An untold story of LSD psychotherapy in communist Czechoslovakia
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
Recommending it is not a safe and good idea.
At the most elemental level How can a person obtain medical grade pure LSD?
Further people have widely different reactions to the drugs mentioned, Making it into a cocktail is a recipe for disaster. Perhaps not for you, and perhaps not for a few others but the odds are against anyone who gives it a try.
Our current level of technology cannot even predict how a single person will react to one of our many anti-depressants. Here try this for a while.
" Dont like, doesn't work, lets try a different one. " (repeat until something works or you run out of drugs).
I am not advocating anti-depressants over the drugs you mention above necessarily. I have some faith that progress can be made in the realm of chemistry and medicine there.
I am saying dont do this on your own kids.
There are some that clean you can have great insights, magical experiences and some orgasm if you choke yourself nearly to death. Not quite death, just before.
Given the cocktail above, self-administered controlled strangulation might be safer.
I don't know if it happens in the wild, but it is a possibility. By using more reagents, you may be more certain, but unless you take it to a lab with good enough equipment (such as GC/MS), you never know.
There are plenty of 4-aco synthetics out there though but those are all mostly very safe and are usually sold as mushroom/psilocybin equivalents not LSD.
I really don't think he meant these combined in anyways. I don't think it'd be very ideal to mix any of them.
They didn't. They're merely sharing their own experience.
I’m a huge free marketeer, but a minimal amount of regulation really goes a very long way to improving outcomes.
Plus, you don’t get a second chance fixing your own brain.
Says who?
I also believe your argument suffers from an attention fallacy. We allow (and encourage) people to do quite a lot of things that are outright more destructive and dangerous. Just walk past any gambling hall and have a look inside if you need an example. There are proper addicts there driven to extreme measures by desperation and tunnel views.
edit: If you need an example, a class mate of a very good friend of mine got into the habit of spending his pay check playing slots. He is currently serving time for cocaine smuggling after he ran out of options and couldnt see any other way out. Once losses are mounting peoples sanity goes quickly. Cocaine smuggling is by far not the worst thing he could have gotten himself into. And its not like putting him in detox for a week would have cleared his mind up as long as the debt is still there.
GP was just saying (given their assumptions / understanding) that it's a bad trade-off to allow people to take these particular risks. That the costs outweigh the benefits.
You, on the other hand, claim gp's (supposed) slippery slope will lead down the path of banning anything... in other words, that if we ban people from taking [these risks] it creates a slippery slope to arbitrarily banning all kinds of things with any risk involved.
you, or i, don’t get to decide what’s fair to treat, or who’s deserving of treatment.
What are you on about? Have you actually tried any of the substances mentioned in the parent comment?
Money + no responsibilities + nitrous shipped to your door is a very very very very bad combo for some people.
I've personally used all of those substances without having mental breakdowns and know many people that have as well. But I do know people that have went down dark paths with nitrous. More intense than the worst alcoholism, imo.
That's because it's dangerous. Even good old weed can provoke psychosis, never mind LSD and mushrooms. Case in point: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/off-duty-...
LSD, ketamine, and other chemicals seem to be working for some people. But it doesn't mean that they're completely _safe_.
Nobody should ever be getting behind the wheel of a car, let alone the cockpit of a plane, if they have not slept in 40+ hours.
There are lots of things that went wrong in that story, at multiple points. Using it to conclude that drugs are categorically unsafe, and therefore should be criminalized, is the wrong takeaway.
> Nobody should ever be getting behind the wheel of a car, let alone the cockpit of a plane, if they have not slept in 40+ hours.
Yeah, just imagine if he actually had a doctor checking on him after he used psychedelics.
And because any sign of depression or mental illness is career-ending from a pilot, the FAA and airlines' policy turned something that might have been treatable into something much worse.
This situation reads to me like a last ditch effort to fix the depression before attempting suicide. The tragedy here is that this will only lead to stricter regulations, rather than the mental health reform this industry needs.
I'm not knocking dialog-type therapy or psychedelic therapy, but maybe I'm built different and as a computer programmer figured out how to use these drugs to debug myself.
Not sure if this is happening with you, but please all be aware that "repressed memory" is a controversial topic and one prevailing view on this is that recalling memories that are inaccessible is actually more like injecting false memories.
I wish I knew this 5 years ago when someone close to me was accusing dozens of people of abuse, which I believed ... But they turned out to be suffering psychosis, paranoia and false memories.
This is what mindfulness meditation is best for. Drugs are just a cop out.
