Psychedelics..... woah.

I learned something new today.

https://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-why-lsd-microdosing-could-be-the-next-major-breakthrough-in-mental-healthcare/page-3/"

"The broad hypothesis was that LSD, with its action on blood capillaries, restored that connection, flooding the senses and allowing us to experience the world something like a newborn baby did. The key to controlling those trips, Feilding discovered, remembering the hypoglycaemic collapses of her diabetic father, was to keep sugar levels high in the blood as the drug depleted the body’s energy."


https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/10/amanda-feilding-lsd-can-reset-the-brain-interview

@wildgrass said
I learned something new today.

https://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-why-lsd-microdosing-could-be-the-next-major-breakthrough-in-mental-healthcare/page-3/"

"The broad hypothesis was that LSD, with its action on blood capillaries, restored that connection, flooding the senses and allowing us to experience the world something like a newborn baby did. The key to control ...[text shortened]...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/10/amanda-feilding-lsd-can-reset-the-brain-interview

Psychedelics do indeed show great promise. Having experimented quite a bit with psilocybin mushrooms in the past, I can say that it opens ones eyes to new possibilities.

@wildgrass said
I learned something new today.

https://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-why-lsd-microdosing-could-be-the-next-major-breakthrough-in-mental-healthcare/page-3/"

"The broad hypothesis was that LSD, with its action on blood capillaries, restored that connection, flooding the senses and allowing us to experience the world something like a newborn baby did. The key to control ...[text shortened]...
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/feb/10/amanda-feilding-lsd-can-reset-the-brain-interview

LSD causes a massive release of serotonin in the body . LSD is an inert compound which leaves the body as LSD . LSD is only a catalyst . Research began in earnest in the early 1990's with relation to mental health treatment .
Based on my personal experience with psychedelics , I feel there are breakthroughs coming in the future.

@caissad4
I have had experience with LSD and others and see possibilities for these drugs for mental health issues but probably not at the doses normally taken.
One time in Denver, an attempted reconciliation with first wife, I had already found another GF and in her flat where I was staying, (lived in Alexandria Va, gone to Denver to attempt reconcile) a woman knocked on our door, said do we have an extra electric heater. I had noticed a storage room in this flat that had dozens of them stacked up and gave her one.
So she comes back a while later, gives me a tiny pill about the size of a sen sen tab. It turned out that was a VERY powerful LSD hit and I naively took it.
So we went to a local coffeehouse and I was playing chess and playing guitar but then that pill took over and my world became like I was in a washing machine about 5 feet across and the world outside that diameter was totally gone. I didn't panic like some folks would have but realized, ok, this is not great but it won't last forever, I knew this was not my new normal so just let it happen without panic, I was playing my guitar, I have zero idea just what I was playing but a waitress came from out of nowhere and into my 5 foot universe saying that is beautiful and then disappeared again.
Gradually that phase left and I went over to watch my new GF play a game of chess and she had reddish hair and it looked like to me fire of intelligence was streaming out of her head, she was whipping her opponent pretty handily and that seemed to bind our relationship as far as I was concerned.
So we left the coffeehouse later and I was still highly under the influence but not to the extent of my universe being a 5 foot sphere around me and went back to her flat.
Next day, some 24 hours later I met with wife at a couple's council and the counselor when I looked at him, the edge of his face started kind of writhing around so that pill was effecting me the next day.
The dose must have been a thousand micrograms or more, MILLIgrams of LSD.
I don't THINK I suffered permanent brain damage but it was a VERY heavy high.
With that experience, I don't think most anyone with some kind of mental health issue would fare well under that massive a dose, even though I do hear experiments with doses like that.
Those experiments though had facilitators who would be able to calm down someone in the state I found myself in, where I had no help, they did have helpers to guide you through the process so I guess there is SOME work done at such high levels but not many.
The ones I hear about are MUCH loser dose, my guess is 50 ish micrograms, maybe 100 Micrograms.

