That describes my outlook after taking MDMA... anxiety has been a constant through my life, and molly showed me what it was like to not feel it. Ever since I have used that as a benchmark in my own quest for healing, and the closer I can get to that feeling without assistance, the further along I know that I am in my journey.

Of course, it's a nice to visit with molly every once in a while. But the real progress is in how I reframe life. Too bad that finding quality MDMA nowadays is so tough.

>anxiety has been a constant through my life, and molly showed me what it was like to not feel it

This is so interesting to read, because I had exactly the same experience - primarily with social anxiety.

I sat on a hill at a festival with a friend after taking MDMA for the first time and imagined just walking up to a food van and ordering food… and didn’t feel the automatic anxious reaction.

It showed me what was there, and what life could feel like without it. I found that it started a positive feedback loop afterwards, where I’d do something social and automatically steel myself against the incoming anxiety… only to feel none! It was absolutely beautiful.

I have seen borderline schizophrenia made much worse by exposure to LSD, and treated effectively after exposure to MDMA.

So, which psychedelic matters a great deal.

True hence the need for regulation and proper diagnosis.

I'd agree with this.

I've never done psychedelics (at least not the kind that are experimentally used for mental health; I did Molly once but fuck that comedown), but I spent years depressed, anxious, guilty, etc. and then I started using weed. I went a little TOO hard for a while, because it was the first time in years I'd had my body and brain giving me primarily GOOD feelings.

Which led to me ending up in therapy and actually addressing my PTSD, because then I knew that feeling shitty wasn't just how I was programmed to be biologically because something was Wrong with me.

The 'too hard for a while' is probably why these things should be done under medical supervision. I basically spent 8 months blazed out of my mind.

I mean mental health is never just one thing; in your case, weed was a gateway drug to therapy (I'm simplifying to try and keep things light). PTSD and C-PTSD are underdiagnosed or ignored a lot, I think, but there are treaments available. One is EMDR [0] that, anecdotally, was very effective in treating my GF's cptsd.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...

I want to try EMDR but I need to find someone who can adapt it to me since I don't have fine muscle control in my eyes and I used to be blind.

(I'm a statistical oddity! YAY!)

emdr at its core has bilateral stimulation, can be auditive, kinesthetic too, experienced therapists should be able to adapt it.

Not even "adapted". Tapping is a common mode of EMDR. The "e" piece is a bit of a misnomer. https://www.getthegloss.com/health/mental-health/tapping-the...

Thanks for showing me this. Gonna show it to my therapist.

> I used to be blind.

That’s awesome you aren’t anymore!

And also: wait what? It’s possible to reverse blindness?? I’m totally ignorant on the subject but I’d b interested to know more if you care to elaborate.

Legally blind, not totally blind.

I had really bad strabismus plus vision bad enough that it wasn't possible to correct my vision before I had surgery to fix my eye muscles. Since that didn't happen until I was 4, I spent my first 4 years with vision so bad my dominant eye is classified as 'can see movement' and my non-dominant eye is 'can see light'. Then I had surgery and they could correct my vision.

I'm not sure why it wasn't done earlier.

I have some visual issues related to this early period. I'm terrible with crowding [0], have no depth perception, have trouble with facial feature recognition (I recognize my loved ones based on their auditory cues), rely more on other senses than sight, etc.

My life can basically be broken down into periods based on what medical oddity I dealt with, looking back. Yikes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_crowding

> I'm not sure why it wasn't done earlier.

Giving general anesthesia to babies/toddlers can be tricky, so that might be a key reason. Our two year old recently went under general anesthesia, and luckily things started going wrong early enough that they could abort and back out without doing any serious damage. Scary situation though.

That is probably why, yes! I was put under.

I'm glad that your child was okay.

I agree.

Then there is also this: Classical psychedelics are profoundly immunomodulating. All serotonin receptor 5-HT2A activators (agonists) reduce systemic inflammation. Generally in very beneficial ways.

Systemic inflammation and depression are intimately related.

(Of course, care should be taken not to suppress inflammation when it is needed. People probably ought not to take psychedelics when fighting off an infection.)

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2015.0035...

That fits with the analogy that I use, that psychedelics are like a helicopter - they allow you to zoom out and realize that there is a path to the top of the mountain (assuming you're stuck/walking in circles). But once the effects wear off it's up to you to remember where to go

I'm writing a book about exactly the point you're getting at: that there is no better questions that get at the experience of being human than our ability to ask ourselves the following two questions:

(1) Where am I? / What the heck is going on?

(2) Where am I going to go next? / What am I going to do about it?

Sorry if this seems overly esoteric, but I really appreciate seeing applications of my thesis in the wild. Cheers

This is exactly why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications are prescribed - to help people realise what an "undepressed" state of mind feels like. Even with "talk" therapies, like Cognitive Therapy (that have proven to be as effective as anti-depressants, and actually better than it in the long term), psychiatrists still prefer to combine it and start treatment with such medications as it really helps you to understand how different you think and feel when you are not depressed.

