But then you have a psychedelic experience, and for a brief moment, things are very much different. And if the experience is even slightly positive, it reminds you that it’s still possible to feel something good, and that glimmer of hope can chip away at your entrenched fatalism.
Of course, it's a nice to visit with molly every once in a while. But the real progress is in how I reframe life. Too bad that finding quality MDMA nowadays is so tough.
So, which psychedelic matters a great deal.
This is so interesting to read, because I had exactly the same experience - primarily with social anxiety.
I sat on a hill at a festival with a friend after taking MDMA for the first time and imagined just walking up to a food van and ordering food… and didn’t feel the automatic anxious reaction.
It showed me what was there, and what life could feel like without it. I found that it started a positive feedback loop afterwards, where I’d do something social and automatically steel myself against the incoming anxiety… only to feel none! It was absolutely beautiful.
I've never done psychedelics (at least not the kind that are experimentally used for mental health; I did Molly once but fuck that comedown), but I spent years depressed, anxious, guilty, etc. and then I started using weed. I went a little TOO hard for a while, because it was the first time in years I'd had my body and brain giving me primarily GOOD feelings.
Which led to me ending up in therapy and actually addressing my PTSD, because then I knew that feeling shitty wasn't just how I was programmed to be biologically because something was Wrong with me.
The 'too hard for a while' is probably why these things should be done under medical supervision. I basically spent 8 months blazed out of my mind.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_a...
(I'm a statistical oddity! YAY!)
That’s awesome you aren’t anymore!
And also: wait what? It’s possible to reverse blindness?? I’m totally ignorant on the subject but I’d b interested to know more if you care to elaborate.
I had really bad strabismus plus vision bad enough that it wasn't possible to correct my vision before I had surgery to fix my eye muscles. Since that didn't happen until I was 4, I spent my first 4 years with vision so bad my dominant eye is classified as 'can see movement' and my non-dominant eye is 'can see light'. Then I had surgery and they could correct my vision.
I'm not sure why it wasn't done earlier.
I have some visual issues related to this early period. I'm terrible with crowding [0], have no depth perception, have trouble with facial feature recognition (I recognize my loved ones based on their auditory cues), rely more on other senses than sight, etc.
My life can basically be broken down into periods based on what medical oddity I dealt with, looking back. Yikes.
Giving general anesthesia to babies/toddlers can be tricky, so that might be a key reason. Our two year old recently went under general anesthesia, and luckily things started going wrong early enough that they could abort and back out without doing any serious damage. Scary situation though.
I'm glad that your child was okay.
Then there is also this: Classical psychedelics are profoundly immunomodulating. All serotonin receptor 5-HT2A activators (agonists) reduce systemic inflammation. Generally in very beneficial ways.
Systemic inflammation and depression are intimately related.
(Of course, care should be taken not to suppress inflammation when it is needed. People probably ought not to take psychedelics when fighting off an infection.)
Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2015.0035...
(1) Where am I? / What the heck is going on?
(2) Where am I going to go next? / What am I going to do about it?
Sorry if this seems overly esoteric, but I really appreciate seeing applications of my thesis in the wild. Cheers
Please note that if you are depressed it is better to start with well researched medications like anti-depressants (whose working are still not fully understood) than psychedelics. To be safe, consider shock therapy or psychedelics only as a last resort, after you have exhausted both anti-depressants and Cognitive Therapy under a good therapist and are really desperate.
This is so real it hurts, I had two doctors diagnose me with severe anxiety without telling me — like they just put it in my chart thinking I already knew. And then one day I did one of those depression anxiety screens and failed so hard genuinely believing it was normal my doc, who I guess assumed it was managed, was like, “hey have you ever taken anything for mood.” And I was like “no, why would I do that?”
For literally the first time in my life I felt what “not anxious” feels like. I was in disbelief for months bracing myself for the pangs of anxiety I got in response to different triggers and… they just never came.
Meditation practice under a guide, can rewire your brain much like psychedelics.
Not to diss on psychedelics - but there is way too much hype about it being a miracle cure for all your psychological ailments.
Psychedelics are wonderful but dangerous and to be used under the right set and setting, a bad trip can induce psychosis and my fear is people with existing mental ailments will start popping psychedelics - not paying much attention and end up in a far worse place than they started.
Hopefully it is regulated.
I stopped taking them pretty quickly because I'm prone to addiction, but your experience mirrored mine completely.
Cocaine doesn't really help because it just dramatically increases the intensity and energy of your current state, it doesn't really alter your thinking in a way that could introduce positive thoughts not already present.
If psychedelics had similarly severe downsides then they would likely not be effective at aiding depression in the long run, but fortunately it has relatively few issues with careful use.
The day we can discover what someone's exact neurotransmitter balance is, I think we'll learn a huge amount about how the brain works via that mechanism. I think if we ever reach that day, we'll also learn that there is no such thing as "neurotypical"
Well do some cocaine and you'd feel great for about an hour but nobody cured their depression that way.
Weed dependency is understated by many, but it typically takes longer to form a strong dependency, and the withdrawal symptoms are usually much milder than the other two.
So, I agree that your logic could apply in some cases… in the more typical case (like op’s) of someone stumbling into this experiential eye-opening organically, if it happens via coke/heroin it’ll probably be a much rougher road.
Edit: Probably why psychedelics work well… the experience is very different but has very weak habit-forming pull (it’s not easy to do casually because it’s an ordeal)