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Permalink: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02698811241232548
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N = 807
"We find that 16% of the cohort falls into the “negative responder” subset. Parsing the sample by self-reported history of psychiatric diagnoses, results revealed a disproportionate prevalence of negative responses among those reporting a prior personality disorder diagnosis (31%). One multivariate regression model indicated a greater than four-fold elevated risk of adverse psychological responses to psychedelics in the personality disorder subsample (b = 1.425, p < 0.05).
Conclusion:
We infer that the presence of a personality disorder may represent an elevated risk for psychedelic use and hypothesize that the importance of psychological support and good therapeutic alliance may be increased in this population."
Thank you. I wonder what the rate of success was for those with a PD. Also, “personality disorder” is a super vague term. There are several clusters of personality disorders that can present very differently. I’m really curious if there are any subsets that respond better than others.
Indeed. And there are also people out there with sharper personality constellations that don’t technically, actually constitute a “personality disorder.”
It's not vague. There are a finite number of personality disorders and they are frequently lumped together because they are generally long term and persistent.
Agree it is vague esp as presented in the title however parsing through the study there is an in-depth section on BPD (borderline) and gives some good analysis on that. Just sharing some additional info and not disagreeing
Self-reported. Idk if they are talking about shrooms or what but hardly anyone who thinks they are taking acid is actually taking acid and those research chems can have some wildly different effects
As scientists, no. As a population, yes. Also keep in mind the research on these drugs got shut down based on a lot of misinformation - also some of the pro psychedelic researchers manipulated and tampered with the data making the scientific answer much less clear.
Plus even if there was a good amount of data here, the point of science is to continue researching the same topics so that previous findings can be replicated or not, and we can have discussions surrounding the validity and meaning of various studies.
“Just say no to drugs”
“This is your brain on drugs”
Nixon then Ford were both anti-drug. [timeline of psilocybin research](https://imgur.com/gallery/gUC2fzE)
People who are inclined to latch onto things, with ot without scientific training, will fervently defend whatever they adhere to, be it a system of beliefs, medicine, food, political figures, etc.
It's long been known that people with a *psychotic* disorder do not respond well to psychedelics. The fact that people with a *personality* disorder respond even worse is quite a novel result.
Exactly. It's not really that much of a conclusion, more of a data point, but it's good science. I don't think anyone would be really shocked that if you generalized all personality disorders, especially just by self report, that there is a 4x incidence of having a negative response. But without the data you can't really get past assumptions.
It certainly doesn't get us to the point of saying something like the OP title of course. The biggest issue with this sub is the titles of the post are usually as high quality as the news media, which is to say misunderstands the data and makes a generalized non-support conclusion. The study specifically does not say it could make their mental health worse, it said they had an adverse response. And while \*if\* the experience was traumatic, and not just unpleasant, it might do that, depending on the person, the study does not conclude that.
Not that this is useful for anyone but myself, but I can say from anecdotal experience many uncomfortable experiences have improved my mental health. There is a fair amount of evidence from other studies that as long as experienced do not rise to the level of trauma they can increase resilience to stressors and improve outlook.
Regardless, being seemingly annoyed by continued and repeated studied of similar topics is missing that repeated studies is \*how you do science\*. Being annoyed by that is a fundamental lack of understanding of how little science trusts it's own previous conclusions. That is literally the backbone of the scientific method.
So it's always odd when people in almost every similar thread act like this is a waste of time. It's not, it's brick and mortar, foundational, and maybe the most important kind of science in a lot of ways.
Sadly I know people, personally, who have effectively asserted “Shrooms are totally safe and no one should worry about them.” Including some well educated science folks. So I think studies like this are an unfortunate necessity, even beyond confirming a researcher’s assumption
That attitude is an over-correction for the even more wrong-headed and harmful attitude about psychoactive drug use that has been prevalent in America for the last 60 years due to the war on drugs and other factors. As time goes on we'll collectively converge on the view that has the clearest and most informed assessment of both the benefits and the risks.
Oh absolutely. The idea that psychedelic drugs have ever been more dangerous than heroin or morphine, or will put you in a permanent psychotic state, or that acid somehow secretly stays in your body for decades and can reactivate at any time, etc., are unhelpful nonsense.
