Johns Hopkins Launches Center for Psychedelic Research
hub.jhu.edu
hub.jhu.edu
Seeing this center open brings tears to my eyes.
She has tried meditation but I don't think it's been very effective for her. And we are in Australia and so cannot sign up for the John's Hopkins study. Can anyone recommend another effective way to reduce her anxiety?
[1] The center's operational expenses for the first five years will be covered by private funding from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation and four philanthropists: Tim Ferriss, author and technology investor; Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress; Blake Mycoskie, founder of the shoe and accessory brand TOMS; and investor Craig Nerenberg.
That awareness is probably what is necessary to really get these things started and accepted socially which translates into regulatory acceptance. Sadly everything is a popularity contest.
There is so much info about many different issues that can be treated, and the info coming from the doctors / scientists at Johns Hopkins that's in the book, is awesome.
I find it is a great bridge for those who are in the medical community / or lean towards not believing there is therapeutic uses.. scientific proof from JH is proof.
However this book is also extra beneficial to those who already believe or understand some of the 'magical effects' - as it gets into some of the studies and some of the methods - and opens the doors to furthering the use in many ways.
You can probably name some "capitalist hippies" with money and influence.
They might also be useful on their own merits, as in, if you have severe depression and eat a bunch of mushrooms maybe you won't be so depressed anymore. Given the current state of anti-depressants, it certainly seems worth a shot.
You are correct. The first usages of MDMA (the defining ingredient in ecstasy) were in therapy.
If you have severe depression (or severe anything really), I would not recommend experimenting without an experienced guide. Think of it like like scuba diving or sky diving: first you learn how with those who already know.
There is a video of her speaking about what happened many years later
I think a huge part of having a guide the first few times is just so you experience it all being OK, so that if on a solo jaunt it's starting to not be OK you've got some understanding that it'll pass as, physiologically, so does the substance.
Once upon a time, I chopped up a bag of dry mushrooms and mixed them with some general tso chicken. I really love my general tso.
This particular meal occurred during a point in my life where I was near my lowest. I was depressed, burned out, reeling from failure.
For about an hour, the world remained as it always had. Then, I started periodically feeling something akin to an electric shock pass through my body. Electricity is only a useful explanation in so far as how long the pulses lasted. On and off in an instant.
The shocks were like momentary flashes of comfort. In the time between seconds when those flashes occurred, the chair I was sitting on was softer, my clothes were more comfortable and I felt a glow of appreciation for the people in the room with me.
I decided to set a watch and eat more general tso on the hour.
Eventually the pulses blurred from spikes to rolling hills. I realized they happened when I was stimulated by something beautiful. The mundane became beautiful. The contrast and saturation of my vision increased. My brain streamed my visual frame buffer through a pixel shader that made everything photogenic, perfectly tone mapped. It was like HDR for the eyes.
Beauty is something I had never had a refined eye for. Stuff looked "neat". This felt like a visual sense that perhaps existed normally in other people, but for me I was only borrowing.
Then my alarm went off. Time for more chicken!
While I was eating, we started watching dune. I was stunned by how colorful David Lynch's dune is. Vibrant purple and green matte backgrounds. I would have told you the movie was all desert tone yesterday.
I shut off my alarm until the movie was done.
I ate one more scoop of general tso after that. Then, I laid down in the dark. I was able to visualize incredibly complicated 3d shapes. I could persist those shapes, rotate, scale and modify them while keeping the image at the forefront. This capability was clearly an enhancement. I got up, opened blender and "printed" some of the things created entirely mentally.
After I laid back down, I thought about my childhood. I thought about frayed relationships and trauma I had experienced. Every negative experience I could come up with bounced off simple epiphany after simple epiphany.
Prior to this, I was under a crushing amount of stress. I felt like I was being hunted, under attack in a world devoid of merit. I was misanthropic.
I thought about the situation I was in, and determined I was fine. Everything is going to be okay. We're all bouncing amidst a manifold, influenced by each other. The whole of humanity, even the crabs pulling at our feet, is beautiful. Quite a few people try to pierce the manifold to transcend the chaos. Maybe we'll never do it? It's valuable to try regardless.
The evil in my life became re-framed as force that might send me towards the boundary. Approaching the boundary is the goal.
Even if I fail at everything, I'm better for trying, even after death.
In the 1950s, before the term “Silicon Valley” existed, a handful of engineers at the tech pioneer Ampex were approached by Al Hubbard, the “Johnny Appleseed of LSD.” And with his help, they found that dropping acid could make their jobs easier.
