"This is to neuroscience what the Higgs-Boson was to psrticle physics"

[john cena]

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/apr/11/lsd-impact-brain-revealed-groundbreaking-images

 

 

The drug can be seen as reversing the more restricted thinking we develop from infancy to adulthood, said Nutt, whose study appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

 

Using three different brain imaging techniques, named arterial spin labelling, resting state MRI and magnetoencephalography, the scientists measured blood flow, functional connections within and between brain networks, and brainwaves in the volunteers on and off the drug.

 

Carhart-Harris said that on LSD, scans suggested volunteers were “seeing with their eyes shut”, though the images they reported were from their imaginations rather than the world outside. “We saw many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD, even though volunteers’ eyes were closed,” he said. The more prominent the effect, the more intense people rated their dreamlike visions.

 

Under the influence, brain networks that deal with vision, attention, movement and hearing became far more connected, leading to what looked like a “more unified brain”, he said. But at the same time, other networks broke down. Scans revealed a loss of connections between part of the brain called the parahippocampus and another region known as the retrosplenial cortex.

 

 

We've got this great tool for self knowledge, yet even this very community is afraid to discuss it because of some irrational fear of "drugs". Meanwhile you take things far more dangerous than LSD like caffeine, nicotine, processed sugars, etc. The lethal dose of LSD would cost millions of dollars, yet it's somehow the most feared by the DEA. Speaking of dosages, according to what I have read, the 75mcg they used in this study is considered below the threshold to even be felt. Some users reportedly take 10-100 times that much. So really, the research has just begun. 

I feel like it is very dismissive to just say that people who use "drugs" had bad childhoods, when in reality the "drugs" can have a very positive effect and they may have came to them for reasons of self expansion, not self abuse as has been asserted countless times on the show.  Why should we limit ourselves to this single animistic brain pattern when there are potentially millions of different "modes" possible with the right chemicals? Why are you too scared to discuss it when it could be the key to unlocking peoples traumatized minds?

As someone who has been vilified on this forum for even speaking to the subject, this study vindicates my conscience. 

If there was a single drug that could cure statism, would it not be the most highly regulated substance in a state? Well, LSD by weight and penalty is by far the most regulated substance, even ahead of nuclear material.. Why do they want to keep people away from it so bad?



 

[Mister Mister]

LSD is not a cure for anything.  However, there is some evidence that, combined with the right environment, it can be very therapeutic, especially in dealing with compulsive behavior such as violence and addiction.  For mentally unstable people, and/or in the wrong environment, it can very harmful - Syd Barrett comes to mind.  At the moment, it is incredibly illegal, and hard to find.  Furthermore, whatever you get a hold of which is called acid could be any number of compounds, some of which, like 2CB, can be very harmful, and even if it is LSD, it's very hard to tell the dosage.  So at the moment, the risks outweigh the rewards in my opinion.  But I do agree that there is potential to learn a great deal from these kinds of compounds, and it is both tragic and criminal, that the government has prevented exploration in these areas. 

 

  I also agree that it is inappropriate to include these kind of substances in the same category as "drugs", in the sense that they don't exactly ease anxiety.  Most people will tell you that after a "trip", there is not an urge to use the drug again, but rather that there is a lot of new experiences to be processed.  People tend to feel refreshed and re-committed to their goals, and under the right circumstances, it can actually help with other addictions such as nicotine, as I mentioned before.  But these experiences, in the absence of philosophy, are no different than any other mystical experience, they may give the person a positive feeling about themselves and life in general, that is more sustainable than most drugs, but don't directly lead a person to accept truth and reject falsehood.  And because of all the risks I mentioned before, and the inability of mental health professionals to help us with these experiences, for legal reasons, I would strongly disagree that psychedelics are some kind of shortcut to self-knowledge or philosophical truth.

Also, what's so bad about a little caffeine?

[Matthew Ed Moran]

We've got this great tool for self knowledge, yet even this very community is afraid to discuss it because of some irrational fear of "drugs". Meanwhile you take things far more dangerous than LSD like caffeine, nicotine, processed sugars, etc. The lethal dose of LSD would cost millions of dollars, yet it's somehow the most feared by the DEA. Speaking of dosages, according to what I have read, the 75mcg they used in this study is considered below the threshold to even be felt. Some users reportedly take 10-100 times that much. So really, the research has just begun. 