Please note that if you are depressed it is better to start with well researched medications like anti-depressants (whose working are still not fully understood) than psychedelics. To be safe, consider shock therapy or psychedelics only as a last resort, after you have exhausted both anti-depressants and Cognitive Therapy under a good therapist and are really desperate.

> This is exactly why anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medications are prescribed - to help people realise what an "undepressed" state of mind feels like.

This is so real it hurts, I had two doctors diagnose me with severe anxiety without telling me — like they just put it in my chart thinking I already knew. And then one day I did one of those depression anxiety screens and failed so hard genuinely believing it was normal my doc, who I guess assumed it was managed, was like, “hey have you ever taken anything for mood.” And I was like “no, why would I do that?”

For literally the first time in my life I felt what “not anxious” feels like. I was in disbelief for months bracing myself for the pangs of anxiety I got in response to different triggers and… they just never came.

I am genuinely interested in this subject - Would you mind sharing what you were prescribed and if you experienced any side-effects? Are you taking it long-term? If not, how do you feel and cope after stopping the medication?

But can't that experience be had under different circumstances - like a meditation retreat, or travel to a completely new country?

Meditation practice under a guide, can rewire your brain much like psychedelics.

Not to diss on psychedelics - but there is way too much hype about it being a miracle cure for all your psychological ailments.

Psychedelics are wonderful but dangerous and to be used under the right set and setting, a bad trip can induce psychosis and my fear is people with existing mental ailments will start popping psychedelics - not paying much attention and end up in a far worse place than they started.

Hopefully it is regulated.

The same is true of some existing meds and even meditation is known to trigger psychosis and anxiety. Most antidepressants come with a warning that they may trigger suicide

Just need some overwhelming novel stimulus

This absolutely happened to me, except with a physician's prescription of Xanax rather than psychadelics. I was severely depressed, experiencing daily panic attacks, etc.

I stopped taking them pretty quickly because I'm prone to addiction, but your experience mirrored mine completely.

going by that logic cocaine and heroin should also treat depression in the same way, but they clearly don't.

Coke and heroin form a stronger dependency faster, and then you’ve created a new & very distracting problem.

Weed dependency is understated by many, but it typically takes longer to form a strong dependency, and the withdrawal symptoms are usually much milder than the other two.

So, I agree that your logic could apply in some cases… in the more typical case (like op’s) of someone stumbling into this experiential eye-opening organically, if it happens via coke/heroin it’ll probably be a much rougher road.

Edit: Probably why psychedelics work well… the experience is very different but has very weak habit-forming pull (it’s not easy to do casually because it’s an ordeal)

Well, if the reason Heroin doesn't help depression is because the body quickly adjusts to it and then you end up needing to use it just to maintain your previous baseline. If it didn't cause chemical dependence and retained its initial efficacy long term it would probably be extremely valuable.

Cocaine doesn't really help because it just dramatically increases the intensity and energy of your current state, it doesn't really alter your thinking in a way that could introduce positive thoughts not already present.

If psychedelics had similarly severe downsides then they would likely not be effective at aiding depression in the long run, but fortunately it has relatively few issues with careful use.

Various stimulants can also have a different effect, depending on one's neurotransmitter balance. For example, Adderall is generally speed to someone without a dopamine deficiency. I would imagine even crystal meth would be far less harmful with a dopamine deficiency than without (although there are still the issues with purity and dose size that would make it inadvisable to experiment).

The day we can discover what someone's exact neurotransmitter balance is, I think we'll learn a huge amount about how the brain works via that mechanism. I think if we ever reach that day, we'll also learn that there is no such thing as "neurotypical"

Having done none of these, perhaps it's something about the quality of the experience? E.g. perhaps when you do cocaine/heroin, the quality of the high is so clearly unusual and extreme that you could never mistake it for being an accurate representation of "how things could actually be" without depression/anxiety? And maybe shrooms etc aren't nearly as extreme?

Are there any examples? These drugs are very dangerous and addictive but that doesn’t mean nobody anywhere has ever had a positive long term outcome from trying them. It just means that statistically a negative outcome is a lot more likely. There are always a few outliers.

There's that Dr. Carl Hart story https://reason.com/video/2022/04/12/carl-hart-on-life-libert... that has popped up twice or more on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31145393

Those are completely different drugs, so no, that doesn’t follow from that logic.

That's my point. OP reduced the effectivenes of psychedelics down to just being able to feel good for a short while.

Well do some cocaine and you'd feel great for about an hour but nobody cured their depression that way.

I take your point, but I think the distinction is that some drugs can make you feel euphoric, but psychedelics affect you on a deeper, psychological level. You're not just feeling an absence of pain or a rush of pleasure (though that can happen, too), you're also thinking in a different mindset.

On high dose psychedelic, “you” are not thinking in a different mindset. The current “you” is completely obliterated. This is the difference between psychedelics and other drugs.