"I walked in as an Irish, Catholic, Republican lawyer. I walked out still Irish, but everything else was gone."
[1] - For example, at about 18 minutes in to his interview here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YRzu8ar1ew
I've heard many personal accounts of single-dose MDMA transformations of an intensely powerful and lasting nature. One friend once compared it to the mystical idea of "walk-ins," souls that take over the bodies of people who have lost the will to live. This person said they walked into a club as one person, took MDMA, and walked out feeling as if a different soul now inhabited their body with an entirely different personality and emotional structure. The change was permanent. Luckily it was almost entirely positive. The "new person" was more sociable, compassionate, outgoing, and optimistic. The person who told me this story used MDMA only a few more times, and none of these subsequent uses produced anywhere near the same experience. It sounded like some kind of one-shot neurological rewiring.
The stuff I've heard about MDMA is far more dramatic and lasting than the transformative psychedelic stories about LSD, psilocybin, etc. that I've heard and read.
BTW I said the transformation is usually positive because while I haven't closely known anyone with a horror story I have seen a few from a distance. MDMA is not strongly physically addictive, but it can be psychologically so. The negative cases I've seen seem to involve the development of a psychological dependence causing heavy use. MDMA can be neurotoxic if taken repeatedly and heavily, and heavy long-term use can be very damaging.
It's a drug that I think could be beneficial if used with care but can be very dangerous to abuse. The radical transformation stories make me really wish it were studied more. We should really try to understand what the hell is going on there.
I had a similar experience with ketamine a month ago. At first I became detached from the situation I was in (severe accident) and was able to evaluate it analytically. Then I became even more detached (and I stopped getting meaningful signals from my senses) and I understood I was a being and my current self was one incarnation of that being. Then I saw all the choices I had made in my life and how they contributed to who this incarnation was and it gave me great insights and relief about my current life.
Sadly when I came to I lost a lot of the clarity. I think I'm still the same person I was mostly, the only striking difference is that I laugh a lot more and my laugh has changed. Also the idea of my own death has become comforting and soothing even though I don't really believe in reincarnation.
As mind blowing as you think that was, IMHO its nothing like the experience of candy-flipping...(MDMA+LSD)
Remember all things in moderation, I have lived to tell the tale, although I can't remember what tale I'm supposed to tell.
It feels like every time I tried a new drug, it helped me understand myself more. Don't understand me wrong, I don't take a lot of drugs. My experience is limited to one night on MDMA in Ibiza, one night on shrooms in Amsterdam and a whole lot of nights on weed.
I seem to suddenly understand everything about myself and the world when I smoke weed. It really puts me into the "Everything is connected and everything repeats itself"-mood, which I've heard from LSD trips. That all that's happening is supposed to happen, doesn't matter if it's objectively or subjectively bad or good right at that moment.
MDMA made me insanely happy about myself and my surroundings for an hour. It was like feeling pure joy and happiness for an hour straight. Although I took it in Ibiza, I spent the night listening to music on the couch in the AirBNB I had rented. I read that a lof of people feel depressive and blue for a couple of days after taking MDMA. For me, it was different - I felt content and insanely relaxed for a couple of days, but in a very good way. Still 100% in touch with the world, just happy. But that effect went away in an instant which I've really felt. Went from smiling and being happy back to normal. Not sad or depressed, just normal.
I have a huge admiration and respect for psychoactive drugs. I would never consider taking Heroin, Crystal Meth etc., but I would really like to try LSD and other substances. It also seems like THC helps me live with ADHD better than any official, legal pill.
All that being said, I don't really know how to handle drugs in the long run. I'm in my early twenties, so maybe it's normal to have a feeling of being lost and not knowing what I should really be doing with my life. I live in a nice apartment, earn good money, ride a beautiful motorbike and have a wonderful girlfriend. But except for my girlfriend, none of these things make me truly happy.
