Do you feel that including drugs in the therapy was a benefit over more common dialog-type therapy? If so how was it different?

Oh yes, nitrous oxide for example lets me surface and approach traumatic events without over-whelming anxiety that blocks the memory out. I've done years of talk therapy without drugs and the problem is that it's hard to let go of my ego personality when I'm talking to another person and it also takes a long time to get a therapist up to speed about what is going on with me internally, because I don't often even know. I did MDMA therapy with an alternative/underground therapist in the 90's and didn't get much out of it because it felt like the experience conformed to her expectations. I didn't feel free to let my mind wander.

I'm not knocking dialog-type therapy or psychedelic therapy, but maybe I'm built different and as a computer programmer figured out how to use these drugs to debug myself.

Thank you - great info. Hope you keep making progress.

> it's hard to let go of my ego

This is what mindfulness meditation is best for. Drugs are just a cop out.

"Drugs are just a cop out" sounds like a massive ego talking. A tool is a tool, and there's no shame in using powerful tools to achieve a goal. Sometimes our goals might be to overcome a challenge with sub-par tools, like climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen, but most of the time our goals are simply the accomplishment in of itself, utilizing whatever tools we have available.

Very well said. Drugs are tools like anything else and can be used or abused by the user.

Why does it matter how someone achieves this? If it helps them and doesn't hurt anyone else, your view on the "correct" way to achieve it is really only you virtue signalling.

> blocks the memory out.

Not sure if this is happening with you, but please all be aware that "repressed memory" is a controversial topic and one prevailing view on this is that recalling memories that are inaccessible is actually more like injecting false memories.

I wish I knew this 5 years ago when someone close to me was accusing dozens of people of abuse, which I believed ... But they turned out to be suffering psychosis, paranoia and false memories.

No, I'm not recalling things that never happened, but rather facing things I wish I could forget

I'm curious about this as well, a lot of studies have shown that psychedelic therapy is most effective when bracketed by talk therapy -- the brain plasticity (or anti-inflammatory effects, the jury is still out) induced by psychedelics open the mind to the suggestions of talk therapy and that without talk therapy (or some kind of self dialogue perhaps?) psychedelics are not as effective.

There's a ton of free lectures on psychedelics and therapy. Ram Dass aka Richard Alpert comes to mind. Stanislav Grof is another. I can't afford to see a therapist anymore, but maybe going right to the source for free is better. I do a lot of writing too. Actually at this point I'd be surprised if I got any benefit out of doing a trip with a psychedelic therapist.

The studies are designed this way to keep the shaman in the equation when the drugs become treatments. Informal polling over decades shows MDMA is pretty impressive on its own.

We need a clinical study where a group of veterans with PTSD is given MDMA and an isolated quiet place to go for several hours. Each of them is told they're receiving a drug that cures PTSD. The placebo effect paired with the brain rewiring effect of MDMA will cure more people than any other method and demonstrate that the effect is self-contained.

I'd take the bet that MDMA + talk therapy is more effective than MDMA alone, based on the theory of action that recollection is not a read-only operation in the brain, and traumatic memories remain as such in no small part due to the intense negative emotions experienced when recalling them. By forcing/encouraging recollection of traumatic memories, while subduing the negative emotions with MDMA, the connection between those strong negative emotions and the memories are weakened.

Basically, the MDMA subdues the negative emotions, and the talk therapy forces recollection. Without the latter, you just have a pleasant trip, but I highly doubt real progress would be made against the trauma.

It depends on how much study you do before hand and how much you go into the session with intention. If you're not good at self-education then I agree a therapist as a guide is helpful.

Worst-case scenario you might just have a wonderful time for several hours and decide you'd like to do it again with some kind of guide.

Anecdotally it's very uncommon to hear about people having a bad time or even a neutral experience on MDMA in any number of settings.

> and that without talk therapy (or some kind of self dialogue perhaps?) psychedelics are not as effective.

Probably because there aren't any people there looking for specific boxes to check

Doing this in front of one of them is a horrible idea because it all gets documented. That's not a very relaxing environment tbh, it isn't a relationship where you are both on equal footing

And this all gets exacerbated if the therapist has their own issues that you aren't aware of

Absolutely. Both are necessary.

> My problem with the current push for this type of therapy is the requirment that it be done by professionals charging hundreds or thousands of dollars. […] I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit.