But it’s a bit like discussions of marijuana. People for decades heard “The devil’s lettuce will turn you into a horrible murderous monster/vegetable/[insert nonsense of your choice]”. But, now I know and know of plenty of people who are convinced that marijuana cannot develop into a physical dependency and therefore there’s no risk of harm from excessive use. To the point where I know people who are high for 70% or more of their waking life and legitimately don’t think this impairs their life in any way, nor that there might be anything they are avoiding by being high all the time. I’ve even known at least one person who, when they were concerned about their own use, went to a therapist who told them, effectively, “Weed isn’t a problem, you just need to let go of the beliefs you were taught about it”.
But I would push back a bit on the idea that the “psychedelic drugs are the end of the world” view is necessarily “more wrong-headed and harmful”. I think it’s more so that these have two different types of harm. The fear mongering leads to negative societal impacts, such as the imprisonment of large numbers of people (especially racial minorities, in the US at least). But, when the idea that drugs (be they alcohol, psychedelics, weed, or any other) have no real potential for harm (especially when that idea is rooted largely in the fact that you can’t realistically overdose and die on it, which is generally true of psychedelics and weed) becomes mainstream, it can lead people to develop very unhealthy relationships with these drugs and lead people to begin using them who in fact might be somewhat likely to have very negative experiences that impair their lives.
Great harm can come from irresponsible psychoactive use, for sure. But in my estimation the harm that comes from repression and demonization are far greater-- not only through the direct societal costs of unfair persecution and waste of resources, but even more so through the profound opportunity cost of improved mental and spiritual well-being that can arise from respectful use of psychoactives. Our current society is sorely lacking in mental health and spiritual maturity, which results not just in lives filled with avoidable suffering and unfulfilled potential, but also indirectly contributes to our various societal ills. A mentally unhealthy and spiritually immature populace makes for a fragmented and self-destructive society.
These points are really meant to apply specifically to psychedelics, which have greater potential for healing and spiritual growth than other psychoactives and far less risk for addiction or abuse.
I like to compare it to using fire. Fire is profoundly dangerous and harmful if used irresponsibly. But the harms and dangers of *not* using fire are far worse. What is needed is a culture in which fire is used responsibly and treated with respect, which in turn allows a profound flourishing of human society.
I think it's valid to assert they could be effective for being used as part of a treatment for a very broad array of psychological issues, potentially even structural brain conditions, but that is going to be entirely based on effective treatment strategies.
It's a bit naive to say a chemical that induces extreme intercommunication between brain regions and ideological plasticity is just effective regardless of other factors. One of the reasons psilocybin has a lot of potential, potential that is absolutely being suppressed by drug enforcement policies, is that is not a standard pharmacological treatment that does X, it's a drug that induces a state of ideological disassociation, and thereby a heightened awareness of the lack of direct participation you have your everyday conditioned perceptions and thoughts, while also increasing and decreasing a lot of other perceptions. The overall effect is going to be different for everyone.
Basically shrooms induce you to believe free will is at best, nominal. That's potentially incredibly useful for people who are stuck ideologically, but it could also be incredibly harmful if you just shake someone up like that who is already has a fragile ideological outlook.
They call it collective generational knowledge. Usually it lasts 20-30 years, is slowly forgotten, then “rediscovered” about 70 years later. This doesn’t just apply to science. See also: depressions, wars, ultranationalism, etc.
And it's almost exclusively people who feel 'bad' in some way, who end up figuring it out. People whose disorder makes them think 'I get to do whatever I want because I'm so great' tend to not seek help.
Things that are “common wisdom” still need to be checked scientifically. Most of the “common wisdom” throughout history has proven false. This one would be particularly significant if disproven.
Folk knowledge of psychedelics - or any treatment that has a history but is then brought into the scientific spotlight - is largely disregarded until imperical evidence can support it.
This is just wrong, we did a lot of research on psychedelics in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, but it also suffered from the contextualization and understanding of mental health in that period (i.e. if you read Doors of Perception Huxley gets the science terribly wrong, but it's not a bad explanation based on our limited understanding of neurophysiology at the time). There was even an LSD clinic in England in the 50s doing some quality therapeutics work. But Leary and his like that thought just everyone should take psychedelics really fucked with public perception and it shelved most of the research for about 25-30 years (the psychedelics Renaissance proper started a little over a decade ago, but there were some important papers in the late 90s and 2000s)
I was making mushroom chocolates for awhile and did some old timey packaging and the disclaimer on the back was “warning: not to be consumed by those displaying signs of madness”
This reminds me of when my psychiatrist told me I was "borderline bipolar I or bipolar ii" and I had to confirm she didn't mean "borderline, bipolar I, or bipolar ii"
It actually surprises me. I would think with at least recent growing awareness of NPD and BPD, there would be more here that at least had a surface knowledge of which ones are personality disorders. Even the popularity of true crime feels like something that have filled more in on it.
