With a moderate dose, you tend to be introspective and consider your own life and relationships in different ways. There’s usually a lesson at the end.

With higher doses, it’s sometimes been just extremely confusing and not at all fun, to the extent that I’d forget my own name or what I’ve taken and basically just all memories. It’s very frustrating to be in that state, constantly trying not to fly away but not able to ground yourself. It’s a little disturbing, but not horrific. I think the reason for this is that I am afraid to lose my ego/die and I would actually benefit from a slightly higher dose to blast it away...

With really high doses though, it’s been a truly beautiful, enlightening experience. I still think of it sometimes. It’s very difficult to really explain in words, but it feels like kind of extreme empathy with all life. Buddhists would call it going egoless. I just felt very at peace: we all live, we all die, and it’s all okay. I’m not particularly religious or spiritual at all but that experience really changed me. It feels like life is in all these different forms, and you just happen to be one variation of it, but you could easily be any other living thing, so you just feel love and empathy for all life. And you know it’s finite and you’re not afraid of death. I would still attempt to avoid death, but I was just at peace with it if it was inevitable. Also, when you come back to reality you’re utterly, utterly convinced that you’ve experienced something profound, possibly, despite all your rationality, there’s a message form god inside this mushroom. It’s almost like the mushroom is laughing at you: “good luck going back to your normal life now.” You’re left with “wow? That was that?!” It’s annoying honestly, because I’m not religious at all and I know it sounds crazy to even say that out loud. Of course, that feeling does slowly fade away like a distance dream or memory.

A great story it reminds me of is “The Egg” by Andy Weir:

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

During that first trip, in a few hours I went from seeing the universe as a mechanistic, "matter is all there is", reality, to directly experiencing that there is so much more. Since then I've gone much deeper down that path and I'm so very thankful for this beautiful medicine for opening my eyes and heart!

When I grew mushrooms in college, I'd take massive doses of fresh mushrooms simply because I was flush with these amazing fungi.

So I took a massive dose of fresh mushrooms, which I think is a better way to go if you can make it happen, something like over 50g wet. As it sets in, I looked up at the night sky and a drop of water precipitated with all the moments of my life reflected inside it. It was as if I was a single drop from a large ocean. In some ways it was sad, this teardrop would pass someday and return to the ocean. I know it's okay, and I want to say that it's been a lot of fun spending time with everyone.

The experience reminds me of Blade Runner when the replicant confronts his own death.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Edit: my apologies. I thought it was dry, not wet.

First, have you seen clear, lasting changes in anxiety and depression? If the single-dose effect for cancer patients really is this strong, it seems like everyone who messed with mushrooms once in college should be 'treated' also.

Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

I think mushrooms can open the door, but you need to use them as a catalyst to take action in your day-to-day life to actually have lasting change. I've still been an asshole occasionally since taking mushrooms. Ultimately you're responsible for your own change, but mushrooms can help you want to change.

> Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

I've had an egoless state for a couple hours or so afterwards, and then maybe for a couple days afterwards I'm generally more relaxed and happy: maybe I'll smile more and say hello to people I barely talk to. But the feeling fades after that. Lasting change happens if you really take the lesson to heart and create change in your normal life.

On or around my birthdays for the past five years, I've been taking a moderate to very large dose of LSD. The lowest dose was around 100 micros, the largest was 10x that.

Me being me, with extensive planning, preparation, and a lot of help from my wife, my first dose in 2015 was the largest one.

The experience was moderately life changing. Things were already going pretty well, but after the trip, I was able to do even more 'personal brain cleanup'.

Specifically, it allowed me to release a big chunk of the personal arrogance I still carried. This has been a nearly life-long process, but the trip grealy accelerated it.

It also helped me further improve my (already pretty good) work/life balance. It's not that I loved my family more, it's just that the things that I already knew (time at work is a means to an end, time with my family is truly the most important thing) became more easily actionable.

Lastly, (for this reply...there more aspects than I have time to type up right now) it allowed me to read, understand and empathize with other people's actions more effectively.