 

I feel like it is very dismissive to just say that people who use "drugs" had bad childhoods, when in reality the "drugs" can have a very positive effect and they may have came to them for reasons of self expansion, not self abuse as has been asserted countless times on the show.  Why should we limit ourselves to this single animistic brain pattern when there are potentially millions of different "modes" possible with the right chemicals? Why are you too scared to discuss it when it could be the key to unlocking peoples traumatized minds?

 

As someone who has been vilified on this forum for even speaking to the subject, this study vindicates my conscience. 

 

If there was a single drug that could cure statism, would it not be the most highly regulated substance in a state? Well, LSD by weight and penalty is by far the most regulated substance, even ahead of nuclear material.. 

 

 

I appreciate you sharing the study, but you are not making arguments, and are making claims about this community and the credibility of the show that you haven't even provided evidence for.

[john cena]

LSD is not a cure for anything.  However, there is some evidence that, combined with the right environment, it can be very therapeutic, especially in dealing with compulsive behavior such as violence and addiction.  For mentally unstable people, and/or in the wrong environment, it can very harmful - Syd Barrett comes to mind.  At the moment, it is incredibly illegal, and hard to find.  Furthermore, whatever you get a hold of which is called acid could be any number of compounds, some of which, like 2CB, can be very harmful, and even if it is LSD, it's very hard to tell the dosage.  So at the moment, the risks outweigh the rewards in my opinion.  But I do agree that there is potential to learn a great deal from these kinds of compounds, and it is both tragic and criminal, that the government has prevented exploration in these areas. 

 

  I also agree that it is inappropriate to include these kind of substances in the same category as "drugs", in the sense that they don't exactly ease anxiety.  Most people will tell you that after a "trip", there is not an urge to use the drug again, but rather that there is a lot of new experiences to be processed.  People tend to feel refreshed and re-committed to their goals, and under the right circumstances, it can actually help with other addictions such as nicotine, as I mentioned before.  But these experiences, in the absence of philosophy, are no different than any other mystical experience, they may give the person a positive feeling about themselves and life in general, that is more sustainable than most drugs, but don't directly lead a person to accept truth and reject falsehood.  And because of all the risks I mentioned before, and the inability of mental health professionals to help us with these experiences, for legal reasons, I would strongly disagree that psychedelics are some kind of shortcut to self-knowledge or philosophical truth.

 

Also, what's so bad about a little caffeine?

Thanks for adding that information. By no means take any substance that you are not 100% sure of it's contents, of course. If you know someone with a gas chromatography–mass spectrometer, that would be great. 

 

That's what I wanted to say in this thread really, how much of a shame it is that substances like this are so dangerous because of prohibition!

 

You are also 100% dead on about it being useless without philosophy. It's a tool, like anything else. 

 

Combined with philosophy and therapy, which can sometimes be nothing more than good empirical and rational friends, I believe is a powerful combo stronger than anything tool we have to date. Provided you have proper environment, the chemical could be a quite literal Red Pill.

 

Telling someone that their entire life they have been fooled is extremely difficult. However, if you can give someone a firsthand temporary experience showing that all of their senses in their totality without the subconscious trauma filtering out what is painful, they can quite clearly see it for themselves even if they don't wish to. There are two ways that can go. Way one, you let go of your ego, you lay back and let your senses feel empirical reality. You learn a lot about yourself. Way two, you resist all the way and continue trying to deceive yourself through your own ego. You learn nothing but more fear and pain. This is where "bad trips" come from. Usually a result of being in an environment where you have not been totally honest with the people surrounding you. There is nothing physically going wrong in your brain, except that you have legitimately scared yourself by looking at a true reflection of your ego and how objectively terrible it is. 

 

 

 

Not an argument!

1. LSD is potentially the most useful tool ever found for psychotherapy (as per the study)

2. LSD is completely harmless unless you buy millions of dollars worth or you are already dangerously psychotic

3. The people of this forum are not going to ingest millions of dollars worth nor are they likely psychotic

4. Therefore, the fear of LSD is completely unfounded

 

Can we really not get past the statist propaganda on this subject? Yes I know I didn't make an argument, because I wanted to hear the communities thoughts. 

 

I'm definitely not saying that the effects of prohibition haven't made acquiring LSD safely practically impossible for the average person. I'm saying that this is ammunition to use against proponents of the drug war and the state altogether, that they have kept something schedule 1 illegal for decades that has the potential to help billions of people. 

[chromanin]

Can we really not get past the statist propaganda on this subject? Yes I know I didn't make an argument, because I wanted to hear the communities thoughts. 

