There is something I don’t entirely understand about psychedelic use. While it might end up being temporary, there is a lot of data that it alters neural structures in fundamental and relatively poorly understood ways. Consciousness itself is very poorly understood. Why take a chemical that is a bit like rolling the dice on how it’s going to modify fundamentally what you are? If you are struggling with severe depression or anxiety or otherwise, I get it… but in most other cases, why? I post this as someone deeply curious about trying them, yet my mind and intellect are things I cherish when it comes to my enjoyment of life.
For sure there are some therapeutic effects when kicking someone who is stuck into totally unknown territory. But as far as I've seen most of these people want to get into a mode to understand something better (themselves, the world, spiritual things...). I think some drugs are good at creating the illusion of understanding something.
As a mathematician I can assure you that the feeling of understanding is an emotion. It's mostly disconnected from truth/false values. People can be emotionally happy, be exited and have a group feeling of understanding - but then you give them a counterexample and it turns out everything was just wrong.
A drug might be able to trigger the emotions, but the things about deeper understandings are most likely just illusions. I think I understood that when some guy who was a very simple mind (he was into sniffing glue - and bummed for alcohol) told me about his wonderful experiences of understanding the world.
For some people having a child fundamentally changes their definition of love and their belief in how it’s possible to relate to other human beings.
This is mostly disconnected from true/false values. The facts haven’t really changed. Yet it can be so powerful and rewarding few would trade it regardless of the risks/pain/hardships that can come with it.
Experiences can be profound and change perspectives in a way that’s so rewarding and wholistic it’s really impossible to describe.
Comparing such experiences to math doesn’t really work, apples and oranges.
It comes down to curiosity over caution.
But I think your concern about negative fundamental modification seems higher than the reports suggest it ought to be. There are thousands upon thousands of people who've used these drugs without serious consequence. I'd say that in general they're less of a concern than alcohol.
Here's one link I found supporting my intuition: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-say-psychedelic-drugs-lik...
As others have said, some combination of perspective on realistic outcomes and risk/reward.
Every experience we have changes us; every job, every family interaction, every book we read and travel we enjoy (hopefully). Learning musical instruments of foreign languages changes neuronal connections. Is there a goal to maintain a static brain over time? (honest question, reasonable if some people think the answer is "yes").
I think there is a misunderstanding about the therapeutic effects of psychedelics. The drugs themselves may alter physical structure in your brain a little bit - but what they really do is temporarily give you a different perspective - they change your point of view. That skewing of perspective is (I believe) where the therapeutic effect from these drugs arises.
If you are deeply curious about these types of drugs, you need to remember that they all wear off eventually. Lots of very smart and happy people have taken these drugs and experienced no harm.
That is true, and it is also true that tons of people have been harmed by them. In particular, they seem to be a potent cause of PTSD, which as we all know can be caused by a single experience, then persist for decades.
I'm willing to believe, though, that some people might know how to guide a person through the experience in such a way as to drastically reduce the risk of PTSD and to increase the probability of beneficial effects.
Also, I'm willing to believe that they can help a person recover from PTSD, too, but that is not what usually happens when they are taken without supervision.
> they seem to be a potent cause of PTSD
This is somewhere between "False" and "So misleading about an astronomically small risk that we should just treat it as False".
Driving or riding in a car is a more likely cause of PTSD - you might be involved in a horrific crash.
Nothing in this world is risk free, but if we dropped the cultural stigma and history, and these were just discovered by Pfizer today and went through regular FDA processes, this class of drugs would have a risk profile lower than SSRIs, benzodiazepines, and most other drugs used for psychiatric purposes.
- [deleted]
Have you known at least a few people who have taken psychedelics, then had a chance to see how they are doing in the years afterwards?
The harm is much more apparent to observers than it is to the psychedelic user him or herself.
If I'm wrong about psychedelics, I'm wrong in my claim that they routinely cause PTSD specifically, not about the claim that they routinely cause some kind of long-term harm. I admit that they also often improve people, including people whose psychedelic use was unsupervised. I.e., I'm making a statistical claim, not a categorical one.
I get my PTSD claim from Dr K of the "Healthy Gamer" YT channel, who is a Harvard-train psychiatrist. I can provide a citation if there is interest.
Tales of a person's life and level of functioning steeply declining after taking a psychedelic, then staying that way for years, are common, e.g., on this web site over the years. Here is one example, and yes, I realize that in the same comment section are people who claim to have been helped by psychedelic use.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44274746
If we ignore what people say about their own experience with psychedelics and focus only on what people say about people they have known who have taken the drugs, the reports are overwhelming negative unless the reports are by researchers and clinicians reporting on psychedelic use in which the entire experience is supervised by a skilled therapist (which I do not criticize).
