Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

Comment by carapace | Hacker News Reader

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Set and setting.

I believe it's important to realize that the "magic" is not in the mushroom.

> "Of course, the drug dose does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. The nature of the experience depends almost entirely on set and setting. Set denotes the preparation of the individual, including his personality structure and his mood at the time. Setting is physical — the weather, the room's atmosphere; social — feelings of persons present towards one another; and cultural — prevailing views as to what is real. It is for this reason that manuals or guide-books are necessary. Their purpose is to enable a person to understand the new realities of the expanded consciousness, to serve as road maps for new interior territories which modern science has made accessible."

~ Timothy Leary, The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting

Drugs like LSD and psilocybin are the chemical equivalent of banging on the side of the box to make the TV work.

With proper set and setting you can get profound effects from e.g. a sweat lodge, or even just hyperventilation (I'm referring to Leonard Orr's Rebirthing breathwork. I would normally link to the wikipedia article on it but that's been defaced by capital-S Skeptics and reduced to a note crapping on the whole thing as "discredited". My dad actually worked for Leonard Orr for a bit and what he was doing was pretty profound whatever it was.)

On the one hand, it's great that the vindictive hysteria around psychedelic drugs is calming down, on the other hand I wish the scientific establishment had a little more epistemological sophistication when it came to investigating the inner world.

To sum up, the cure is not in the pill, it's in the set and setting. The pill just gives you an excuse. You can also use e.g. hypnosis, prayer, drumming, dancing, sweat lodges, or weird breathing, to effect the change you want, just to name a small sampling of the available modalities.

It's amazing how strongly people can have an opinion about something they have clue what they're talking about.

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/17/4853

Synopsis: no, actually the drug has a pretty powerful impact on your brain and is the main driver of the effect

First, thank you! That paper is awesome, actual Scottish science. Cheers!

Second, I would never begin to deny that "the drug has a pretty powerful impact on your brain", because that would be stupid.

Third which "effect"? Your linked study "sought to investigate the acute brain effects of LSD in healthy volunteers", we're discussing psilocybin for major depression. So... what's up doc?

What I'm saying is that getting high is not the best available therapy for depression.

First of all, whether "getting high", as you put it, is or is not the best "available" therapy for depression is debatable, and not known at this time. Ketamine has definitely shown to be much more effective against certain kinds of depression than therapy, and much quicker acting, and I wouldn't doubt that psilocybin might also be.

But more to the point, you were asserting that the effects of the drugs were secondary to the therapy associated with them, to which I strongly disagree with. The action of the drug itself is main driver of its therapeutic potential, specifically that of "breaking" normal heuristic patterns of activity, suppressing others, and allowing more inter-region connections and plasticity to flourish where non existed before. Most people can't do that very easily, if at all , with just therapy, meditation, diet, and exercise or whatever. However, I -CAN- do that, quite easily and without effort, without the guidance of a therapist or anything else, by simply eating some mushrooms and letting them do their thing.

The pill is just an excuse? To do what? To chant and dance around? I don't think you know what psilocybin does to people.

> The pill is just an excuse? To do what?

To heal.

> I don't think you know what psilocybin does to people.

I think I do.

> I would normally link to the wikipedia article on it but that's been defaced by capital-S Skeptics and reduced to a note crapping on the whole thing as "discredited".

a lot of Wikipedia is like this

Yah... "Planet Without Laughter" https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/smullyan.html

Are you speaking from hands on experience with psychedelics?

I don't like to give details on a public recorded forum, but yes, you can assume I am experienced in re: psychedelics.

I'm also experienced in non-chemical, uh, procedures that have a dramatic and reliable healing effect. In this connexion I should mention, I was cured of depression by a single intervention by a hypnotherapist. I've talked about it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20371167

Good to know. What I find interesting in such conversations is the differences of opinions experienced people have about from where "the magic" is coming.

> To sum up, the cure is not in the pill, it's in the set and setting. The pill just gives you an excuse. You can also use e.g. hypnosis, prayer, drumming, dancing, sweat lodges, or weird breathing, to effect the change you want, just to name a small sampling of the available modalities.

I feel certain that you have far more background (than my zero) in these other fields, but despite fairly extensive reading on the matter, I have encountered very little that leads me to believe (and much that opposes the idea) that the magnitude of what can be practically achieved by the common man with these other techniques comes anywhere near to what can be achieved with an afternoon of reasonably organized psychedelic usage. To be clear, this isn't to say that I oppose such practices, or claim they have no value - I believe the exact opposite of that, they seem to also be tremendously valuable, but my intuition tells me that psychedelics have way better bang per unit of effort.

The whole problem (I'm pointing out) is that the bang is too potent and can go wrong. The kinds of insights and healing you get from e.g. Core Transformation Process or Feldenkrais Method may take longer but they're much safer and unlikely to have negative side-effects.

It didn't sound like that's what you were pointing out, at all.

"I believe it's important to realize that the "magic" is not in the mushroom."

"To sum up, the cure is not in the pill, it's in the set and setting. The pill just gives you an excuse."

This makes it sound like the mushroom is little more than a placebo.

> is too potent and can go wrong.