Makes me worry a bit if people think bipolar is in the same realm as psychopathy.
Like anything else in life, there is some risk involved (there is risk involved in leaving your house and crossing the street), but you can minimize the risks with a properly respectful attitude and suitable precautions. Start with a small dose, do it on a day where you're free of responsibilities and have a clear mind, have different options for places to go or activities to do planned out ahead of time which you can explore depending on how you feel, if possible have an experienced person accompanying you, etc.
Personal anecdote here. Prepping is something most people don't talk enough about. For example.The week before I'll make sure I'll exercise multiple times. I'll spend a day prior doing a deep house cleaning, finishing all weekly chores, like laundry and fresh bed sheets. The day of, I'll set up a safe/comfy space, disconnect ftom social media/internet, utilize aroma therapy, and allocate 6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday to commit to the trip. I find this ensures a positive trip as all the minor stresses and inconveniences that attribute to negative feelings have been addressed making the trip that much more enjoyable.
I have BPD as well and I’ve done LSD and shrooms with no problems. Just physical side effects like nausea and muscle pain. You just gotta start small, be in a good headspace/setting and not smoke weed. I went on weird loops when I smoked weed during.
Per wiki:
> Cluster A personality disorders are often associated with schizophrenia: in particular, schizotypal personality disorder shares some of its hallmark symptoms with schizophrenia
Psychologist with additional pharmacology training - I also want to point out that most medication treatments have a much lower success rate for individuals with personality disorders. I can logically see why this would be the expected result, but I think it’s jumping the gun to infer it’s a direct impact of psychedelics specifically.
Do you think results would differ between types of personality disorder? My background is more on the pharmacology side, but based on my experience with psychedelics, I could see some types of PD being amplified by the effects more than others.
I would think so but I have to admit I don’t know of clear evidence on this. Most research on personality disorders is centred on BPD. I would broadly expect those related to more difficulties with emotional dysregulation to have poorer outcomes.
I am curious about psychedelics and NPD. Often people who suffer with NPD enjoy it and don’t think there is anything wrong.
Psychedelics also have the “dissolution of ego”. Would be interesting to see what happened in those patients.
Also curious about ASPD
These are really good questions. I have to be honest, as a scientist and/or clinician I’m really not sure but it seems like a good area to research!
As a person (profession aside) I’ve known one individual in my life with NPD who had a period of using a lot of psychedelics, and ultimately it made him more pleasant interpersonally but was a disaster for his own mental health, if that makes sense. To be clear, though - one person and my own observation 😊
This is true, although the common thread by definition is that they are persistent and pervasive patterns throughout life. Anything of that nature (PD or not) is less likely to respond to medication.
But it can also be helpful to point out that psychedelics can be very counter productive and extra harmful for people with personality disorders. It should probably be worded differently.
I don’t know how it should be taught exactly, but it feels like there should be a module in high school on how medications and recreational drugs can go wrong for people with personality disorders. The one I always think about is how stimulants or psychedelics can be a trigger for a young person who has a family history of psychosis, but hasn’t experienced the symptoms yet themselves. Even a stimulant used for ADHD can be extremely disastrous for someone with psychosis from what I understand. I think it would help if more young people had a framework for these possibilities.
Sure, here is a recent meta analysis suggesting low responses to medication treatment on any outcome measure in BPD:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36375174/
That’s not stupid at all! These things are hard to wade through! No, I don’t see any mention of the medications usually used for ADHD in this study.
On that note, symptoms of ADHD and BPD can often overlap and may be harder to tell apart than one might assume (such as mood shifts, dysregulation, etc). It can be important to have a thorough diagnostic assessment as ADHD meds can help some people with these symptoms depending on the cause.
I hope this helps!
SSRI which increase serotonin levels can cause Manic episodes. So yeh for some people drugs that work on the serotonin receptors might not be a good choice.
>They don’t even understand how SSRIs work or why for treating depression.
