Using Psychedelics To "Reset The Brain"

[Frankdee20]

Responding to the OP's original question. If you want an intuition for the probable mechanism, read:

Mental Mountains

Then read:

Neural Annealing: Toward a Neural Theory of Everything – Opentheory.net

Then if you can handle it, get a summary of the "simulated annealing" algorithm with visuals. At this point you can understand Aaronson's metaphors in the first article around making mental mountains smaller and/or finding passes through them.

Interesting read

Today's random Ray Peat quote when I arrived at the forums:



The very fact that you can write that statement, Frankdee20, is proof that you have come into your own as an honest human who can take life on its terms.

It's the most moving thing I have ever read in these forums and I'll never forget it.

I'm flattered LOL, TY

 

[Nemo]

New post at Haidut's blog is about a study that shows LSD has profound anti-inflammatory properties and that a low dose every fourth day over three weeks inhibited anxiety and depression and improved cognition in Alzheimer's patients: LSD enters clinical trials for Alzheimer Disease (AD) – To Extract Knowledge from Matter

No one seen wandering around saying "The colors, man, the colors."

And the post right before that one is on a study about blocking serotonin to treat alcohol addiction: Blocking serotonin, adrenaline treats anxiety, brain damage due to alcohol “addiction” – To Extract Knowledge from Matter

 

[boris]

Thanks for the link Nemo.

I still have to wait some time until I can finally get to try serotonin antagonists like cyproheptadine. LSD was easier to get. So the last weeks (2x) I decided to try a small dose of approximately something between 10-50 mcg for some immediate relief.

Effects:
It immediately stopped acute diarrhea.
Creativity was stimulated intensely for about 5-8 hours.
I could internally resolve some ongoing personal relation problems within the first hours.
Mood boosting effect lasted several days

Very slight visual effects:
When looking at objects while walking by (like a tree or a lamp post) my view looked like stabilized video footage. The object was very well seperated from the background. The background parallax was slightly distorted, it seemed further away.
Slight wobble when staying still and looking at nearby objects.
All the distortion effects only lasted for a few minutes.
Clearer and more vivid mental pictures when thinking about something (work related or random thoughts). This lasted several hours.

I didn't measure temperature but metabolism felt revved up. All the brain activity was probably using a lot of resources. I got exhausted and hungry relatively quick even though I ate a big breakfast.

All in all the effects were very similar to higher dose cannabis which probably has some anti serotonin effects, but the feeling of postitive outlook is much longer lasting than cannabis. With cannabis it only lasts a short time during and after consumption and it makes me feel and look more run down.

Cannabis also raises my blood pressure more intensely, but it's not tested for possible adulterations and it's from an unkown source. So it could be cut.

 

[golder]

Very interesting post. I'm keen on trying a micro style dose a few times per week. 50mcg is actually a rather large dose, is it not? 100mcg is considered 'recreational'? I wonder how long the anti-serotonin effects of the LSD will last, that would help us understand how frequently to dose.

 

[boris]

Yeah, I didn‘t measure it exactly. It was a corner of a 250-300mcg blotter. Also don‘t know how accurate these numbers are.

 

[Nemo]

I still have to wait some time until I can finally get to try serotonin antagonists like cyproheptadine. LSD was easier to get. So the last weeks (2x) I decided to try a small dose of approximately something between 10-50 mcg for some immediate relief.

Boris, great report. Thank you.

 

[Nemo]

Very interesting post. I'm keen on trying a micro style dose a few times per week. 50mcg is actually a rather large dose, is it not? 100mcg is considered 'recreational'? I wonder how long the anti-serotonin effects of the LSD will last, that would help us understand how frequently to dose.

James b, you could just start very low and titrate to symptom relief. Based on the experience of my husband and many friends, you will likely want less and less in doses farther and farther apart as time goes on. The high doses of the '60s took place in a supportive culture. I wouldn't try those doses now.

I believe it retrains your brain in some way so that after a while, you no longer need it. The benefit (heightened creativity, reduced stress/anxiety/depression) never goes away.

My husband's last dose was 35-40 years ago, a very small dose. He's never taken it again because he's never returned to his pre-LSD symptoms.

But I don't mean to sound like a pusher here. I've never used it and probably never will because I've never liked any consciousness-altering drugs, not even weed or wine, and I don't have problems with depression or anxiety, etc.

