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Comment by cf141q5325 | Hacker News Reader

Magic Mushrooms during an Amsterdam visit. I was drinking heavily, half a liter whiskey per evening every day for a few years. I also didnt think couldnt stop, the urge to drink, and the inability to stop once i started seemed to be just too strong. And that despite me despising how stupid i got while drunk. It really wasnt a fun addiction and realistically i was on my way to drink myself to death. After the trip the urge was gone and has remained this way for 4 years now. I even tried a sip of my back then favorite whiskey a few times on special occasions but never finished the glass. I can honestly say i am truly over it.

I also dont seem to be the only one having this experience, a cofounder of AA (Bill Wilson) had a similar experience with LSD.

Obviously, read up on psychedelics safe use first.

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Same for me. 40-year "functional" alcohol dependency. Pattern of mostly avoiding drink during the week, desperate for Friday to come around, followed by poor sleep, tiredness, weight gain, regret.

A mushroom trip in Vancouver helped me understand the underlying cause of dependency, what I was running away from. That seemed to be all it took. The need was simply gone and the habit broken. Weekends are more like the energizing productive breaks they always should have been.

Yep totally on board with this, if I take hallucinogens I completely lose interest in drinking for a few weeks afterwards. Have always wondered if microdosing would help this

This is an interesting approach that seems to (finally) be getting more attention from a research perspective as well.

When you mention mushrooms during an Amsterdam visit, it makes it sound like it was a one time experience. Is that correct? Have you been regularly taking mushrooms during that 4 year period? Or did you simply never need to drink after one mushroom dose?

If it's the latter...that is truly remarkable and again, proof (even if anecdotal) that this needs to be researched far more thoroughly than it has been.

I did it a few times since then for other reasons, turned out to be roughly every year or so. I find it to be an amazing tool for introspection and resetting perspectives in which one can get stuck. Differently put, i found that it has more to offer to me.

But the alcohol was a one time thing, something just rewired. I never felt that effect subside. I already didnt like it but felt just stuck, in addition to the urge to drink. I had a sip during the afterglow and the idiocy of it was just blatantly obvious. Funnily enough that wasnt the intent for the trip. It was just a really amazing side effect.

I wish i could give a better explanation but it has been 4 years and my life moved on since then. Its not something i think about unless the topic comes up. But it was such an important fork in the road for me that i found it important to mention. See it as an +1 for anecdotal experience.

I also agree with the obvious potential, "How to change your mind" from Michael Pollan is a great book on the topic.

I know plenty of people, myself included, with similar anecdotes. For me it was LSD.

I've been sober for five years, starting the year I was finishing at university. At this point, I was taking prescription stimulants, smoking weed, and drinking every single day, and never had a moment sober. It had been that way my entire university experience, and I was slowly exiled from every social circle I attempted to join, and had various near scrapes with devastating consequences, but nothing stuck.

The summer before my final semester, I took LSD with my girlfriend. It was during that trip when I realized I needed to stop, or I was going to continue to be miserable. It took about another three or four months for me to realize the thought I had was the truth, but I quit, and have not relapsed in over five years now. That also means I haven't taken acid since that trip. I don't think I'd need to in order to stay sober now, it has just become the way I live my life.

I wound up getting heavily involved in 12-step recovery programs, which I admit, are not for everyone, but saved my skin, and gave me a group of sober people to call and add to my social network. I still go to meetings, but I think my experience with LSD made me realize that was the path I needed to take.

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