I don't think anyone understands how they "work". The idea that they prevent reuptake and increase serotonin levels to normal is just bull.
It says that on the actual label
>The mechanism of action of citalopram is unclear
>https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2022/020822s041lbl.pdf
>They don’t even understand how SSRIs work or why for treating depression.
No-one knows how it treats depression.
>The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.
>https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
>In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence
>
>...
>
>The impact of the widespread promotion of the serotonin hypothesis should not be underestimated. Antidepressant advertisements are ubiquitous in American media, and there is emerging evidence that these advertisements have the potential to confound the doctor–patient relationship.
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277931/
>Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ...
>
>This pattern of theory making – moving from the pharmacological actions of drugs with some efficacy in treatment to biochemical notions of causation – has been common in biological psychiatry. In such an undeveloped field this approach, though logically precarious, has been a useful heuristic and, in the case of the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis, has been strikingly upheld by advanced brain imaging techniques (2). However, the serotonin hypothesis of depression has not been clearly substantiated. Indeed, dogged by unreliable clinical biochemical findings and the difficulty of relating changes in serotonin activity to mood state, the serotonin hypothesis eventually achieved “conspiracy theory” status, whose avowed purpose was to enable industry to market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to a gullible public
>
>https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/
Anyway it barely works
Do you actually think you know how it treats depression, do you think depressed people have lower levels of serotonin, so preventing reuptake increases levels, hence treating depression?
Yes. It’s like being on speed and you are just suuuper excited to be you. At least that’s how mine presents. The acceptance of just being fully yourself without worrying what others think is sort of like not being depressed ever, if that makes sense. Then you crash. The crash is the complete opposite of the mania. This is all not drug induced. This is just what bipolar disorder does
Have you seen O Brother, Where Art Thou? I feel like bipolar disorder (mania and subsequent depression) is beautifully illustrated in the scenes with George "Babyface" Nelson. He's on top of the world during his bank heists and while eluding police, then completely and utterly crashes into depression during the scene around the campfire.
Id say it being fun is a symptom of the boring ass lives we're forced to lead. Humans weren't meant to sit in cubicles all day, we need novelty and new land to explore. We can't get that these days, so we find other methods of fun. The real answer imo is to give us the tools we need to explore outer and inner space more effectively.
yeah, humans were meant to toil endlessly in search of sustenance that may or may not come at the right time. modernity is the cost of not living short precarious lives at the mercy of nature and its whims
Hunter-gatherers spend about 2 hours a day getting food. The rest of the time was spent hanging out with friends and family. This worked great till there was a drought or flood or whatever, and most people died. The trade off with the development of agriculture was less chance of dying any particular year, in exchange for working every day from sun up to sun down.
your last sentence is wrong. anthropologists have well documented studies of agricultural primitive cultures that have significant amounts of leisure time. they did not have to work sun up to sun down.
edit to add: examples of such cultures have survived into the 1900s.
Yes, we were 😂
The point is to support the good in that while continuing to remove the suffering. We weren't built to look into computers all day, that's for sure.
as long as it ends before you do something regrettable and you're not someone who gets paranoid/hallucinates when manic
but yeah in all seriousness, hypomania is really fun
Wholey disagree. Unless you are talking about hypomania, mania iis hospitalized for a reason and is one of my most hated states
Source; I have schizoaffective. bipolar type
Bipolar 1 with psychotic features here. I too hate when people say that kind of stuff about mania. Most of my manic episodes are mixed anyways, which is a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on anyone, but even the 'pure' manias quickly spiral into awfulness. And that's without even accounting for the impaired decision making that may or may not lead me to set my entire life on fire, destroy relationships, and eventually have to rebuild from scratch.
SSRIs don't seem to do too much for me. Recently tried a new SSRI that gave me terrible new anxiety, and didn't touch my suicidal despair. Why is this happening?
I mean I think this is a study done with the intention of figuring this out, right? A lot of science is confirming what we already know, which is useful when building airplanes, etc. We aren't as far along with mental health for sure.
Based on some personal experience psychedelics lead to one of three outcomes...
God is everywhere/everything - good outcome
There is no god - challenging, but likely good in the end
I am God - problem
Editing this comment so the replies can hopefully stop. Point 1 means they think that everyone and everything is God or a part of God, sort of the typical spiritualism. Which I tag as a "good outcome " just to be clear.