 

[golder]

James b, you could just start very low and titrate to symptom relief. Based on the experience of my husband and many friends, you will likely want less and less in doses farther and farther apart as time goes on. The high doses of the '60s took place in a supportive culture. I wouldn't try those doses now.

I believe it retrains your brain in some way so that after a while, you no longer need it. The benefit (heightened creativity, reduced stress/anxiety/depression) never goes away.

My husband's last dose was 35-40 years ago, a very small dose. He's never taken it again because he's never returned to his pre-LSD symptoms.

But I don't mean to sound like a pusher here. I've never used it and probably never will because I've never liked any consciousness-altering drugs, not even weed or wine, and I don't have problems with depression or anxiety, etc.

Very informative post, thank you. It seems to be collectively agreed upon that the unique benefits of this molecule are its permanent changes over time. I don’t think I can ignore this any longer! Merry Christmas

 

[kyle]

I dont think "resetting" is applicable concept to the brain.

I think in order to change, you need to learn with your depression and anxiety, not consider it a problem in itself but the signifier of the problem.

Contrast this with the default belief in the culture - depression as a disease to be treated allopathically.

@Nemo as you pointed out, the confounding factor is the culture was different. More in tact families and community, more professional opportunities.

Academia for example was a smart avenue back then. Affordable tuition and room to grow in academia and a more mature culture.

It wasnt just the lsd but the opportunities afforded in that era that lifted him up.

Most boomers, who indulged in LSD, didnt emerge with the sangfroid you describe - on the contrary.

Even getting married in this day and age, being such a foudational point of growth and stability, is unheard of today.

Im curious if your husband agrees with my assessment of academia then and now, and his assessment of his fellow psychonauts - that is whether they faired as well as he.

 

[boris]

Very informative post, thank you. It seems to be collectively agreed upon that the unique benefits of this molecule are its permanent changes over time. I don’t think I can ignore this any longer! Merry Christmas

@James b still you should inform yourself about set and setting, like any psychedelics or even cannabis it can amplify any feeling. The best way to do it is with a psychiatrist who guides you through the experience.

 

[Nemo]

I dont think "resetting" is applicable concept to the brain.

I think in order to change, you need to learn with your depression and anxiety, not consider it a problem in itself but the signifier of the problem.

Contrast this with the default belief in the culture - depression as a disease to be treated allopathically.

@Nemo as you pointed out, the confounding factor is the culture was different. More in tact families and community, more professional opportunities.

Academia for example was a smart avenue back then. Affordable tuition and room to grow in academia and a more mature culture.

It wasnt just the lsd but the opportunities afforded in that era that lifted him up.

Most boomers, who indulged in LSD, didnt emerge with the sangfroid you describe - on the contrary.

Even getting married in this day and age, being such a foudational point of growth and stability, is unheard of today.

Im curious if your husband agrees with my assessment of academia then and now, and his assessment of his fellow psychonauts - that is whether they faired as well as he.

Resetting definitely applies to the brain. See the research posted by Haidut here and on his blog on resetting PTSD.

And LSD is not a drug like heroin or methamphetamine where I could point to lots of people who were destroyed by it. Any story like that about LSD has about as much credibility as Reefer Madness.

Every boomer I know who used LSD emerged feeling better for it except one who overdosed on heroin. The rest of my husband's friends who used LSD are still friends. The ones who were writers are all still writing and publishing novels and poetry. Some of them worked as carpenters and the like to supplement their incomes. Another of these friends runs a pinball museum, one runs a horseracing betting operation that has made him hundreds of millions of dollars. A couple became professors. One is a lawyer. One has a business installing museum exhibits around the world. One makes a living as a folk singer. I just realized that they are almost all still working in their 70s, not because they need to but because they're healthy and love their work.

And we have young friends who use LSD right now. One just graduated from college and got a job as a social worker for a school district. One is a young cop. One is a 29-year-old entrepreneur who overcame crushing depression and alcoholism using LSD. We met him through blackjack, but he also runs a legal weed business in San Diego, a sex doll brothel, and now a clinic for alcoholics and drug addicts. He used to run a spa in Vegas with those sensory deprivation floatation tanks, but he sold that business.

One of my sisters is a travel writer. She has used LSD from time to time all her life. Her husband uses it too, and he is a social worker.

