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I totally agree that:

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

But our blues haven't appeared from nowhere. We have significant cultural institutions that function primarily by dividing the populace against itself. Getting healthy likely means waking up to the fact that we're under attack and doing something other than "self care" about it.

So I disagree with:

> the structures of power are so solidified I’m not sure there’s really much actual risk to them from drug legalization.

They seem pretty shaky to me. Which is for the best. Being powerful should come with a fear of the people you have power over. If you're one weird trip away from a revolution then it's probably time to start treating your people better.

There is some history in the US with regards to power structures, getting needs met, and psychedelics. Mostly in the late 60's and early 70's there was a big counterculture movement that focused on exactly those things, and the power structures at the time were certainly threatened, and created things like cointelpro.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO#:~:text=Overall%2....

>Getting healthy likely means waking up to the fact that we're under attack and doing something other than "self care" about it.

I pretty strongly disagree with this sentiment. The vast majority of misery in this country is self-inflicted from buying into a worldview and lifestyle that is inherently unfulfilling. The self care of conferring oneself from that mindset goes a long way.

Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it?

Being bought in means that we're afraid to talk to our families or neighbors about certain topics for fear of things getting too spicy in one way or another, it keeps us divided. Apply self care (psychedelic assisted or otherwise) for long enough that we're not afraid anymore and maybe you've achieved your mental health goals, but now you're having the kind of conversations that change things.

>Ok but who is selling that worldview, and how does our behavior change when we stop buying into it?

That's a complex question and I probably don't have the perfect answer. If I were to take a stab at it I would say the top causes are consumerism, politics, and trained helplessness are at the top of the list.

As for who's selling it; basiclly everyone is. Individuals and companies want you to think that whatever they are selling will make you happy. Politicians want you to think you need them to do good in the world. Your neighbors want you to be impressed with their good values and status.

In my experience and opinion, once people escape, the behavior changes in that they start actually doing things that make them happy, opposed to things that they are told should make them happy. This can take an infinite number of forms. It might mean going out and helping your neighbors instead of watching political news. It might be going for a walk instead of watching Netflix. It might mean reading a book instead of browsing twitter.

When the previous poster said:

> A crisis of unhappiness in this country

I think he was right to say "this country". I've been places where, by all objective measures, the people have it much worse, but I don't get the sense that they're unhappy the way that we are.

> As for who's selling it; basically everyone is

If that we're the case, it would be happening everywhere. We'd just call it the human condition. The contrast upon returning to the US wouldn't feel so stark.

I think there is a relatively small demographic who is selling the uniquely dissatisfying American worldview much more strongly than the rest of us are. And conscious or otherwise, they have their reasons.

If we start ignoring the programming en masse, I expect they'll switch to less subtle means of control.

I'm not saying we shouldn't do it. I think everyone should trip at least once precisely because it helps you cast off habits of mind that aren't serving you. But when that capability is in everybody's toolkit... Well I think it's going to be a bumpy ride. Worth taking, but bumpy.

To be clear, when I say basically everyone is selling it, I'm speaking in a us centric context. I don't think the phenomenon is unique to the United States, but I do think it is more pronounced here. I too have met people that live on less than a dollar a day and are happier than people making six or seven figures.

When I say everyone is selling it, what I mean is that if they have bought into it, they are propagating it as a normative worldview. I think is accurate and the only way such ideas survive. It is systemic and relies on Broad acceptance. At the center, it depends on hundreds of millions of people believing in it.

It is helpful to step outside of that system and get a radically different perspective. Psychedelics are just one way to do this, and probably not even the best. The challenge is that even after experiencing that perspective, you step back into a world where everyone believes something different and you start to forget.

The solution is pretty simple. For one you have to make an intentional effort to be present in your life and live it in a way you find meaningful, despite external forces trying to convince you otherwise. Second, you have to surround yourself with friends and loved ones that reinforce this healthy world view.

In the end, I think I'm less cynical than you are. I don't think there are more powerful tools for mind control waiting to be deployed. I also don't think it would be a bumpy ride if more people took control of their lives to improve their happiness. Life and society would simply get better and better as more people did so.