It's kind of sad to see that the anti-state libertarian propaganda is working so well: the problem at stake here is not “too much state”, it's that you don't have universal healthcare to pay for these professional bills and keep the rate these guys charge at a decent level.

Nobody should be forced to do their own research and risk their health just because therapists are unaffordable.

Not OP, but personally I have no problem with people going to licensed therapists to do psychedelic assisted therapy if that's what they feel comfortable with. What I would take issue with is if that becomes the only way to access something like LSD legally.

I've only ever taken psychedelics on my own, and while I've done regular talk therapy, I don't think I'd want that experience with a therapist. Taking 100-150ug of LSD at my house while listening to music, meditating, and practicing yoga should be available legally to me if I choose it. It's completely transformed my life for the better.

The argument you're replying to is "if healthcare is a right, then you don't need to go other routes."

Sort of like, "if you have nothing to hide, why value privacy?"

It overlooks the fact that, while these substances are useful in therapeutic contexts, that's not the _only_ value they have. And, even if they were not strictly useful in other contexts, that wouldn't preclude a right to use them "recreationally".

So, I totally agree with you.

I wish people could separate out complex issues like this into their 3-5 most significant constituent parts. For example: personal sovereignty/freedoms, public health implications, medicinal value, social harm/risk, cultural impact.

There are a lot of reasons to be either in favor or opposed to psychedelics, and then on top of that to support strict or permissive controls. To conflate those all into one issue is reductive and it stifles discussion and progress.

Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to get these thoughts out.

I would go one step further, being a heavily anxious person i dont think i would have had a good time with such a supervised experience. Especially given the giant influence a sitter with his framing can have on your trip. Especially looking at the horrific track record these institutions have with dealing with psychedelics.

Saying they know better/best/as the only ones is stretching the suspension of disbelief quite a bit. I am happy to fill out some sort of drug drivers license about knowing the risks and how to deal with them. But there is simply no way in hell i am letting such quacks into my trip.

edit: Since there is always the risk of someone taking this the wrong way, let me promise you that on the spectrum of "be all you can be" i am on the better half with a bunch of legal ways to go quite a lot lower at my disposal. Ways that arent closable through legislation. I would suggest focusing on some self improvement instead :)

I live in a state with universal healthcare through mandatory insurance that's 30% of my income. Guess what? The state doesn't recognize this kind of therapy, and the insurance pays out only for whatever the state recognizes (and there is no free market of healthcare insurance), so I have to pay everything out of my pocket. And it costs the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That's alright, that's new experimental therapy and it will improve, you might say. Well, they don't even pay anything for my ADHD treatment because the state says adults can't have it, it's children's disease. That's what I get for 30% of my income - nothing.

The antistate libertarian "propaganda" is working so well because it's not propaganda but the only way to get treatment. At least they let me pay for the drugs myself, I'd probably kill myself if I couldn't get them just because the state said so.

First of all, you're moving the goalpost since the conversation was about the cost of professionals, not the availability of treatment.

> The antistate libertarian "propaganda" is working so well because it's not propaganda but the only way to get treatment. At least they let me pay for the drugs myself, I'd probably kill myself if I couldn't get them just because the state said so.

It only works for the very small fraction that can pay “he equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars” worth of treatment, which means that for pretty much everyone it's literally as if state said that they cannot get them! In the richest country in the world, some people can't even afford drugs that are decades old, call that a way to get treatment.

Yes, indeed. So what's your suggestion? Nobody should get it? Same with the ADHD treatment too? That's also unavailable to many due to the prices - I pay $100/month for the drugs I desperately need, that's 10% or more of income for at least 30% of the local population where I live.

I'm not moving any goalpost. The issue is that the state won't pay for the treatment, which includes the professionals who perform it.

> Yes, indeed. So what's your suggestion? Nobody should get it? Same with the ADHD treatment too?

No, quite the opposite: everyone should get it, and to get there the affluent should use their money to help this cause, not sidestep the problem for themselves and be fine with the status quo not moving for the commoners.

The affluent are a very, very minor group here. The state policy is not in any way controlled by them. It's the "commoners" and the populist socialist parties they vote for (that have way over 30% of the parliament and lead the government) who want to and do preserve the status quo even though it's actually bad for them. They label the affluent ones, who indeed would like exactly what you're suggesting, as dangerous liberals that will destroy the traditional values of this country.