If I don't smoke weed for a long time, I seem to loose myself. But the same can be said for when I start smoking too much, too frequently. I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but reading your comment made me think about that topic :)
I disagree there. There isn't much that compares to a deep k-hole. Perhaps a DMT breakthrough experience. But LSD and MDMA doesn't compare*
* Assuming "normal" LSD dosage, if you are talking about eating a strip of tabs (1000ug) ok, then all bets are off, but at that level the MDMA isn't going to be able to do much
The problem is self-reporting as a good change means nothing here. What you really want to know is if the original person, knowing the full transformation, would prefer the outcome. You don't get that because the person making the self-report is the person that already underwent the change.
For example, if I had a pill that made you a serial killer, but nevertheless very good at it, enjoying it, and totally lacking empathy for your victims, you'd probably self-report as being happier too. But the you of today would be horrified.
If I held conservative Catholic views, that's probably what MDMA would seem like. I'd be happy with who I am with strong moral values, but there'd be this scary pill out there that could make me give all that up, destroying what meaning my life had previously. It's not much consolation that I'd later self-report it as a positive change.
Lobotomies used to be justified based on self-reported outcomes. Is there anything objectively different here?
This works for the lobotomy example as well, if they have their memories in tact from before. You can assume there's a decent chance you'd feel better if others with similar problems felt better, and you have to weigh that against fairly objective external changes which you might find abhorrent, fairly obvious in the case of a lobotomy.
Perhaps medical ethics should make a point that the type of changes you could experience should be outlined, but there's a general pattern that I think can be defined and understood enough for informed consent to be given or withheld. Like most medical treatments, it would get defined in terms of risks and probabilities rather than certainties. You risk coming out with weakened religious beliefs, etc.
If something change your values in a way that the old you would not accept, are you still you?
First there's a huge selection issue, many won't ever want to take it.
Since the drug has a strong effect you cannot easily design a placebo study - people would still know if they got a sugar pill or the real deal [0].
Anything that's a highly unusual experience is likely to be rated as significant.
Very hard to design a good study.
I believe the reported efficacy would greatly go down with increased availability. If alcohol was a mostly illegal schedule 1 drug in most of the world I could see similar narratives forming around it.
[0] btw I think that's a very underappreciated factor across all kinds of research. Even with regular medical drugs. Don't see it brought up too much.
"This scary pill out there that could make me give [strong values that I'm happy with] up, destroying what meaning my life had previously. It's not much consolation that I'd later self-report it as a positive change."
summarizes my thoughts about MDMA perfectly.
Conservatives aren't scared of change, they're scared that they themselves, and others around them, would come to fully accept it. The fear is that this completely invalidates their current worldview rendering existence meaningless. It's the fear of being wrong about life on an emotional level.
It's only applying to current political charged issues.
I think the biggest problem with how many people see MDMA and psychedelics is uncritically accepting the first things that come to mind after taking them, that feel oh-so-true, or that they "give" you insight. It's still you, you're not God, you just have a whole lot more feelings for a bit. (But, depending on what walls you have up intellectually or emotionally, having those feelings take them down for a bit can be very productive.)
Ibogaine is also a fascinating drug to look into. It’s frequently used as a treatment for heroin and other severe addictions. The trip is multiple hours long, and described as life-altering - many people describe vivid recollections of the worst moments of their lives, but stripped of the painful emotions associated with them. But the drug essentially interrupts the addiction cycle and requires those pathways inside your brain, with some pretty impressive rates of remission.
I knew a girl whose story was fairly unpleasant. However, given her trip report (its multi-day length, with paranoia and hallucinations in particular) I believe that was not pure MDMA, it probably contained Bromo-DragonFly (one of the most dangerous and longest-acting psychedelics) or something like that.
Sounds like PCP plus meth, DOB plus meth, or some other nasty combo. Making cheap nasty "disco biscuits" out of meth plus random thing is apparently pretty common. The meth could account for some of the paranoia and strung out feelings.
Gotta love prohibition and how it encourages the production of "bath tub hooch."
Because of that, if halve the users become more outgoing and halve the users less so, for a net improvement of zero, what you’ll hear still can usually be in what they self-report as a good way.
As an extreme thought experiment, if 99% of users become depressed reclusive hermits directly after use and the others feel hugely improved, all self-reports you hear will be positive.
