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Comment by bjourne | Hacker News Reader

I read in a forum about psychedelics about a guy who had been carving up his whole arm while tripping on LSD. The response befuddled me and wasn't what I expected: "Classic newbie mistake", "Your own fault for tripping alone", and "You should put knifes and weapons away when you trip." It made me realize these people are like adopters of niche programming languages. To outsiders they tell everyone how great their language is and how you'll become 10x more productive switching to it. Only on bug trackers will you find out about lack of tooling support, stochastic compiler bugs, and bad api designs.

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These are not normal reactions to being under the influence of psychedelics but latent mental illness being activated.

That they can activate latent mental illnesses that wouldn't be activated otherwise is the main risk of psychedelics, and is absolutely a real problem

It happened with someone I know. He tried psychedelics in a weekend at the beach house scenario for the first time as a middle aged man. He liked the experience and then started reading about LSD microdosing, so he decided to try that.

Over the course of a few weeks he began to slide into what was clearly schizophrenic delusions. He became obsessed with what he presumed was a vast conspiracy to murder him and take his money, interpreting ordinary events like someone cutting him off on the highway as being part of this.

Thankfully he's got a good partner and support network, got into therapy, and now is doing fine.

I have a pretty live and let live attitude over psychedelics, but I do hate when aficionados pretend there aren't risks or downsides.

On a less dramatic scale I know people who've tried it and hated it, and that's very much a possible outcome as well. It's crappy when aficionados flip that around into somehow being a square or whatever.

It is quite irresponsible to take a psychedelic drug and then drive a car.

So called microdosing of psychedelics is generally rubbish, the way they're distributed means you have no idea whatsoever what dose you're actually taking and if you want to live with a 5-HT2a tolerance, just go on a trip dose and you're good for a few months.

Edit: And with some of these substances one should expect cardiac toxicity if dosing every day, due to serotonin receptors in the heart.

Activating latent mental illness is a risk of psychedelics, and yet they are still safer in that regard than alcohol and cannabis. There is a lower rate of psychosis being triggered with LSD and psilocybin. This is an education problem: we are (at least sort of) taught in school the risks of drinking too much, and in younger generations, smoking too much weed, but we are taught nothing about when it's appropriate to take psychedelics.

Some recent studies suggest that there is no increase in risk of psychosis from psychedelic use, and at worst, it causes symptoms which would have surfaced anyways to surface sooner. This isn't a reason to take psychedelics of course, it's better that one goes as long as they can without experiencing some sort of schizo-affective disorder.

My point is that people are misunderstanding the risks when they look at psychedelics and go "No way I'm taking that, I don't want to make myself schizophrenic", and then don't bat an eye when they drink a glass (or two) of wine or smoke a joint.

The longer I live, the more I find most things in life are just delaying something, and ultimately just death. My teeth are shit, I fix them a little at a time and just pray they don't break down too much before I'm dead. Some of my muscles/tendons bones are getting weaker, I just baby them enough that hopefully I can keep their use to old age.

We hope to push most the bad stuff beyond or as far towards death as possible, and death as far away as possible so long as not too much bad stuff is already happening. The question then becomes at what rate we slow the delay of schizo-affective disorder or some other mental illness. It's coming for all of us, given enough time.

I see this differently. Your worldview is “normal” but not “healthy”

> they are still safer in that regard than alcohol and cannabis. There is a lower rate of psychosis being triggered with LSD and psilocybin.

Is this adjusted by amount of use? As in, is it possible that it's more likely to trigger latent mental illness with alcohol and cannabis not because they trigger it more effectively, but because they are significantly more widely available, significantly more widely used, and people who consume them consume them in significantly greater amounts?

If you get drunk once, I get high once, and our friend trips on psilocybin once, what is the comparative risk of activating latent mental illness for these events alone?

The thing is, the use patterns are not really the same.

I had to quit drinking, because I couldn't moderate my intake. I struggle with cannabis craving and use.

I have taken a number of psychedelic drugs, but never due to craving, and not more than a handful of times. I have had profound and life changing experiences (for the better), it's not always fun.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure regular use of psychedelics is not a great idea. These substances can be hard on the body and brain. Respectful and intentional use can have benefits far beyond the risk. Indeed, I may be alive today as a result of my use.

With 5-HT2a psychedelic substances you get an immediate, extreme tolerance so unlike ethanol or other common GABA:ergics you won't get that kind of every day abuse and related self harm.

Single dose use is more likely to be harmful with ethanol at a comparable degree of intoxication, it is strongly disinhibitory in comparison, but a particular person might be more sensitive one way or the other.

My one experience with psilocybin was the only time in my life I've ever confronted the fragility of my mental and emotional wellbeing in such a sudden way. Drastically different from other psychedelics I've experienced. MDMA is pure bliss - psilocybin is something I won't go near without professional guidance.

MDMA is extremely mild on the psychedelic side compared to psilocybin, lsd, dmt, etc.. not to mention it floods you with "happy/safe" feelings which makes for a generally easy experience.

The others can really get you..

I've experienced what I thought was being at the gates of hell on all of them at least once.. The gratitude I felt at the conclusion of those trips lasted for months =p

It's also a marked risk of "social media", "being in a crowd", "being alone" ... you don't understand mental illness, don't use it as a crutch for your ill informed prohibitionist memespreading.

Consuming any substance really comes down to one thing:

Do you want to "feel" yourself more, or do you want to feel yourself less?