Potent, or too potent?

Can go wrong? Sure, so should be used with caution, like anything else powerful.

> The kinds of insights and healing you get from e.g. Core Transformation Process or Feldenkrais Method may take longer but they're much safer and unlikely to have negative side-effects.

Are the insights and healing similar?

Is the amount of effort similar?

Is the likelihood of receiving insights similar?

Is there trustworthy evidence suggesting high risk (likelihood and magnitude) of risk with psilocybin, and trustworthy evidence that there is lesser risk with <x>?

I feel fairly certain the answer to most of these questions is something like: "We don't know, for sure, because there is very little evidence outside of anecdotal stories."

> It didn't sound like that's what you were pointing out, at all.

Sorry. I'll try to do better.

> This makes it sound like the mushroom is little more than a placebo.

Yeah, kind of. It has an effect, that's undeniable, but whether that effect results in a therapeutic outcome or a bad trip or just a fun time is not due the chemical. It's not like e.g. aspirin for headaches (FWIW that's still pretty mysterious too, but at least it's consistent.) The result of taking psilocybin depends on the "set and setting" (and a lot of other factors no doubt.)

> Can go wrong? Sure, so should be used with caution, like anything else powerful.

Look this is weird for me to say but no, I object to the normalization of getting high as a way to treat depression. There are other methods that are effective and safe.

> Are the insights and healing similar?

> Is the amount of effort similar?

> Is the likelihood of receiving insights similar?

> Is there trustworthy evidence suggesting high risk (likelihood and magnitude) of risk with psilocybin, and trustworthy evidence that there is lesser risk with <x>?

> I feel fairly certain the answer to most of these questions is something like: "We don't know, for sure, because there is very little evidence outside of anecdotal stories."

One of the strange and frustrating things is that every kind of healing modality with which I have personal experience (including Reiki, Feldenkrais, NLP, EFT, hypnosis, and others), every one of them is somehow "unreproducible" by at least some mainstream scientists, to put it mildly:

> Reiki is a pseudoscience,[1] and is used as an illustrative example of pseudoscience in scholarly texts and academic journal articles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiki

> There is no good medical evidence that the Feldenkrais method confers any health benefits. It is not known if it is safe or cost-effective,[2] but researchers do not believe it poses serious risks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldenkrais_Method

> There is no scientific evidence supporting the claims made by NLP advocates and it has been discredited as a pseudoscience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming

> EFT has no benefit as a therapy beyond the placebo effect or any known-effective psychological techniques that may be provided in addition to the purported "energy" technique.[3] It is generally characterized as pseudoscience and it has not garnered significant support in clinical psychology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_Freedom_Techniques

> The use of hypnosis in other contexts, such as a form of therapy to retrieve and integrate early trauma, is controversial within the medical or psychological mainstream.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnosis

And so on.

I know from personal experience that the five things I just mentioned are pretty profound healing modalities. I have some theories, but really I don't know why science can't verify this stuff (at least so far.)

> Yeah, kind of. It has an effect, that's undeniable, but whether that effect results in a therapeutic outcome or a bad trip or just a fun time is not due the chemical. It's not like e.g. aspirin for headaches (FWIW that's still pretty mysterious too, but at least it's consistent.)

Agreed, somewhat. It's not due just to the chemical.

BUT, it doesn't necessarily follow that:

> The result of taking psilocybin depends [primarily] on the "set and setting" (and a lot of other factors no doubt.)

Set and setting is undoubtedly important, and it's possible that they are paramount, but I see little evidence to believe this is the case and that similar (see above) results can be practically achieved with alternative approaches, and much that contradicts it. But to be clear, at a bare minimum one needs to be sitting in a quiet, (preferably) dark room, not at a rave. This much seems obviously true, and in line with what you're saying.

I think where we agree is that a certain state of mind MUST be achieved in order for the magic to occur. Where we differ is how (the various ways in which) that can be achieved, and to what degree, in reality (which for us to know, would require substantial study, that has yet to take place).

> Look this is weird for me to say but no, I object to the normalization of getting high as a way to treat depression. There are other methods that are effective and safe.

Agreed, if you word it like that, but I don't think that's a fair wording. Just "getting high" isn't the only option.

> One of the strange and frustrating things is that every kind of healing modality with which I have personal experience (including Reiki, Feldenkrais, NLP, EFT, hypnosis, and others), every one of them is somehow "unreproducible" by at least some mainstream scientists, to put it mildly

I intensely share your frustration with the excessively scientific materialist style of thinking that comes up with these "unreproducible therefore it's false pronouncements.

We need to get everything down on paper and start sorting it out, and then form opinions. And this applies to everything, not just psychedelics. If only people could figure out this incredibly simple idea.

You know, I wish more people were able to have reasonable conversations like you, imagine how wonderful the world could be if a way could be found to recognize and spread this character trait.

You're too kind. :-) I appreciate your conversation and reasonableness too.

And I agree with you,

> We need to get everything down on paper and start sorting it out, and then form opinions. And this applies to everything, not just psychedelics. If only people could figure out this incredibly simple idea.

I like to think we're getting there, but only time will tell, eh?

Warm regards

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