@sonhouse said
@caissad4
I have had experience with LSD and others and see possibilities for these drugs for mental health issues but probably not at the doses normally taken.
One time in Denver, an attempted reconciliation with first wife, I had already found another GF and in her flat where I was staying, (lived in Alexandria Va, gone to Denver to attempt reconcile) a woman knocked on ...[text shortened]... y.
The ones I hear about are MUCH loser dose, my guess is 50 ish micrograms, maybe 100 Micrograms.

Dude. Set and setting!

I've never knowingly taken LSD. Didn't have any contacts, but I knew how to grow my own shrooms from a spore syringe! Also I say "knowingly" because I had a truly bizarre experience when I was around five or six years old and my mom's shady boyfriend Dave was staying at our apartment. My toys were falling through trapdoors and witches were crawling up the walls! Oddly only the prospect of losing my toys upset me a little. Dave must've left something lying around in the kitchen that I got into. I even had a couple of what could only be described as flashbacks in subsequent weeks or months. Like, one time I "saw" my tongue fall out of my mouth while I was lying in bed, and another time what looked like a nightstand floated into my bedroom in the middle of the night, said something in a deep voice (not sure what), and then floated away. Good times!

I understand that 200 micrograms of LSD is pretty strong, and 500 should put you on your ass out beyond the eleventh dimension to have high tea with Buddha at the Grand Unified Theory Cafe. If you truly took a milligram that's just crazy. But I've never heard of anyone getting brain damage from LSD. There is something called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder. This can include flashbacks, but some people forever see moving or psychedelic patterns on surfaces. It's seemingly very rare.

@caissad4 said
LSD causes a massive release of serotonin in the body. LSD is an inert compound which leaves the body as LSD . LSD is only a catalyst

Wow, not sure I ever knew that. I think psilocybin gets metabolized into something else, so maybe this explains why an LSD trip lasts so much longer than a shroom trip.

@soothfast said
Wow, not sure I ever knew that. I think psilocybin gets metabolized into something else, so maybe this explains why an LSD trip lasts so much longer than a shroom trip.

It takes several days for the supply of serotonin in the body to return to normal after taking an hallucinogen . So, theoretically , repeated similar doses taken on consecutive days should have a lesser effect . I found that to be true .
I have even used LSD and psilocybin while playing in chess tournaments and found my mental energy increased and my clarity in analysis was better . There was one instance where I was in a tourney in Dallas and I watched the board I was playing on slide over and fold over the edge of the table and disappear . I waited til it came back up and played my move. I actually tied for 1st place in the tourney with a very strong master .
LSD affects the mind more than the body while psilocybin is more of a body stone . I have taken megadoses of both ( 2000+ micrograms) and rather enjoyed the multi day experiences . I have not used any in over 20 years because it is impossible to find a reliable chemist who produces it. Purity is paramount . For a mild experience you can try Baby Hawaiian Woodrose seeds . You can buy them on Ebay . Crush them (8 or 9 seeds) and place in a poultice , place poultice between cheek and gum and a mild high will follow .

@caissad4 said
LSD causes a massive release of serotonin in the body . LSD is an inert compound which leaves the body as LSD . LSD is only a catalyst . Research began in earnest in the early 1990's with relation to mental health treatment .
Based on my personal experience with psychedelics , I feel there are breakthroughs coming in the future.

According to the Wikipedia page it is metabolized:

Only 1% of the drug was eliminated in urine unchanged whereas 13% was eliminated as the major metabolite 2-oxo-3-hydroxy-LSD (O-H-LSD) within 24 hours.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Pharmacology

@soothfast said
Wow, not sure I ever knew that. I think psilocybin gets metabolized into something else, so maybe this explains why an LSD trip lasts so much longer than a shroom trip.

According to the Wikipedia page it's metabolized into psilocin which is a partial agonist of HT-5 receptors which are normally activated by serotonin. There's some evidence that dopamine is also released by both LSD and psilocybin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Pharmacology

@Soothfast
Well the dose I took is never going to be quantified for sure, I only met that lady twice, once when she asked for a heater and next when she gave me the pill. I never saw her again to ask her if she knew the dose level.
Getting your universe curtailed to a sphere a few feet from your body like I experienced had to have been a really high dose.
I did have one experience in Thailand when I was on a weekend R&R trip from my work place way up north at NKP air base, some dude put one drop of liquid LSD in a coke and he said it was about 100 micrograms and when that hit I tried playing a game of chess and the board seemed like 3 dimensional where the individual squares seemed to be more like the size of floor tiles all at different heights and moving around. It wasn't a scary trip though. It did still last most of the night, where I ended up on the roof of the hotel where I was staying. (a complete party hotel, dozens of folks having a huge party in the hallways, in the rooms, on the roof, in the lobby, crazy night for sure!)

