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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

I don't really know if the effects can be attributed to psilocybin here. It describes general well-being improvements after a social event that was also a retreat focused on a mutually enjoyable activity which was psilocybin exposure. I'm curious if this happens also in writer's retreats, furry or anime conventions, group hiking, or meditation retreats.

The lack of even an attempt at control makes it a very weak paper overall and I wouldn't attribute it to support anything.

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Anecdotally, I experienced an effect that was indistinguishable from an MDMA roll toward the end of a 3-day Landmark Forum session I attended a little over a decade ago. I had been a somewhat regular MDMA and psilocybin user during my early 20s.

What took me by surprise was I felt the company/teaching itself was largely bs, but something about how the whole room of 100 or so people seemed to come together in a giant ball of positivity put me in that state, and it was an immediate shift. It was so overwhelming on the drive home that I had to pull over a few times to get my bearings. I woke up the next morning still fully rolling, and it wasn't until lunchtime that it really abated.

Something in the punch/coffee? Seriously. Did anyone else attending have a similar experience?

I actually wondered if somehow I had been slipped something, but I hadn't eaten for hours by that point and had been sipping out of the same water bottle all day.

Many attendees were acting fairly happy/goofy but it's just one of those things that would be inappropriate to bring up or ask. I attended a follow-up 3 day advanced seminar to see if I could recapture that feeling and left disappointed.

This stuff falls under what I would consider the 'cult' umbrella and I think one of the reasons why such orgs are so successful is because group empathy sessions are really powerful. Unsure if my experience itself was in essence an MDMA flashback or if MDMA (and psilocybin) is a conduit to what group empathy can achieve.

Landmark takes the cult-like tactics to a whole new level. Avoid at all costs.

Can confirm, I know someone that's spent over $100k on landmark.

That is really sad

I've noticed that whenever I describe my MDMA experiences to others, I feel a faint a faint version of the effects, sorta like a flashback. I chalked it up to something about the effects being associated with those memories, so activating the memories also activates the effects.

I get a light version of it whenever I do yoga, meditation, or get a deep tissue massage. This was different, like a min 150mg dose - intense body rush, light sensitivity/nystagmus. And it just went on for about 16 hours or so, impairing my ability to function.

I too feel this. More me, the feeling is about regular strength but much more brief

Fasting can increase awareness. The rationale behind it is that,

1.) your immune system isn't bogged down by foreign matter, plus

2.) your mind needs to focus to find food in times of scarcity and avoid predators.

I wasn't fasting per se, it was about 8 hours since I had eaten (it was 9pm and lunch ended at 1).

Sleep dep, food dep, and states of high emotional arousal are textbook brainwashing techniques.

The MO of a cult introduction is to love bomb the victim and/or to build up tension and then release it cathartically. This is often enhanced by deliberately disturbing food and/or sleep cycles.

The superficial content is not the message. The feelings are the message.

These events are designed to make people leave on a high, so they imprint on the source and keep coming back to it. The high is far more effective than anything that's said, whether or not it makes sense.

Oh for sure. In addition they created their own lexicon used in the context of the teachings and did all sorts of compliance exercises (making the room repeatedly stand up, forced us to call friends/family to confess and recruit).

The thing is, I went in knowing all this. I knew exactly what they were doing, knew the background of the org, and went anyway to support a couple friends. It still got me right at the end, as I was sitting in my chair thinking how ready I was to go home, within the second to last hour of the 3 day retreat.

I didn't come away thinking better of the event, but I was damn curious about the psychological impacts of group empathy, how the room had almost attained some resonant frequency of emotional harmony and I was swept up in it.

During fasting the immune systems is dialed down significantly. If anything, the increase in awareness may be due to a reduced CNS inflammation.

I mean if you think about it the effects from the drug are caused by the human brain, thus the human brain should be able to recreate something similar to it if it wanted to. Sort of like how people report having “acid flashbacks”

/my uneducated theory

The tricky thing about psychedelics is that they have been described as delivering the "placebo effect on steroids". That is to say, the set and setting prior to ingestion directly effects outcomes, so if you want to maximize your chance of seeing some consistent results, you would want to prime people with certain expectations and knowledge prior to them taking the psychedelic. If you were to control it against an active placebo (people often use an amphetamine), the participants would be able to deduce they aren't actually taking a psychedelic.

I like to call it psilo-cebo for mushrooms, or psyche-cebo in general.

The approach should be to use different types of psychoactive drugs to multiple pseudocontrol groups. Have a control group have placebo, then another LSD, another Ketamine, another a synthetic cannabinoid, another mushrooms.

That way even if the effects are genuine of psilocybin it will pop from the rest in the results, if is in psychedelics in general LSD will pop as well, if it's anything "mind exploring" Ketamine will pop too, if it's just getting high what makes things better, the cannabinoid will join into the results.

And obviously this has to be done on people without drug experience, because the effects are rather easy to tell apart by drug users.

"obviously this has to be done on people without drug experience, because the effects are rather easy to tell apart by drug users"

Interestingly, the subjective experience of having a "high" seems to be somewhat learned through prior experiences. Testing on people without drug experience may not be the accurate test one might want and assume.

This is most likely because of the function serotonin has on neurons and neural networks. 5ht is a g protein coupled receptor, and in the case of serotonin what happens when you hit one with an agonist is you set a cascade of second messengers intracellular that modify how the cell responds, such as adjusting the protein expression of different ion channels and/or receptors. This can lead to a greatly increased sensitivity to stimuli that already exists.

participants were able to deduce it because it's not at all the same experience in any way shape or form. Your use of the term "placebo" is extremely incorrect in this case.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_placebo

Anecdotally, I follow a big con each year-DragonCon-and the warm fuzzy feeling during and after seems real to me. Part of it is the planning and build up the months leading to it, and seeing old friends and stuff, and part is being part of a cool, time boxed community.

I would love to see a study of this effect.

Definitely have the same feeling after QuakeCon or music festivals as well.

Concentration of a lot of really powerful soft tissue that makes neural electricity.

Or, just human interaction is good. Either way, we belong in communities. This is what is meant by "love each other". Stronger in packs, etc.

It's a good question.

There are a lot of ways that "psilocybin therapy" is more similar to behavioural/experiential (rehab, Camino del Santiago pilgrimage, etc.) than pharma therapy.

I'm not sure that those things are an appropriate control. But yes, there's been very little serious research. It was near impossible to do until just recently.

Some more solid old research on iboga and some new, somewhat more mature research happening with mdma.

I think the difference here is experiencing an entheogen. A psilocybin experience can literally restore your spiritual faith. I have experienced different conventions and different drugs, and the after-glow of entheogenic drugs is different than the after-glow of a con or shared group experience.

experiencing an entheogen. A psilocybin experience can literally restore your spiritual faith

Interesting point. Given individuals temperamentally and experientially predisposed to depression and who report they know no other cognitive condition then entheogen exposure could supply the experience of alternate (positive) states of mind. Assuming these individuals report they want to entertain these induced positive states then you could imagine a therapeutic regimine which would involve use of psilocybin-like compounds coupled with presentation of social interaction simulations through 3D VR headsets outfitted with strategically placed EEG monitoring probes. If simulations are shaped to elicit negative reactions which subsequently are detected then audio queries can be inserted such as 'is this an appropriate reaction? What would be a better reaction or strategy?' which could aid individuals in shaping their own cognitive behavior. - does sound like a personalized interactive AI date-sim plus often the only winning move is not to play :-)

or just take an appropriate dose of mushrooms with good friends every couple of weeks.

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