Set, drug, dose, and setting all play huge roles in the effects one gets.

First, a lot of drugs on the black market aren't what they claim to be. So someone who tried what they thought were mushrooms in college might have gotten something else.

The dose of psilocybin one gets from black market mushrooms is also difficult if not impossible to gauge. So someone who tried mushrooms in college could have gotten too low or too high a dose.

Many people are also completely clueless when it comes to how to optimally prepare for and take drugs, and believe all sorts of myths and misconceptions about drugs. So many of those who took mushrooms in college probably did so in very poor circumstances, with no intention or even self-destructive intentions (such as those that often go hand-in-hand in binge-drinking), and possibly with misconceptions about what the experience will be like.

This is all very, very different from taking psilocybin or other psychedelics in a carefully designed study, with trained therapists who typically give days if not weeks of therapy before the sessions, during, and after the sessions, are given pure, precisely measured doses. The setting is designed for maximum therapeutic effect, as are the resources available during the session (such as having pictures of loved-ones on hand to focus on at the peak of the session). The sessions are usually done with light blocked out by an eye-shade, and with music carefully designed to facilitate the session. The therapists are on hand to give support and help the patient work through any diffcult experiences, and are encouraged to work through such difficulties rather than run away from them. Acceptance is encouraged.

Because of this careful preparation, planning, and professional therapy, the results are likely to be much different than casual mushroom use in college by people who are likely to be ignorant of psychedelics in general, and of how to properly run a therapeutic session in particular.

Maybe the problem is in the rarity and ineffability of the experience. We don't have a huge frame of reference for mystical-type experiences, and we don't have much of a common language to describe them. We rely on metaphors, the way we do when describing being in love.

When it's all over, you might think, "What the hell was that?" A memory of the feeling-of-the-thing, but no real word for what-it-is-like.

However, I now worry whether this has made me too malleable and less assertive. I often have to remind myself that there are people who would take advantage of you given a chance (the dark personality triad); the systems we live in can be very impersonal and hostile; and so we do have to lookout for ourselves and our family. Is there something you can share about this?

I think if you're concerned about it, it's probably not a big problem for you. Being kinder to all living things includes being kinder to yourself and your family anyway :-)

That article was on a different topic, but the lesson is being aware of the extremes and taking a bit of both is to be balanced, not to be contradictory.

I've had horrible experiences with a very large dose. I essentially passed out and when I awoke I genuinely thought I had died and was roaming as an invisible spirit. It wasn't until a friend interacted with me I realized I was still alive and began to come down.

I really think anyone should take care when experimenting with powerful hallucinogens. They aren't for everyone and have been known to trigger psychosis and other adverse reactions if one has a family history of mental illness.

By the way, ever since these trips, I can’t enjoy much marijuana in the same way. Marijuana feels like the start of that trip now. It’s very weird.

I took 5-6g when I was much younger and it was not an enjoyable experience on the whole, forgetting who/where I was, thinking I was other people. The most interesting part was everything arranging itself in sensible geometric patterns. No matter what I looked at, tree bark, the ground, the wall of a house, a pile of leaves, everything would appear structured as sort of repeating hexagons or octagons. That affect combined with occasional moments of profound peace felt revelatory, but I did not take mushrooms for a few years after that. I will almost definitely never do it again either.

I have not experienced the marijuana thing though :).

Also, with psychedelics the effects will vary from person to person, and even on the same person depending on that person's mood, body chemistry, how much and what they've eaten, what's going on with their life and their subconscious mind at the time, what their expectations are, their stage of development, where and with whom they take it, etc.

2) there was no placebo group, just low dose and high dose. The investigators called low dose “placebo like,” which anyone familiar with microdosing knows is bullshit.

3) the study size is still fucking tiny. With less than 30 subjects per arm, you can’t take the central limit theorem for granted. With 566 patients screened and 51 accepted, I’m particularly leery - especially since they offloaded all discussion of their exclusion criteria to a supplement no one ever looks at.

