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Comment by simbolit | Hacker News Reader

The central bit:

"psychedelics are silently doing something even more remarkable than warping reality: They are rapidly inducing a state of neuroplasticity, in which the brain can more easily reorganize its structure and function. (...) For the first time, researchers have purposively developed psychedelic drugs that appear to bring about neuroplastic effects without producing a trip. These drugs stimulate the same serotonin receptor as traditional psychedelics (...) nontrip psychedelics will have at least one major advantage over their trip-inducing analogs: They can more easily be placebo-tested. Classic psychedelic research has been bedeviled by the simple fact that it is virtually impossible not to know that you are taking a classic psychedelic"

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> the brain can more easily reorganize its structure and function

What's that actually mean? That sounds like something with lasting effects...?

In short, it often is. People who experience ongoing depression, especially when associated with long term/complex trauma, are essentially fighting against the structure of their brain.

The deeply ingrained defense mechanisms brought about by complex trauma were installed gradually and repeatedly (or suddenly and violently for other forms of trauma). Establishing new patterns of thought is possible but slow and sometimes excruciating. The possibility that psychedelics can put the brain in a state from which it can reform its conception of these events in a shorter period of time than traditional therapy is pretty incredible, and one of the reasons I’ve personally gotten very interested in this space.

There was a point after years of traditional therapy when I started to realize and understand I’m safe and can’t be hurt by events of the past. But even though I deeply “get it”, and this is a kind of victory on its own, my ever-active brain just keeps churning away, running the subroutines beat into me (sometimes literally) from an early age, and this manifests as anxiety and depression. It’s a frustrating place to operate from. Aware of why my nervous system does what it does, but often powerless to prevent it. Psychedelics seem to offer a much better chance of integrating these events.

The analogy I heard recently was a brain with chronic depression/trauma is something like a car with a bad engine. It is repairable and fixable, but it's a lot of work to tear everything down, and lots of times trying to fix or replace one thing snowballs into many things (e.g. you shear a rusty bolt, or as long as you have the timing belt out, you really ought to do the water pump). Other times you really need to address the broken rod before you can do anything else, but to get there you need to tear the whole engine down.

The problem is, you can't just tear your brain apart into individual pieces and leave it scattered across your garage as you work on each piece one at a time. Every new counseling session, every new day you're starting over and tearing down things and then when you're done, when you have to get back to the day to day of life, you have to put it all back together and hope it gets you through to the next one.

Psychedelics seem to give you a very brief window where you whole brain is just sort of "exploded" like a giant parts diagram. And you can poke at and work on one part at a time without all the tear down and without having to do all the other pieces because they just all got out of the way. It's not as good as if we could just tear everything down and do a complete rebuild over the course of a week. But given what we have, when things are really entangled and overlapping, it's a better / faster approach.

This remarkably well describes my experiences with mushrooms. I recall all of it, its not some brain fog like from alcohol or weed, but those experiences perceived by massively 'expanded' brain simply are not the same as when remembering it sober, its like seeing a tiny crop of an original picture, it may still make some sense but you are probably missing most of what actually happened.

But let me tell you, once I got into another trip, those memories from previous trip again made complete sense and they were very detailed, if only for that brief amount of time.

Anyway back to the topic, when tripping (alone, laying in bed with eyes closed, shamanic music in background, late evening), I felt I gradually lost all my senses (ie weird to keep 'seeing' as experiencing what was happening, yet organ of the eyeball was unreachable at that moment to my brain, and so were the others), all connection to my body. Heart rate went to very low mode (I held breath for what I referenced as few mins just to try this new situation, not more than 3, and I could 100% control all feedback from desperate body spasming for any air while I was casually observing it, not a worry in the world for that experiment - just to clarify I don't do any freediving or similar activity where you train to hold your breath). At the height I was a mist of atoms, dancing or more like swirling in the air in the music, nothing in nothingness. Those atoms were tiny parts of me, alone useless and incoherent, meaningless.

And once trip was ending, very very gradually (I'd say it alone took 90 min easily), coming down from that peak one step at a time, re-discovering senses and body. All those atoms joining one by one. I felt very strongly that if I had any major character flaw or unresolved issues, this would be the moment where putting back those atoms wouldn't work very well.

I had this without getting any info from more experienced users or research (those mushrooms I grew myself from growkit from Amsterdam, we talk about cca 2007), and the part about splitting into atoms and then combining them back together sounds similar to neuroplasticity you describe.