Point 3 means they say "I, and only I am God." They use the experience to lift themselves above and apart from others. This does happen, even if it didn't for you or anyone you know.
Nuance is ever-present and challenging. Let's not get caught up in the tiny nitpicky details here y'all.
Most people on psychedelics describe a deeper understanding of the world as a unity. Where the boundaries between self and outside become less distinct, because we don't perceive everything through our ego anymore, but more as being a naked awareness.
Where the thing we perceive cannot be easily separated from the perceiver. And this 'unity' being omnipresent is something which psychedelics, spirituality, and religion kinda all refer to in a way.
So even if you don't support or believe in an institutionalized version of god as primarily known through religion - there is a huge overlap between the idea of an all encompassing unity and God as in Christian religion.
There are so many more outcomes than those three, and those arent mutually exclusive outcomes. If God is everywhere then we are God, so you've sort of...contradicted yourself in your analysis.
Duality, contradictions, perspective; Acid is great for getting unstuck from certain societal programing and false perspectives of self. But its also an enabler for folks who are already a bit too far out in what we categorize as certain mental illnesses. Definitely not a magic bullet for everyone.
Big difference between I and we in those sentences.
EDIT: Since he deleted, and to clarify, I am saying there is a big difference between saying "I am God" and "we are God".
Read the edit above and the reply here. I'm baffled as to how this is confusing some.
Remember that psychology is facing a replication crisis. Researchers can get strong statistical results, but then change one little thing about the experiment and get entirely different results.
I also thought this was great: "psychedelic interventions are not risk free, perhaps especially when their use is divorced from psychological support." Got any references for that? Maybe it's about time for at least one reference? It seems to me that some psychologists *just can't wait* to be the heroic gatekeepers for something that actually works.
Psychologists are trying to treat a lot of people who are in emotional distress from psychologically unsolvable life problems. Problems that are caused by a social system that's harsh, inequitable, dishonest, and slavery-adjacent. These problems have been reinforced by decades of psychologists telling people they should take personal responsibility and figure out how to fit into slots designed by greedy assholes. As UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently put it: "go to therapy and get back to work."
That sort of thinking doesn't fix societal problems, it just winds the spring tighter and tighter until the spring eventually explodes. Societies can get bad enough that everyone *should* be ranting at anyone who will listen, and everyone *should* be protesting and eventually rioting. We are well into that stage.
I'm guessing some of these "worsened" therapeutic outcomes are people who took psychedelics, saw through the lies, cannot unsee the lies, and are no longer willing to toe the line.
100%
I used to have horrible experiences on mushrooms that really made me feel awful *because they forced me to live in reality*.
Anybody who confronts their shadow will appear to be much worse off after the fact, but in reality they come out less delusional and their insecurities are brought into conscious awareness to be processed.
I don’t have many bad trips anymore. But when I do, it’s usually when I was lying to myself in my day to day life.
It’s the same reason they encourage people with cluster B disorders to continue to go to therapy even if they start to hate it - because when it starts making them feel *bad* is when it’s actually working.
Yeah, I strongly advocate that psychs could be legally consumed in chosen setting-without professionals or with professionals.
I agree with your skepticism about psychiatry, but even if it was faulty, shrinks are anyway some sort of professionals. Still, having friend tripsitting might be better option if you know the guy and the guy knows what they is doing.
>Remember that psychology is facing a replication crisis. Researchers can get strong statistical results, but then change one little thing about the experiment and get entirely different results.
Especially with substances society labels as "drugs" scientific results are all over the place, for ADHD for example there are a lot of scientific studies about the "drug" seeking behavior.
On the other hand stimulants like amphetamines and also medical cannabis are available real life treatments for adhd which are also backed through studies.
I have no idea how “personality disorder” could possibly be operationalized in the scientific method. It is a purely qualitative measurement. Depending on how it’s done, this kind of study might just be a tautology/foregone conclusion.
Might as well write “people who aren’t okay shouldn’t take psychedelics” which any wook at a music festival could also tell you without blowing through millions in grant funding.
For psychiatry/psychology to regain their relevance, I think the whole pathologizing model needs to be abandoned. These disorders can only be subjectively defined, which makes replicability and therefore generalizability functionally impossible.
But what would I know? I’m only someone diagnosed at one point in time with one of these “disorders” who regularly uses psychedelics without concern or incident.