So a few of use ended up on the roof looking at the clouds and that went on like that just staring out till sunup, watching the sunrise unfold very slowly.

That happened one other time I took acid, not a deep trip but ended up with a GF at Point Dume off 101 in southern California looking at the ocean and thinking I was seeing flocks of birds but it was in reality just the waves rolling in the distance and I watched those waves for what seemed like hours.

One other time I took acid, I had the job of picking up a couple of folk music friends at LAX and was on a rather low level stone at LAX and I remember watching this autonomous floor cleaner, pretty large machine actually, running its path through the airport, something like 2 AM with almost no people in sight and I was enthralled with that contraption, thinking it must have been an alien🙂 My friends noticed I was a bit high and they drove ME home😉

@deepthought said
According to the Wikipedia page it's metabolized into psilocin which is a partial agonist of HT-5 receptors which are normally activated by serotonin. There's some evidence that dopamine is also released by both LSD and psilocybin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin#Pharmacology

That certainly updates my info which was from the late 70's .

@caissad4
It's amazing we actually SURVIVED the '70's, eh!

@sonhouse said
@caissad4
I have had experience with LSD and others and see possibilities for these drugs for mental health issues but probably not at the doses normally taken.
One time in Denver, an attempted reconciliation with first wife, I had already found another GF and in her flat where I was staying, (lived in Alexandria Va, gone to Denver to attempt reconcile) a woman knocked on ...[text shortened]... y.
The ones I hear about are MUCH loser dose, my guess is 50 ish micrograms, maybe 100 Micrograms.

THat's a great story. "fire of intelligence"

In that Guardian article I posted, the LSD advocate they interviewed recalled her first experience with LSD. She ended up spending 3 months (!!!) inside a small hut on her property before her friends were able to coax her out. Certainly, that dosage was probably too high for therapeutic use. For depression, it seems to make a ton of sense. There's also the evidence throughout anthropology that humans have used various psychedelics (normally via some sort of restorative ceremony) for centuries to reset the brain.

@wildgrass

Hi, thanks! But shrooms and such have been used for MILLENIA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/health/cannabis-anicent-dead-marijuana.html

Since boo has been around for millions of years, it is not a big stretch to think humans were using it a hundred thousand years ago also. All you have to do is be a vegetarian kind of human and eat a wild pot plant and they would get the message pretty quickly and connect eating the plant to getting high.
My guess is eating pot and shrooms goes back before modern humans, 200,000, 300.000 or a million years ago with australopithecus afarensis for instance.
They probably did not have intelligence to match modern humans but I suspect they were significantly more intelligent than modern apes and chimps and bonobo's and the like so I imagine if they had consumed either weed or shroom, they would have been able to put 2 and 2 together about just what plant got them high and liked it well enough to go back for more.
I suspect also the concept of those plants and fungi would be lost and found again a thousand times in the last million years also.

@sonhouse said
@wildgrass

Hi, thanks! But shrooms and such have been used for MILLENIA.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/health/cannabis-anicent-dead-marijuana.html

Since boo has been around for millions of years, it is not a big stretch to think humans were using it a hundred thousand years ago also. All you have to do is be a vegetarian kind of human and eat a wild pot plant a ...[text shortened]... hose plants and fungi would be lost and found again a thousand times in the last million years also.

Yes of course millenia. Sorry for the mistype. Other animals (e.g. deer) seek out these plants/fungi as well. It's good to hear about the newfound respect for psychedelics among the medical community, for treating depression and Alzheimers and dementia and ASD and chronic pain etc. Too bad it took so long. I'd never heard of the idea that they may act as a sort of reset button for synchronizing/harmonizing unruly brain waves.