So based on my experience with LSD users, I consider it a safe and helpful drug that, depending on the dose, can be used with virtually no psychedelic effects to reset mental illness based on stress or can be deliberately dosed to produce psychedelic effects and affect consciousness in a positive way. People I know who've used LSD deliberately and repeatedly for psychedelic effects are in better touch with reality and psychologically healthier than any other people I know, including myself. Although I've never tried LSD and said I probably never will, I may try a very low dose to help with a lingering kind of PTSD I have from when I had cancer.

But I do strongly agree with you that boomers got a far better start in life than millennials. It was terrific growing up in a generation where everybody's father could support a family on a single paycheck and was home every night by 6 pm for a family dinner. It was terrific having your mother at home full-time and women were far less stressed out. My mother held cooking and sewing classes for my sisters and me. That's how my sister started her dressmaking business in high school. My mother encouraged us to plant vegetable gardens in the yard. If you had a tough day at school she was always there to listen. I remember so many times standing at the kitchen counter talking to her while she was chopping up vegetables for dinner.

We had total freedom as kids to roam around on our own, even well after dark. There were multiple families with children on every block, and everyone's mother was home, keeping an eye on all the neighborhood kids, so we were safe. My sisters and I rode our bikes to the beach every summer. We thought nothing of riding 10-20 miles each way. There was no such thing as a play date. We never went to structured summer camps or day camps or after-school programs. Everyone just played and, as we got older, started running summer businesses. My first business ever was a pet-boarding business. Every summer I would have multiple cats and dogs and rabbits and birds to take care of when the neighborhood families went away on their vacations.

There were no fast food dinners. Before I left home for college, I had eaten a McDonald's hamburger exactly one time, with my father in 1972 on the way home from fishing. Our mothers cooked healthy foods. There were no glyphosates poisoning everybody. We had far fewer vaccinations. Animals were raised on pasture--I remember clearly when corn-fed starting becoming a thing. The milk man, who lived down the street, brought our milk and cream and butter, and nothing was ultra-pasteurized or homogenized. You had to drink the milk fast.

My husband worked as a dishwasher and a Greyhound baggage handler before he made the discoveries that changed his life. He lost a lot of high school friends in Vietnam. I graduated from college in the middle of a deep recession. So for us, it wasn't that there were so many economic opportunities out there. It wasn't the 1950s, when our fathers rose up out of nothing into well-paying jobs. I think it was the better foundation in family, health and play that made the big difference from what young people have today. None of my young friends got that.

 

[Grapelander]

Took mushrooms yesterday and hung out with my son in Petaluma, went hiking and watched the streams.
Most of my trips were in the 80's before all the cell phones and chem trails - it is so different now.
I did stop drinking alcohol completely after using psychedelics - I was a daily drunk before that. It just happened - no intention or effort.
Seems like it is best to be in Nature. Also nice to take a shower - put on some baroque music - and smoke a fatty.
Most bad trips are internal psychic processing; though bad people and places also create a bad trip.
If you use DMT or Salvia you will need a 'sitter'. I blacked out on Salvia (1st time using) and twisted my foot; had to get a cast.

Decriminalize Nature Oakland

 

[boris]

Very interesting post. I'm keen on trying a micro style dose a few times per week. 50mcg is actually a rather large dose, is it not? 100mcg is considered 'recreational'? I wonder how long the anti-serotonin effects of the LSD will last, that would help us understand how frequently to dose.

I could estimate the dosage now in hindsight. It was actually a 200mcg tab not more. The described effects were from a little less than an 1/8 of 200mcg.
So about 20 mcg.

 

[Sulcuscentralis]

For mushrooms I would make a tea and discard the pieces as they can cause gut discomfort. Psylocybin dissolves in hot water.

Terence McKenna who is well known in the psychedelic space would get very bad trips later in life. They were so bad in fact that they left him shook and he never ate mushrooms again, but reportedly had no problems with pure psylocybin extract.

I suspect it was gut/serotonin issues that caused this.

He was taking monstrous doses pretty frequently probably. At least from what I heard.

 

[Sulcuscentralis]

LSD changed my husband's life. He says he did it 50 to 100 times within about a 10-year period starting in 1967. Roughly 3/4 of those times were before 1970.

His childhood was filled with anxiety and abuse and enormous stress, and he had two children, no money, no job, no home, no prospects, no education or special skills, and a wife with a diagnosis of schizophrenia by the time he was 21, but from the time he first tried LSD at 19 he says he never felt seriously stressed out or worried again. I believe it, because in decades together I've never seen him get stressed out even once. He says the LSD taught him to just let things go. It gave him a different perspective about his place in the universe.

