thirdform

pass the sick bucket
nearly all people who speak positively about psychedelics are irresponsible in evangelising them, even for beneficial uses. If you want to give people an accurate picture you have to tell people what the experience is, which is essentially a temporary state of schizophrenia. sometimes this can still keep you cognitively aware of the external world, other times it cannot. But the fact that people don't mention this is irresponsible in the extreme. It also gets rid of the allure. A lot of drug culture is marketting pseudo-rebellion, nothing to do with quantity.

I'm not asking you to rebel by taking drugs, I'm asking you to rebel against drug culture. demystify it to bring out the true power of gnosis. http://www.locusplus.org.uk/publications-and-editions/publications/2149~Sacred+Selections
 

Woebot

Well-known member
it's not teenage fantasy. what do you think the mystics meant by annihilation in the divine? Total ego death of course.

this is only ever a temporary experience. total ego death looks like: actual death, catatonic schizophrenia or alzheimers. one of the unheralded advantages of psychedelics is not that they take you there - but that they wear off quickly and bring you back.

talking of the mystics ramakrishna is the most convincing example of someone who regularly experienced ego dissolution - bhava/samahdi (and is able to talk about it intellectually in all honesty)

he readily discusses the inability for people to stay in those states of mind indefinitely. he talks very plainly about kinds of ego formation: the wicked "I", the servant "I", the ego of devotion and the ego of knowledge.
 
nearly all people who speak positively about psychedelics are irresponsible in evangelising them,

Agree. I was serious about that policy out in the real world. I assume a level of knowledge and experience here but to any lurkers: listen to thirdfrom, the most sensible man on the forum!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
not true. discredited in "scientific" trials but as relevant an observation as it ever was.
Yes true. Psychosis is a psychiatric concept. If psychiatrists agree that the psychedelic state is neither identical, nor particularly similar, to a psychotic episode, then it ain't a psychotic episode.

Look, I appreciate that I'm pissing into the wind against the general ambient anti-science prejudice of this forum, but there is something to be said for accepting that others might have knowledge about something you don't.

And it was precisely in those early scientific trials that the idea of "psychotomimesis" came from before it was abandoned, so your argument doesn't even make sense from the POV of a blanket rejection of scientific approaches to studying psychedelics.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
If psychiatrists agree that the psychedelic state is neither identical, nor particularly similar, to a psychotic episode, then it ain't a psychotic episode.

we're going to have politely disagree with another i'm afraid tea.

if there was a complete consesnsus amongst psychiatrists that there was no relationship between the states then i'd think you were in a stronger position. there isn't such a thing. i interviewed at least three psychiatrists who thought there was a connection.

also it was never abandoned as a term by the psychiatrists who coined it - so again a mistake to view them as a monolithic body.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well hang on, I never said there was no connection. I said I didn't think they were the same thing - for one thing, I understand schizophrenia isn't exactly enjoyable, whereas many people clearly enjoy psychedelics a lot.

But regardless of whether that view is correct, or whether the question can even be answered in any sort of objective way, I'm just surprised to see someone attacking scientism while at the same time adhering to a viewpoint that, to me, seems extremely scientistic.
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
@WashYourHands is serious about the medicinal benefits of cbd, so I'm not throwing shade at him. but the idea that you can just get people microdosing to minimise anxiety is psychiatry logic if you don't attend to those reasons which make you anxious to begin with.

And well, I'm against how psychiatry is overprivileged in todays climate because it is cheap, and easy to administer. whereas something like psychoanalysis is long and time-consuming.

Psychoanalysis is long and time consuming. Costly too, both for the NHS to employ mental health specialists and through the labyrinth that passes for the pvt sector. One of my personal and professional loathings is that, with the current rates of psychological trauma being experienced by Covid survivors, relatives of deceased etc, this cabal of cunts who run the dept of Tory health will never cough up the funds for adequate coverage, never mind institute what was needed prior to Covid. That would require a drastic overhaul and reform of the mental health sector, budget increases and reform of GP services too. There are narrow bottlenecks everywhere, postcode lotteries and prolapses in duty of care across health authorities.

CBD research into depression and psychosis might allow for a more gentle admin of a compound supported by face to face appointments, assuming a client can find a face to face appt. Another area where Covid is really hollowing out service efficacy. The systemic issues are vast, compacted and getting increasingly worse because, as I said in the rona thread, we’re not on a health war footing. We could adapt training programs for the recently unemployed or furloughed to retrain in key NHS sectors. Seems common sense, but I’m not optimistic that our current admin has the slightest idea of unfucking itself there. Instead, psychiatry will remain a cheaper, less effective, glorified pill dispensary to stave off adding to already astronomical waiting lists.
 

muser

Well-known member
not true. discredited in "scientific" trials but as relevant an observation as it ever was.

