Hacker News Reader

Comment by zozbot234 | Hacker News Reader

Taking psychedelics is a bit like trying to fix a Swiss watch with a sledgehammer: it might just work, but that's not the way to bet. Therapy and well-guided meditative practice can be a lot gentler than that.

View on HN

Conversely, for some people trying to fix depression with therapy and guided meditation can be a bit like trying to fix a Swiss watch with therapy and guided meditation. Everybody is different!

This isn't some erowid report. This is actually about studies being made by professional researchers who are publishing their results.

Evidence based medicine is always better than layman opinions like 'psychedelics are a mental sledgehammer'.

I agree, that taking psychedelics is likely not a good idea. But the analogue gives in my opinion totally wrong picture of the actual risks. Psychedelics, at least psilocybin, are quite harmless compared to almost any other substances. The reason for that is that they aren't very habit forming.

Personally I used psilocybin recreationally back in the days. Got once bad experience and ended up in a psychosis and to hospital. I got better in couple of days and long term effects were nonexistent.

Then I have couple of friends whose basic substances are just legal alcohol and cigarettes, and boy have they fucked their lives with those. It just takes a long time to do it that but psilocybin for sure does not lead to that kind of path.

There is actually a ton of incredibly fascinating knowledge about what psychedelics do – neuroimmunobiologically the effects are profoundly interesting. It’s a surprisingly sharp and specific instrument, certainly double-edged though.

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/immunology/articles/10....

This is sort of how the mechanism of psychedelics fixing depression comes across to me as well. But, surely there must be much more to it, since, as you’re of course aware, fixing a Swiss watch with a sledgehammer will have a very low success rate. The other end of the analogy spectrum could be that it’s a bit like a chemical catalyst. There’s a lot of resistance to a reaction happening on its own, but will very likely happen if given the proper jolt.

A better analogy might be "fixing a heart attack with your fists". It might work, if the problem is fibrillation or a blocked artery and if the impact resolves it… or it might just cause further injury without resolving anything. (Or it might resolve the heart attack, but then cause a stroke a few minutes later.)

Thank you for the balanced opinion. It's a rarity here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com