It's fascinating that a monthly visit to your local shaman may still be more safe and effective for depression, anxiety, and cognitive decline than anything western medicine has been able to produce.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/abbierosner/2020/02/21/microdos...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6463489/
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6343205/
[4] https://www.beingpatient.com/could-psychedelics-help-treat-a...
"Punching-the-hippy" politics aside, the political leaders told us there was nothing beneficial ever about those drugs, and we typically believed them, even lumping scientists who wanted to study them in the same camp as the "UFO Cranks".
So the question is, is it western medicine that's the issue, or the lack of science based politics?
I get that in some people it can be a wonderful thing, nearly a miracle cure. I've done plenty of psychedelics myself, but I always find the insistence by proponents that any harm done is the fault of the user ("poor preparation", "not the right setting", "inexperienced guide", etc, etc) to be really disingenuous and unscientific. Like, there are legit some people that really won't respond well to this as therapy.
Now, conventional pharmaceuticals and therapy have the same issues, but the reality is psychedelic therapies have never been a clear favorite.
How about lack of science based medicine?
Western medicine, which I would rather call scientific medicine is not against psychedelics and natural remedies, but instead of telling you to eat the funny shaped mushroom, it will study what exactly is in that mushroom, extract the good stuff, remove the bad, maybe try to improve it. It will then test it, with accurate dosing and if everything goes well, produce a treatment that is similar to what the shaman did but better.
I'd say the only thing the shaman has over a registered doctor is that he can spend more time with you, and hopefully have a positive influence on your lifestyle. But it is not a shortcoming of scientific medicine, in fact, it recognizes it. It is more about doctors being too few and overworked.
These are alpha-blockers for treating migraines or hypertension. There are psychotropic drugs based on these as well, and a bunch of discredited nootropics.
Now, high BDNF on its own is not a good or bad thing. It is released both when injuries and when growth happens...
I would be very careful recommending a shaman, unless you happen to have evidence for how well traditional approach to treatment works compared to recent drugs or current mental health treatments, or a precise description of what those people do, as it's more than just "take this drug and go home". We could use such studies for sure, and not for cultural appropriation!
We lack sufficient data to recommend for or against. (Partly because countries virtually banned research because "drugs" are "bad". Others are trying to hold it exclusive for their culture, which is wrong too. I think they should stand to gain from it if it works.)
Shamans are more like tour guides. Walking you through your own experience.
I get the romanticized enthusiasm but let’s not crap on scientific process that easily. Sure there has been political pressures that stagnated psychedelic research, but for a while western medicine has been trying to work this out in a replicable and safely administrable manner. Shamans don’t operate under those limitations, hence the apparent “superiority”, with all associated, undocumented risks.
To get to the point of this paper, there are “western” substances that help with BDNF and cognitive decline too, eg. lithium, which is not as psychoactive and has a perfectly well documented risk profile (not saying risk free).
I’m intrigued by lions mane because it’s legal, of course.
The "stack" is insane as we do not understand what each of the components does separately or in any combination and the rationale for including one of them is based on discredited ideas.
An interesting thing to know is how seizures and mental illnesses interact, for instance. Yes, we're talking ancient early XX century "connect a brain to electric current" kind of thing but at better precision. Electroshock therapy. We know so very little here.
It could well be that psychedelics and this share the mechanism of action. Or not.
But such effects are only present when you take like 100ug, not the few micrograms that would constitute a microdose.
It was just my imagination as confirmed by the sober driver and other passengers.
I was aware that my mind was wandering though - at a higher dose I might not have been aware of that.
> I remember going to a racquetball court and it seems like they were many balls in the court when there actually there was only one
The best guide is https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/shrooms/comments/8e7g6n/how_to_grow.... Expect to read a lot before you start growing.
> Animal studies have implicated the neurotrophin BDNF and the growth factor IGF‐1 in mediating the beneficial effects of exercise on hippocampal function and structure as well as cognition. In humans, findings are less clear since exercise‐induced increases in peripheral BDNF have been consistently shown only immediately after a single bout of aerobic exercise. Studies involving longer exercise interventions (i.e., 6 weeks up to 1 year) have reported mixed results. While the majority of reports have found no changes in circulating BDNF and IGF‐1 at the end of the training period, Zoladz and colleagues (2008) demonstrated increased plasma BDNF after 5 weeks of endurance training in physically active male adults. Further, Leckie et al. (2014) found that 1 year of moderate‐intensity walking significantly elevated serum BDNF only in individuals older than 65 years of age. Lastly, Heisz et al. (2017) reported that, although no group differences in serum BDNF were found following 6 weeks of high‐intensity interval training in young adults, participants with greater fitness improvements had higher serum BDNF levels than their counterparts with lower fitness gains.
From this, I'd guess one wouldn't see a sustained increase in BDNF levels from microdosing either.
I think a lot of X correlates with Y studies are just kinda crap for a number of reasons, including that we don't have extremely good baselines -- e.g. continuous 24 hour monitoring across a wide population in a multitude of circumstances.
It takes about an hour to kick in, and for me, lasts about 6-8 hours.
It feels like it silences any inner critic in me, so I am a lot more free thinking. I have used it several times to overcome getting stuck on a programming problem, but I have to write the solution down because I usually get too distracted while using it to be able to focus enough to implement. The problems it's good at are ones that require abstract thought - for example I was trying to come up with a data structure to accurately represent atomic 3D structures, and then also algorithms to query them and model how they interact, this is where it was most useful for me. I came out with 10ish pages of notes and drawings that were enough to allow "sober" me to code it out and test it.