I've always been a very verbal person but the first time I tried mushrooms I found I wasn't able to describe my experience in words and I really wanted to draw it. Up until that point in my life I had thought of words as being the de facto correct way to convey thoughts, but that experience really made me understand that words were just my way of conveying thoughts, and there really isn't a correct one. It was absolutely a transformative experience for me and made me appreciate art, all forms of it, in a deeper way.

Interestingly enough though that first experience with psychedelics was the only one I actually found transformative. I did mushrooms maybe half a dozen more times afterwards and experimented with a few other drugs including LSD and MDMA and I never really felt like any of those trips gave me any deeper insights or changed the way I viewed things.

I have been struggling a lot with dating. Despite being a quite social, and often popular guy to be around, there has been some block/hump that always stood in the way of dating. Funnily enough it struck me some weeks ago that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain to be able to show my interest romatically to others. What I'm scared of is the possibility of it having some other undesired effect though

I had a similar experience with dancing though. Thought I hated it, and I always had to force myself to do it, until I started (modestly) drinking alcohol. My body would dance for me and I would enjoy it. The effect more or less stuck around and I even genuinely have days of more confidence after a night with alcohol.

All of this is mildly depressing though. It feels as though we are just our brains (maybe obviously), but just that we're the strange effects of the functions of a non-magical/soul-less organ in our heads primarily just meant to steer our bodies. Those thoughts make drugs both existentially liberating but at the same time also "imprisoning" for me

> All of this is mildly depressing though. It feels as though we are just our brains (maybe obviously), but just that we're the strange effects of the functions of a non-magical/soul-less organ in our heads primarily just meant to steer our bodies. Those thoughts make drugs both existentially liberating but at the same time also "imprisoning" for me

That is certainly one way of looking at things, and one of the more frequent perspectives I harbor. But I've also had enough trips down the rabbit hole to realize there's more to it than that. Way more to it.

We are definitely strange effects for sure. We are haunted atoms that formed in the core of a dying star. Weird, right? If you find that worldview imprisoning, I encourage you to question it. Magic is often simply what you need it to be, no need to get hung up on whether magic is "real" or not, because that doesn't actually matter.

Check out Discordianism if you haven't already. It's kinda like hot swapping reality tunnels. No need to commit to one ontology all the time :).

>I have been struggling a lot with dating.

>I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain to be able to show my interest romatically to others

u wot m8

Well the thing about tripping is you can’t really predict what the result will be. I was able to realize I am cool and sexy because I have been doing a lot of work on myself to get over some past issues, and the trip just helped a few things click that I probably would have figured out in the next year or so either way. Success at dating is mostly about being comfortable with yourself, and that takes therapy and personal growth. If you’re doing those things, psychedelics can help make connections you are close to, but I would not think that any given trip is going to solve that particular problem if it’s not one you’re already making progress on.

> that I probably have to go on a psychadelic trip to rewire my brain

Do you really need the permission of drugs to do what you want?

You already have your outcome. You know where you are. To what end do you need the drugs?

Let's say you do this trip.. and it turns out the thing blocking you from dating is that you were molested at a young age. Those memories come flooding back to you at 2am while you're sweating like a pig and vomiting repeatedly.

Is that the right outcome? Is that the outcome you want?

Worse yet, what if there is no deep seated reason why you're afraid of intimacy and dependence? What if you are just scared of it for no reason?

There is no secret enlightenment to be had. There is only you and your fear blocking the door, and the fear isn't real.

To sort of add to this, I’ve found that meditation has had far more profound effects than psychedelics ever did. Maybe they help to kick start things or show how much of yourself you don’t know.

You could just as easily be describing therapy. Of course people sometimes need external help to achieve their goals or change their perspectives! Sometimes it's therapy, sometimes a vacation, sometimes a heart-to-heart with a close friend and sometimes a bunch of acid.

Dropping acid is maybe not the same thing as therapy sessions with a well qualified professional who is board certified, licensed and so on.