“[Hubbard] wanted to turn on the best and brightest and have the wisdom trickle down to the populace,” Pollan said. “Engineers who were working on chips found LSD very helpful in imagining a structure as complex as a computer chip. Before there were computers, designing a computer chip was much harder! It was a three-dimensional structure, layered, and you had to hold an incredible amount of information in your head.”
The Ampex engineers started a nonprofit called the International Foundation for Advanced Study, giving LSD to people like inventor Doug Engelbart. His first under-the-influence invention was a toy for toilet-training boys, but Pollan pointed out that it was only after this experience that Engelbart did the work he’s most famous for: Inventing the computer mouse, the graphical user interface and key components of the internet.
“Engineers, unlike scientists, deal with irreducible complexity,” Pollan said. “There’s so many variables that, instead of reducing a problem to simplicity like scientists, they have to find patterns in a very complex space. That’s what LSD does — it helps you find patterns.”
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/16/17358484/michael-pollan-how-to...
Personally, I have very limited technical skill when tripping. I'm a semi-professional musician, and I can keep up with folks, but I don't think I sound better or worse. There are a lot of interesting aesthetics that you can pull from that kind of visual hallucination, but IME it's not super "realistic" or "rational".
I've gotten a lot out of psychadelic drugs but the realizations are usually far more poetic than practical.
The longer-term revelations I've found have more to do with realizing that, say, a lot of my relationships have been validated by caring for my partner because I didn't get a certain level of care growing up, and that I've probably worked to find partners who need a certain amount and kind of care... so as long as I keep doing that I will probably keep failing in those relationships.
That's an example of something I realized in my last session, and it holds up well even now that I'm sober. It was also something that I have been working though over the last couple of years, so it's not like big astounding fact... it was just really brought home because it feels (once again, maybe just to me) much more inviting to really examine those kinds of thoughts and conditions in that setting.
On the other hand, I can't program / do calc / do about anything technical... when I look at designs while sober it's all wingnuttery with obvious flaws.
You might have a different experience
After coming down I thought it was probably some nonsense that my brain dreamt up, but I analogized it as a 2D surface of a 3D sphere and it makes complete sense. Drawing a circle on a sphere and calling one side of the line you draw the "inside" is completely subjective—we just tend to call the smaller side inside. If you grow the circle to the greatest meridian of the sphere, which side is now "inside"? Is my brain on the inside and the universe on the outside, or is the universe on the inside and my brain on the outside?
I also kept seeing (when I say "see", it isn't the type of hallucination that appears like a real object in front of you, these all form in my mind's eye but are more vivid than what I can usually visualize) these grid-like, branching "corridors". I'm not sure what the best term for it would be and it may have not been 4 dimensional per se, but I don't think the way it's laid out would work in 3 dimensions. It was like I was floating in an intersection with rows (x), columns (y), and aisles (z) passing through me. A lot of this is hard to visualize when not tripping.
I'm pretty certain I know what you're talking about - your description is so accurate :)
If you still do this, can you verify that you indeed see that clearly? We assume that it's impossible to transfer any thought from the 4d mode into out common 3d mode, simply because our memory in the 3d mode isn't fit for that. Just like a flat pixelated screen can't adequately capture a 3d object. However it's possible to transfer simple forms, like a simple flat drawing or a number. You can imagine some complex 4d form, imagine a section and count something or just remember the shape. Then in the usual 3d mode you can still compute that shape using some equations, although it would take some time, and compare the result with what you've seen.
Insights on LSD also tend to be more durable. “Insights” on other psychoactives were often stanzas of gibberish the next day. No idea what the mechanism here is, but it certainly feels like LSD doesn’t derange the rational centers of thought as quickly. Maybe Johns Hopkins can tell us more in a few years.
(Disclaimer: YMMV. Don’t expect superpowers; respect the drug; dose carefully and low at first; “set and setting.”)
Very well written, and feels similar to some of my own experiences. I'm impressed by your ability to use Blender, though!
I've used blender for 16 years (rarely get paid to though..). Mind, this was in 2.79. My muscle memory is all wrong now that 2.8 has came out. It's going to take months to train myself out of old habits!
It's a travesty that acid is still illegal, but fortunately it's really easy to get. I started using it originally as a party drug, funnily enough. But it's much more than that.
Possibly the full text:
https://archive.org/stream/AmusingOurselvesToDeathByNeil203/...
> The cost of the nasal spray as of 2019 will be US$4,700 to $6,800 for the first month.
This has been a long time coming.
It looks like this time around the experiments are much more controlled and looking to get hard data rather than just "turn on, tune in, drop out".
The government (CIA) also used psychedelics in all kinds of horrible, torturous ways with their experiments.
This might be true.