We need a clinical study where a group of veterans with PTSD is given MDMA and an isolated quiet place to go for several hours. Each of them is told they're receiving a drug that cures PTSD. The placebo effect paired with the brain rewiring effect of MDMA will cure more people than any other method and demonstrate that the effect is self-contained.
Basically, the MDMA subdues the negative emotions, and the talk therapy forces recollection. Without the latter, you just have a pleasant trip, but I highly doubt real progress would be made against the trauma.
Anecdotally it's very uncommon to hear about people having a bad time or even a neutral experience on MDMA in any number of settings.
Probably because there aren't any people there looking for specific boxes to check
Doing this in front of one of them is a horrible idea because it all gets documented. That's not a very relaxing environment tbh, it isn't a relationship where you are both on equal footing
And this all gets exacerbated if the therapist has their own issues that you aren't aware of
It's kind of sad to see that the anti-state libertarian propaganda is working so well: the problem at stake here is not “too much state”, it's that you don't have universal healthcare to pay for these professional bills and keep the rate these guys charge at a decent level.
Nobody should be forced to do their own research and risk their health just because therapists are unaffordable.
I've only ever taken psychedelics on my own, and while I've done regular talk therapy, I don't think I'd want that experience with a therapist. Taking 100-150ug of LSD at my house while listening to music, meditating, and practicing yoga should be available legally to me if I choose it. It's completely transformed my life for the better.
Sort of like, "if you have nothing to hide, why value privacy?"
It overlooks the fact that, while these substances are useful in therapeutic contexts, that's not the _only_ value they have. And, even if they were not strictly useful in other contexts, that wouldn't preclude a right to use them "recreationally".
So, I totally agree with you.
I wish people could separate out complex issues like this into their 3-5 most significant constituent parts. For example: personal sovereignty/freedoms, public health implications, medicinal value, social harm/risk, cultural impact.
There are a lot of reasons to be either in favor or opposed to psychedelics, and then on top of that to support strict or permissive controls. To conflate those all into one issue is reductive and it stifles discussion and progress.
Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to get these thoughts out.
Saying they know better/best/as the only ones is stretching the suspension of disbelief quite a bit. I am happy to fill out some sort of drug drivers license about knowing the risks and how to deal with them. But there is simply no way in hell i am letting such quacks into my trip.
edit: Since there is always the risk of someone taking this the wrong way, let me promise you that on the spectrum of "be all you can be" i am on the better half with a bunch of legal ways to go quite a lot lower at my disposal. Ways that arent closable through legislation. I would suggest focusing on some self improvement instead :)
That's alright, that's new experimental therapy and it will improve, you might say. Well, they don't even pay anything for my ADHD treatment because the state says adults can't have it, it's children's disease. That's what I get for 30% of my income - nothing.
The antistate libertarian "propaganda" is working so well because it's not propaganda but the only way to get treatment. At least they let me pay for the drugs myself, I'd probably kill myself if I couldn't get them just because the state said so.
> The antistate libertarian "propaganda" is working so well because it's not propaganda but the only way to get treatment. At least they let me pay for the drugs myself, I'd probably kill myself if I couldn't get them just because the state said so.
It only works for the very small fraction that can pay “he equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars” worth of treatment, which means that for pretty much everyone it's literally as if state said that they cannot get them! In the richest country in the world, some people can't even afford drugs that are decades old, call that a way to get treatment.
I'm not moving any goalpost. The issue is that the state won't pay for the treatment, which includes the professionals who perform it.
No, quite the opposite: everyone should get it, and to get there the affluent should use their money to help this cause, not sidestep the problem for themselves and be fine with the status quo not moving for the commoners.
ADHD is a classic example, it's actually being discussed in the media right now - the drugs and therapy are labeled as one of the dangerous liberal ideas, the mainstream suggestion is stricter parenting, which of course includes beating the children - that's a traditional value here as well ("we survived it, they will survive it too", right?).
My suggestion to Americans - don't let the "commoners" use the state to capture your healthcare like it happened here. Countries like ours need you to develop new treatments. System like ours will never produce anything and will never move forward without your example. If you adopt this kind of system, the world is fucked.
> My problem with the current push for this type of therapy is the requirment that it be done by professionals charging hundreds or thousands of dollars. […] I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit.
I read this as, "I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State, especially when that set and setting costs thousands of dollars that my needs don't require."
You were the one that moved the goalposts, claiming that the lack of universal healthcare is "the problem at stake here."
And then when the person helpfully rebutted that point—no, it's not costs, but the fact that universal healthcare isn't a panacea, citing their individual experience—you complain that _they_ are moving the goalposts.