P.S., benzos and SSRIs are both bad drugs that do more harm than good, IMHO, so your assertion that psychedelics are better than them is not saying much.
long time lurker but created an account to reply here. i've taken plenty of psychedelics from around 18 y/o on a regular basis (once or twice every other month with frequent breaks of several months and then more intense periods of heavier usage) until i was about 29 and lost interest. i've tried DMT, LSD (my favorite. have done large doses of 800 microgram), different kind of shrooms...
drugs have repeatedly given me profound and connected experiences. it makes you feel connected with people and the world because your ego is reduced and you let everything in your surroundings fill you up instead. your mental barriers and preconcieved notions fall apart and you just accept what is happening around you.
I know several people with hereditary mental health disorders who's ailments have been trigger by drug use but i don't think you can blame the drugs here. a traumatic experience could trigger it too.
while i would not call my self and addict, i was a thrill seeker in my younger years for sure. today i'm a successful SWE, homeowner in a major western city and have a loving partner. plenty of my friends who were with me doing these drugs have similar lives today.
PTSD is not usually what happens when taken without supervision either. I think there's a large chasm of experiences between lifelong healing and lifelong damage with regard to psychedelics. I have pretty limited experience with it and came to the conclusion that it's not for me. But of the people I know who do them or have at one time, I don't think I know anyone whose life has been changed by them.
You are overstating or overgeneralizing the strength of psychedelics as a class of drug. Most people who take them are not taking enough to produce a PTSD-level response.
I developed PTSD after my finding my 3yo son floating in a pool face down (I luckily saved and revived him - he's fine now) and it would take a very intense psychedelic experience to come anywhere close to that kind of emotional content.
Claiming the entire class of drugs are a potent cause of PTSD rings of reefer madness propaganda to me.
>the entire class of drugs are a potent cause of PTSD
That is indeed my claim. More precisely, it is my secondary claim that (like I say in a cousin comment) I am less confident of than my primary claim that psychedelics are a potent cause of some sort of long-term severe harm.
A person's having had PTSD does not automatically make the person an expert on what sorts of experiences can be traumatizing. There is more to it than the just the intensity of the emotions. PTSD is very complicated and difficult to understand (which is why many with PTSD have no clue that they even have it).
Dr K says BTW that it is the loss of the sense of self that can be traumatizing in psychedelic use.
I think your definition of "understood" is too narrow and perhaps that is your challenge. People have been taking many of these substances (e.g. psilocybin, THC, DMT, etc.) for thousands of years. Their qualitative, long-term effects are extremely well understood by the cultures and peoples that use them. My assumption is that you are WEIRD (forgive me if I am wrong), and the tendency we have is to disregard any data that wasn't created in a Western lab.
Just in case…
The acronym WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, a term used in psychology and behavioral sciences to describe the populations that have historically been the subject of research.
TIL, thanks!
In my case, the people I looked up to generally had tried these things and reported them as valuable or interesting experiences. So I decided to ‘roll’ the dice and am glad I did.
> Why take a chemical that is a bit like rolling the dice on how it’s going to modify fundamentally what you are?
Because sometimes that is the last thing that's left. When everything else has failed it may be the only hope that stands between you and the abyss.
risk vs reward. I've had a few psychedelic experiences, and in my case, they either didn't lead to any significant changes or ended up having positive outcomes. But what I've also learned is that my gut flora has a huge impact on how my brain works. Diet plays a major role in how I feel and think. So while I might still try psychedelics occasionally, I'll avoid certain foods because of the concerns you mentioned.
Feynman shared your hesitancy for very similar reasons. He states in Surely You're Joking that he was offered, but never took them.
You certainly don't have to! But yet for some reason you're deeply curious. Why?
At the end of the day: it’s a one way door. That’s what is scary about it. It does change you in an un-reversible way, much like getting a tattoo or getting married or having a child. You will be a different person. Hopefully you like that person!
Marijuana makes me feel like im living inside of a badly written play where the script was written by a new hire at the last minute, none of the actors know their lines and the plot makes no sense. I dont like it. Alcohol gives me migraines and degrades your body.
But shrooms have low potential for addiction, no hangover and its a pleasant experience. So that's my vice of choice. I take them in moderation in social settings. I generally feel like my mood is lifted and my mind is sharp following a dose.
