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Comment by codingslave | Hacker News Reader

Almost everyone that I meet who has done considerable, or even moderate, amounts of psychedelics has clear and obvious personality changes. Personality is a poor word to use, but something like their disposition, "hippy" attitude is extremely common. So much so that I think these drugs cause long term physical damage to peoples cognitive faculties. This is completely anecdotal, but I have seen it so many times in my life that I wouldn't touch a psychedelic with a ten foot pole. And yes, I have tripped on acid, but only once, and do believe that while in some ways it was earth shattering, in many ways I would take it back if I could.

The most productive and successful people I meet almost always have been mostly sober their whole life, exhibiting balance and clear headedness. If psychedelics are doing any good, it is because those who are taking them are already so broken, any kind of change could be construed as positive.

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I can see that being the case, being intoxicated (no matter by what) for an extended period of time is going to shape the way you see the world (like any other experience in life).

Anyway for me personally the one time I tried acid it was more like: hey cool experience, it feels like I am experiencing things for the first time, kind of like a child. While the trip itself did not really change me a whole lot it made me reexamine things in my life and consider how I approach things and made me more aware of how my emotions and my brain in general can have an effect on my perspective. In that it was a teachable experience and any change in my personality after that experience was due to me having experienced the world in a different way even though it only was once.

I am not planning on taking it again anytime soon though. I can also see how it might affect others differntly, anyway they are mind altering (even if temporary and the changes can be permanent, like a holiday or a car crash and with my limited experience I can not speak to how it could exactly go wrong but I suggest anyone in here respects their mental health and reads up on all this before considering to try it)

Success and productivity are slippery terms, and even more relevant you don't really now the history of psycho-active chemical consumption of your acquaintances.

Those are big claims you're making, and I doubt you could find much actual science to back up them up.

Remember, psychedelics are not a new phenomenon in human society...

Growing up I was friends with a large group of people deep into psychedelics, I watched them transform from who they were before the drugs to who they were after. These are people took the drugs seriously, the dosages, their "set and setting". Society tells us that anecdotal evidence is false, but thats brainwashing. I can see with my own two my eyes what drugs do. Most likely certain areas of people brains are dampened or flattened by these drugs, and so if youre and anxious person, maybe you experience "relief", but that comes at a cost.

Despite the downvotes from the insecure "muh meds" types, that's pretty much exactly what everyone notices about users of psychedelics. Despite meeting hundreds or thousands of people who trip, I've never seen a single example of an overtly positive change in people's lives, and seen hundreds of examples of obvious negative changes in people's lives being associated with their psychedelic use and the mush-headed hedonist lifestyle it seems to engender.

I've also seen dozens of people who had life altering psychotic breaks from taking LSD and Mushrooms. By contrast I've only known two people who have lost their marbles the old fashioned way.

As for microdosing: zero of the people I know who have done it, including myself, envinced any obvious performance improvement.

What cost?! If all you have is anecdata, then here's mine: Psychedelics have been the catalyst to some of the most profoundly positive experiences in my life, and any changes that I've experienced afterwards were wholly positive. Same with my group of friends who did the same. There.

You won't take my anecdotes seriously, just as I won't take your anecdotes seriously, so I hope you see now why this kind of hyperbole is worth nothing if not backed up by peer-reviewed science.

Are you seriously suggesting I'm brainwashed because I asked for sources? Jesus man, you're very far gone.

Not suggesting brainwashed, just that its very common for people on hacker news and elsewhere on the internet to argue against being able to extrapolate truth from subjective experiences. It's common that we are told that what we see have seen cannot be the full truth because we "don't have enough data". "But thats a topic for another time

The thing is that it maybe true that your definition of "positive experience" fits my definition of what I have seen as the before and after. Many of these people who have become more hippy like would also describe that as a positive thing. But like I was saying, what I have seen has been that psychedelic effects on peoples brains are often deterministic, many people who have taken too many end up with very similar psychological profiles and dispositions. Clearly there is something going on there.

In some ways, part of the angst in my post arises from all of these different news articles popping up that talk about the positives of psychedelics, when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

Well, the problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is unreliable and often subject to bias. It is just not very useful to a reader because they are missing both the context of the experience and the political predisposition of the writer.