Many people are not interested (or ready) to feel themselves more. And when they do, they might not like what they find.

That's pretty simplistic, and doesn't come close to explaining the complex interactions of drugs. Caffeine, Zoloft, LSD, Meth, Heroin, and PCP all have wildly different effects that can't be boiled down to "feeling yourself".

They are 'classic newbie mistakes', but they are not normal? The drug messing with your neural pathways, messing with those particular neural pathways, is not normal, but rather just activates 'latent' messed-with-ness? This sounds like words without meaning.

Or just someone who is mentally ill taking psychedelics.

"latent mental illness" sounds like a tagline for the human condition.

It also sounds like blaming its risks on "user error"

Bath Salts. If rabies was a medicine. LSD lets you keep your marbles, they just become more colorful and roll around for awhile. It is disassociative though in a way that pain can be experienced differently. Solitary is okay, but don't go into it alone with self-harm in your history.

Ask your doctor if placebo is right for you.

Just be careful with metaphors. It's useful for conveying ideas, but it's easy to mistake the original idea by the substitution. Psychedelics are not programming languages. It doesn't matter if you or I write the same piece of code in gleam, they will work the same if the environment is the same. The same cannot be said by psychedelics.

I see it as an unfortunate byproduct of the war on drugs forcing advocates to become boosters beyond what they otherwise would as a means to counteract the many years of bad-faith negative press. It was especially prevalent (still is to a certain extent) for weed, though I think that's dying down a bit now that it's been decriminalized in a lot of places.

I would have said that was both horrific and unusual, rather than ‘classic’.

Let’s not pretend it’s perfectly safe (what is?) but this is hardly ‘normal’.

While it might not be normal, that type of thing is not unknown and alone is enough to mean everyone should avoid those drugs.

I disagree, I think it is effectively unknown, vanishingly rare considering how many millions of doses have been consumed over decades.

Let’s not pretend it’s 100% safe and foolproof, but that’s very far out of the ordinary.

By your own logic you are fine with all alcohol being avoided, right? Psychedelics kill infinitely fewer people than alcohol, after all.

That kind of thing occurs far more often when someone has not used drugs.

Logically, drug use should be mandatory to reduce the prevalence of such self-harm.

> I read in a forum about...

...something that likely never happened (and if it did, it wasn't the LSD)

People jump out of windows/off roofs all the time on psychedelics.

The AI overlords call bullshit on that.

The nutshell quote: "Jumping from heights under psychedelics is possible but statistically extraordinary—orders of magnitude rarer than popular mythology suggests."

The chances of being struck by lightning are exceedingly slim. But if you're venturing out on a mountain top in early summer your odds skyrocket. So shouldn't we widely inform people who are doing so of the dangers and what to be aware of?

https://www.cdc.gov/lightning/data-research/index.html

Maybe heights specifically, but hang out at the medical tent at any decent size music festival and tell me psychedelics are as harm-free as people suggest.

No they do not, the instances of this are incredibly small, and every one of them involved the use of alcohol or other drugs.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21256914/

I don't buy it, personally. I used to be a big psych guy until I had multiple friends get in dangerous police situations because of them. And I've heard a lot more individual stories. Pretty much every psychedelic festival has people ending up in the security/medical tent. It's not as risk free as people will have you believe.

Don’t buy it however you like, actual data does not support your claim. How do you know those people ending up in the med tent only took LSD or psilocybin?

Med tent is mostly people overheating because it's a summer dance festival and water is often scarce.

I'm talking about the people experiencing hypomanic/psychotic episodes, not heat exhaustion.

Studies that look at mushrooms in a controlled therapy session are not the same as unreported/unstudied crises at high intensity parties.

Then go read the study I linked, because it analyzes coroners data and tox reports from deaths linked to substance use. Guess what? None of the deaths where people were jumping out of windows, jumping into lakes, etc "from mushrooms" were psilocybin use.

You're doing everybody a disservice by spreading FUD that is contradicted by real world studies and data. It's no better than what Nancy Regan tried (and for the most part succeeded) to do.

I'm not here to argue the stats, I'm just sharing my personal anecdotes from doing psychs 100s of times and going to dozens of psych festivals. My username is mushroom brain. I'm just sharing that it's not all enlightenment and these drugs come with risks. The odds may be low statistically but the consequences can be very high.

The pendulum has swung so far left from the Reagan propaganda to the point that people attempt to downplay any cautionary perspectives and act like these things are purely harmless spiritual panaceas.

How many of them get there from intentionally jumping of a roof or carving up their arm? I suspect most are simple dumb accidents, like people have with alcohol, but of a different variety.

Have you been around someone experiencing psychedelic induced psychosis? They are often quite a danger to themselves and others. Usually requiring sedative/chemical restraint & police intervention by EMS. Ask any EMT about this.

Yes, I have seen several, including one that had to be forcibly sedated in the dirt. I have also seen many drunks fighting others and police.

Over 15 years at burning man, I have seen many people injured and maimed doing stupid things while high.

That said, the type of intentional self harm described above is basically unheard of. Mostly dumb accidents and some suicides.

To the extent there is any unique risk, it is more about long term psychiatric issues

Sounds like AI should guide us. (maybe an uncensored version)

This should've been horrifying I guess, but I found it rather amusing. And as a niche-programming-language-enthusiast: well done with the analogy!

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