(Though we have to control for how many new users entering the market, how many shut-ins it has already produced, etc. But looking at very rough data about MDMA use and depression prevalence per country, there's doesn't seem to be any correlation. For example Netherlands is at a constant 4% since 1990, but use went up from ~2.3% to 8.4% from 1997 to 2018. https://www.statista.com/statistics/632401/ecstasy-usage-in-... and https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health#depression )
I remember back in the days on a certain research chemicals subreddit where people were raving about the "borax combo" -- a mix of 4 or 5 substances that were indistinguishable from MDMA and had no crash like MDMA and the ingredients themselves were not known to be neurotoxic.
I think they just looked at the MDMA receptor affinity and just combined substances that would roughly match that receptor affinity.
Also as far as I know, MDMA is only neurotoxic because of it being processed by the liver and MDMA injected in pig or rat brain was not supposed to be neurotoxic.
The worst thing to do from what I've read is take more MDMA right after a dose wears off to try to prolong the high. That's where you get into neurotoxicity.
I recall a way around that (other than by just not taking MDMA at all, obviously) is to take an SSRI (like Prozac) at some point after rolling, which would bind to the reuptake transporters, preventing dopamine from doing so.
See also the recent anti-trans panic, and rigid enforcement of gender roles and gender expression more generally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment
I don't remember the experiment, I think it was on Radiolab, where something like 10 non religious people took LSD and 9 ended up becoming priests from the influence of their experience.
The idea of "God" and religion seem to arise more readily from experiences at the extremes of human consciousness. Whether it be trying to make sense of the chaos and death on one end or the unimaginable beauty and interconnectedness on the other.
Rigorous religious rituals and benevolent paternal overwatch can help bring comforting structure and an answer to "why?" to those living through hardship just as the idea of an omniscient watchmaker can help make sense of overwhelming, awe-inspiring realizations about the complexities of reality from a peak psychedelic experience.
Drugs change people. Personal experience, mostly negative.
I get that some people can smoke a joint every few weeks and not have an urge to over due it.
Probably 60% of extended family is hooked and either dead or living with a dead beat.
Whether someone is an addict or not is not about the addict's (or anyone's) opinion. Addiction and dependency are very well understood from a scientific viewpoint.
It's not only “some” people that don't overdo it. A very large percentage of the population has used marijuana and yet you don't see most people in the conditions you described.
I highly doubt the root problem of your 60% of extended family is drugs (assuming we're just talking about stuff like marijuana or psychedelics). If they feel like they need to relax all the time, maybe it's because they're subject to too much stress or are (maybe hereditarily) oversensitive to stressors, in which case they might need some help regardless of drug use.
One last thing (but the most important), psychedelics are decidedly NOT addictive (again, following scientific definitions). In addition to not causing an urge and immediately causing tolerance that lasts for weeks, they're very well-known for ending decades-long addictions and all sorts of negative behaviors (including overuse of marijuana!). At high enough doses, they are nothing like a typical marijuana high. You really have to experience it to understand just how deeply and positively they can change one's life. Ironically enough, they might be a great option for your family to try (under proper guidance) in order to get out of their situation.
What finally got her off drugs?
My parents started a custody battle to have her children taken away. That got her act together.
Her husband got clean after getting 2 strikes in a 3 strike state. 25 years for his next arrest.
My adopted daughter came to us because her biological mother wouldn’t get off drugs. Kept failing to pick her kids up from school.
The number of people I see that say "oh I just use it to relax" is quite high. It is a way to ignore what is in front of you and not have to deal with it. I understand the idea quite well.
What twists me on all of this is the blame shaming of people who say 'do not do that junk'. When they can clearly see the chaos these choices bring. Choices are made one at a time and little choices eventually turn into big nightmares or happy times. Not everyone ends up there. But many do. I know a decent number as well.
Then once lets say you get 'cleaned up'. You now have to re-learn how to cope with life. As the usage of whatever is how you used to do it. But that is no longer there. So it is quite an emotional roller coaster for everyone involved.
