The Anxiety Thread

[Hanley]

Hanley, can you explain the experience at all, and how it resulted in reduced anxiety?

Oh man. I dunno. The ruminating, perseverating intellectual mediator shut down for a few hours and I just walked around a forest in awe.

And the "peak" was something like a direct experience of the interconnectedness of everything. Sounds cliche/trite/sophomoric out of the context of the experience, but it was a hugely powerful. And I'm moved thinking about it now, over a decade later.

I dunno why that experience helped so tremendously with anxiety. But it did.

I'm guessing context was important. I was living in a little cabin on a wooded island in Maine and was meditating a fuckton.

That shit was all positive.

#

I also have experience with something like a "bad trip". I once ate a massive dose of thc edibles and went on a journey through some sort of solipsistic hellscape (like instead of "everything is one" it was "I'm the only one...and I'm all good and all evil, all joy and all suffering"...so I'm quite familiar with the terror. I kinda think both experiences are useful.

Naturally, I interpret the bad trip as pure delusion and the good trip as a revelation of the function of consciousness.

I have considered a regimen of micro-dosing and thought that might be what you were doing until you clarified otherwise.

I'm planning on visiting Vancouver BC for a guided high-dose session sometime in the near future. With follow-up "integration" work.

That ^ sort of context is what I was thinking might help. I wouldn't pop 5 grams and hope for bliss.

I'm not familiar with the research on micro-dosing (and I haven't tried it). But, seems low-risk* and possibly useful

* Regarding legal risk: If - in the context of 100,000 Americans overdosing on opiates last year - law enforcement deems mushrooms worth their time enforcing....then the world just needs to fucking burn. Realistically, it's just not (and shouldn't be) an enforcement priority.

[Cellist]

@Hanley You might be on to something — "We envision a day when psychedelics will be more than a last-ditch treatment: they will be a catalyst for mass mental health." Rick Doblin, PhD is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and a member of the Board of Directors of its wholly owned drug development subsidiary, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... heir-power

[Hanley]

@Hanley You might be on to something — "We envision a day when psychedelics will be more than a last-ditch treatment: they will be a catalyst for mass mental health." Rick Doblin, PhD is the founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies and a member of the Board of Directors of its wholly owned drug development subsidiary, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... heir-power

Tons of compelling studies have been coming out of Johns Hopkins & NYU (and other institutions). Check out the work of Roland Griffiths if you're interested.

[chrisd]

Not so sure about psilocybin, 'a friend' had one lousy trip and spent the night cowering under the duvet because the large werewolf (actually a leather jacket over the back of a chair' kept staring at him and there was nothing to smoke except gaulloise.

LSD on the other hand leaves you blissed out for a few days afterwards, with a complete relief from anxiety and depression. The effect is not permanent. Again, make sure you have a good supply of cannabis to mellow things out.

[Hanley]

one lousy trip and spent the night cowering under the duvet because the large werewolf (actually a leather jacket over the back of a chair' kept staring at him

That werewolf [wipes away tear] was a projection of your your friend's father.

[EggMcMuffin]

Hanley, can you explain the experience at all, and how it resulted in reduced anxiety?

Oh man. I dunno. The ruminating, perseverating intellectual mediator shut down for a few hours and I just walked around a forest in awe.

And the "peak" was something like a direct experience of the interconnectedness of everything. Sounds cliche/trite/sophomoric out of the context of the experience, but it was a hugely powerful. And I'm moved thinking about it now, over a decade later.

I dunno why that experience helped so tremendously with anxiety. But it did.

I'm guessing context was important. I was living in a little cabin on a wooded island in Maine and was meditating a fuckton.

That shit was all positive.

#

I also have experience with something like a "bad trip". I once ate a massive dose of thc edibles and went on a journey through some sort of solipsistic hellscape (like instead of "everything is one" it was "I'm the only one...and I'm all good and all evil, all joy and all suffering"...so I'm quite familiar with the terror. I kinda think both experiences are useful.

Naturally, I interpret the bad trip as pure delusion and the good trip as a revelation of the function of consciousness.

I have considered a regimen of micro-dosing and thought that might be what you were doing until you clarified otherwise.

I'm planning on visiting Vancouver BC for a guided high-dose session sometime in the near future. With follow-up "integration" work.

That ^ sort of context is what I was thinking might help. I wouldn't pop 5 grams and hope for bliss.

I'm not familiar with the research on micro-dosing (and I haven't tried it). But, seems low-risk* and possibly useful

* Regarding legal risk: If - in the context of 100,000 Americans overdosing on opiates last year - law enforcement deems mushrooms worth their time enforcing....then the world just needs to fucking burn. Realistically, it's just not (and shouldn't be) an enforcement priority.