I doubt that will happen to any effective or substantial degree, "science" is concerned with the quantitative and objective reproducibility. It is impossible for a scientist to fully assimilate the state of someone who is experiencing a "satori", without them either being that person or also experiencing a satori themselves. And if they achieve that, which is unlikely, they are back at square one: how are they going to relay the satori to other scientists for documentation and further research: what is there to research with regards to inner experience when the only known modes of knowledge in science are all outward?
Rather, scientists look for effects with whatever physical tools are available to them, such as changes in brain center blood flow; and then they tend to conflate the effects as the causes. IE. it's the changes in the brain causing the satori, not the satori causing the changes in the brain!
A thunderclap under the clear blue sky
All beings on earth open their eyes;
Everything under heaven bows together;
Mount Sumeru leaps up and dances.
Wumen Huikai
--- The books I refer to include Pollan's recent book (cited several times in this thread), some of Grof publications, "A Really Good Day" by Ayelet Waldman, a plethora of "reports" from people's experience on Medium, and preview on Consciousness Medicine from Françoise Bourzat.
Is taking drugs under controlled conditions something that’s especially Eastern?
That being said, I like the idea of using these kind of tools in a controlled setting for treating certain psychological issues. I hope they're careful in not getting too many people zonked out on newly created mental constructions. Though I suppose its better to be happy than depressed, regardless of the conditions surrounding it.
I think the primary common interest is the meditation aspect due to the similarities in effects, but then out of that often comes similar viewpoints on life.
> At least from a vipassana perspective, anything like psychedelics will just get in the way.
No doubt they have an effect, but in what way do you think they "get in the way"?
Also, the Buddhist lineage it sounds like you are referring to is one of many. Because you mention vipassana, I'm guessing Theravada / Hinayana. There are other vehicles that have different precepts & ontologies, e.g. Mahayana and Vajrayana.
That being said, I do firmly believe that having a solid foundation will benefit any experience in expanded states of consciousness induced by psychedelic medicines. This foundation can be nurtured and supported through myriad means such as meditation, therapy, and other forms of mindfulness-based, somatically-oriented practices.
With this foundation in place, it is not uncommon for people to reach much deeper states of meditative capacity and awareness through the careful use of these substances. This is why, within the guide communities, it's often said that a single daylong guided experience can be equivalent to attending a 1-month silent meditation retreat, or 5 to 10 years of psychotherapy.
From my personal view, there is no comparison to 'that' and getting my every day perspective closer to it. I think psychedelics can be interesting to see that change is possible, that things are not set in stone, least of all your mind, but it's ultimately proven to be no real solution (for me :) )
We're seeing this with marijuana right now. I live in a state where it's legal, I voted for legalization, and I think it's wonderful that people aren't being thrown in jail for possession anymore. But I categorically DO NOT want this shit to be aggressively marketed to the public and normalized. It is harmful in most cases. Smoking MJ is not that much better than smoking tobacco, if at all. Certainly not great for the lungs. You can get really ill from THC if you consume a lot for an extended period of time, especially if you're fat, which most people are nowadays. Long term impact of TCH on the brain is poorly understood, etc.
Now, granted it's better than alcohol in most ways. You're very unlikely to even contemplate driving a car while stoned, for example, let alone be able to do so successfully. You're unlikely to be aggressive. You're unlikely to destroy your liver by smoking weed, and so on.
But that does not mean that it should be something people just do willy nilly IMO. Same with psychedelics. I'd be more OK with it if it's legal but socially frowned upon, and all marketing is forbidden.
I'm not a fan of cannabis, but I'm living in a state where it is legal. I'm really not seeing any worse effects, I think. It's just as available to me as it has ever been... I've never not been able to find it and that's pretty common among the people I know.
Unlike cannabis, most folks I know who don't have a lot of other pathologies will quit doing psychedelics. That's purely anecdotal, but I know quite a lot of people who've worked with both these drugs.
Also, it's not the kind of stuff that markets well. It's incredibly cheap to produce... in the case of mushrooms they are easy to grow. The market is more or less already saturated, because the folks who really want that experience just go find it.
I guess my main thought is this: tripping is often quite scary, and most people who do it a lot eventually give it up for that reason. At the same time, of the literal thousands of people I know personally who've used psychedelics, none have had their lives ruined over a single, first trip.
So I'm skeptical that even if it were marketed like weed, it would actually result in a problem.
Are you able to substantiate this with evidence of some kind?
So while you can smoke weed every day and get the effect, you cannot do that with LSD or Shrooms. And you don't inhale smoke.
And my take is that that argument should probably stick to fashion and cultural issues and stay out of medical discussions.
If you are curious about the topic, I couldn't recommend the Psychedelic Salon podcast enough.