Startups are betting on a psychedelic gold rush

From what I have read, following the topic for many years, the key is to have a (human) guide to help you if they see you heading in the wrong direction. Psychedelics can be thought of as emotional amplifiers; feed them bad thoughts for too long and you get a runaway spiral to permanently scarring your emotional well being. The same, however is true for good thoughts, leading to euforia, transcendental thoughts, etc., which I guess is why many folks come back to do them again (once they have rebuilt whatever reserves are needed). What any one person may experience on the same dose of the same chemical may vary wildly though, I imagine due to the levels of other chemicals already in the body, and the current emotional state.

This is why being in a safe and comfortable environment with a friend that you trust is very important!

Bad trips are intense emotional states, but can be powerful learning experiences too. A safe, loving environment can let someone work through the thoughts/emotions/memories that may underlie their depression. It makes it easier to see the negative patterns and find a different path.

Bad trips are mainly Really Bad when you're in both a bad mindset _and_ a bad setting, whether that's due to bad vibes, bad friends, being out in public, etc.

Set and setting are 100% drivers of the experience you'll have with psychedelics. You have to be in a good state of mind, and you have to be in a safe, stable environment. Psychedelics will amplify and loop experiences of your trip, so if you're in a negative headspace, that will feed back into itself. Confronting the inner darkness is a thing, and experienced users will have gone through at least one "bad trip" which they'll view as horrible at the time, but valuable because of the insight into the workings of tsensory.

There's been some recent trends among psychedelic communities in saying there's no such thing as a bad trip, only difficult ones. I tend to agree, but only in the context of responsible use.

Being depressed doesn't mean you can't prepare and manufacture a headspace and experience with psychedelics. It does mean you need an experienced guide who will be by your side through the experience. It must be someone who you trust and feel comfortable with, and who you've told the truth about your state of mind and intentions. Never try tripping alone in a negative headspace.

Much like skydiving with squirrel suits, you need a teacher and experience before you should attempt anything risky or complex. An experienced guide can also "show" interesting and beautiful and profound places in your mind and sensorium.

It's very important to draw on the experience of others, to have a sitter, and to educate yourself about psychedelics in general and the substances you are going to use in particular.

Mushrooms are a wonderful starting point, and Terence McKenna a great resource to learn about the experience of using them. They're nominally the safest and most forgiving psychedelic to start with with a huge array of people to learn from.

Ultimately psychedelics are tools that can give you access to internal perspectives. They operate on the fundamental workings of intelligence and consciousness, mirroring and modifying your neural signals into strange loops and unexpected activations, which can break your mind free from all sorts of negative patterns.

Above all else, learn as much as you can about safe use and harm reduction. A little effort and responsibility goes a long way towards guaranteeing the success of what can be the most profound and moving experiences you can have as a human.

Hm, my understanding is that powdering it tends to homogenize the stuff enough to mitigate most of those risks, assuming you do it in large enough batches.

Personally I prefer a lesser processed product than something extracted using solvents and who knows what other industrial processes/opportunity for toxic errors...