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Comment by whilestanding | Hacker News Reader

I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects. I wish I would have never taken Psilocybin. I didn't even have a bad trip, it was the ideal kind of experience a lot of people seem to strive for. I had the cliche "spiritual awakening" type of experience. It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip. I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out. It took almost ten years to slowly realize what was obvious to me before the mushrooms which is that I am not the center of the universe, and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.

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That is a very good example, and thank you for sharing your experience. It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.

If that is what you did you probably would have been more grounded. But it is absolutely crazy to deduce from this very controlled experiment with a very limited single dose of Psilocybin and a lot of therapy after that, that recreational use is ok. This experiment was designed to allow for further controlled experiments to check for Psilocybin potential for treatment of depression and the like. That is all it should be used for.

I'm glad they've taken precautions and first of all it seems they went very far to make sure everyone was safe. That is paramount.

That said, the obsession with profession psychologist or psychiatrist as some sort of necessary therapy or guidance in use with psychedelics is just baffling to me. I've tripped a lot, the first several of times of which were completely on my own with no one else around. I'm sure there are people out there who would benefit from these sort of professional guidance but it borders on naive gate-keeping to believe these people are somehow necessary for experiencing altered mental states. I fear some suffered not being able to have the chance to explore psychedelics on their own, but instead influenced by the long traditioned history that medical/mental professionals introduce. It's like they're forcing their own color on the experience.

> It should be noted that in the original article the test subjects (1) take Psilocybin only once and (2) are followed from this dose by hours of therapy by a professional psychologist.

Virtually every modern psychedelic study includes huge amounts of therapy. I actually don’t know if review boards would even approve a study which didn’t have a significant therapy component right now.

This makes the study results non-portable to recreational use. Many of the depression studies use upwards of 20 therapy sessions around the 1 or 2 psychedelic sessions, which is nothing like what happens when taking psychedelics recreationally.

But I think you'd also be quite hard pressed to find any peer-reviewed study that shows a professional therapist yields better results regarding long-term detriment after exposure to psychedelics than mere access to health care when needed along with friends or whatever circumstance people find most enjoyable to take psychedelics in.

There's scant evidence that mandatory therapy sessions are the determining factor of whether or not psychedelics can be taken safely.

This is simply a poorly understood area, scientifically, due in part to government restriction on research. The intertwining of the therapy could mean psychedelics counteracted bad therapy, or the inverse, or neither.

I am going to offer a piece of opinion here that will offend the psychiatrists, psychedelics enthusiasts, and many of those with more conservative views about drug use: what if psychedelic drugs are just another form of entertainment for the mind, like television. What if our ancestors in places like indigenous communities in present-day Mexico actually first started taking them because it GAVE THEM SOMETHING TO DO and a reprieve from boredom, and the spiritual interpretations later just added to the entertainment. What if therapists and psychiatrists, lawmakers, doctors, parents, shaman are making much ado about nothing while injecting their own influence into the mix, particularly for the relatively low risk drugs.

You're welcome. I was not being treated for anything it was just for recreation and I was under no supervision. I'm all for studying the medicinal effects of it.

Do you think it was psilocybin that gave you those thoughts or do you think the idea of psilocybin gave you good cover to experiment in idealism of youth? Your realism and experience sound more like the practical wisdom a lot of people gain over the 10 years of their 20s.

This is the correct answer; psychedelics enhance aspects of your personality that were already quite present

Yes, I agree it's quite possible to retrospectively mistake the effects of psilocybin for the psychological evolution that happens naturally.

The psilocybin gave me a God complex delusion due to the hallucinations ideas and feelings I had during the trip. unfortunately I didn't shake the fundamental world view I gained after the trip until objective reality tossed me around enough to snap out of it.

> I definitely think Psilocybin gave me negative long term effects.

I think it's extremely bizarre that the public narrative has become that psilocybin will:

1) Create an openness to new ideas and flood you with different thoughts and feelings

2) Only create positive changes, thoughts, and feelings.

There's a big push in online comment sections to deny, downplay, or otherwise dismiss negative experiences. Psychedelic enthusiasts will come out of the woodwork and try to argue away any anecdotes that aren't purely positive, blaming them on everything from vague underlying mental health conditions to a misuse of the drugs. But it's almost always victim-blaming.