At the end of the day, psychedelics sit at the intersection of personal responsibility, medicine, and social order. We can argue whether and how they should be allowed, whether they have medicinal value, and what the impact on society is, at large. But those discussions are orthogonal to the questions about the optimal configuration of medical care and health systems.
If you want to wave the banner of universal healthcare, feel free. You might even get some of us to agree with you. But don't come into a political discussion about personal sovereignty and tell people "you don't actually need sovereignty, you just need more state."
That's just insulting.
> You were the one that moved the goalposts, claiming that the lack of universal healthcare is "the problem at stake here."
One either use a money argument and I'm allowed to refute it, or don't. But you cannot tell me I'm moving the goalpost for responding to the argument.
If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.
If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.
> But don't come into a political discussion about personal sovereignty and tell people "you don't actually need sovereignty, you just need more state."
The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out. Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.
> At the end of the day, psychedelics sit at the intersection of personal responsibility, medicine, and social order. We can argue whether and how they should be allowed, whether they have medicinal value, and what the impact on society is, at large. But those discussions are orthogonal to the questions about the optimal configuration of medical care and health systems.
The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.
> That's just insulting.
Nobody insulted anyone, please don't play the “this is offensive” card.
Fair play for responding to the money argument. That's fine. But redirecting that it's _only_ about money misses what I thought the actual point was. A fairer way to reframe my accusation is that the OP offered two claims, and you addressed one (money) and ignored the other, then claimed that the other (freedom) was a different goalpost. I think it was the main goalpost, to begin with.
>If you remove money from your rephrasing of the argument you get “I should not be required to use these in a set and setting sanctioned by The State” which is different: I don't mind if you really want to self medicate, nor does the state (as illustrated by the fact that there's no felony or crime for self medication), but in average it's a pretty poor idea: you're way more likely to harm yourself than achieve your goal. If Steve Jobs died because he wasn't smart enough to make the proper medical call for himself, so can you.
Agree with you. I think they are powerful and dangerous, but I am against a nanny state. We should outlaw things that have profound negative effects, such as children with developing brains taking these compounds.
>If you really want to do it “because freedom”, then go for it, but if you do it because there's money at stake like OP, then you're not actually doing it freely, you're doing it under economic constraint and blaming “too much state” is delusional.
Fair point. I don't think that was the case, but I can see why it might seem like that.
>The argument being made was, in short, “it's too fucking expensive, fuck the state” when the reality is that it's expensive because the state doesn't want to intervene, which is what I pointed out.
I think you're half-right. It's expensive because the state has facilitated a black market. It would still likely be expensive due to taxes and regulation, if it were legal. Universal healthcare probably lowers costs, but I hate the argument that "because I'm not paying directly, it's free." We have that now with insurance, and it's a lie.
>Also, “personal sovereignty” is an oxymoron unless you're a king or some autocrat. Sovereignty is a collective process, it's “we the people” not “Me myself and I”.
Personal sovereignty is a thing. It's about autonomy and the right to choose what you do with your body and your property. There are fuzzy areas, such as where those choices might impact others or the environment, but I believe in it as a fundamental right, not a positive one.
>The comment I responded to at the beginning was complaining about the cost of health professional, it wasn't at all about psychedelics in particular, and that's the argument I responded to.
The first one explained, "I remain resistant to this insertion of the state into what should be my right to use my own mind the way I see fit." Yes, they mentioned cost as a factor, but I read that as incidental to the "real" issue.
Apologies for playing the "offensive card." I put a lot of stock into my ability to identify root causes and figure out problems. If someone comes along and presupposes that I'm wrong about my framing of an issue without explaining why, that does feel like an affront. It feels like a theory of mind violation. It felt like you were claiming, "You say that you care about sovereignty, but you actually only care about access. If it was free you wouldn't be complaining." How could you know that? You're not in their head. You skipped a step, and just assumed. I'm hyper-sensitive to this type of thing. I suppose I was projecting this onto your reply to the OP.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HXMHdhQL_8&pp=ygURbHNkIGluI...
On a more serious note, it's a shame that the psychotherapy research was stopped.
Another article from Maps https://maps.org/news-letters/v17n1/lsd_in_prague-long_term_...
I feel like I am seeing the same cycle happen again with psychedelics, especially shrooms and LSD.
Point being, the pendulum always swings. If weed is always terrible and always going to kill you, then when the pendulum swings, it's going to cure cancer and bring back your dead pet bunny. The truth is somewhere in the middle: it can lead to transformative experiences, but mostly just makes you slow, hungry, and often paranoid.
