logoalt Hacker News

candiddevmikeyesterday at 10:02 PM4 repliesview on HN

I believe there have been other studies that prove this for not just the synthetic. Yet we are all supposed to accept the "facts" that psilocybin (and cannabis) are considered schedule 1 illicit substances (high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use).


Replies

pjeremyesterday at 10:30 PM

At that point it’s not "other studies", it’s more "tons of studies". It’s truly an exponential number of studies that had the same conclusions in the last 5-10 years.

And N=1 but I can say without any doubt that LSD (and a pretty low dose at that, 50ug at once plus some microdosing) played an immense role at recovering from burnout. It was like night and day even after such a low dose that I _knew_ I recovered.

Those are amazing and powerful but also potentially dangerous substances and it’s a crime that we don’t allow everyone to get the benefits by, if not freely legalize it, at least adding those in the medical toolbox.

show 2 replies
reverend_gonzoyesterday at 10:06 PM

It is outrageous that both cannabis and psilocybin are scheduled 1 drugs and also completely legal to buy in certain locales.

show 3 replies
Aurornisyesterday at 10:51 PM

> Yet we are all supposed to accept the "facts" that psilocybin (and cannabis) are considered schedule 1 illicit substances (high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use).

To be clear, this compound they're testing is also a Schedule 1 drug. COMP360 is their name for their psilocybin formulation. It's not a separate chemical, it is literally psilocybin.

Schedule 1 drugs can be used in clinical trials. Positive results in a clinical trial does not automatically remove the Schedule 1 designation. The medication is not approved yet and the clinical trial results are preliminary.

nosuchthingyesterday at 10:43 PM

This paper is an incredible read: TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines

https://akjournals.com/view/journals/2054/7/S1/article-p22.x...

  > "Researchers have called attention to the ways that the hype promoting psychedelics as miracle cures 
  replicates preceding claims about the efficacy of SSRIs and other antidepressants in prior decades. 
  As the drug historian David Herzberg articulated in conversation with UC Berkeley's The Microdose:

    There’s been an enormous amount of money invested in psychedelics as people hope that they 
    can be the real Prozac in the same way that Prozac hoped it would be the real Valium and 
    Valium would be the real barbiturates, which would be the real morphine. 
    There’s a long history of hoping that maybe this time, it’s not so complicated; 
    maybe there is a simple switch to change people without having to change any [other] aspect of their [lives].

  While others have noted similarities between the earlier SSRI hype and the ongoing hype for psychedelic medications,
   the rhetoric of psychedelic hype is tinged with utopian and magico-religious aspirations that have no parallel 
   in the discourse surrounding SSRIs or other antidepressants. I argue that this utopian discourse provides insight 
   into the ways that global financial and tech elites are instrumentalizing psychedelics as one tool 
   in a broader world-building project that justifies increasing material inequality. 
   This elite project reveals how medicalized psychedelics can potentially undermine the very prosocial and 
   pro-environmental outcomes that the field's funders insist psychedelics will promote. 
   To understand the envisioned role of psychedelics within this elite project, this paper analyzes a different 
   parallel hype, revealing correspondences between the psychedelic industry hype and the concurrent 
   hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI), including the Large Language Models (LLMs) that power ChatGPT. 
   The presence of these parallels is understandable when one considers their underlying affinities, 
   like two blooms from one plant: the same Silicon Valley and venture capital forces are investing 
   enormous amounts of capital to develop both as cultivars in their own image, 
   selecting for desired traits that further the existing socioeconomic order.
show 1 reply