If something gets banned so heavily then it might be something good in it. Are there any reasons to trust some well-organized commies who bans anything for everybody for everybody's money for getting more everybody's money? Not all of users are Francis Crick and Paul Erdos kind of person but some of them... are.
Curiosity.
We only live once.
If your default live model is going to school, then going to unviersity, partner, kids, work, work, living daily live, getting old, dying and you are happy and content, great!
But that image is not true for a lot of people for a lot of different rasons.
LSD gave me a lot of empathy for people who have some mental illness for example. MDMA gave me a very empathic experience i never had before.
And just getting old might be a goal for people, also something like not dying but again, thats just a default thinking not necessarliy what other people conclude for their lives.
It's fascinating that this particular comment was flagged (I vouched for it).
The reason I took psychedelics the first time was also some combination of curiosity, recreation, and frustration at feeling like I'd fallen into a local min. As a cousin comment mentions, their power is giving you a different perspective which you quite literally cannot conceive of in your current mental state.
Those who have been to therapy (and had a good therapist) know the value that an honest and different outside perspective can have on your life. But there's also a barrier between you and that other person - they don't really have the full context of what motivates or worries you. Psychedelics are a new perspective on the thoughts going through your head, the sensory experience you're having, the emotions you're physically feeling.
That's not to say it's all good and no bad, but I'll leave that to the droves of comments exaggerating their risks. If you're looking for an altered mental state, mushrooms / LSD / MDMA pose far less harm than alcohol or cannabis.
The life path of "going to school, then going to unviersity, partner, kids, work, work, living daily live, getting old, dying" is, other than the kids part, utterly horrifying to me and feels like not living at all. Why even bother with life if driving to work and driving home is all youre going to do with it? I am fully of how pretentious this sounds but, the way most people live is an insult to the precious gift of the human spirit.
Of course for many there is no choice. But that only makes it more horrifying not less.
2 weeks ago I took shrooms with my friend, we went to the basement of an arcade and crashed a bdsm costume party, then i spent the night at her place. This weekend, I played music with 4 talented people for 15 hours, and we finally collapsed giggling and covered in sweat at 2:30am. Thats living life! These are the kinds of things you can do if you are willing to take risks. You think I want to retire to a life of watching wheel of fortune? Why???
I am not a psychonaught, only started tripping more recently, and I have only used mushrooms. That being said, I was always anxious about using them as I was very freaked out by the idea of something that can alter your mind instead of merely becoming intoxicated like weed or alcohol. I thought it makes you into antoher person and loose control but that is bullshit - you are fully aware. After my first go I have no fear of them.
The feeling is fantastic, nothing like weed or booze. You feel relaxed and warm in the sense that you want to be around people and talk to people. Like it fills you with love for humanity (I wanted to call my mother and tell her I loved her and so on.) BUT it makes you hyper aware of emotions so be sure your environment is relaxed if you're inexperienced. As you come down you will then start to wrestle with your own buried emotions which can really be a roller coaster. However, as long as the environment is relaxed you will feel safe and be able to handle them.
The trick is go slow for your first time, take a little and see how you feel as it take 30-45 min to kick in (for me 45 min like clock work almost.) Make sure you are in a good mental state. Had a bad week or something really bothering you? Not a good state. Don't trip. Make sure the environment feels safe and relaxed.
You wont encounter that type of change with mushrooms at a conventional dose. Normally when people talk about the change in neural structures etc, this comes from higher order psychedelics, or sometimes lower order psychedelics at heroic dosages. Think of it like electroshock therapy in the sense that enduring this large eustress, change is made.
I merely responded to someone who appears to have a fear of taking them because of the effects and shared my experience. Don't understand the downvotes.
I feel like _order_ would matter. Like, surely by #24 you're probably getting a bit bored.
I’ve done ibogaine recreationally at lowish doses if anyone wants to ask me about it. I don’t think it gets enough attention. Maybe because there’s some danger.
I'm less familiar with it. All I really know is that it was on the list of natural medicines that was decriminalized in Colorado. What is the experience like?
Apologies in advance, I’m on mobile.
I’ve been taking doses of around 600mg ibogaine TA, every 6 months or so, bought online at the first place that comes up in google. You can experience cardiac arrest from taking it, which will quickly kill you, and I based this (IMO) safe dosage on some papers I read. Don’t consider me an authority! And there’s also certain gene mutations that can raise or lower your risk of heart problems, related to how you metabolize ibogaine/noribogaine.
(I have also tried microdosing, based on another paper I read about a woman with bipolar depression. But I don’t have much to report there.)