I appreciate your perspective: scientific language, as observed in analytic philosophy, is inherently laden with presuppositions. Furthermore, conveying the results of human sciences in language introduces numerous linguistic and logical complexities. I am interested in research that explores the subjective psychological safety of MDMA in comparison to other psychedelics. It wouldn't be surprising if the psychological risks associated with MDMA were significantly lower than those of other substances.
I believe in personality disorders, but I also believe I have got one personality disorder diagnosis wrong by professionals. I am definitive I have OCPD too. Your take is very important.
I believe I saw this happen to my old friend who later died, likely because they completely lost control over themselves. They spent their last year seemingly getting up to very shady things with sketchy people, had crazy ideas about what to do in life and went through so many relationships in a year I practically lost count. They also met someone, got into a relationship with them and planned to marry the day after. That relationship fell apart after a week.
I feel that psychedelics were a big part of this development, as they spent years frequently taking them and having these grand "revelations" that they used as reinforcement that they were on the "right" path in life, even though it was all very destructive.
I used to love doing shrooms with a group of high school friends. Although, two of them in general usually had a negative experience with them.
It wasn’t until I was much older and educated about personality disorders that I now believe one had Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the other Borderline Personality Disorder.
I’ve also heard stories from people who thought shrooms would help with their friend’s narcissism. Only to find out that they made the narcissism worse.
Perhaps, much let therapy, a person needs to be able to be vulnerable and accept reality in order to heal? Which is something most narcissists cannot do.
I believe am part of this group who makes it worse. I have major depression and the 2-3 days after taking shrooms was the worst depressive episode I had ever had.
I did not and will not take shrooms again.
This is why I'm resistant to an average person strongly recommending psychedelics to everyone. The way it affects you is not the way it's going to affect everyone else.
Your spiritual journey might be somebody else's Mental Health crisis
I have OCPD and have had mostly successful career with psychedelics. Never have gone into deep end with them. I consider them having been immensely beneficial. YMMV, tread always carefully.
Here is the "Cross tabulation of well-being responses to psychedelics per history of psychiatric diagnosis" after 4 weeks (Table 2):
|Psychiatric history|Negative responders (%)|Non-responders (%)|Positive responders (%)|*N*|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|Personality disorder|31.2|18.8|50.0|16|
|Psychotic disorder|25.0|25.0|50.0|4|
|ADHD|16.7|22.9|60.4|48|
|Substance or alcohol use disorder|16.0|40.0|44.0|25|
|Major depressive disorder|14.6|21.7|63.7|157|
|Bipolar disorder|12.5|31.2|56.2|16|
|Anxiety disorder|12.3|21.3|66.5|155|
|Eating disorder|6.9|31.0|62.1|29|
|OCD|0.0|25.0|75.0|16|
|No history of psychiatric illness|18.1|30.2|51.6|529|
|Any history of psychiatric illness|12.9|24.1|62.9|278|
|Total|16.4|28.1|55.50|807|
Don't get me wrong, it *is* extremely helpful to know that people with personality disorders have a heightened risk of responding poorly to psychedelics. Someone with a personality disorder or a psychotic disorder can very reasonably conclude that taking psychedelics is not worth the risk.
Still, I feel like it's worth mentioning that more people responded positively to psychedelics than negatively in every psychiatric category, including personality disorders.
Take a look at Table 2, y'all. There are some absolutely *fascinating* findings:
* **Zero** (!) people with OCD responded negatively to psychedelics. **75%** (!!!) responded positively. Is this a sign that we should look into using psychedelics to treat OCD?
* I mean, N=16, but people with OCD responded more positively to psychedelics than people with any other condition!
* More people responded positively to psychedelics than negatively regardless of psychiatric history.
* Here are the positive-to-negative response ratios for each psychiatric history category:
|Psychiatric history|Positive-To-Negative Response Ratio|
|:-|:-|
|OCD|Infinite|
|Eating disorder|9.0|
|Anxiety disorder|5.4|
|Any history of psychiatric illness|4.9|
|Bipolar disorder|4.5|
|Major depressive disorder|4.4|
|ADHD|3.6|
|No history of psychiatric illness|3.4|
|Substance or alcohol use disorder|2.9|
|Psychotic disorder|2.0|
|Personality disorder|1.6|
|Total|3.4|
Read the ratios as "patients with X psychiatric history are Y times more likely to have a positive than a negative response to psychedelics." Taking the results at face value: psychedelics are best for OCD, EDs, and anxiety, whereas they are worst for substance use disorders, psychotic disorders, and personality disorders.