It gave him a different view of what consciousness is. He completely lost all fear of death. None of his problems seemed like big problems anymore. He said he just felt, "I can deal with this." And he did.

He immediately felt he could do anything he wanted to do, and in fact he became acknowledged worldwide as a top expert in his field by age 30. He revolutionized his field, beating out all the PhDs from Harvard and MIT and Stanford, at the same time as he was the sole provider and caregiver for his children and severely disabled wife.

He just started doing what he wanted to do. When he got into his life's work, it took only a year and a half from when he started to become famous for his discoveries, despite starting with no background in it, no degrees in it (or anything else), and no connections in that field. He just started teaching himself and putting his ideas and discoveries out there. He says he would never have had the courage to do that without the experience with LSD. Yet it didn't take courage when he did it. He said the feeling instead was an overwhelming feeling of confidence and fun. He's laughing right now talking about it.

He says if you ever try it, you want to be in a 100% safe environment. You need to have absolutely no obligations or responsibilities during the period you're tripping (a 10 to 12 hour period). It's not that you won't want to do anything, it's that you need to have no pressure on you to do anything. He says showers and baths feel unusually wonderful while you're tripping.

It's a good idea to have somebody there whom you like/love and who likes/loves you. Somebody that you can talk to. DO NOT try to drive a car. His schizophrenic wife was, ironically, an ideal companion for tripping. They connected best when he was tripping.

He says at first he would have the feeling, "I should really take some acid again." Then, after about a year, he had that feeling less and less often. He says, when he took it, he always had the feeling he was working through stuff in his head. But with time, there was less and less to work through. He says that whatever you think you're going to work through when you take it, your mind takes off wherever it needs to go when you're actually on it, which is never where you thought you needed to go.

After a while you stop seeking out the experience because it's so integrated into you that you don't really need it. You're already there. Still, he's open to doing it again.

That's is amazing! My experience is pretty much the same - lsd "fixes" the bad thinking patterns which cause anxiety or depression. No wonder most research finds mostly positive things about it.

 

[Sulcuscentralis]

James b, you could just start very low and titrate to symptom relief. Based on the experience of my husband and many friends, you will likely want less and less in doses farther and farther apart as time goes on. The high doses of the '60s took place in a supportive culture. I wouldn't try those doses now.

I believe it retrains your brain in some way so that after a while, you no longer need it. The benefit (heightened creativity, reduced stress/anxiety/depression) never goes away.

My husband's last dose was 35-40 years ago, a very small dose. He's never taken it again because he's never returned to his pre-LSD symptoms.

But I don't mean to sound like a pusher here. I've never used it and probably never will because I've never liked any consciousness-altering drugs, not even weed or wine, and I don't have problems with depression or anxiety, etc.

The more you do it the you crave it and need it. From what I heard Albert Hoffmann himself was doing smaller doses throughout his later life. And he lived till 102...

 

[Homo Consumericus]

The more you do it the you crave it and need it. From what I heard Albert Hoffmann himself was doing smaller doses throughout his later life. And he lived till 102...

Are there serious risks accompanying microdosing after a certain age?

 

[shine]

Are there serious risks accompanying microdosing after a certain age?

Maybe death by astonishment.

 

[Samya]

He was taking monstrous doses pretty frequently probably. At least from what I heard.

He was maybe in his younger years, however in later talks he stated he took mushrooms infrequently, saying something along the lines of - once you take a strong dose the last thing you're thinking of is taking it again for a long time. I think this also addresses the first sentence of your quote below, which I don't believe is correct for most people as psychedelics tend to not be addictive.

The more you do it the you crave it and need it. From what I heard Albert Hoffmann himself was doing smaller doses throughout his later life. And he lived till 102...

Albert Hofmann did mention to Rick Strassman in a (then) private conversation that he was interested in the potential of microdosing and that he did microdose himself. However he attributed his longevity to his 2 raw eggs daily at breakfast.

 

[Terma]

These are very nice posts. Everything is familiar minus hallucinations since mine were the softer drugs. No will to try standard LSD because of them, but **** yes I'll microdose that someday. I was straight edge lol. Have no will to touch alcohol again either. I'm convinced this stuff works and hopefully with enough time the mechanism will come out.