I'm glad you were able to process your experience and undo the unhealthy changes. Thanks for helping spread awareness that psychedelic-induced changes aren't automatically good or positive.

The public narrative is not that at all. Go ask a few typical midwestern grandmas what she thinks about her grandaughter dropping acid and report back.

Since when grandmas represent the trendy narratives?

Moreover, most of the positive reports I saw were self-reports. If you do psycho drugs, you should not be the one reporting the results. Instead it should be done by your peers/friends who don't do the drugs. Your own report will be extremely biased.

Thank you! I actually logged off my HN account for a day so I didn't see my karma because I assumed I'd be downvoted for my anecdote and didn't feel like arguing with narrative pushers.

> . I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out

You are blaming the drugs? I think you should take responsibility yourself!

Causal attribution is different from the assignment of responsibilities, notwithstanding whether this attribution is correct. Maybe some drug did cause somebody problems, but from the social perspective they may still be "on the hook" and thus "responsible" for all their problems.

I 100% take responsibility for the choices I made including the choice to take the drug in the first place.

However, the God complex delusion I attribute to the mushrooms.

If you have had a Dog Complex Delusion it is on you, not the drugs!

if you had a DOG complex, that is most certainly drugs ;)

a GOD complex on the other hand I may agree with you :)

> It make me incredibly narcissistic and allowed my brain to think in a very "the universe is on my side" kind of way, and I was open to a lot of magical thinking and woo woo after the trip.

That's why it takes a sufficiently mature (in terms of rationality, emotional intelligence and moral values) mind for a trip to be actually safe. One can reach it sooner or later or never but I would consider 25 (when your prefrontal cortex development actually peaks and you have already have gained your fair amount of general experience) a reasonable mean and recommend avoiding psychoactive substances (unless a competent professional decides the opposite and is going to supervise) if you are significantly younger, no matter how legal in your state they are.

BTW the universe actually is on your side. The moment it's not you're dead.

> I made a lot of goofy choices with too much idealism and gusto and not much of a plan and it set my life and career back when it didn't work out.

Why do you believe that's bad? I would say a life without goofiness is a horror. A world without idealism is hell. Some choices setting your life and career back occasionally are inevitable and can actually bring immense value you just don't (immediately or ever) consciously recognize. My life/choices has always been a disaster but prepared me to and at some moment "has put" me in a specific place where I have met my soulmate who turnt my life in a paradise (long proven sustainable and, arguably, even antifragile).

> I am not the center of the universe

Well, you can't prove you aren't and numerous philosophers (and some Everett interpretation enthusiasts) would say you are. And this doesn't mean you have to be a jerk.

However you turn it around, you are the Universe experiencing itself subjectively. That's easy to understand without any drugs.

Having felt that during your trip might have led you to the wrong conclusion that your social life will somehow magically be improved by this knowledge alone. It could be, but not without a lot of good old work and effort. Even after all of that, there's no guarantee that you'll get what you want and won't get what you don't want.

A lot of people waste their lives with or without the drugs, so maybe it wasn't just this substance that led to those setbacks.

BTW, "the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as "the universe is on my side".

Not at all. One is the null hypothesis that is also supported by evidence, and the other is also known as having delusions of grandeur.

Flippantly dismissing it as "the null hypothesis" is covering up an entire tradition of ideas around secular society's beliefs about the nature of reality. The evidence points to consciousness/subjective experience being the fundamental "matter" of reality, and this is beginning to gain traction again with scientists and philosophers. The "null hypothesis" in your context is built upon the logical positivist framework of the dualist belief that the mind and body are separate, and the objective world can be full apprehended rationally, which involves many a priori assumptions itself and is not a given. Most people are ignorant of the millennia of metaphysics that led to modern ways of looking at the world and just assume it to be ground truth rather than a complex mental construction just like the rest.

You're right, the kids on youtube slowly dying of rabies unable to drink and convulsing in their bed are dying because they deserve it. The world is not a harsh place for them, and they were owed rabies.

It's pretty clear there are people that the universe in practice has offered a shit sandwich. That may not be true for everyone but it could be true to the commenter. Your view is just some self-centered objectivism.

Another flippant dismissal that doesn't address what I said. I said nothing of anyone deserving suffering. Your snap judgement on the nature or reality based on a YouTube video doesn't mean that deep threads and traditions exploring the nature of reality completely ignore the existence of suffering.