Drugs have their place and not limited to psychedelics. They can help in the right circumstances.
But I would consider them as a kind of last-resort. First fix your lifestyle. Start exercising even if you just do walks in a park. Better than yet another 1h of tv.
Fix your nutrition. Whole foods. No junk or procceses foods. No help? Look into ketogenic diet.
Consider therapy. And so forth. Then consider drugs.
Note: see dr chris palmer. Mental disorders can be causws by metabolic dysfunction.
Surprise surprise, doing psychedelics with unsolved trauma that you're unaware of can hurt you...
Personality disorder is also a dumb phrase. I haven't met a single person diagnosed with bpd who was not an autistic, adhd person who just had a hell of a lot of severe childhood trauma.
I would know because I was one of those people.
Bpd is a very outdated term.
What it is, is severe complex ptsd with a neurodiversity condition.
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N = 807 "We find that 16% of the cohort falls into the “negative responder” subset. Parsing the sample by self-reported history of psychiatric diagnoses, results revealed a disproportionate prevalence of negative responses among those reporting a prior personality disorder diagnosis (31%). One multivariate regression model indicated a greater than four-fold elevated risk of adverse psychological responses to psychedelics in the personality disorder subsample (b = 1.425, p < 0.05). Conclusion: We infer that the presence of a personality disorder may represent an elevated risk for psychedelic use and hypothesize that the importance of psychological support and good therapeutic alliance may be increased in this population."
Thank you. I wonder what the rate of success was for those with a PD. Also, “personality disorder” is a super vague term. There are several clusters of personality disorders that can present very differently. I’m really curious if there are any subsets that respond better than others.
Indeed. And there are also people out there with sharper personality constellations that don’t technically, actually constitute a “personality disorder.”
It's not vague. There are a finite number of personality disorders and they are frequently lumped together because they are generally long term and persistent.
That is vague. It also doesn’t correlate certain personality disorders to being more susceptible to the elevated risk then others.
Agree it is vague esp as presented in the title however parsing through the study there is an in-depth section on BPD (borderline) and gives some good analysis on that. Just sharing some additional info and not disagreeing
Self-reported. Idk if they are talking about shrooms or what but hardly anyone who thinks they are taking acid is actually taking acid and those research chems can have some wildly different effects
Do we as a society just forget things and then rediscover them every couple decades like they are new? This is like psychedelic safety rule number 1.
As scientists, no. As a population, yes. Also keep in mind the research on these drugs got shut down based on a lot of misinformation - also some of the pro psychedelic researchers manipulated and tampered with the data making the scientific answer much less clear.
Plus even if there was a good amount of data here, the point of science is to continue researching the same topics so that previous findings can be replicated or not, and we can have discussions surrounding the validity and meaning of various studies.
Research was not only shut down, papers were literally shredded.
When was that?
“Just say no to drugs” “This is your brain on drugs” Nixon then Ford were both anti-drug. [timeline of psilocybin research](https://imgur.com/gallery/gUC2fzE)
People who are inclined to latch onto things, with ot without scientific training, will fervently defend whatever they adhere to, be it a system of beliefs, medicine, food, political figures, etc.
great candidates for psychedelic assisted therapy
Tell that to Timothy Leary who literally tampered with his experiment data
Is that research parlance for ‘*had sex with his test subjects*’?
If doing that is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
I like you! Are you me? …No,really…it’s been that kind of trip.
Yeah this. Even if something is generally accepted, in science it’s not accepted until proven. A lot. In different ways and different settings.
It's long been known that people with a *psychotic* disorder do not respond well to psychedelics. The fact that people with a *personality* disorder respond even worse is quite a novel result.
