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Comment by avidiax | Hacker News Reader

I have not heard the claim that it's the mystical experience doing the work. I have heard some theories about the glutamate system in the brain, which is strongly affected by e.g. ketamine, psilocybin.

My experience with ketamine treatment for TRD is that it was lots of awesome shapes and colors and sense of melting into the floor, but definitely no communion with "god" or "mystics", no special reexamination of the self or amazing new perspective. Despite that, I still experienced some improvement in symptoms.

I would hope that pharmaceutical research can reduce the time and expense related to this treatment and the side effects like nausea, and less on the moral panic that some people use these drugs for fun somehow.

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I was introduced to the idea through a podcast of Lex Fridman hosting John Vervaeke. The idea is that being trained in some methods enables you to better re-frame ideas, reality etc. when under the effect of these substances and then to be able to integrate them to your life once you are sober. Basically to identify when something you identified and felt while under the effect is more "real" since your brain makes connections which don't usually happen. The training allows you to see these connections as something more than noise.

"Integration" is a buzzword but probably for good reason. It's not healthy to compartmentalize your own mind, because those compartments eventually express themselves in often dysfunctional ways if you're not fully tapped in to them. Meditation can help with "integration" as well although I'm sure every drug and method has different efficacy. I see this as a stepping stone to better mental health, because sometimes crazy stuff gets churned up and your next step is to process it in a healthy way, hopefully working with a decent CBT professional.

"I have not heard the claim that it's the mystical experience doing the work."

This claim has been the prevailing view of almost every psychedelic researcher from the 60s until ~10 years ago. It was also a big contributor to there being almost zero human research into psychedelics over that time period.

It's still the prevailing view today, but not talked about because researchers can actually get funding if they lie about it.

The trip you had was different than what people experience on LSD or psilocybin. You still had a trip. You broke out of your normal frame of mind and were able to comprehend things from a perspective that you couldn't previously conceive of. It seems to me like this is the important component and not whether you think you met God or your creator. It seems to make sense that the changes in yourself afterwards are due to the experience and not to the chemistry, and I wonder if the people focusing purely on the chemistry have never had a trip.

It also lines up with people getting similar benefits from serious meditation practice or dramatic life experiences.

The common theme is that all these things change perspective, and none of them are entirely safe.

My experience is that the majority of the people focusing on the chemistry have ever oriented a trip and it was the impetus for going into research that focuses on the chemistry.

>My experience with ketamine treatment for TRD is that it was lots of awesome shapes and colors and sense of melting into the floor, but definitely no communion with "god" or "mystics", no special reexamination of the self or amazing new perspective

I've heard people also make similar comments to the LSD or psylocibin experiences as well. In my personal experience, that's purely a matter of dosage. Sounds like an obvious thing, but not everyone knows how a particular dosage will affect them. Any particular dose that is just a fun time for one person might be 1:1 meeting with a higher power for someone else.

This is where I hope honest legal regulation would help. Rather than having to think about how many stems/caps you can eat from SourceA vs SourceB, you can just take a capsule that is accurately measured at X mg. Maybe you need to take half or take 2, but at least it would be the same each time.

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