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Comment by tempsy | Hacker News Reader

recreational doses are not necessarily therapeutic doses

if you are taking a psychedelic as part of some therapy regime it is not a tripping balls level dose

Everything I've learned about therapeutic psilocybin treatment is that the doses involved are actually quite a bit higher than I've ever done on a trip at home.

For example for psychedelic therapy with psilocybin, you would see a therapist a few times with no psilocybin, then you would have a session where you take something like the equivalent of 1 gram of dried mushrooms, and go through that session with the therapist. Then come back 1-2 weeks later and take something like a "heroic" dose or about 5 grams dried mushroom equivalent and go through that session with the therapist. Then you come back again two weeks later and have a sober session again to talk about all of it.

My understanding is that this is generally how the well respected research studies have gone. The most I have ever done myself is 2 grams dried mushroom equivalent, and I usually stay under 1.

Jesus. five grams would scare me. does it just not work to use an eighth?

So in a clinical setting they actually give 20-30mg of psilocybin directly. This works out to approximately 3-5g of dried cubensis depending on their potency.

I can’t imagine being completely detached from reality, and using that to work through really tough shit. Talk about a bad trip.

From my limited understanding, when a trip is used in a therapy session, it allows a patient to observe past trauma from an (emotional) distance, allowing them to process it. I can see how that would work. If trauma is so severe that you can’t even think of it, you’d push it away to the back of your mind where it would fester.

5 grams? Most people would absolutely lose their shit on that. Even an eighth of good mushrooms is enough to obliterate most people. Like complete ego death.

How long do these sessions last? What are the logistics? I’m very curious.

9 hours on a heroic dose

An eighth won’t give you ego death. 5 grams is about where you start getting kaleidoscopic visuals and good hallucinations

In all, the whole trip usually lasts a solid 4 hours. You’re going to be ready to pass out at the end

> An eighth won’t give you ego death. 5 grams is about where you start getting kaleidoscopic visuals and good hallucinations

This is completely dependent on the strain[1] and potency of that batch. It also will depend on the person. To make any definitive statements on what people will experience on x grams is not an informed opinion.

[1] https://leafly-cms-production.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2...

Leafley is great but, I’ve babysat enough people to tell you that an eighth (3.5g) isn’t going to put anyone on a shroom trip. They’ll definitely get stoned and have some euphoria on the downslope

Update: p. Cubensis is what I’m most familiar with

it's interesting because someone replied to another comment of mine saying 2g is tripping balls for them haha. I think it greatly varies from person to person - I for instance seem to have a greater tolerance for psychedelics than most people I know. I guess it would also depend on what you consider a "trip".

5 grams is the idiotic recommendation from Terence McKenna that people blindly follow because he was a good writer and had an almost psychedelic stand up routine with public speaking. He was basically a type of cult leader.

It is absolutely terrible advice. The advice should be "less is more" not this McKenna "heroic dose" bullshit like some kind of dosage sport.

> The advice should be "less is more" not this McKenna "heroic dose" bullshit like some kind of dosage sport.

The research backed advice is that set and setting are what really influences the experience.

The dose varies by person, tolerance, genetics of the fungi, and how deep one wants to go in the experience.

Taking 5 grams is not something to do in a whim, for pride or ego, or to keep up with anyone else. Better to ease into a bigger dose over time and not rush the experience.

5g wet (fresh) of P. cubensis is totally doable. The same mass of dry *P. semilanceata* on the other hand...

Yes my understanding was a that ego death is the goal, and this is done in a controlled setting with a trusted therapist.

I have no experience with these dosage levels but what I have heard is that some people don’t experience the full ego death at 3.5 grams but most people do at 5 grams, and I have also heard that there isn’t much additional effect from higher doses. So the thinking is to make sure to get everyone over that edge.

However there are other forms of treatment and I’m only talking about what I learned a few years ago, I’ve not studied the latest work and I am not a medical professional at all.

I did a quick google search to find more info for you and it seems there’s a lot of new work being done. I didn’t find any convenient link with the answer to your question though.

I had to do four grams the first time. If you are on antidepressants or anti anxiety drugs you'll need more of it. Four grams was the lower therapeutic dose for me, after that I did six grams, but was able to get by for the remainder of the seven weeks on just two grams a day.

I've done a heroic dose without help, and it is very hard to describe. However, I'll describe one part:

I went to the church of engineering and saw the manifest glory of all levels of abstraction that I understand and leverage to build _all_ at ONCE. I saw what I have been building in a new light ( https://www.adama-platform.com/ ). The absolute beauty of mathematics made me cry.

Ever since this event, I have been... ultra level. I'm just at peace. It's a wonderful experience. The whole "holy shit, I'm dying part..." was kind of rough.

Yeah the experience I have with heroic doses of psilocybin and LSD have been both the most challenging and the most transformative. People are scared by the idea of a bad (scary/unpleasant) trip, but it's important to remember that the drugs will wear off, and you can often take some deep learnings about yourself from that unpleasantness.

> Everything I've learned about therapeutic psilocybin treatment is that the doses involved are actually quite a bit higher than I've ever done on a trip at home

Where are you getting this info? All the good data I've seen is definitely not 5 grams dried. 20-25mg seems to be the sweet spot[1][2][3][4] which is around 2 grams[5].

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2206443

[2] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9751063/

[4] https://newatlas.com/johns-hopkins-psilocybin-study-finds-op...

[5] https://www.leafly.com/learn/psychedelics/how-to-dose-mushro...

Fuzzy memory from what I learned a few years ago. I guess i was really responding to the person who said “you’re not tripping balls in a therapeutic setting” - personally even 2 grams is “tripping balls” by my standards, but like I said 2 grams is the most I’ve ever done.

It's actually could be other way.

There is an anecdotic evidence that bad trips on first intake are more frequent with lower doses of psychedelics than higher.

So it's very possible that those therapeutic sessions will be mind-shattering experiences and not like going to discotheque with friends.

A therapeutic MDMA dose is basically equivalent to a recreational dose from the literature I've read. Not sure about psilocybin. Ketamine dosage definitely leads to tripping balls.

Not at all actually. I underwent 11 weeks of ketamine therapy. No hallucinations whatsoever, and I checked with others because I thought I was missing out! I felt physically drunk, but mentally absolutely clear. You may be thinking of a higher dose taken recreationally.

Or the reports I read were before they dialed in the dose.

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