I don't even understand the stigma against psychedelics, people are free to drink themselves to death but it's literally impossible to (physically) hurt yourself with some funny fungus. You can't really even abuse them either......

I hate that they're illegal in California, they're decriminalized in Oakland but then this happened to the one place "dispensing" them



I want to try them because they seem like a better alternative to whatever fucked up shit they put into SSRI's, but they won't be legal in my state any time soon. Too much of a hassle, if we could grow them here they're a cheap, cheap way to manage depression/anxiety via microdosing, at least from what I've read...

[aurelius]

Oh man. I dunno. The ruminating, perseverating intellectual mediator shut down for a few hours and I just walked around a forest in awe.

Finished 6 ketamine infusions (they actually just injected me). Would describe the experience as more internal. Although I did have the expansive experience with one session. Very intense (not scary). And freeing. I came away with a different perspective is the best I can describe it. I lack the vocabulary to adequately describe the experience. It is likely your philosophy education and meditation better prepared you for the experience.

There are studies showing that psychedelics encourage new connections and can even repair serotonin and dopamine receptors in the brain. I am interested in micro-dosing psilocybin. I just have to figure out how to grow my own.

[psmith]

I enjoyed psilocybes, but can't say the experience did much for me that five or six beers wouldn't have.

Same with ketamine, tbh.

[Brackish]

We can start with flying, which I’ll be doing tomorrow despite every fiber of my being resisting. Tips?

Telling me that it’s the safest way to travel and that my car is far more dangerous doesn’t help. I control my car, and it doesn’t ride ten thousand feet above hard ground.

Usually I remind myself that the airline staff do this shit every day of the year, so I should just stop being a pussy.

Last time I had to fly, I took a Xanax a half hour before the flight and every half hour during the flight. Honestly, it didn't help, but I slept great when I got where I was going. Fuck flying. And fuck anyone who says it's safer than driving in a car. If a car crashes, and I live, I walk away from it. If a boat sinks, I swim away. If a plane decides to fall out of the sky, you're fucked. TSA frowns on people flying with a parachute as their carry on. I'm 100% with you.

But at the end of the day your chances of dying I. A plane crash are far less than a car. You don’t always walk away from a car crash. A lot of times if you do, you’d wished you,actually died.

I'm aware but knowing that doesn't change anything.

[aurelius]

Same with ketamine, tbh.

What dosage level? I completely disassociated and had visual hallucinations. I don't know what beer you are drinking...

[GlasgowJock]

I enjoyed psilocybes, but can't say the experience did much for me that five or six beers wouldn't have.

Same with ketamine, tbh.

This beer you drink, which brand?

Asking for a 'friend'.

[Hanley]

I enjoyed psilocybes, but can't say the experience did much for me that five or six beers wouldn't have.

Goddamn, son.

Here I was hallucinating J.S. Bach fugues and falling in love with a birch tree.

To be fair, it was a lovely birch.

[Culican]

I had mushrooms a few times in my twenties and I have never forgotten the experiences. They were life changing.

[Root]

I enjoyed psilocybes, but can't say the experience did much for me that five or six beers wouldn't have.

Goddamn, son.

Here I was hallucinating J.S. Bach fugues and falling in love with a birch tree.

To be fair, it was a lovely birch.

Birches ain't shit but boughs and twigs

[RedFinn]

Miscellaneous recollections of psilocybin:

1) My first many doses were 10-100 mg of mushrooms, which did nothing. I think I was confused about the difference between dose guidelines for psilocybin versus mushrooms. (Mushrooms are ~1% psilocybin, I think.)

2) I took 2 grams of mushrooms and sat outside on a pleasant summer day and had a generally nice time. I took notes of the experience somewhere, and one thing I wrote is that it was like a pile of leaves being rustled. Like a thousand dramas playing out in my mind. It was a scrambling of my brain.

3) I took 4 grams of mushrooms and sat outside on a pleasant summer day and had a fairly unpleasant experience. Lots of involuntary head jerking and other movements. Some moaning and crying. If the 2 gram trip was a scrambling, this was a major scrambling. But at the end, I swear, it felt like being born again. Like whatever ruts had developed in my brain had been wiped clean. I felt very peaceful and tranquil, to the point that I didn't want to talk or hear anyone else talk because I felt it would disturb my peaceful state.

I felt slightly catatonic for days (or maybe weeks) afterward. I felt like a different person. Unfortunately I got dragged back into "life bullshit" (appointments, emails, etc.) which I felt disturbed my peace and prevented me from realizing the full transformative potential of the trip.

I plan to do another 4-6 gram trip again but next time I want to be able to ignore the world for at least a couple weeks afterward. Just lie around and read books or something like that.