ADHD is a classic example, it's actually being discussed in the media right now - the drugs and therapy are labeled as one of the dangerous liberal ideas, the mainstream suggestion is stricter parenting, which of course includes beating the children - that's a traditional value here as well ("we survived it, they will survive it too", right?).

My suggestion to Americans - don't let the "commoners" use the state to capture your healthcare like it happened here. Countries like ours need you to develop new treatments. System like ours will never produce anything and will never move forward without your example. If you adopt this kind of system, the world is fucked.

The GP mentioned cost, but I read it as a philosophical objection to the state forcing its insertion into the activity:

> My problem with the current push for this type of therapy is the requirment that it be done by professionals charging hundreds or thousands of dollars. […] I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit.

I read this as, "I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State, especially when that set and setting costs thousands of dollars that my needs don't require."

You were the one that moved the goalposts, claiming that the lack of universal healthcare is "the problem at stake here."

And then when the person helpfully rebutted that point—no, it's not costs, but the fact that universal healthcare isn't a panacea, citing their individual experience—you complain that _they_ are moving the goalposts.

At the end of the day, psychedelics sit at the intersection of personal responsibility, medicine, and social order. We can argue whether and how they should be allowed, whether they have medicinal value, and what the impact on society is, at large. But those discussions are orthogonal to the questions about the optimal configuration of medical care and health systems.

If you want to wave the banner of universal healthcare, feel free. You might even get some of us to agree with you. But don't come into a political discussion about personal sovereignty and tell people "you don't actually need sovereignty, you just need more state."

That's just insulting.

> read this as, "I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State, especially when that set and setting costs thousands of dollars that my needs don't require."

> You were the one that moved the goalposts, claiming that the lack of universal healthcare is "the problem at stake here."

One either use a money argument and I'm allowed to refute it, or don't. But you cannot tell me I'm moving the goalpost for responding to the argument.

If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.

If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.

> But don't come into a political discussion about personal sovereignty and tell people "you don't actually need sovereignty, you just need more state."

The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out. Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.

> At the end of the day, psychedelics sit at the intersection of personal responsibility, medicine, and social order. We can argue whether and how they should be allowed, whether they have medicinal value, and what the impact on society is, at large. But those discussions are orthogonal to the questions about the optimal configuration of medical care and health systems.

The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.

> That's just insulting.

Nobody insulted anyone, please don't play the “this is offensive” card.

Thanks for the considered response. I appreciate it.

Fair play for responding to the money argument. That's fine. But redirecting that it's _only_ about money misses what I thought the actual point was. A fairer way to reframe my accusation is that the OP offered two claims, and you addressed one (money) and ignored the other, then claimed that the other (freedom) was a different goalpost. I think it was the main goalpost, to begin with.

>If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.

Agree with you. I think they are powerful and dangerous, but I am against a nanny state. We should outlaw things that have profound negative effects, such as children with developing brains taking these compounds.

>If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.

Fair point. I don't think that was the case, but I can see why it might seem like that.

>The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out.

I think you're half-right. It's expensive because the state has facilitated a black market. It would still likely be expensive due to taxes and regulation, if it were legal. Universal healthcare probably lowers costs, but I hate the argument that "because I'm not paying directly, it's free." We have that now with insurance, and it's a lie.

>Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.

Personal sovereignty is a thing. It's about autonomy and the right to choose what you do with your body and your property. There are fuzzy areas, such as where those choices might impact others or the environment, but I believe in it as a fundamental right, not a positive one.

>The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.

The first one explained, "I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit." Yes, they mentioned cost as a factor, but I read that as incidental to the "real" issue.

Apologies for playing the "offensive card." I put a lot of stock into my ability to identify root causes and figure out problems. If someone comes along and presupposes that I'm wrong about my framing of an issue without explaining why, that does feel like an affront. It feels like a theory of mind violation. It felt like you were claiming, "You say that you care about sovereignty, but you actually only care about access. If it was free you wouldn't be complaining." How could you know that? You're not in their head. You skipped a step, and just assumed. I'm hyper-sensitive to this type of thing. I suppose I was projecting this onto your reply to the OP.

This afternoon I was waiting for my man. 80 bucks in my hand. He sells me medicine that I know I need, but I also know is hard to get. Because the physicist thinks that he is God and that he decides who is going to live and who is going to die; he thinks that he can preach about everything.

> One must never mention "self-therapy" because that might scare legislatures into keeping these drugs illegal.