> Your view is just some self-centered objectivism.

the irony of projection right here. Sneering at someone to prove your point is an effective technique to convince weaker minds to agree with you, I'll give you that, but it doesn't make you correct.

So you're willing to entertain then that someone could have the objective view that the world isn't on their side? With feelings and a priori opinion removed, factually dying a horrible death of rabies in childhood before reaching even reproductive age cannot possibly be seen as the world/universe being on your side.

BTW, I didn't actually believe you thought people deserve to die of rabies, it was an inflammatory example to drive out how you can possibly defend this viewpoint necessarily being subjective and not objective.

Anyone can have any view they wish about the world. What I'm saying is that it's very easy to take a superficial analysis of the nature of the reality built on gut feelings, personal anecdotes, and "i happen to be born in the right place at the right time in the right cultural tradition that has lock on truth" syndrome, and replace it with another superficial analysis of the reality built on gut feelings and personal anecdotes and "i happen to be born in the right place at the right time in the right cultural tradition that has a lock on truth" syndrome. Flapping from one superficial belief to another doesn't make the latter more true.

I'm not sure deciding that "the world is on my side" is objectively false for some people is a superficial belief.

"'the world is on my side" is objectively false" is not at all equivalent to "the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything"

>"the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as "the universe is on my side"

Once we establish the validity of "the world is on my side" can be objective (and I think by all factual basis, the world is most definitely objectively not on some people's side), your logical expression now looks like this:

"the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything" is just as much as a subjective value judgement of reality as < objective statement >

Logically put you say

Subjectivity_of("the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything") >= Subjectivity_of (<Objective Statement>)

which is reduced to:

Subjectivity_of("the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything") >= 0

Another words, your statement was meaningless and imposes nothing on the subjectivity of the statement "the world is a harsh place", just lots of word soup about your outrage over perceived ignorance of "millennia of metaphysics that led to modern ways of looking at the world."

Sorry to be blunt, but this sounds like an issue with your thinking, rather than an issue with psilocybin. You were already vulnerable to woo woo and narcissistic thinking, and psilocybin just awakened these traits in you. It's analogous to how hallucinogens can cause snaps in people with undiagnosed schizophrenia. In fact it could be said that it helped you because you became aware of them and flushed them out of your system.

I’m not sure I totally buy this. Yes psychedelics illuminate your mind but they also induce spiritual experiences in most people that take them.

For folks who have little real spiritual understanding (most Americans), this can seem very enticing

It sounds like you mostly agree with me, and that most Americans are prone to woo woo and narcissism, which sounds pretty accurate.

I disagree with this.

When people are vulnerable to something that doesn't mean they should have to go through it. There are many examples where it will make a human weaker in the end. There are also many examples where it will make a human stronger, but I think in his story it made him weaker because he lost 10 years that he otherwise presumably wouldn't have.

Not only did he lost 10 years, he lost 10 relatively foundational years (i.e. it's less bad to "lose 10 years" in your 60s to 70s compared to your 20s to 30s due to the compound interest effect that early "good years" have).

The reason I posted this is because I went through a very similar experience, in fact for about the same length of time. I did this with a half dozen other people that also had "spiritual" experiences, but didn't fall into the same way of thinking as myself, so there's 7-8 data points that fed into my comment.

Genuinely curious, but how did you all come to this conclusion, are your friends similar? As an engineer with friends who were engineers and scientists, most of us just thought "wow our brain sure is an interesting machine when you manipulate the chemicals" and went on with your lives virtually unchanged.

When I look back at those years I used psychedelics my only real takeaway from use is that the mind is an interesting machine and drugs make me dance funny. Maybe it's because I don't know a spiritual crowd but even my old buddies from rural working class places just found them entertaining, I never heard a single story about spiritual breakthroughs.

No, I'm saying I fell to the woo, but my other friends did not, despite having spiritual experiences. We are all engineers btw.

Thank you for your sharing your experience.

It's possible I was vulnerable to this flawed thinking before this. But at the end of the day it doesn't matter too much to me if the chicken or egg came first. And in the long run I don't know if it helped or hurt me due to the butterfly effect. But I do know I regret it and if I had the choice to go back in time I would have stayed away from psilocybin.