In sum, I think there is great potential in mushrooms but I believe there is probably potential for negative effects too, since brain change isn't automatically good. But I think it has the ability to help me get out of some bad habits or patterns (e.g. addictions, maybe some PTSD, depression, learned helplessness, and maybe other things too).

PS: I have no idea how these "professionally supervised" mushroom trips are supposed to go. When you are in a vulnerable state like that, are you going to want to be looking at and talking to a stranger? And this is not exactly a one-hour appointment. It's basically all day, and I didn't even want to drive for days afterward.

Listening to music also seems like a weird idea. I don't want a distraction during the trip. I'm not trying to ignore what's happening.

[TimK]

Birches ain't shit but boughs and twigs

[Hanley]

Birches ain't shit but boughs and twigs

It triggered a laughing fit at work. I must've sounded insane.

PS: I have no idea how these "professionally supervised" mushroom trips are supposed to go. When you are in a vulnerable state like that, are you going to want to be looking at and talking to a stranger? And this is not exactly a one-hour appointment. It's basically all day, and I didn't even want to drive for days afterward.

There's like 10,000 years of precedent of "professionally supervised" mushroom and ayahuasca trips.

It'll be interesting to see how western culture adopts the supervised trips. I think psilocyibn plugs quite neatly into the standard western psychotherapeutic context. You just add a day-long event for the trip itself, sandwiched between a bunch of "preliminary" and "post/integration" sessions.

I also think they plug quite neatly into something like a religious/spiritual context. My background is zen, and I think they'd work perfectly there. I know a lot of practitioners would scoff at the idea of using mushrooms to trigger religious experience (zen has a rich history of arrogance and condescension)...but they fucking work (probably better than zazen and koans). I think they're a sort of democratization of religious experience.

Listening to music also seems like a weird idea.

It's fucking amazing.

[RedFinn]

PS: I have no idea how these "professionally supervised" mushroom trips are supposed to go. When you are in a vulnerable state like that, are you going to want to be looking at and talking to a stranger? And this is not exactly a one-hour appointment. It's basically all day, and I didn't even want to drive for days afterward.

There's like 10,000 years of precedent of "professionally supervised" mushroom and ayahuasca trips.

It'll be interesting to see how western culture adopts the supervised trips. I think psilocyibn plugs quite neatly into the standard western psychotherapeutic context. You just add a day-long event for the trip itself, sandwiched between a bunch of "preliminary" and "post/integration" sessions.

I also think they plug quite neatly into something like a religious/spiritual context. My background is zen, and I think they'd work perfectly there. I know a lot of practitioners would scoff at the idea of using mushrooms to trigger religious experience (zen has a rich history of arrogance and condescension)...but they fucking work (probably better than zazen and koans). I think they're a sort of democratization of religious experience.

Come to think of it, I did feel more religiously inclined after the trip. I remember wanting to prostrate before the rising sun.

(I am more or less agnostic, but militant atheism is weird to me. I think there is possibly some significant latent brainpower in the "religious part" of the brain.)

Listening to music also seems like a weird idea.

It's fucking amazing.

Amazing because it makes the trip more enjoyable, or because it increases the beneficial effect of the trip? (Note the implicit, possibly unfounded assumption that those two goals may be in conflict.) I feel like music would reduce the value of the trip because it would impede the "scrambling" of the brain that I referred to. But I can't be sure of this. Actually, don't natives chant and play instruments during drug trips?

I am tentatively of the opinion that there is no one size fits all procedure for this kind of thing, because people's brains are different.

[Root]

Try them at a Phish show. Trust me.

[Hanley]

(I am more or less agnostic, but militant atheism is weird to me. I think there is possibly some significant latent brainpower in the "religious part" of the brain.)

Yeah. I think...theism is really odd. But spending energy being a-theist is equally weird. Like...no one's a-zeus.

The awe-inspiring headfuck of consciousness is all I need to trigger religious-like emotion. Even if it's just an emergent property of counter-entropic living systems....or whatever. It's fucking cool.

Amazing because it makes the trip more enjoyable, or because it increases the beneficial effect of the trip? (Note the implicit, possibly unfounded assumption that those two goals may be in conflict.) I feel like music would reduce the value of the trip because it would impede the "scrambling" of the brain that I referred to. But I can't be sure of this.

I listened to late Beethoven. It WAS the trip (or, rather that stage of the trip). I remember feeling strong empathy for and connection to Beethoven. And the sublime element of the music was almost unbearably beautiful (like I think B's late works are his communication of his "religious experience").

I didn't get any brain scrambling. And my brain scrambles pretty easily (weed scrambles it pretty effectively). But I really think the experience helped massively.