If you just mean "try random things to see how it helps", I suppose you could start by finding Jesus or licking a cattle prod. Why limit yourself to just a few methods of magic insight?

Indeed why not try those things. People should be more open to new experiences as long as you're not hurting yourself or others. If you find that looking cattle prods makes you happy, more power to you

I don't think there's any kind of global anti-drug conspiracy.

Anti-drug fear mongering is a byproduct of few factors: ignorance (people confuse crack, LSD and say MDMA, labeling everything as drug), valid fears (LSD was legal while being underresearched and that lead to few terrible events), self-propelled drugwar cycle (drugs caused wave of fear, became a good target for politicians, that caused even more fear mongering and the cycle is closed), and valid historical concerns (many drugs are very bad and caused pretty terrible historical precedents like opium abuse in China).

People are getting more educated on drugs these days, and more questions arise in the society regarding if certain kinds of drugs like LSD should be more available. Though it would be a long road.

It's not a conspiracy, it's a well-documented effort by the US and other powerful nations to extort every corner of the planet to adopting harsh, unscientific, liberty-obliterating laws against drugs (except the state-sanctioned ones of course!) that has been going on for about a 100 years. Cracks are beginning to show (see Portugal, Uruguay and others), but that is still the global system we live under thanks to various UN conventions pushed by the US and the national-level laws that adhere to those conventions.

> We’ve got a crisis of unhappiness in this country and psychedelic therapies are absolutely a powerful tool we could use to help people find themselves.

While I agree with everything else you said, this bit concerns me. I'm certainly in favor of using these tools to help anyone who needs help. But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms, but what are we going to collectively take to address the root problem(s)? And when?

> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

Because that's the default.. People haven't evolved to be happy; we have evolved to barely survive to have kids and care for them so that a few become adults. Being happy is the exception, you should ask how anyone manages that.

I sort of agree with this. We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy. These <things|experiences> will bring pleasure but they don’t create meaningful happiness. As if pleasure and happiness are the same thing. But they are often conflated.

I can’t tell or teach people “how to be happy”. I’m not even sure that’s possible or if it’s something everyone can do or would really want to. But I do know that being hooked on a treadmill of pleasurable experiences isn’t it.

> We’ve been marketed to that we should be happy and that buying <thing|experience> will make us happy.

Seems like the entirely idea of happiness has been semiotically highjacked by marketing, morality, other things

When I mentally picture "happiness", all I really see is a bunch of behaviors that are frequently depicted as desirable in the aggregate by media and others

The Buddhists are a lot more sane about this than we are. Imo there's so much residue around the word "happiness", in order to achieve a sense of peace it's better to just throw it out and take each day at a time

Happiness is a state of mind, and is a (mental, emotional) place, and that place is easier to occupy if your life is setup to make it easier. A few good friends, a romantic partner, meaningful work, kids is sort of the usual and probably pretty safe recipe. It's possible to have these things and be miserable, and it's possible to have none of them and be blissfully happy.

Aristotle wrote a pretty solid book on the topic.

The default is resorting to drugs, alcohol, other destructive behaviour, and even suicide?

Maybe.

But this isn't a universal default. These escapes at this level isn't happening everywhere in every culture, is it?

Why are using drugs and alcohol automatically destructive behaviours? I imagine you know and work with many people who use drugs and/or alcohol and also have families, friends, hobbies, career trajectories and are overall reasonably happy, well-adjusted people. I mean, that describes virtually everyone I know! The problem cases certainly exist, but within my personal world, those people are the exceptions.

> But maybe we should start with a mirror, and collectively ask, "Why are so many so unhappy?"

How is this even supposed to be determined? It isn't like you can test for happiness like you test a pool for Ph levels. Assuming we can is optimistic

Oh I think people are unhappy because of an abusive political system designed to funnel all wealth to the top while everyone else works themselves to death. Collective action is absolutely the real solution, but psychedelics can help people locked in the mindset that things can’t change to consider a better world.