I’m a pretty stoic and cynical person after being used as a doormat growing up in narcissistic family. I hope I don’t lose this perspective/lens of not trusting others if I tried psilocybin as my family would take advantage of my altruistic nature as a free labor resource to do work for them if I let my guard down and try to be helpful.

Interesting. That almost sounds like mania/hypomania.

(Not saying that it induced a hypomanic episode, just that all of those fit the description)

Yeah I think it’s really important to use psychedelics with a therapist. I’ve seen a number of friends go down this path. Having a therapist can help ground you and understand what the experience means to your emotional body.

That being said due to subjectivity you are quite literally the center of your universe =P

That's probably outside the scope of this study. You were probably not in a regulated setting or under the care of a psychiatrist at the time. I'd imagine there's some guidance involved in the whole process that recreational users would miss.

> that I am not the center of the universe, and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything

that's usually what I take from a trip on mushrooms - seriously

Thank you for sharing your experience. I've reposted below what I wrote to someone else, in the hope that you (or anyone reading) may find this helpful (and hopefully find a way to more peace).

I would point out, in particular that:

1. When using psychedelics, there may be a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.

2. Openness to more creative ideas is a common feature of psychedelic use. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.

----- Repost: Psychedelics are very powerful compounds acting on the infinitely complex human nervous system.

It should therefore be expected that the outcomes will be extremely variable and highly contingent on the background and predispositions of the user, the type(s) and dose(s) of the drug(s), the context of the usage of the drug (including related psychotherapy) and other events, practices and influences in the individual's life.

That being said, I have noticed, a general trend towards:

- Less combativeness, agitation and aggression. There is less tendency to want to engage in petty squabbles or incite your own (or others) negative emotional reactions.

- Openness to more creative ideas. A cynical take would be that you become more suggestible/easily influenced (and this may be a feature also). There definitely seams to be a new willingness to consider new viewpoints, new ideas and new options. You may find yourself re-engaging in old intellectual pursuits, exploring previously unsolved problems and/or using previously unrelated topics/fields in conjunction.

- In a similar vein, you may also find yourself exploring spiritual/philosophical topics, especially those related to compassion, empathy, group cohesion and 'reduced ego'. This probably looks an awful lot like hippiness lol. This may include rethinking political, social and economic attitudes.

- Generally more positive thoughts and emotions (positive valence). This often follows a period of emotional and intellectual turmoil (which may loosely coincide with a 'bad trip' at the time of ingestion or subsequently, during a period of integration). This generally, but not always, results in a long term overall improvement in mood and overall outlook.

- Psychedelics may help in getting through/integrating past trauma. This may be part of what underlies the above. Many of us live with the after-effects of trauma and being able to work past this can be life-changing. This may be a traumatic process in itself, but sometimes psychedelics facilitate approaching these issues in ways that were not previously possible. IMHO many of the most severely affected by trauma are not even aware of the fact that they're affected and this manifests in a plethora of negative outcomes. Psychedelics in a positively reinforced environment (ideally with therapy) can help tremendously here.

There are a lot of really great resources online for anyone who is interested (regardless of your level of personal experience or opinion):

Highly recommend qualiacomputing.com and qualiaresearchinstitute.org (along with the group's online videos), especially for the HN crowd looking for a more multifaceted, more 'scientifically rigorous' (I use the term loosely here lol, but I think you'll get what I mean).

I'd also recommend some of the lectures on the Oxford Psychedelic Society's website: https://oxpsysoc.org/#things

I hope you find this helpful. Psychedelics are a complex topic but overall I believe they have immense potential to help many people, including but not limited to the following. I strongly encourage anyone reading this to learn more.

- Pain syndromes, including intractable, severe, pain syndromes like cluster headaches. - Resolving trauma (including but not limited to PTSD). - Psychological disorders, including depression and anxiety. - Overcoming addictions.

This is a great insight of a consequence that is unlikely to be considered.

> and the world is a harsh place that doesn't owe anyone anything.

Which is just another subjective view...

Not sure if your comment concludes actually the opposite: You should do Psilocybin if you want to have a happy idalistic life with less career struggles.

it's interesting to turn the question around: is it possible to fuck someone up for life w/25mg of psilocybin? with the right set and setting maybe

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