If you already have a certain mindset you are going to dismiss evidence to the contrary, too. You may just be confirming your opinion by only acknowledging positive samples. For example, you may not even know about the subset about psychedelic users who are perfectly normal and "un-hippy" because they do not tell you about their drug use. Likely, if you observe habitual and open drug-use you may also encounter a specific personality type.

>when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

I also would dispute that, drug use in the US is not that uncommon, especially under millenials and university graduates. So it is quite likely that both readers and authors are familiar with psychedelics.

I would rephrase your statement "the problem with anecdotal evidence..." to "a common problem with anecdotal evidence...". As I see it, and increasingly see it, people are told that their anecdotal experience carries little value. I think that in reality an intelligent individual can extract huge swaths of truth from anecdotal evidence. The backlash against that kind of thinking is really a form of thought suppression and brainwashing. We are told that speaking in generalities, stereotypes, etc is dangerous and flawed. This type of thinking falls under, in some ways, a political effort to people stop from coming to their own conclusions about why people act the way they do. Its along the same line of forcing politically correct speech.

The caveat here is that real hard science needs real hard data, not anecdotal evidence.

But you can come to your own conclusions about virtually anything including conspiracy theories if you are relying on subjective observations and your own interpretations. You should be free to do so but it should come with a strong disclaimer so others don’t take it as truth. That’s the value of cited research. It lets you assume some credibility and objectivity in the claim.

People on the internet probably have a better background in statistics than you since you're suggesting your hypothesis using one qualitative sample based entirely on your memory with no variance or power calculations can be used to infer anything about the general population. You're just stating an opinion which leads to pointless rebuttals. Psychadellics allow you to revalue things, if you use that opportunity to group think with a subculture instead of finding your own better values then that is more of an issue with the user than the psychadellics effects in general.

I work as a machine learning engineer, and have a masters degree in applied math, I know statistics. Thanks for the subtle you must not be smart cheap shot though

I think the dosage is important. Ask someone in a psych ward in a hospital how often they get patients with psychosis from weed alone. Yes, there are more deadly drugs, but it is naive to believe there aren't any significant risks and repercussions.

Seriously? This is first I hear of something like this. Any sources you can share on the subject?

Here is what I found through searching. [0] Another author did also warn against the assumption that increased THC smoking -> increased psychosis chance. [1] It needs to be studied more, but so far we have found some possible links.

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0...

Weed well known to be linked to psychosis

Of course it only happens to some subset of users and the link is far from clear

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/03/19/7049482...

Anecdotal evidence just tells you you can't translate individual cases to larger distributions, or at least, that should be the case. Especially when it comes to psychedelics for some reason, this is just dismissed as 'oh well, bad stuff happens sometimes'.

I've seen the same as you, in myself and others. It might not be true for all people, but at least a significant, noticeable subset of the people who use psychedelics do fall into that 'category'. Like minds unraveling themselves, almost becoming ghosts in their vague perceptions of themselves and others.

And I think your perspective is justified, just by listening to the stories people tell about the experience itself, not by doing statistical analysis per se. Users tend to speak about feeling one with their surroundings. In group settings, boundaries disappearing between people. People becoming more sensitive to ideas and 'vibes'. Do it often enough, and you'll become more and more biased towards the things you surround yourself with while under the influence.

But here's the thing.. that stuff will pull you under if you're not careful.

I believe there are some flaws in your thinking, or at least the way you have articulated it in your comments. Hopefully this is received less as criticism, but more so as fine tuning or improvement of your ideas...

> Almost everyone that I meet who has done considerable, or even moderate, amounts of psychedelics has clear and obvious personality changes. Personality is a poor word to use, but something like their disposition, "hippy" attitude is extremely common.

How many samples have you based your conclusion on? Did all/most members belong to one common group of people (your subsequent comment suggests yes). Is it safe to assume all individuals will adopt this style of thinking, and to a similar degree that you've experienced?

> So much so that I think these drugs cause long term physical damage to peoples cognitive faculties.

May cause (I suspect you know this, but just making note of it).

> The most productive and successful people I meet almost always have been mostly sober their whole life, exhibiting balance and clear headedness.

How do you know they have been mostly sober their whole life?

> If psychedelics are doing any good, it is because those who are taking them are already so broken, any kind of change could be construed as positive.