I don't mean to say that any substance is completely innocent: in fact, I believe that pretty much any action significant enough to have a positive result can be used in some way to create a negative one. Volatility is dangerous, and drugs often cause volatility. But total reductionism is going to get pushback.
IIRC, they are pretty sure that schizophrenia is a combination of genetics and situation. I'd not say that we need to be guided and supervised (as this would just keep the black market around), but rather better informed and more research on mental disorders. The vast majority of folks that do LSD don't wind up with schizophrenia, and IIRC you have to be predisposed to schizophrenia to develop it after LSD.
I'll note that it is pretty rare to develop schizophrenia later in life as well.
Source: Ex developed schizo-affective disorder, later being diagnosed as schizophrenia. He was in his early 20's when diagnosed, but showed symptoms well before that I could only recognize in hindsight. I've personally done LSD more than 35 times, but completely unsure of how many times that is and that doesn't include other hallucinogens I've done. I, personally, do not have schizophrenia and am 42.
Or perhaps being a latent schizophrenic, he was drawn to LSD/drugs in general. According to a study done in 2006[0] 90% of schizophrenics in the US used tobacco products in 2006, while only 20% of non-schizophrenic people did.
How do you explain this? It’s either “schizophrenic people use drugs at a higher rate” or “tobacco causes schizophrenia”. I’d bet heavily on the former.
I think there's two categories of drugs and it's harmful to ignore the distinction. I don't know enough about the specifics of all drugs to nail down the definitions precisely but a description will suffice. One category is "psychedelic", the other is opiate. Marijuana is a federal schedule 1 drug in the US, right next to heroin. If we don't train society to differentiate between these two then unsuspecting young people who experiment with marijuana illicitly will say "all those warnings were over something harmless. I'll try heroin next." The war on drugs is perpetuating weed as a gateway to more dangerous drugs. The THC and psilocybin family has its risks in the same way that alcohol and nicotine have their risks; the opiate and methamphetamine family should not be confused or taken lightly by anybody.
Was a really nice guy, seemed fully functional, yet he completely sank his business from whatever he was taking.
While, you write that you don't want to make assumptions, it sounds like you are already set in thinking there is just two issues.
There is much more than just the black and white world you created with "psychedelic" and "opiate."
Reading books changes people, just look at how many people credit "Atlas Shrugged" as the book that started their journey to become libertarian. Similarly, we see each and every day how effective is propaganda.
We see how hard it is to kill xenophobia, bigotry and other biases. But we also know how these develop, how people get radicalized by terrorist organizations. Yet the same thing happens albeit with a lower intensity and without a focused purpose when people watch/read/consume whatever the community/culture they are embedded in throws at them.
4chan changes people. QAnon changes people. The antivax hysteria changes people.
Psychedelic drugs change people, yet the opioid and crack epidemics were not about LSD, they are about an alcohol++. They are about legal painkillers, yet no one is really advocating banning painkillers.
But is this not yet another a worldview (literally, a "view" upon "the world") itself, but of a somewhat different sort? If you really think about it, how is it, literally, that you (seem to) ~know that "conservatives" "are" "so terrified" of taking drugs...and not just that they are, but also "why" they are?
Yes, I fully realize that you were "just" "making a generalization". But my curiosity is, what is this "making a generalization" thing that people do? Like, what is it really, when you boil it down to its actual implementation?
More generalized, to the broader world, how is it that (as one can observe every day, in extremely large quantities, in forum conversations on any platform):
[Person A] knows(!) what [Person B]/[Group B] [[thinks/believes/likes/hates/wants]/[did/does/will do (in the future)]/etc] (in general, or, specifically regarding: [Topic A]/[Topic B]/[Topic C]/[/etc])?
Again, they're "just" "generalizing". Fair enough- it's literally true, after all. But the interesting thing is, where does the foundational knowledge (facts?) contained within these generalizations come from? How can so many people know enough about the world and how it works such that they are able to accurately predict not only the the thoughts of other people (who are all simultaneously doing this same thing), but also past events and future events (including the massively complex chain of causation for each)?