LSD and psilocybin and the like will probably end up being the same. Microdosing works fine for some people, not so much for others. Psychadelic therapy will be great for some and really screw up others. You can have people who get bad reactions to psychadelics, and you can have terrible therapists, and you can have both at the same time.
I definitely feel the need to allow this space to be explored, but with cautions in place, mainly via public education. These substances can open doors to different parts of our psyches and can open our eyes to patterns in the universe we hadn't seen before, and that should be celebrated. But they can also uncover horrors we were not meant to experience, and tear apart our sense of reality in ways that leave us much more damaged than we ever were before. Start small and start slow, and if it gets too much, stop.
It's a repeat of the '60s all over again. Back then there was the same "miracle drug" attitude, a ton of overuse, then a bunch of negative reports, and the pendulum swung to "we need to heavily restrict these drugs".
I'm waiting for that part to repeat.
As in we see that while research is prohibited people have all kind of wild ideas but once we let researchers research they uncover the truth about them? Honestly does not sound half bad.
Though I think there is more to LSD. It's fair to be skeptical. If the pitch is it's going to fix everything for everyone, or the likes, then it's definitely a lie.
Conversely, "therapeutic" processing of trauma often occurs subconsciously. Such as during sleep, and arguably more so as sleep quality improves.
Instead of looking for benefit, at least for now, the concentration should be on an assessment of harm. Only in that context will a future study on possible benefit be informative.
This is a weird take. If a person is suicidal, and "convinces himself" (whatever that actually means in the context of the therapy) to not kill themself, this is therapeutic effect by definition.
I didn't mean to imply that being convinced of therapeutic benefit always means that there isn't any. There could even be a lot of benefit.
I meant to state or imply that being convinced doesn't necessarily mean that such a benefit was significant, if there at all.
This means that someone convinced of such benefit may have that benefit, but not necessarily.
Respectfully, using a binary life and death measurement example only means that you've cited a circumstance where we can definitely measure when there has been a significant benefit. Assuming that we can conclude that suicide was otherwise likely (we can assume that for this hypothetical).
Take another example:
A person can momentarily convince themself that their PSD is healed, even just out of positive self-talk, a single good therapy experience, and hope, and then go on to realize continuing debilitating symptoms for their lifetime.
What the experimental use of currently illicit street drugs in psychotherapy should be measuring, assuming that we can agree that we should be conducting such experiemnts (I don't agree given the available research), is whether or not they may make conditions such as PSD worse over the coming decades. In spite of patient verbal feedback at any point in time. Because people like street drugs, in general.
When was the lsat time that you witnessed an enthusiastic or otherwise "therapuetic" user of street drugs lamenting the thinning of their cortical white matter?
Or lamenting the loss of other brain architecture that theoretically would help them overcome mental illness should it survive their habit?
> I disagree that it is a weird take.
You say "Perception of psychotherapeutic progress does not equal progress.", but the article ends with Hana K. doing objectively better that before her therapy, decades (!) later. It simply isn't just perception.
> A person can momentarily convince themself that their PSD is healed, even just out of positive self-talk, a single good therapy experience, and hope, and then go on to realize continuing debilitating symptoms for their lifetime.
Well, yeah, obviously. Have you read any protocol that is actually used during these types of experimental therapies using MDMA or psilocybin? The patient doesn't undergo just single session, and regular talking therapy is also administered, in multiple sessions.
> is whether or not they may make conditions such as PSD worse over the coming decades.
I agree that this should be also studied. And I'm sure it already is. The re-emergence of using psychoactive substances is a trend that is only a few years old. So sure, the current effect (which are statistically huge) may not last forever, but again based on this article, I think the effects will last.
The actual therapeutic effect would be stopping suicidal ideation, not a single instance of suicidal behavior. A person may continue to suffer whatever ill effects that were pushing them to suicide but (temporarily) reconsider the action itself.
On the one hand, nobody can "fix" you; you need to internalize different ways of thinking and build emotional resilience. Drugs may help this process, or help maintain it, but they're not a cure, and neither is talk therapy. It is, in a sense, a matter of convincing yourself.
On the other hand, most people- even very introspective people- will struggle with self-therapy. It isn't as easy as "today I am happy".
Well, yeah, that's what I meant and that what's the article is about (e.g. the story of Hana K.).
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=willsoon
and enable 'showdead'.
Whether it’s HN or not, no idea, but it looks to be flagged by other users who can downvote to me though.
edit: someone beat me to it! I should have logged in to refresh the view! :D