That's because it's dangerous. Even good old weed can provoke psychosis, never mind LSD and mushrooms. Case in point: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/off-duty-...

LSD, ketamine, and other chemicals seem to be working for some people. But it doesn't mean that they're completely _safe_.

> That's because it's dangerous. Even good old weed can provoke psychosis, never mind LSD and mushrooms. Case in point: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/off-duty-... > > LSD, ketamine, and other chemicals seem to be working for some people. But it doesn't mean that they're completely _safe_.

Nobody should ever be getting behind the wheel of a car, let alone the cockpit of a plane, if they have not slept in 40+ hours.

There are lots of things that went wrong in that story, at multiple points. Using it to conclude that drugs are categorically unsafe, and therefore should be criminalized, is the wrong takeaway.

I'm not saying that psychedelics should be criminalized. I'm saying that they are not just some fun toys that should be allowed to be used without medical supervision.

> Nobody should ever be getting behind the wheel of a car, let alone the cockpit of a plane, if they have not slept in 40+ hours.

Yeah, just imagine if he actually had a doctor checking on him after he used psychedelics.

The critical part of that article is that Emerson was suffering from depression for 6 months prior.

And because any sign of depression or mental illness is career-ending from a pilot, the FAA and airlines' policy turned something that might have been treatable into something much worse.

This situation reads to me like a last ditch effort to fix the depression before attempting suicide. The tragedy here is that this will only lead to stricter regulations, rather than the mental health reform this industry needs.

Well, psicosis is like gravity. I have not experienced psicosis, but I have experienced episodes of psicosis. The first time was when I had a little accident where I broke a glass with my forehead. The second time was when I was awake for 3 days in a row.

This is something that would quite easily kill other people who ventured into it.

Recommending it is not a safe and good idea.

At the most elemental level How can a person obtain medical grade pure LSD?

Further people have widely different reactions to the drugs mentioned, Making it into a cocktail is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps not for you, and perhaps not for a few others but the odds are against anyone who gives it a try.

Our current level of technology cannot even predict how a single person will react to one of our many anti-depressants. Here try this for a while.

" Dont like, doesn't work, lets try a different one. " (repeat until something works or you run out of drugs).

I am not advocating anti-depressants over the drugs you mention above necessarily. I have some faith that progress can be made in the realm of chemistry and medicine there.

I am saying dont do this on your own kids.

There are some that clean you can have great insights, magical experiences and some orgasm if you choke yourself nearly to death. Not quite death, just before.

Given the cocktail above, self-administered controlled strangulation might be safer.

Virtually all LSD that is sold is pure. The synthesis is well known and it's so cheap there is virtually no incentive for adulterants. Obviously some level of regulation would be better. But it is not at all difficult to acquire such a thing.

Yeah, and the Ehrlich test agent is hyper-specific, so very easy to test if it's legit or a potentially harmful analog.

Reagents only test if what you are looking for is there. They don't tell you anything about what you are not specifically looking for. For example if you have both LSD and a NBOMe (a generally undesired analog), it won't tell you anything about the NBOMe. Furthermore, it is not that specific (it reacts to indoles). So it is possible for someone to mix an chemical that reacts with the Ehrlich test with, say, a NBOMe for effect and pass it off as LSD.

I don't know if it happens in the wild, but it is a possibility. By using more reagents, you may be more certain, but unless you take it to a lab with good enough equipment (such as GC/MS), you never know.

This might happen with random sellers at raves or festivals but it almost never happens outside of that specific low quality high volume sales environment. Nobody is peddling NBOMes.

There are plenty of 4-aco synthetics out there though but those are all mostly very safe and are usually sold as mushroom/psilocybin equivalents not LSD.

Maybe in the USA. Where I live I got some LSD once in my life. A guy sold me some n-bome as LSD. By the time I felt the acid on my tongue, it was too late. I saw Fenrir the Wolf eating the moon. I saw the bricks of a wall propeller outside, like in a film about dreams. But that was all. Nothing even close.

Where are you located? I thought LSD was fairly widespread in most places and relatively easily accessible.

I'm sorry strangulation is not safer than psychedelics... they have virtually no physical harm potential and have an extremely strong tolerance build up that is virtually instant which resists dependency.

>> Given the cocktail above

I really don't think he meant these combined in anyways. I don't think it'd be very ideal to mix any of them.

