Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior | Hacker News Reader

Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior

jop.sagepub.com

14 pointsalexcasalboni11 comments

From the abstract: "After adjusting for [factors including] childhood depression, we found no significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics and increased likelihood of [mental health problems in the past year]."

Yet: "Psychedelic users were more likely than non-users to report a depressive episode before age 18."

Taken together, these are curious findings, because they're deliberately ignoring something that turned out to be a clear correlation, even one that might be the result of a causality in the reverse direction to one that might be otherwise presumed.

Under "Limitations", just reading this now:

"People who choose to use psychedelics might have better initial mental health before using psychedelics, and people who experience problems apparently related to psychedelics may choose to not use them again."

Psych ward patients who got there via psychedelics wouldn't be included in the study also.

What is written in their abstract seems irresponsible in the extreme, given the above limitations:

"We failed to find evidence that psychedelic use is an independent risk factor for mental health problems. Psychedelics are not known to harm the brain or other body organs or to cause addiction or compulsive use; serious adverse events involving psychedelics are extremely rare. Overall, it is difficult to see how prohibition of psychedelics can be justified as a public health measure. "

I think it has to do a lot with moderation. If someone is going to take full doses of psychedelics multiple times per week, I have no doubt in my mind that they could go through serious mental health issues. But that is not to say that occasional use is very safe. In fact, occasional use can be extremely helpful to many people.

I'm curious as to what the effect of frequent micro-dosing is...

If someone is going to take full doses of psychedelics multiple times per week, I have no doubt in my mind that they could go through serious mental health issues.

Why? There is nothing in the report to support that viewpoint, and quite a few points that contradict it to some extent.

Because you brain needs a rest from that flood of information. You'll go mad just as you'll go mad if you stop sleeping.

The brain is extremely active while you sleep. The brain never rests. It is always active. The question is how active is it under different situations. The brain can't tell if the information it is receiving is from a real visual experience or a psychedelic. I'm sure stress does more damage than a psychedelic experience and we experience that daily in business/startups et al.

Anecdata: I've seen a handful of people, including myself, take significant doses of LSD, or mushrooms, over a period of up to 4 days, either in an intentionally controlled environment or at multi-day music festivals. Despite taking increasingly large quantities the effects rapidly diminish after the initial dose, and it typically becomes increasingly difficult to even want to continue dosing because you can take more for pretty much no affect. Looking at a handful of trips on the third day and thinking "Why?" and putting them back in your pocket.

Even spacing the doses out to 'multiple times per week' results in rapidly diminishing returns.

I don't personally know of anyone who's life has become messed up because of the types of experiences described above. Some have gone on to 'settle down', have kids, etc. many of us had full time jobs and still do, or finished degrees.

Amphetamine and MDMA, on the other hand, can rapidly turn peoples lives upside down, all the while they think they're being rational people.

Would it be a good idea for everyone to start taking psychedelics? I'm not convinced that's an experiment I want anything to do with, I'm not sure it would scale well. Having said that, alcohol causes, or is a factor in, so much mayhem...

ah my mental health problems and suicidal behaviour must have been a coincidence, good.

> we found no significant associations between lifetime use of psychedelics...

does lifetime use mean ongoing or once off?

From the article: "We counted participants as having any lifetime psychedelic use if they reported use of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline or peyote."

This is pretty typical use of the term. They also distinguished it from "past year use" for LSD.

so i would count as lifetime use, i did them a few times, developed mental health problems and stopped as a result. my mental health problems cleared up within a year. now i don't have mental health problems. i would hardly say on the basis of my experience that psychedelics are safe.

i know people who took many times longer to recover. the report seems to imply that my experience is just a coincidence. i doubt i would have developed the mental health problems without psychedelics.

the report looks at lifetime use but past year mental health problems, which means you can't say "Psychedelics not linked to mental health problems or suicidal behavior" you have to qualify it by saying "past year".

So glad that there is finally a study that proves this as a fact.

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