Just for the love of god don't do such strong stuff if you have some unresolved inner issues. There is a chance you can solve it for good via this, but the risk of something going wrong and ending up in catatonic nightmare, or even some (additional) permanent damage ain't worth it. If it would be long term legal and accepted and you would be able to have professional managing the set then this part should be without major worries.

Yup. That’s the main reason to take psilocybin for most people. The hallucinations are interesting but not really worth the trouble. After 30 minutes of a recreational trip I find I wish I could go back to sobriety, it’s very mentally taxing. And the effects last for maybe 5 hours. It’s like going on a really intense hike in your mind, but taking the drug plops you 10 miles into the wilderness and over the next few hours you have no choice but to hike back out. Micro-dosing is different as you can distract yourself from the effects fairly easily.

For me a trip is something that takes a certain amount of preparation. It feels like gearing up for a spring cleaning marathon that you can not stop once you start. So you get together a list of the parts of your brain you want to clear out, set aside a day and a half for the trip and the recovery, and dive in.

Yes, and some people come back from trips permanently wrong. It’s rare but it happens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

That's the idea. It's why you encounter many people who talk about therapeutic applications of psychedelics.

Users of DMT, or participants in the ayahuasca ceremony, often advocate for the drug because they claim that it really opens a portal to another dimension and godlike beings there. The trip is very much the point, not mere vague benefits like neuroplasticity or developing more empathy. Indeed, I can imagine some DMT advocates claiming that an approach of applying psychedelics without inducing an actual trip, is the man's attempt to intentionally deprive people of contact with those extradimensional entities.

To clear up the dissonance, I interpret that "Side effect" does not mean "Unintended consequence" in this case, it means "Not the root cause of brain changes". Sure, I intended to trip, but the trip was caused by something deeper.

As in: "The nice fuzzy warm feeling of sitting around a fire is a side effect of self-sustaining exothermic oxidization of organic volatiles in dried wood"

Of course I made a fire for the warmth on my face / clothes. It's just the warmth I feel is a side effect of a deeper process where the heat sustains the reaction. It just so happens I'm around to harvest some of the waste heat.

They are using it for another purpose - which is fine by me (tho usually not with LEO).

If my psychiatrist gives me medicine supposed to deal with my mental health problems, I don't necessarily want contact with extradimensional entities, I want to get better.

Different purposes. Some people drink beer to get drunk, some people drink alcohol-free beer for the taste. Same with decaf coffee.

Just a small correction but you mean DMT: DHT is the hormone that causes hair loss.

Hey now,

I take propecia to make sure those portals to the demon world stay _closed_

Fixed, thanks.

Yeah, hallucinations without the other effects of the psychedelic sounds sort of useless, unless used as a weapon, torture or something on people who don't realize it.

Trips without heavy hallucinations are still useful, but hallucinations without the trip? Not sure what the point of that would be.

The point is treatment of psychiatric illnesses like depression without the potential for upsetting hallucinations.

Even SSRIs are now thought to work by inducing neuroplasticity, and they don't cause hallucinations either.

>> They can more easily be placebo-tested

yes, please!

psychonauts communities can be insufferable without this component.

“oh you had a side affect? you should have known you have a history of such and such in your family, the drugs are perfect stop talking!”

would love basic studies with control groups and hypothesis

You’re participating in the wrong communities. Bad people do bad things regardless of what tribe they belong to.

For a movement that loves the empathy improvements from their drugs, the phrasing here is lacking that and is still Exhibit A of invalidating and minimizing, not even an example of a community that does it better.

Edit: Additional capitalization added for the maturity goal post, let’s see if it pays off.

I haven’t taken a psychedelic since I was thirty. Do you think a recommendation for communities I haven’t been a part of for nearly twenty years will be of any use?

And finally, if you want to try to insult someone on the internet at least have the courtesy of using capital letters. I can’t expect maturity or even following the spirit of this site. But can I at least expect the most basic part of the written language?

Why do you feel qualified to invalidate and minimize if you aren’t a part of any community in question?

And every cult has idiots.

It would be amazing to be able to learn like a kid again for a set bit of time. Imagine taking a neuroplasticity drug and then practice guitar, or Spanish, or whatever, for an hour or two.

Maybe I just have freakish neuroplasticity, but I find that getting better at learning more than made up for ease of learning. I traded rote for note, and am better off for it.

Now, combine that with a neuroplasticity pill...

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