> Recommending it is not a safe and good idea.

They didn't. They're merely sharing their own experience.

The 'odds are against anyone who gives it a try'? What odds are those exactly? Psychedelics have an extremely high safety profile and low addiction potential. Your comparison to antidepressants is laughable.

I don't take them together. I'm not recommending it, rather I'm saying let me do it in the privacy of my own home if I want. It's a free country (US) isn't it?

How was 5-MeO compared to the other two?

I've drank ayahuasca about 300 times (I work at a retreat center). 5-meo/bufo (especially at the "full release" dose) is probably the most profound experience I've had. To go "all the way", you really have to drop every attachment and accept that you are indeed dying in that moment (the freakouts happen when people are unable to and fight it). When you come back it's like being reborn. It is good for releasing a lot of stuff, but without many sessions things tend to come back pretty quick (it's good to be aware of those first things that come back- it's primo stuff to work on in therapy or ayahuasca/longer-lived psychs to really dig in to).

When looking for drug experiences, Erowid is probably the best resource I've ever found: https://www.erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_5MeODMT.shtml

And if you screw this extremely delicate self-administered chemical mind alteration up, the rest of us have to foot the bill for the resulting care / homelessnes / crime.

I’m a huge free marketeer, but a minimal amount of regulation really goes a very long way to improving outcomes.

Plus, you don’t get a second chance fixing your own brain.

>Plus, you don’t get a second chance fixing your own brain.

Says who?

I also believe your argument suffers from an attention fallacy. We allow (and encourage) people to do quite a lot of things that are outright more destructive and dangerous. Just walk past any gambling hall and have a look inside if you need an example. There are proper addicts there driven to extreme measures by desperation and tunnel views.

edit: If you need an example, a class mate of a very good friend of mine got into the habit of spending his pay check playing slots. He is currently serving time for cocaine smuggling after he ran out of options and couldnt see any other way out. Once losses are mounting peoples sanity goes quickly. Cocaine smuggling is by far not the worst thing he could have gotten himself into. And its not like putting him in detox for a week would have cleared his mind up as long as the debt is still there.

The 'rest of us' don't have to foot any bill. Your argument is a slippery slope fallacy that leads down the path of banning anything potentially dangerous. People take risks every day and psychedelic experiences are no different.

Haha. This is funny because you're making a slippery slope argument that consists of chastising gp for making a slippery slope argument (which they didn't).

GP was just saying (given their assumptions / understanding) that it's a bad trade-off to allow people to take these particular risks. That the costs outweigh the benefits.

You, on the other hand, claim gp's (supposed) slippery slope will lead down the path of banning anything... in other words, that if we ban people from taking [these risks] it creates a slippery slope to arbitrarily banning all kinds of things with any risk involved.

While it's true you could do permanent damage with improper, reckless use of tools and get, eg HPPD, the brain is also resilient, and, eg nitrous oxide abuse takes a long time to get to a level of causing harm (which it very much can through B12 depletion), but used properly (aka taking B12 supplements) it can be used without doing damage, giving you as many chances to fix your own brain as you can afford, if that is a route you want to take.

yes, that’s what collective health care means, regardless of if it’s state-mandated, or fully private.

you, or i, don’t get to decide what’s fair to treat, or who’s deserving of treatment.

Sure. And we should outlaw motorcycle riding, rock climbing, and rodeo while we’re at it. After all, the rest of us are going to have to foot the bill when you get hurt. I’m sure we can expand that list.

I definitely don't think I should have to pay if you're being reckless, and doing something crazy like sleeping in your bed when a meteor or jet engine or toilet seat falls out of the sky and kills you. I hate freeloaders, ugh.

Yes. But you have insurance for all that kind of activity. I hope.

>> if you screw this extremely delicate self-administered chemical mind alteration up, the rest of us have to foot the bill for the resulting care / homelessnes / crime.

What are you on about? Have you actually tried any of the substances mentioned in the parent comment?

I have personally seen people become dependent on nitrous oxide. Take it away from them and they have no problem stopping, though.

Money + no responsibilities + nitrous shipped to your door is a very very very very bad combo for some people.

I've personally used all of those substances without having mental breakdowns and know many people that have as well. But I do know people that have went down dark paths with nitrous. More intense than the worst alcoholism, imo.

Lots of places will eventually get you free LSD therapy, same as any other kind of free healthcare.