics. Kill some over connected pathways vs Kill some bacteria.

How many people have died from LSD? Surely some addictions are better than others. If he had replaced his alcohol addiction with chocolate wouldn't that have been better?