There are simple things, like the fact that we are isolated. This according to Noam Chomsky is an intentional and desirable outcome of a corporate mass media system that wants to keep us separated. And a nice psychedelic trip with friends is a great way to remember not just that you like being with your friends, but that the world that keeps you apart is genuinely inhumane, and we should start to look deeper at how to solve these issues.

Basically I think psychedelics can be a tool that leads to the collective action you have rightly pointed out is the ultimate solution.

The reverse seems much much more likely. The abusive political system pushes drug legalization as an opiate of the masses so they are more content to deal with the abusive political system. A weekend of legal drug use to make the pain go away and disrupt solidarity.

Opiates are quite a different animal. A weekend of psychedelics with your friends is not going to help you ignore anything.

re: opiate of the masses

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/the+opiate+of+the+masse...

In short, it's not to be read literally.

I'm aware, and in context with religion is an apt metaphor. But in context with psychedelics it's not.

They're not a numbing agents, they're catalysts for change, that's why they're applicable to therapy in ways that opiates are not.

Yes and no. At some low-level the brain doesn't differential between physical pain and mental / emotional pain. It's pain, and it needs to be reckoned with. Maybe psychedelics aren't painkillers in the opioid sense. However, they do provide pain relief, and yes perhaps an opportunity for healing.

The difference really isn't all that much.

I agree with the other commenter that this is not how psychedelics work. They do not "make the pain go away" like depressants. If they have any effect on solidarity it would be to strengthen it, not disrupt it.

This is interestingly a great example of the point being made in TFA. That we need a new category for psychedelics because they are not anything like opiates etc.

> These psychedelics can help resolve the symptoms

My experience with psychedelic-assisted insight is not consistent with this. You have the right trip, identify some root-causes that you've been overlooking, and then sober-you has the rest of your life to do something with that new awareness.

They're not painkillers. If anything, they're the opposite. There are all of these rumors about LSD causing back pain because people who have been ignoring back pain trip and are suddenly aware of it again. Such an experience caused me to upgrade my chair and start practicing yoga, for instance.

> They're not painkillers

In the traditional sense (e.g., alcohol, Oxycodine, etc) no they are not. But they are mind altering, literally. And that alteration is an opportunity to break patterns, unhealthy patterns. Being in that other state of mind shows you another state of mind can exist. You experienced it. So you take that away with you and ideally build new healthier paths.

I totally agree. Isn't that quite different than what painkillers do?

Presumably your new path has something to do with a problem that you had. It's not helping you cope with having the problem, it's prodding you to solve the problem.

Sometimes people try psychedelics and have great experiences just like that! Sometimes they try psychedelics and they have baaaaaad experiences, that are essentially traumatic and result in lingering negative feelings.

Risk versus reward!

… but you don’t have to risk much, for your first time. Yes, tripping with your friends at a festival is great - but you can also do a little, on your own terms, to try it out, and get a feel for whether it’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

Possible benefits of micro dosing notwithstanding, you won’t get the dramatic effects everyone tells stories about without taking a significant dose… but that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing arrangement. You can try a little, you can increase or decrease your dosage next time, you can take notice of the conditions surrounding your hood and your bad trips, and - I mean what I’m really describing here is how to learn to use a drug responsibly. It’s like any other powerful experience, you need to be smart about how you approach it.

I think people get suckered in by unnuanced anecdotes on either side - “it was amazing, it cured my depression!” and “it was awful, it escalated my schizophrenia” are on opposite ends of a spectrum. I always think everyone owes it to themselves to experience wherever along that spectrum they are comfortable going - not necessarily a psychedelic evangelist per se, just very much in favour of careful deliberate experimentation with your own brain and body chemistry.

Glad you had a good trip! Ones where you come away learning something about yourself are the best.

They are not all equal. Not the people, the experience, the substance, or the sum of all.

Without study and care and the ability to be Frank about such things as purity, setting and set, those people are going to fail to realize any “reward”.

> Sometimes people try psychedelics and have great experiences just like that! Sometimes they try psychedelics and they have baaaaaad experiences, that are essentially traumatic and result in lingering negative feelings.

> Risk versus reward!

