from Hacker News

Psychedelics Could Trigger A 'Paradigm Shift' In Mental Health Care

by rvikmanis on 10/10/15, 5:08 AM with 130 comments

• by codeshaman on 10/10/15, 9:38 AM

  They can trigger a paradigm shift in many other areas, not just mental health care. Except it's so hard to explain this to a 'normal' person, who's never taken any.

  "If God were to permit you a brief voyage into the divine process, let you whirl for a second into the atomic nucleus or spin you out on a light-year trip through the galaxies, how on earth would you describe what you saw when you got back, breathless, to your office? This metaphor may sound farfetched or irrelevant, but just ask someone who has taken a heavy dose of LSD." - Tim Leary, The politics of ecstasy, 1968

  It's similar to the 'overview effect' reported by astronauts who've been to space. Of course it triggers a paradigm shift and 'cures' depression or other mind-loops that we find ourselves in so often.

  It's good to see that there are more discussions about psychedelics in the scientific community. I suspect there are many (more and more) scientists and academics who use psychedelics so I think we will see more and more material published on this subject, apart from the huge amount of anecdotal material available online.

  I also suspect that people use more psychedelics now than ever in our history. And it's happening globally. And it's a good thing.

  Because I believe psychedelics are the mythical 'love bomb' which can stop wars and bring peace to people and other species on Earth. And they could, in theory, cure cancer - certainly the psychological and spiritual effects of the disease, which could bring remission to it's physical manifestation.

  So yeah, there's lots of research still to be done.

• by chestervonwinch on 10/10/15, 3:44 PM

  Psychedelics are a lot like taking a vacation. You may have an experience which will impact your life in some (perhaps significantly better or worse) way. You may gain new perspectives on life. You may gain insight into yourself and travel companions. You may develop an ugly tendency to be that annoying person who always talks about their trip to ___ and always find a way to interject it into conversations.

• by fsiefken on 10/10/15, 10:45 AM

  Support MAPS (Multidisciplinairy Association for Psychedelic Studies) http://www.maps.org/ or the Dutch OPEN Foundation to promote research in this area. https://twitter.com/FoundationOPEN

• by Litost on 10/10/15, 11:24 AM

  Pretty tangential, and i've no idea yet as to it's accuracy, but i loved the idea that the human race's "emergence into consciousness was triggered by our ancestors encounters with visionary plants". From an ironically, as otherwise i probably wouldn't have stumbled on it, Ted Talk by Graham Hancock:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0c5nIvJH7w

  Out of interest, are there any other theories as to what might have caused this "leap"?

• by s_dev on 10/10/15, 9:42 AM

  If LSD is this safe in a black market environment: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11660210

  I don't see how if it was clinically manufactured and administered the risks couldn't be acceptably mitigated. The interviewee seems confident the government is on board and things are going down a new path though so I guess this could be a thing now.

• by xacaxulu on 10/10/15, 6:34 PM

  This is strong medicine, but the reports around ayahuasca, ibogaine, psilocybin, DMT and peyote all indicate the possibility of deep and lasting positive psychological shifts. I'd personally submit to treatment in the safety of a psych/medical clinic rather than a secret Peruvian yoga retreat but the fact that so many centers are popping up indicates some kind of global hive-mind desire for change. I'm supremely interested in the official and unofficial studies taking place all over the world right now in these domains.

• by api on 10/10/15, 6:09 PM

  Psychedelics are, I think, a genuine example of a suppressed technology. They're one of two major suppressed technologies of the 20th century, with the other possibly being nuclear power.

• by Mz on 10/10/15, 8:11 PM

  "The exciting thing isn't just that these drugs work for something that we already have treatment for. It's that they're getting big effects on disorders for which we have very poor treatment."

  It sounds to me like it may imply that much of what we call "mental health" disorders are really somatopsychic conditions.

• by Synaesthesia on 10/10/15, 8:38 AM

  At the very least psychedelics should be a legitimate subject of serious inquiry in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry.

• by werber on 10/10/15, 12:22 PM

  I was surprised the article didn't mention Ayahuasca, maybe the original source did. I know a few people that used it to get off heroin for good after going through several Regan-relapse cycles.

• by noahdesu on 10/10/15, 4:46 PM

  I just finished reading "Acid Test: LSD, Ecstasy, and the Power to Heal" by Tom Shroder. It was parallel tour of the history of influential people (primarily Rick Doblin of MAPS), and a Iraq veteran suffering from PTSD that was treated later in the book with MDMA. http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Test-Ecstasy-Power-Heal/dp/014751...

• by thucydides on 10/10/15, 8:03 PM

  Rick Doblin at MAPS has said he's funding the medical research of psychedelics and MDMA partly to change their public perception. It's a good strategy. "Medicinal alcohol" during Prohibition and medicinal cannabis during Prohibition 2.0 both helped sway a skeptical public.

  Strategic concerns aside, psychedelics clearly are powerful medicines and can yield profound insights, and their relative safety makes their Schedule 1 status morally repellent.

• by Glench on 10/10/15, 5:10 PM

  Here's a link to an early-release PDF of the study: https://psilosybiini.info/paperit/Psychedelic%20medicine,%20...

• by ArkyBeagle on 10/10/15, 9:21 PM

  The man made the "unreliable narrator" his main device, but I think "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" should put to rest any idea that such trendy chemical amusement aids have much therapeutic value in the general case.

  It least puts such ideas in a position of having to work a lot harder to make their case.

• by max-a on 10/10/15, 8:54 AM

  Psychedelics can trigger psychosis too.

• by nmrm2 on 10/10/15, 9:38 AM

  TA: "The fact that the effects last beyond the time that you take the medication -- that's really a new paradigm in psychiatry."

  I have no doubt that psychedelics are capable of producing lasting changes in behaviors, habits, or outlooks. Actually, I'd be surprised if that particular point is at all controversial.

  However, prespcribing a psychedlic that could have lasting impacts on a person for "reasons we don't understand" seems... unnecessarily dangerous, whenever an alternative exists. Which of course is only an argument for more research.