4) They used a crossover study. What this means is, as per their methods:

Patient enrolled at week 0. Got low dose (or high dose) at week 4, on average. Got the other dose (high, if the first was low) at week 9. Follow up with outcome measures at week 24.

Crossovers are used to amplify your sample size IFF the effect of the drug is expected to be significantly shorter than the time period between administrations.

In this case, that’s not true: NO previous research suggests that the mood effects of shrooms last significantly <4 weeks. And they know that, which is why their follow up was at 6 months.

In short, this study wasn’t “high dose shrooms show improvement in mood for six months, as shown by comparison to placebo.”

It wasn’t even “high dose shrooms show greater improvement in mood at six months than low dose shrooms”.

It’s “people that take high dose shrooms and then low dose shrooms show better mood in a few months than people that take low dose shrooms and then high dose shrooms, with statistically invalid tests, and no placebo to show that this wasn’t just baseline improvement because, hey, people do cope over time.”

Shit study. Shit shit absolute bullshit.

Edit: My bad. I was looking at the original crap study. Not the 5 year follow up of the crap study. Old crap still crap.

"Participants who reported use of cannabis or dronabinol were instructed not to use for at least 24 h before sessions."

I wonder why there isn't any number of how many people used cannabis during the trial or its effect compared to people who didn't.

Care to elaborate? Microdoses are supposed to be below the active threshold.

I’m not saying the microdosing studies are well done, but they surely prohibit taking for granted that microdosing is a placebo. What little evidence there is tilts away from that.

No, I don't believe that's true. In fact, this meta study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6364961/

actually explicitly mentions that the body of research doesn't support your claim about microdosing and placebo.

- "Eighty percent of the patients reported that their symptoms faded, and the effects lasted six months, the 2016 study found. At the time, this long-lasting effect was a landmark finding."

- "The new study ... followed up with 15 of those patients nearly 5 years later, and found that up to 80 percent were still experiencing significant improvements in cancer-related depression and anxiety. Nearly all of the participants attributed their positive life changes to the psychedelic-assisted therapy."

- "Next, he said, researchers need to conduct studies looking at brain scans taken before and after people are given the psychedelics, and also look for biomarkers that could indicate changes in the body."

So this is a follow-up study. Do an experiment, check six months later, and five years later.

Incredible, really. Forget the drug: we have scientifically figured out a life-changing procedure for easing cancer patients' anxiety for _years_ with a single dose. And it's super cheap!

The article also says they're going deep into the research, scanning brains next. Hopefully we'll see results sooner than another five years. :-P

I think the more interesting news is that the government have even allowed such an experiment. Anyone know where this research took place?

P.S. NBC's summary doesn't say (anyone have a sci-hub link to the original?) whether (or how) they accounted for the difference in time. i.e., the world was much different than it was five years ago, and people's anxiety changes too.

Disclosure: I am a participant in a double-blind study at NYU that is researching the use of psilocybin for alcohol use disorder. The results (wanting you drink less) have been incredible. Life changing. The team at NYU is amazing. This is not just taking medicine. It is done with therapy, psychiatrists who are present during sessions (“sitters”) and a heavy focus on set, setting and integration.

You can buy spores online because the active psilocybin is not in them. They are mushroom spores (it's all so stupid to make illegal, but that's another debate)

You can grow them very easily in spare space. You grow the mycelium in a jar with brown rice flour and vermiculite, there comes a point where you expose the jar to some light to help stimulate growth. Like any natural growing mushroom. Then you put them in a container that remains humid, and again light helps them grow as theyll grow towards it. Think of a mushroom growing under a leaf off rotting tree bark in the forest, same concept.

They're decriminalized where I am (denver) and easy to find. Not legal to grow and cultivate, but do it for personal use and noone is going to bother you. Start selling or distributing, yeah, no need for that. Dont do that, federal law is still backwards and you can technically get in some trouble.

Moral? The closer you can get to know those growing / harvesting the better. I've always had good luck through my connections for herb. I imagine in recreational 420 states, it's harder to ask the dispensary where to get Magic Mushrooms though.

So it's difficult to get even for legit research.