If one was energetic, you could probably take this thought experiment a little deeper, encompassing the entirety of history and current world realtime events involving all persons and systems on the planet, where multi-dimensional recursion and paradoxes and what not would start to arise, and perhaps other interesting questions, like:
- How frequently (percentage of the day) do each of us engage in this activity?
- Might errors occasionally arise during this process (sometimes resulting in paradoxes, or explaining other paradoxes)?
- Might this activity have effects in the physical world?
- What is reality, really, if you sit down and think about it as hard as you can for a really long time (under a "normal" state, and when on 5 grams of mushrooms)? Is it as it seems? Is it as described on the telly? If it differs, where/how, and to what degree?
- Does any of this matter in the real world? Why or why not?
Humans are surely many orders of magnitude smarter than animals, but how is it (implemented) that they are so much smarter? So smart that they can read minds, predict the future, and even know(!) that which is unknown: what humanity itself (the sum of all peoples on the planet) is or is not capable of in the future (much of which depends on future scientific discoveries of that which is not known in the present)? How is all of this computation implemented?
lol, just kidding, this is all just one of those crazy "woo woo" ideas that came to mind on a mushroom trip one time. It's "just" chemicals, maaaaan (as anyone who has studied logic and epistemology would correctly conclude). Now that I think about it a bit more, conservatives actually are rather uptight folks, aren't they! I'm one of them, so I should know.
Conservatism believes, fundamentally, that existing institutions are necessary for promoting the general welfare. What conservatism fears is people looking for meaning in themselves, finding it and then withdrawing from the social institutions - leading to a general collapse. It links in very neatly with a world-view where meaning is to be found externally to the self.
It isn't anything to do with the fixedness or flexibility of moral truths. Conservativism as a philosophy can handle extreme morally flexible if the institutions require it to survive.
Religion is fine as long as it is theirs. A conservative christian generally isn't ok with conservative Islam, even though so many things are similar (women at home, no LGBTQ , etc). School is fine as long as it doesn't teach the wrong things. Other Christians are fine so long as they aren't OK with some things. And so on.
Yet, in general, institutions that force one to help pay for another's life aren't considered good, even though things like a healthy safety net (welfare system) promote the general welfare of peoples.
Lately liberalism has taken more extreme and authoritarian views (compelled speech, forced equality of outcomes, use of violence against opposition).
If this article is correct, I think we will see a shift of both parties to a more libertarian public face, even though the people in power will still want to retain their power (whether moral or economical) through authoritarian policies.
I think the article conflates liberal values with libertarian values, which is a common mistake to make if you don't know the subject and the history of the name (liberal vs classic liberal vs libertarian).
There's no magic pill for happiness or "rightthink" and assuming that one side (conservatives) are against drugs because it changes people is really wrong.
If you look at the history of the conservative party, you'd see they were very much progressive in moral and social issues.
And, in many cases, they still are.
It's dangerous to approach this topic at all, but I would sincerely argue that modern trans-activism is by far the most visible example of this dynamic today. This is anecdotal, of course, but the only enforcement of gender roles that I am personally exposed to comes from this community. If I don't believe in gender identity, and say so publicly, I am liable to lose friends. That strikes me as cultish and regressive.
MDMA was by far the most profound personally, and has made me a happier person overall. I've never fallen back into my old ways of thinking and am much more comfortable with myself.
But the first time is the most helpful and profound - once can really be enough, though I can understand why someone would want to take it 1-2 times a year just to keep it fresh in their mind.
They just sort of boil everything off. You get down to the core of who you are, and realize that the anxiety you feel is either completely irrelevant and useless, or based on something you absolutely have control over.
The first time I tried both of them (not at the same time, obviously) was in my late 20's. I now know that I need a reset every 5-10 years, just to take stock in who I am and what I'm doing.
It really is phenomenal, the things your brain can do with a little help.
Ayahuasca is on my list, but I haven't been brave enough to do that, yet. Apparently it's more of a visceral, base high. I'm afraid that coming that close to killing my ego would be a bit too much.
A single MDMA experience broke me out of my shell. It's hard to describe how profoundly it changed my life.