This is a theory, with little if any supporting evidence (I suspect you know this, but just making note of it). My point is, stating theories as facts can alter the mental models of those who read your comments (which is likely the sort of thing going on with the group of friends you observed)

> Society tells us that anecdotal evidence is false, but that's brainwashing.

Here I very much agree.

> I can see with my own two my eyes what drugs do.

What drugs can do, as you've interpreted, in a very small set.

> Most likely certain areas of people brains are dampened or flattened by these drugs, and so if youre and anxious person, maybe you experience "relief", but that comes at a cost.

It comes at a cost sometimes. How frequent this is, and to what degree, is unknown. (I suspect you may know this, but here I am less confident).

> its very common for people on hacker news and elsewhere on the internet to argue against being able to extrapolate truth from subjective experiences.

Very much agree, and this thinking is so clearly incorrect that is frustrates me to encounter it so frequently among rational people.

> But like I was saying, what I have seen has been that psychedelic effects on peoples brains are often deterministic, many people who have taken too many end up with very similar psychological profiles and dispositions. Clearly there is something going on there. In some ways, part of the angst in my post arises from all of these different news articles popping up that talk about the positives of psychedelics, when neither the people writing the articles, nor those reading them probably know very many people with any experience.

I agree. These are powerful substances, are often taken far more lightly than they deserve, and opinions expressed on forums often lack epistemic humility.

The question is also how the cost compares to other potentially damaging activities and circumstances - including work stress as an employee, work stress as a founder, someone who is bankrupted by the health system, someone who abuses more common and popular drugs like cocaine and alcohol, and so on.

These are all at least as likely to lead to "deterministic" behavioural and emotional changes, not to mention direct physical health issues.

In a broader context, your implication that psychedelics are somehow uniquely dangerous because you disapprove of how they have affected a sample of people you know personally really doesn't stand up to wider scrutiny.

Your argument here largely boils down to, "you are biased because anecdotal evidence." If you knew nothing about heroin, and then watched a bunch of people get addicted, you wouldn't say, "Well were they rich or poor? Could have been a biased sample set."

Kind of. I'd say it's more than you are making an assertion of fact (conclusive truth) based on anecdotes that consider an insufficient number of variables and samples.

If you were instead expressing an opinion I'd have no complaint. Perhaps I've misinterpreted you?

I think there's good reason people are downvoting you, but a valuable nugget implicit in what you say is that we do not have, and may never have, a correctly representative sample of the general population (in terms of psychological profiles) taking these drugs on order to get accurate data on psychedelics.

what part of a "hippy" attitude equates to physical damage to peoples cognitive faculties?

I've come to the conclusion, and so have many around me, that the stereotypical "hippy" attitude is in many cases a deterministic result of taking psychedelics. Its impossible for me to point to a number and say, look it changed by x amount in that part of the brain. In my own experience, I could describe what is known as the "afterglow" of psychedelics as a calming anti anxious, anti "negative emotion" feeling. But the feeling is accompanied by an odd feeling that somewhere in your brain is just not firing like it used to.

What specific things do your friends say or do, that you consider a hippy attitude?

Belief that reading stories to water will confer health benefits to those who drink it is prevalent in Boulder.

Thanks for sharing. I felt amused and I think that is silly. I am still wanting to hear from the person I asked, because I want to understand what he or she specifically thinks a hippy attitude is. His or her idea might be different from yours or mine.

Such beliefs are obviously silly, but they may also be true (placebo effect, power of positive thinking, etc). We lack sufficient data to form a very strong conclusion one way or the other, but we certainly have some.

  placebo effect, power of positive thinking

Bit of a jump from 'reading stories to water.'

What matters is that one believes it.

I think nicotine has been found to be the only substance that measurably increases performance.

Of course it is often countered by negative effects on respiration. Cannot find the study anymore, but it was very interesting.

I don't think you know about drug use of successful people because they know how to hide such consumption. But it is pretty clear that there is an enormous demand in the higher echelons of society.

A lot of the journals about positive effects on nicotine was sourced by tobacco companies in order to sell tobacco and has iffy science that hasn’t been reproduced.

I wouldn’t bet my health on it.

Do you wish you could take it back because you are assuming that the negative traits you see in others are manifest in you, or do you perceive those traits directly? Or was it more a poor experience that makes you want to take it back?

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