The most reliable way for HN readers (in the US) is probably illegal via the darknet. (Tails OS + TOR)

If you are not averse to mysticism and observation-creation and all that stuff...

Just mindfully, focusedly set an intention and then keep your eyes peeled.

They don't seem to have any current psilocybin studies, but they do have an MDMA study.

This seems pretty simplified but I wonder if someone should try to grow their own.

I am curious about other hallucinogens that are easy to produce or good if legally available.

jfi, I live in india.

But I would very much recommend that anyone who tries this is very well informed on the subject at least. It is a process which requires care, high degree of hygiene and experience so the product doesn't get contaminated.

At best one would not only inform themselves rigorously but also consult an experienced grower during and after the process.

I found some consistent sources but I would still doubly make sure if there are any established forums or papers to look into.

PF Tek - is an easy method to grow any quantity of mushrooms.

Cleanliness in growing mushrooms is on par with cleanliness for brewing beer. You are making a nutrient rich environment for your fungus. Best not have it contaminated with an organism that is antagonistic to your goal.

The counter-argument I've heard is well, should everything in medicine be subject to the double-blind gold standard? Or put another way, is there a class of experiments where the double-blind standard is not applicable to? Is it right to discount a class of experiments just because the proponents of the double-blind standard can't figure out a way to make the double-blind applicable?

I'm a hacker not a doctor, but my instinct is "well, if the only tool you'll accept is a hammer, it's kinda up to you to make this thing look like a nail."

I would love to find this study again, so far, no luck: someone decided to test an 'active placebo' for ACL surgery, of making four incisions in the usual places, but not actually scraping away at the ligament. It was comparably effective as the actual surgery.

This left me thinking that stimulating the immune system by causing trauma might be an underutilized medical technique.

That's not necessarily true. With MDMA, which can arguably be considered a psychedelic, some people who were given a placebo during the research studies swore they got MDMA, and had very productive sessions.

Some people also don't hallucinate even on psychedelics like LSD, which usually cause visual hallucinations, so even with those it's possible for placebos to be effective.

Rick Doblin originally designed his MDMA studies to use a lower dose of MDMA as a placebo, but found that it actually tended to make people with PTSD worse than using an inactive placebo (because the small dose would be enough to bring up old trauma, but not large enough for the people to feel safe in dealing with it, so they re-buried the trauma after being re-traumatized with it, making them worse), so he gave the FDA the choice of using the active placebo and making subjects worse or using the inactive placebo and not making them worse but giving up the double-blind nature of the trial, and they chose the latter.

I just had a single dose of psilocybin way back when and it calmed me for years. I have not been a cancer patient.

That said, a lot of my depression and anxiety was rooted in losing my father to cancer at the age of 10.

It's not like the habits I'd built worrying or caring about those things went away overnight, but they did very rapidly stop having top priority in how I directed my energy. That brought immediate and sustained relief.

I was instead reminded of my own capacity to appreciate simple aspects of life, stuff I'd come to take for granted. Suddenly I remembered that I could let go of all that stuff and that there was this whole ground of life under my feet and all around me, that it was there to support me all along.

Here are some examples of things that felt profound, that I relearned or maybe even had a chance to learn deeply for the first time ever:

- Just being outside in the park with a couple of friends gave me so much peace and joy. We sat and found pleasure in the most basic stuff. We giggled. We had our minds blown.

- Woah... look at those ducks, they live in this park. This is where they live.

- Trees are alive, breathing, and likely aware of us on some level or another. Their bark seemed like an elephant's skin to me. Life is everywhere.

- The sun and earth are locked together. It's up there all the time, just buzzing, and its energy is amazing and abundant. Like holy shit it's powerful can you believe that thing is up there? Don't look at it!

- Check out that man jogging. He's just pulsing with life and vitality. I want to jog! It looks so satisfying and quenching to be alive like that!

- Everyone has their own reality. My reality is different from your reality and that's just fine! If someone tries to come at you with their reality, that's fine, it's their reality! I have my own reality and you have yours.