Physically it makes me sweat a lot, but it's a very strange sweat - not like an exercise sweat - but the sweat feels very clean and pure and is odourless. I often shallow breathe and it suppresses my appetite, so I have to set reminders on my phone to eat, exercise and drink while I'm taking it.
Everything feels like it's clean and my visual resolution goes up a lot more, it's interesting for me to see how much of what we see is perceptual and not limited by the physics of our eye - I can see a lot more clearly and everything feels "cleaner"
I sometimes get visual effects, which I can only describe as absolutely beautiful and mind blowing. It's very hard to describe because I can control them to a certain extent and as a neurotic person I thought that the "loss of control" would freak me out, but it's not like that at all. Last time I used I saw the most beautiful honey-like flowing pattern in the wood grain of the door, which was continuously moving and just utterly beautiful. I also witnessed the curtains rotating (imagine a sine wave going up and down, the curtains looked like they were doing that) and also the pillows on the couch looked like they were breathing.
The bad side is that it stops me from sleeping, so the next day I'm usually a zombie until I can get a good night sleep the following night.
It's an amazing tool, and I love how creative it makes me as a senior programmer, but there's no way I'd do it every day or anything.
The first time you do it, you should definitly do it with someone experienced and in a safe place, where you have no other obligations for that day. If the feeling is getting too intense I find that a citrus drink seems to decrease the intensity (I have no idea if thats a placebo or not)
If anyone has any questions ask away
There is an interesting exercise for people with somewhat functional upper mind and I wonder what's going to happen if you try it in that LSD-elevated state. The exercise is just focused thinking about the relationship between sound and space. Before the exercise begins, the "trainee" needs to get a good understanding of the two concepts. First think about what the general idea of sound is: what really makes sound a sound? Then think of space as the spacetime in the GR theory: it's some kind of fundamental structure that obeys wave-like GR equations, so it naturally has all sorts of quantum-scale ripples and large gravity waves. Once you have a grip on the two concepts, the exercise begins: combine the two thoughts and stare at the "mix" with your mind.
For average folks this will produce no effect. But for those with somewhat working upper mind and well functioning lower mind, this produces one specific effect. I basically wonder if LSD allows you to skip a very long training process and enter the mode, at least temporarily, to make this exercise useful.
P.S. As to what that effect is, I'd say it doesn't matter. If it works, you'll see it. Turning on lights is a matter of flipping a switch, not the knowledge of electricity.
First, it made me understand the concept of good and bad "vibes" w.r.t. to drug use. It was clear that the experience of taking LSD recreationally in a group of people was a much a social experience as a chemical one. Keeping the "vibe" positive, by playing the right kind of music, staying chill, and saying and doing the right things, was important not to break the spell. Unfortunately, as somebody who suffers from social anxiety, this awareness made things quite stressful for me at times, as I felt I had to constantly maintain some level of self-regulation, which was not made easier by how intoxicated I was. I have the same problem when smoking weed in company.
Second, while I hoped for the kind of psychological breakthroughs and revelations that some people describe having using LSD, I didn't experience them. I never felt connected to the universe or some greater purpose. I certainly had periods of intense introspection, but they didn't reveal anything to my about my character I wasn't already aware of. I think part of that was that I was already in my mid-thirties at the time, and had done plenty of introspection over the years. I already had a good understanding of my own character — my strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears and regrets — and I suspect anybody with a similar disposition won't have any breakthroughs using LSD.
Ultimately, I didn't regret trying LSD, but it didn't leave me with any desire to try it again. Despite its reputation, it just seemed like another drug to me. Stronger in its effect than most, but I never felt like a child of the universe, I just felt high.
However, different drugs do affect different people differently. So it's possible you're just not very sensitive to LSD, but it is pretty unlikely. With the right dose, set, and setting, it's unlikely that you would be so unimpressed.
By huge margin consistently the most intense experience in my life, and I've been through some stuff (birth of my son, 6 months backpacking in Himalaya, adrenaline/mountain sports, not in that order).
That was some 10 years ago, I don't even feel the need to try again. Kind of lesson took, not much more to gain, only risking some bad drama.
Perception of time is altered (slowd down mostly), you can see intricate pulsating, kaleidoscopic, patterns in ordinary things (flowers, the floor, carpet, etc), you get deep thoughts and feelings (can be a rollercoaster), it greatly enhances music (it's like seeing in color for the first time). Sex on it is not bad either...
Never had a bad trip, ymmv.
But, it also gave me some interesting experiences, like the confusion of senses. Truly smelling colors was a weird one, one that I remember very vividly. Other than that, it’s lots of fireworks for the mind.
There’s something interesting to be found around ~1200mics but it’s -definitely- not something for the inexperienced to try.
But yeah, you pretty much tend to remember everything that happens to you during a trip, even years afterwards, which naively makes me believe your brain and memories become more malleable during that timeframe. This would explain why bad trips could be traumatizing.
Then there's gwern who did a RCT self-experiment and reported no benefits but the way he measured said 'benefits' (stupid little tests, self-rating) isn't convincing.
This doesn't much change the summary. Even at face-value (though you have to wonder about losing 80% of their data), what functional changes does some transient blood serum increases in BDNF cause, and why would some chemical results noticeably change one's assessment of the experimental evidence reported so far? It will be much more interesting to read the other data, which, however, remains unknown: "assessment of mood, cognition, empathy, and creativity that will be reported elsewhere." (That's from the pain paper reporting this study. Apparently they intend to salami-slice this study into at least 3 papers.)
1. Plasma brain-derived neurotrophic factor levels after severe traumatic brain injury. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/02699052.2015.10.... Brain Injury Journal.