 

I'm definitely not saying that the effects of prohibition haven't made acquiring LSD safely practically impossible for the average person. I'm saying that this is ammunition to use against proponents of the drug war and the state altogether, that they have kept something schedule 1 illegal for decades that has the potential to help billions of people. 

 

I partially agree with you, the potential benefits of psychoactive drugs are tremendous. There are cognitive barriers and conditioning which are difficult to break, even for high IQ people. Then again, maybe high IQ people just need that little extra push whereas a low IQ or otherwise limited individual might not know what to make of their new experience (as described by RoseCodex above). There's also this tendency by pro-drug folks to ignore the variation in users, dose, and psychoactive mechanism. We know psychoactives can interact with some people to cause psychosis, we know many of these school shooters were influenced in some way by psychoactives (including prescribed SSRI's!).

 

My position would be to shift the discussion towards responsible use and context. If everything is above board then we can inform people of how to safely use drugs, what drugs are safe, who shouldn't use drugs, ensure better safer drugs are available etc. On the flip side, when people are properly informed of the dangers they can be held more responsible. Maximize benefits and mitigate costs. Just leaving everyone in cognitive dissonance land and denying all the positives, I don't see how that works out well.

[Wuzzums]

Scientific studies which basically boil down to "we took a bunch of fMRI scans" trigger me.

 

tl;dr version: "We don't know what is going on, we don't know how it's going on, we don't know what the consequences are, we don't know what advantages or disadvantages are, HOWEVER we do know that that SOMETHING is going on compared to when nothing is going on."

 

It's a well established fact in the research community that the more brain scan images you put in your study, the higher media coverage it's gonna get. People love colorful pictures. Decades worth of hardcore maths and physics to study the universe and not a single eyebrow raised from the public up until the moment someone decided to literally photoshop some images and suddenly people went mental.

[john cena]

I partially agree with you, the potential benefits of psychoactive drugs are tremendous. There are cognitive barriers and conditioning which are difficult to break, even for high IQ people. Then again, maybe high IQ people just need that little extra push whereas a low IQ or otherwise limited individual might not know what to make of their new experience (as described by RoseCodex above). There's also this tendency by pro-drug folks to ignore the variation in users, dose, and psychoactive mechanism. We know psychoactives can interact with some people to cause psychosis, we know many of these school shooters were influenced in some way by psychoactives (including prescribed SSRI's!).

 

My position would be to shift the discussion towards responsible use and context. If everything is above board then we can inform people of how to safely use drugs, what drugs are safe, who shouldn't use drugs, ensure better safer drugs are available etc. On the flip side, when people are properly informed of the dangers they can be held more responsible. Maximize benefits and mitigate costs. Just leaving everyone in cognitive dissonance land and denying all the positives, I don't see how that works out well.

I can assure you that if you appeared to someone as a legitimate doctor, told them they had no control over their "mental illness", and gave them LSD, it would probably not end well either. I don't know if the SSRI's themselves are to blame, or the dangerous rhetoric the people taking them are told. Like that there is a chemical imbalance and they can't control it. 

 

 

 

Scientific studies which basically boil down to "we took a bunch of fMRI scans" trigger me.

 

tl;dr version: "We don't know what is going on, we don't know how it's going on, we don't know what the consequences are, we don't know what advantages or disadvantages are, HOWEVER we do know that that SOMETHING is going on compared to when nothing is going on."

 

It's a well established fact in the research community that the more brain scan images you put in your study, the higher media coverage it's gonna get. People love colorful pictures. Decades worth of hardcore maths and physics to study the universe and not a single eyebrow raised from the public up until the moment someone decided to literally photoshop some images and suddenly people went mental.

Well blame the state, not these scientists. It's highly illegal and almost impossible to conduct a study on. That's all I'm saying, this is great for a drug legalization argument.  You don't think this warrants more study at least?

[Wuzzums]

Well blame the state, not these scientists. It's highly illegal and almost impossible to conduct a study on. That's all I'm saying, this is great for a drug legalization argument.  You don't think this warrants more study at least?

I think it warrants actual research fullstop.

The state is indeed to blame for these types of studies but not in the way you'd think.

 

These state funded academics get a certain budget per year to conduct their research. If they happen to be more effective and spend less than their alloted money, the budget for the next year is gonna get cut accordingly. So in order to fix this they have a quick brainstorming meeting at the end of the financial year in order to find some clever way to spend the extra cash.

 

This is how and why this type of "pointless" research is done.