It’s tough to describe any altered state. But for someone who’s thinking it’s like acid or mushrooms, note that it’s not really fun or pleasant. Your heart beats slower and softer, your body feels weak and uncoordinated, and there’s little to do besides rest.
But the mind is so, so active. And it’s like an excavator. Just pulling things from wherever and throwing them into your mind’s eye. I don’t like therapy and find it tedious and unhelpful, but this feels like years of therapy squished into a 12+ hour trip. Has helped me a lot with my relationships, especially with my mom.
You see a lot of yourself. What’s ugly, what’s beautiful, what’s neutral. You feel somehow distant from your problems but close to your “self”, which makes it more comfortable to face things.
After it’s over there’s a glow and calm that lasts a while. Days, or weeks, or months sometimes. Sleep feels a little more restorative, laughs come a little easier, the dusty baseboards of the mind feel cleaner.
So these are the effects of the lowish doses I’ve been taking. Some day in a safer environment I’d love to do a real full dose. But even at this “low” dose, it’s by far the most powerful drug I’ve ever taken, in a positive way.
Like everything in the world today, there is a lot of nonsense, pseudoscience (and actual science), influencer garbage, etc... around psychedelics. However, if you are in a good mental space, and in a comfortable and safe location, and the opportunity comes up, you should absolutely have a psychedelic experience if you can. It is one of the pleasures of life. Start with mushrooms. Be sure to start slow, you can always take more, you can never take less. And if you do take more, don't double your original does, that always gets people in trouble.
Everything in moderation.
Also don't forget you can couple your psychedelics with valium. (This isn't medical advice)
It's unfortunate that the path of psychedelic normalcy just led to people more publicly bragging about surviving one chemical or another like fucked up merit badges.
A single small dose of any given psychedelic can be enough to generate new mental benchmarks to process the world with (love, empathy, timelessness, selflessness, etc)
The drug itself is often irrelevant to the experience and it's impact, but we've unfortunately dragged along the ego of the underworld where each dose needs to be bigger and more exotic for bragging rights. In that light it's just another drug, and quite sad in my opinion.
what’s more sad and worrying are the folks doing themselves lasting damage by doing these things in the wrong situation (mentally or physically) and without appropriate guidance.
When I was a younger lad, I'd take something like 75 mics of an acid analogue and just have a normal night out. As juvenile male simians are want to do, sometimes that involved getting into a fight. Turns out that is uniquely fun on psychs, even when you lose badly. A couple years later, I took up dropping acid in the dead of night and terrorizing packs of coyotes that prowled the outskirts of town, that was also really fun.
Psychs are just drugs like any other. I think people get too wrapped up in the mysticism of them, or think the debilitating effects of heroic dosing is unique to them. How many uncs in the chat can't smoke weed anymore because it makes them have an awful time emotionally? How do you think dabbing a gram of wax would work out?
Lol dude, lets hang out some time.
Like dosing on ketamine then getting up on stage and making Nazi salutes.
Downvoters: explain why that's a good idea, and if you do that too! And if you have any pro tips on mitigating your Ketamine Bladder and Heil Hitler Arm symptoms:
Urology & Continence Care Today: Ketamine bladders: what community nurses should know:
https://www.ucc-today.com/journals/issue/launch-edition/arti...
>KETAMINE AND THE URINARY TRACT: In recent years, the link between ketamine use and damage to the urinary tract has become apparent, with estimation that at least 26–30% of users experience at least one bladder symptom (Winstock et al, 2012; Misra, 2018). Using ketamine at least three times a week over a period of two years has been shown to result in altered bladder function, with some patients complaining of severe urological problems (Mak et al, 2011). This syndrome is often called ‘ketamine bladder’ or ‘ketamine cystitis’ in the literature (Jhang et al, 2015; Misra, 2018)
On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama: As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous and his drug use was more intense than previously known.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/elon-musk-drugs-childr...
>Mr. Musk’s drug consumption went well beyond occasional use. He told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use. He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it.
Edit: I'd say it's the ketamine abuser who's throwing Nazi salutes and pissing his pants who's the one perpetrating polarizing politics. I'm just using him as an example of why it's idiotic to abuse ketamine, which is quite on-topic. I'm not going to walk on egg shells to avoid triggering thin skinned MAGA "fuck your feelings" snowflakes.
> Like dosing on ketamine then getting up on stage and making Nazi salutes.
Elon Musk is a clown, but nobody on a dose of ketamine is doing anything, least of all making coherent gestures and political grandstands. Drug naive people should avoid having any degree of commentary on them, you always say the most ridiculous things.
People don't take K and go dancing?