- People are deeply remarkable.

- I can make some pretty nice rhythms with just a rock and a wooden back-scratcher. I can pretend that the rock is my friend. That's fine to do and it's fun. I can refer to it as "my friend, the rock!" and introduce it to my human friends, and this will be plenty of fun and is perfectly acceptable. No shame, just a little silliness that's all.

- At this time I'd made a habit of looking at my face in the mirror to check on different blemishes or see how I "looked". After my little mushroom journey, I remember looking at myself in the mirror and seeing through all my scars of age and my blemishes, looking into my own eyes and seeing myself, a living being with emotions and spirit and needs and vitality. It felt so good to just acknowledge my own basic being on a simple level. Maybe this moment could serve as a metaphor for the rest of the experience.

I didn't have any "negative" experiences except for one moment where I saw that there was some stuff inside of me that felt pretty shadowy, stuff that I could get stuck in if I focused on it. I decided not to focus on it and that was that.

But my intuition is that if I ever did eat mushrooms again and did have a "bad trip", it would most likely feel something like an intense grieving, realizing and processing difficult stuff I've accumulated over the course of my life and remembering who and what I care about.

One thing I'll mention is that I waited a while before actually eating the mushrooms. I decided I was open to it a year or so before actually trying them out. It was important to me that I really felt ready and had a good environment, that the time was right, etc. I took the mushrooms with a couple of trusted friends who I felt comfortable with. We went to a big, beautiful park on a warm late summer day. There were some people out but not too many. Two of us decided to keep our phones in airplane mode. That was a very good move. Our third friend didn't put his phone in airplane mode and eventually had kind of a funny experience because he went off and met up with someone else like you might on a regular day when you haven't just eaten mushrooms, which opened him up to all kinds of different people and energies he hadn't anticipated or prepared for.

It's good to treat yourself a little bit like you would a little kid. Set up a safe environment that feels comfortable to explore, and buffer yourself from unpredictable external stimuli or people, e.g. news media or people whose energy might stimulate fear. It can be nice to have a kind, fun person as a guide, someone you trust and can enjoy time with.

I took a moderate dose. It wasn't a microdose, but nothing huge. I asked the person who gave me the mushrooms to help with this, since he had an idea of how strong they were.

If I were starting from scratch, I might consider microdosing first just to get a feel for what's possible, and to understand that it's possible to have a safe, nourishing experience.

Also: if you're worried the aftermath of a bad experience, you might consider building trust with a psychotherapist (I personally enjoy integral psychotherapy!) for a few months beforehand so that you'd have someone to process with if it did go the difficult route and you needed help integrating.

Higher doses are all about the latter, a lot more ego death and huge weighty difficult to describe type emotions.

It's a simplified explanation, but you get the gist of it.

https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerce...

[1] - https://doorofperception.com/wp-content/uploads/Aldous_Huxle...

We usually associate ourselves with ego and death is tightly linked with losing of ourselves.

But after you experience ego death once, you quickly realize that you're no longer afraid of death because there are no one who dies.

Some people's brains are very good at putting up barriers - it can't stop the hallucinations. It's hard to describe, but the brain can put up barriers. You can feel your mind cycling through stories - books you've read, TV shows and movies you've watched - to keep itself in control.

Weirdly, fresh shrooms were legal in the UK right up to 2005, when they were put in the same category as heroin and cocaine. I remember walking past shops openly advertising them. (Peyote cactuses too, which according to Wikipedia are still legal.)

"Ego death" is the removal of a sense of self as distinct entity.

Since the self no longer exists as a distinct entity, and since we regard death as the end of self, it becomes impossible to be afraid of death as death is no longer relevant.

[1] https://fantasticfungi.com/

Also they excluded people using benzodiazepines, SSRIs and MAOIs. I've taken mushrooms while on SSRIs and the trip is usually severely dampened.

Well, crap. I imagine it will be a few more years yet before I'm able to take a tiny dose. I'm a week in to taking Lexapro on top of Cymbalta, which I've been taking for over a year, and I'm hoping I can get some good results. Or at least even things out enough that I can tackle things enough to feel a little better and less anxiety.