You could discount any real link between psychedelics and psychotic mind states on case studies alone surely. Can you find similarities in the nature of their hallucinations, their thought patterns, the typical characteristics of the experiences? They are wildly different for the most part. Maybe if you talk in broad generalizations and just look for some specific things in fMRIs you can draw more similarities but experientially pretty obviously different. The exception being people suffering psychotic breaks on psychedelics and those with schizophrenia who have taken psychedelics.

Reading this it seems to cover most aspects, not that I'm at all qualified to assess how robust it is.

https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/advance-article/doi/10.1093/schbul/sbaa117/5908041

I totally agree controlled studies with psychedelics seem barmy though and the evangelizing is reckless and way too common.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
I understand schizophrenia isn't exactly enjoyable, whereas many people clearly enjoy psychedelics a lot.

there are psychotic states which are tremendously pleasurably. mania is tremendously pleasurable. and many psychedelic experiences that are deeply unpleasant.

the negative aspect of mental health experiences is because the fracturing of the ego which unleashes them, and which colours the subjective experience, is usually a result of tremendous stress or trauma. the phenomena themselves, psychotic experiences and psychedelic experiences are the same.

for instance if i tied you table and under conditions of torture forced you take LSD the chances are you would have a terrible experience.

I'm just surprised to see someone attacking scientism

i don't think scientism - measuring things - is a useful tool when talking about consciousness, no. poetry or painting are much more useful and appropriate tools. it's just that they are properly valued.

while at the same time adhering to a viewpoint that, to me, seems extremely scientistic.

i don't get this sorry.

i'm saying that, in spite of one (or more) studies which have concluded that the experiences are different there are many more equally "scientific" examples of people disagreeing.

to be clear, i'm not arguing from a "scientific" position - i'm just saying that to argue it from a "scientific" position, like i think you are (?), is difficult because there isn't a consensus in that community.

but speaking personally i don't agree that there's a great difference. they are definitely different (it's easier to escape from the clutches of psychedelics because they wear off and the brain/body resumes its previous position - bounces back into shape) but i don't think they differ of the order in which it makes sense to talk about them as different phenomenon.

that's very unscientific of me because you'd have trouble measuring that - easier to conclude looking at it from a social or historic capacity like wot i did in my booky wook.
 
The phrase 'non-specific amplifier' is a good one - psychedelics will free up and intensify, express, accelerate: latent traumas, vulnerabilities, potentials. which can be therapeutic or damaging, theyre moving you through a process faster and with more depth, width, brain connectivity

Stanislav Grof in 1980

In the dosages used in human experimentation, the classical psychedelics, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, do not have any specific pharmacological effects. They increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and the body which leads to manifestation of otherwise latent psychological processes.

The content and nature of the experiences that these substances induce are thus not artificial products of their pharmacological interaction with the brain ("toxic psychoses ), but authentic expressions of the psyche revealing its functioning on levels ordinarily not available for observation and study. A person who has taken LSD does not have an "LSD experience," but takes a journey into deep recesses of his or her own psyche. When this substance is given in the same dosage and under comparable circumstances to a large number of individuals, each of them will have a different experience reflecting the specificities of his or her psyche. In addition, serial sessions of the same person will vary in their content and show a characteristic progression.

i can see how that bit in bold is not necessarily true

recent studies seem to show that they act in a reductive way (decreased blood flow to default mode network) which allows for connections that are normally diverted by that filter
 

muser

Well-known member
there are psychotic states which are tremendously pleasurably. mania is tremendously pleasurable. and many psychedelic experiences that are deeply unpleasant....
the phenomena themselves, psychotic experiences and psychedelic experiences are the same.

Sorry to keep prodding but what are you basing that on? I'm interested in what you have read or experienced. Do you think if you asked a group of people who were going through a manic stage what they were experiencing they would sound at all similar to a group of people having a really enjoyable trip? They may both contain hallucinations, distortions of reality etc but they are still totally different experiences. Again, psychotic responses can be triggered by psychedelics, but then its a combination of the two things.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
but speaking personally i don't agree that there's a great difference. they are definitely different (it's easier to escape from the clutches of psychedelics because they wear off and the brain/body resumes its previous position - bounces back into shape) but i don't think they differ of the order in which it makes sense to talk about them as different phenomenon.

that's very unscientific of me because you'd have trouble measuring that...
Yes, of course you can't measure subjective states, by their nature. But there are all sorts of things you can measure - electrical activity and blood flow in different parts of the brain, levels of hormones and neurotransmitters, etc. If you're willing to overcome an anti-science prejudice then these might provide a valuable insight into whether any two subjective conditions are the same thing, or kind of similar, or totally different.

Of course, you're also free to dismiss the entire field of neuropharmacology as bad and wrong and insist anyone who works in it is an idiot.
 
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