Go dancing? No. You can take ket in the vicinity of dancing, at an event where dancing is the main attraction, but the nature of the drug makes participating on the dance floor a non-starter. "Ketamine is killing dance floors" was a very common sentiment some 8 years ago.
Here, have a nice video of Aphex Twin on a light dose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqega6a2g6A
I’d venture to assume the downvotes are simply because you’re taking a relatively neutral topic and mapping it onto a polarized political subject
> Like dosing on ketamine then getting up on stage and making Nazi salutes.
It's much more likely to be the Adderall.
"One reason that narcissists so commonly abuse drugs and alcohol is because the substances amplify their feelings of grandiosity and invulnerability. More so, narcissists often get stuck in the cycle of drug abuse because drugs readily cause the brain to deny there is a problem." https://illinoisrecoverycenter.com/narcissism-and-addiction/
Impulsivity mediates the association between narcissism and substance-related problems beyond the degree of substance use: a longitudinal observational study "A grandiose self-enhancement strategy should be reflected in motives of self-enhancement, such as increasing confidence through substance use." https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12...
Personality Disorders, Narcotics, and Stimulants; Relationship in Iranian Male Substance Dependents Population "correlation between stimulant use and histrionic personality disorder (P < 0.001) and antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders (P < 0.05)" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4553170/
While Musk is one of the richest aholes on the whole planet, i don't think its Ketamine who made Musk do shitty things.
I think Musk alone is just a really depressing ahole who has no longer any social feedback due to his position.
He seems to lack the ability to admit he was wrong. (And smart as you might be, nobody is immune to error). He wanted to port the PayPal production stack to windows. He refused to listen to reason and bulled ahead. It was about this time that the revolt and ouster happened. Could you imagine trying to run a production stack on win in the early 2000s? (Or ever) had he got his way we wouldn’t even be talking about him because he would have failed and disappeared into obscurity.
[flagged]
I almost saw this movie last night
https://thefilmstage.com/john-lilly-and-the-earth-coincidenc...
but we had a visitor at home and enough to deal with. I read Lilly's books like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_of_the_Cyclone
and they were a bit of a hoot as he nearly killed himself multiple times injecting LSD and then testified that LSD was perfectly safe. I've known a few people, all male, who took LSD and developed a sort of "messiah complex" where they felt not a general spiritual "sacrament" experience but rather the opposite and some kind of hypertrophy of narcissism like the 'False Self' that Kohut warns about.
The article mentions 2-C-T-2 which I got in Europe which I understand was the closest people got to a commercially viable psychedelic in that it has a nice stimulant effect (easy walk from the German border to Děčín) and very nice visuals but seems to have little cosmic element so you are sitting on the toilet and feeling like a constipated sinner and that's about it.
Myself I don't have a lot of interest in LSD and company these days because for a while every time I take it it makes me aware of how I have many more nerve endings in my gut than I have on my skin so I feel turned inside out which isn't quite a "bad trip" but isn't very good either. Best thing that happened the last time was I laid down in the leaf litter and watched a pair of snakes having sex but I later picked four ticks off myself.
Why would anyone inject LSD? Skin contact with a few micrograms is enough to trip.
Beats me. The only dosage forms I've seen are blotter and sugar cubes, maybe some of the blotter diffuses through the lining of your mouth if you keep it under your tongue but it also works great if you just swallow it -- it's very orally available.
Lilly though had a bad relationship with drugs, he crashed his bike when he was high on ketamine long before ketamine was fashionable.
In the early 1990s accounts of drug experiences on Erowid were mostly positive ("I smoked weed and got high and had a good time") but by the early 2000s it started to look like anti-drug propaganda but I think it was a lower quality tranche of users [1] and you started seeing negative ones ("I took a fistful of random pills, went out on the street, lost motor control and was laying flat on the ground, everybody was really sympathetic until I rolled over and a huge baggie of pills came out of my pocket, then I got kicked by a cop.")
[1] y'all know I am not inclined to believe in natural hierarchies but I think that early adopters of most things are "better" than later adopters however you define "better"
Hypertrophy of narcissism.
I needed this phrase 20 years ago. Very well put.
What do you mean by mental benchmarks? LSD and the like are just drugs. Petty weird to make them more than that. What are they in your opinion? I like taking LSD, but I do NOT like it as something "holy" or "otherworldly".
It's not fucked up to want to maximize results while minimizing risks.
The drug itself might actually be relevant. I suspect far more people per 100k have had negative reactions to say DMT than mushrooms, due to speed of onset, other receptors hit, etc.
It's like a psychedelic hot dog eating contest!
The Great Smoke Off