This is not medical advice. There are cases of serotonin syndrome from the combination of SSRIs and mushrooms. Use caution.

The book by Michael Pollan, already suggested here, is a must read if you want to convince yourself and give it a try.

I can also recommend r/microdosing and r/psychonauts.

One the universe which is ever expanding and one mind where number of connection make it as big and complex as universe.

I never noticed this fact until I was high that all the universe complexity exist in our own mind. It has infinitely many layers.

I’m thinking about something like visiting a resort-like place (recommended here; forgot its name) where they have experienced ”mediators” that help you, and actual doctors.

It's impossible to predict how you'd react, but it sounds like you're looking in the right direction. Find a safe, professional place, and start small. You definitely don't want to start with a high dosage.

I think it's quite possible, likely even, that psychedelics occasionally trigger mental health crises, sometimes long-lasting ones, in individuals who would not otherwise have experienced them.

They're also quite valuable, and that needs to be weighed against the risk. Having guidance and starting small, is good advice.

edit: some other advice for MDMA. Do it with someone you trust, preferably someone who has done it before, don't do it in public, and make sure you don't have access to phones or any other means to contact people.

In fact, in the early 70's, it WAS used successfully as a tool for couples therapy.

This was done under the guidance of experienced, trained therapists, with therapy done before, during, and after the session.

[1] - https://maps.org/research/mdma

Also, keep an eye out for upcoming legislation on legalizing psilocybin and/or mushrooms in your local area. Vote and put pressure on your politicians to make this happen, if you believe it should.

To have the best, most constructive experience, I'd strongly recommend reading The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide by James Fadiman.[2]

No brief summary can do this book or the subject of having a good trip justice, but at the very least be sure to have an experienced person you like and trust sit with you during the entire time you're on the substance, and try to carefully prepare for the experience and don't just do it on a whim at a party or a concert. Though such settings could work out, you will maximize your chance of having a good experience by choosing a safe, quiet space, where you won't be disturbed.

Be sure you don't have any other responsibilities for the day of the trip and perhaps the day after as well. Eat lightly the day before and day of the trip. Some people like to fast a bit, though make sure to stay hydrated. Have a clear, specific intention for the trip, and try to take something you've learned from the trip and make it a concrete part of your life afterwards. Depending on what you want to get out of the experience, you might also want to have some pictures of people you care about and maybe a rose to look at near the peak of the trip. There's a lot more to be said about this, and I'd really recommend you read the guide for more. The Secret Chief Revealed, about an underground psychedelic therapist, is another great resource.[3]

If it is going to be your first time, make it really special. You'll never have a first time with this substance again, and you really don't want to squander the opportunity. Some people spend a lot of time later in life chasing the magic of that first time, and it's never the same.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeut...

[3] - https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Conversations-Undergroun...

You could invest in quasi-legal grow ops in areas where mushrooms have been mostly decriminalized, like Oakland, California. You could invest in the largest marijuana companies that are the most likely to pivot to other plant medicines.

But, otherwise, basically, no, there is no reasonable way to invest in psychedelic mushrooms right now. Possibly buying domain names.

Something I did predicting the future of this industry was buy buylsd.com 5 years ago for $1500 (not operating now obviously until that's legal but another ten years would be a long time, I think). www.buymushrooms.com will similarly go up enormously in value in a future with widely legal drugs, at least as long as that is still a future with .com type in traffic and prioritized search engine rankings. I don't own buymushrooms.com but that would probably be a great investment at $10k, questionable at over $100k.

I'll likely be starting some kind of non-profit in the space with Thomas Ray within the next year. Check out his research:

https://www.transformpress.com/breadth-and-depth https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygDULQ9AY7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxrAUIIbkeM

I don't like how HN has blind spots like these culturally. Just how Ritalin was used for ADHD in children and the worries of overdiagnosis should really make people skeptical about this, if just to make you think what the side effects or problems were from something that is a useful cure.