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Comment by LoganDark | Hacker News Reader

Psychedelics are one of my favorite classes of drug. I used to take LSD recreationally every few weeks or months, until one bad vomiting episode caused me upper-esophageal sphincter dysfunction somehow. Ever since then, I can't seem to take any without throwing up (and generally having a terrible time due to stomach contents backing up into my throat constantly). Nobody can seem to figure out why my throat stopped working properly all of a sudden or how to fix it. :(

I'm glad that psilocybin research is picking up. I really think its potential benefits deserve to be more widely known and available. Hopefully without the spontaneously appearing dysfunction though

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>upper-esophageal sphincter dysfunction

If you've never read a Pulitzer Prize Winner, Confederacy of Dunces would be a personally-relatable disaster (to start with; it's great).

>Psychedelics are one of my favorite classes of drug.

Your initial description of usage was probably a bit wreckless, but I do maintain that most people would probably benefit from a single (or few) psilocybin experiences (preferably an initial high-dosage with a well-trained sitter).

Microdosing is a fantastic long-term strategy, before starting more-prescribed methodologies towards happiness. Probably not useful without an initial high-dosage, first (or much cloudier/ineffective).

YMMV £¢¢£

I certainly have been reckless with it, but it helped me a lot to cope with constant high stress without resorting to more immediately harmful things. It also gave me a lot of nice experiences, unique insight and other things like that. Before this dysfunction started, bad experiences were pretty rare rather than practically every time...

shame, same with mushrooms?

Cannot say the same for psilocybin. Far as I can tell, I majorly overdosed the first time, because I fainted, hit my head and had to go to the hospital for staples.

Around a week later I took the same dose again (the rest of what I had) to help process the trauma. (It did help. I of course avoided the situation that made me faint the first time)

I'd want to try psilocybin again sometime; it's quite a bit more expensive than LSD but it does have an interesting profile (for me: less stimulant-like)

Wow, yeah maybe cool off things for a while. You have some wild experiences. We have legal truffles in NL, come and visit, they are not so expensive here. But maybe trip with a guide for a while.

It's been years since then. At the end of the day it's FAFO.

That fainting episode wouldn't have been prevented with a guide unless they followed me into the bathroom, since for some reason the smell is what caused me to faint. (I found this out during the second time when going near the bathroom made me feel fainty -- I am glad I figured out what it was so that I could avoid it. It would've sucked to conclude that I can't have psilocybin at all, or something)

I will actually end up visiting the NL for other reasons eventually, so I might look into magic truffles :)

Microdosing has very limited evidence to support it, and even mode widely varying claims for what it supposedly helps with.

Such is natural when what one gets out of it is subjective, and there haven't been "real" academic studies on it yet. But, there is some consensus that it does seem to do something above placebo, even if all it does is say, lift spirits a little, or slightly increase creativity or neuroplasticity, etc.

It helps me not be an asshole.

Datapoint: one.

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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces>

It might be coincidence. Hiatal hernia affects more than 50% of the population over age 50, though not everyone shows symptoms.

Ever since that episode I've had difficulty swallowing; sometimes when clearing my throat the air will unexpectedly blow out my mouth instead of my nose; and I also have to be doing that constantly because my throat never actually feels clear now; it sucks.

I used to be able to swallow gummy bears whole for fun. Or any medication, even huge pills (1g magnesium glycinate, for example -- those pills are not small) -- I didn't even need water. Now, even with water it's hard to swallow any medication, and it's hard to even swallow food half the time. Something definitely went wrong and is now wrong, compared to before.

If you're younger, having the condition is less likely, but it's possible you have a nonspecific injury that behaves similarly.

One weird trick to try is a "heel drop": https://www.modernapothecary.org/blog/the-healing-power-of-h... Even if you don't have a hernia, it can't hurt to try it; you can even do it accidentally by drinking a sports drink and then jogging around the block. I was shocked to find it ended an awful bout of laryngopharyngeal reflux. (I had a scan long ago that incidentally observed a sliding hiatal hernia, but I didn't have symptoms for many years.)

In any event, I'm sorry you're having this trouble, and I hope it resolves itself.

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