Well something I did not say in my comment but I believe is very important is that it's not just "do drugs, win prizes" it's "take time over a period of years to learn how psychedelics work with your body, try some experiences in emotionally safe spaces, reflect on those trips with your friend and therapist, and develop some confidence to work your way up in dosage as you learn to understand how it works for you".

While some people may be able to randomly take a higher end dose and have a good result, I certainly advocate that people take their time to get in to these substances. I advocate for legalization because of what is possible with very careful use of them as a tool, but it takes some care to learn how to use them properly!

Thanks for sharing. Great example.

I took 100ug LSD twice and I was suicidal after it for years

It sounds like you were insecure about certain things like dating and got over it via psychedelics

I mean if that works, sure. But what happens in the future if you latch onto some other insecurity? Will you just take a psychedelic again? Is that going to actually fix the problem?

I don’t know if it’s accurate to describe what I was going through as “latching on to an insecurity”. I had literally forgotten that I am cool and sexy and this led to insecurity around other cool and sexy people I liked. Once I remembered that I am also cool and sexy, I was able to see myself on an even playing field with the people I like and there was simply no cause for insecurity.

I will certainly do psychedelics again tho. When done with intention and maturity they’re fun, harmless, and have generally always been positive and emotionally productive for me. Some years ago I had a mushroom trip that was emotionally challenging, but reminded me of the mortality of my aging parents. This led me to make more of an effort to see them and spend time with them. That’s a wonderful outcome.

The thing about psychedelics is that they basically work by loosening up your brain’s “default mode network” which is the set of pathways you use to make decisions. By loosening up this network you can find adjacent connections that were almost there but had not quite clicked. So they are a tool to help you find things you have been missing. This is something I will continue to explore. On a more basic level, I found that a small dose of LSD at a dance party is very enjoyable and way better for me personally than drinking alcohol or consuming marijuana. Not that I need substances to have fun, but sometimes that’s a fun way to spend an evening.

>I mean if that works, sure. But what happens in the future if you latch onto some other insecurity? Will you just take a psychedelic again? Is that going to actually fix the problem?

If taking a psychedelic on occasion is effective in combating people's insecurities that is almost certainly one of the most massive wins in the history of mental health.

I don't think it's nearly that simple but I am baffled by the idea of "taking a psychedelic cured you of this issue so what are you gonna do if you have another issue, cure it with another psychedelic, huh?" being some sort of negative thing.

For everyone who has an experience like you, there's someone like this guy: https://www.ecstaticintegration.org/p/dmt-derealization-and-...

Anyway, since you were dancing, I assume you used MDMA which is much "less psychedelic" than acid or DMT (and much more of a stimulant). There's also more potential for misuse and addiction. Ketamine, too, turns out to be quite addictive by the way.

It seems clear that psychedelics are going mainstream and, unlike the 60s and 70s, they will be legal in some places. I'm not convinced that ths will be a net good, partly because it's not clear that it was a net good in the 60s and 70s, but we'll see.

There's nothing stopping you from dancing on acid or shrooms. In fact, that's the whole point of psytrance.

You are implying a 1:1 relationship with good experiences and bad experiences. That's not how drugs work. It is important to know the actual reality of this type of ratio so that individuals who are looking to use a drug of this nature can be well informed.

No, I'm positing a 1:1 relationship between "holy shit I am a new person" in a good way and "holy shit I am a new person" in a bad way.

That's not the same as good/bad experiences.

I don't think there's nearly enough data available to posit it one way or the other - anything we say is almost certainly going to be purely anecdotal.

My anecdotal experience has been that the vast majority of people who have used DMT have not felt like a "new person", and the few that have, have felt so in a positive way.

> Ketamine, too, turns out to be quite addictive by the way.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2022-07-ketamine-addiction.ht...

I have done the medically assisted Ketamine trips. No sign them being addicting to me whatsoever. It didn't do a whole lot for me, but some of the other peeps in my cohort had amazing results working through old grief.

It's well known that ketamine is addictive. Just google "ketamine addiction". It's an effective antidepressant for many people but you can't take it long term because tolerance develops quickly.