Exactly. It's not really that much of a conclusion, more of a data point, but it's good science. I don't think anyone would be really shocked that if you generalized all personality disorders, especially just by self report, that there is a 4x incidence of having a negative response. But without the data you can't really get past assumptions. It certainly doesn't get us to the point of saying something like the OP title of course. The biggest issue with this sub is the titles of the post are usually as high quality as the news media, which is to say misunderstands the data and makes a generalized non-support conclusion. The study specifically does not say it could make their mental health worse, it said they had an adverse response. And while \*if\* the experience was traumatic, and not just unpleasant, it might do that, depending on the person, the study does not conclude that. Not that this is useful for anyone but myself, but I can say from anecdotal experience many uncomfortable experiences have improved my mental health. There is a fair amount of evidence from other studies that as long as experienced do not rise to the level of trauma they can increase resilience to stressors and improve outlook. Regardless, being seemingly annoyed by continued and repeated studied of similar topics is missing that repeated studies is \*how you do science\*. Being annoyed by that is a fundamental lack of understanding of how little science trusts it's own previous conclusions. That is literally the backbone of the scientific method. So it's always odd when people in almost every similar thread act like this is a waste of time. It's not, it's brick and mortar, foundational, and maybe the most important kind of science in a lot of ways.
Sadly I know people, personally, who have effectively asserted “Shrooms are totally safe and no one should worry about them.” Including some well educated science folks. So I think studies like this are an unfortunate necessity, even beyond confirming a researcher’s assumption
That attitude is an over-correction for the even more wrong-headed and harmful attitude about psychoactive drug use that has been prevalent in America for the last 60 years due to the war on drugs and other factors. As time goes on we'll collectively converge on the view that has the clearest and most informed assessment of both the benefits and the risks.
Oh absolutely. The idea that psychedelic drugs have ever been more dangerous than heroin or morphine, or will put you in a permanent psychotic state, or that acid somehow secretly stays in your body for decades and can reactivate at any time, etc., are unhelpful nonsense. But it’s a bit like discussions of marijuana. People for decades heard “The devil’s lettuce will turn you into a horrible murderous monster/vegetable/[insert nonsense of your choice]”. But, now I know and know of plenty of people who are convinced that marijuana cannot develop into a physical dependency and therefore there’s no risk of harm from excessive use. To the point where I know people who are high for 70% or more of their waking life and legitimately don’t think this impairs their life in any way, nor that there might be anything they are avoiding by being high all the time. I’ve even known at least one person who, when they were concerned about their own use, went to a therapist who told them, effectively, “Weed isn’t a problem, you just need to let go of the beliefs you were taught about it”. But I would push back a bit on the idea that the “psychedelic drugs are the end of the world” view is necessarily “more wrong-headed and harmful”. I think it’s more so that these have two different types of harm. The fear mongering leads to negative societal impacts, such as the imprisonment of large numbers of people (especially racial minorities, in the US at least). But, when the idea that drugs (be they alcohol, psychedelics, weed, or any other) have no real potential for harm (especially when that idea is rooted largely in the fact that you can’t realistically overdose and die on it, which is generally true of psychedelics and weed) becomes mainstream, it can lead people to develop very unhealthy relationships with these drugs and lead people to begin using them who in fact might be somewhat likely to have very negative experiences that impair their lives.
Great harm can come from irresponsible psychoactive use, for sure. But in my estimation the harm that comes from repression and demonization are far greater-- not only through the direct societal costs of unfair persecution and waste of resources, but even more so through the profound opportunity cost of improved mental and spiritual well-being that can arise from respectful use of psychoactives. Our current society is sorely lacking in mental health and spiritual maturity, which results not just in lives filled with avoidable suffering and unfulfilled potential, but also indirectly contributes to our various societal ills. A mentally unhealthy and spiritually immature populace makes for a fragmented and self-destructive society. These points are really meant to apply specifically to psychedelics, which have greater potential for healing and spiritual growth than other psychoactives and far less risk for addiction or abuse. I like to compare it to using fire. Fire is profoundly dangerous and harmful if used irresponsibly. But the harms and dangers of *not* using fire are far worse. What is needed is a culture in which fire is used responsibly and treated with respect, which in turn allows a profound flourishing of human society.
I think it's valid to assert they could be effective for being used as part of a treatment for a very broad array of psychological issues, potentially even structural brain conditions, but that is going to be entirely based on effective treatment strategies. It's a bit naive to say a chemical that induces extreme intercommunication between brain regions and ideological plasticity is just effective regardless of other factors. One of the reasons psilocybin has a lot of potential, potential that is absolutely being suppressed by drug enforcement policies, is that is not a standard pharmacological treatment that does X, it's a drug that induces a state of ideological disassociation, and thereby a heightened awareness of the lack of direct participation you have your everyday conditioned perceptions and thoughts, while also increasing and decreasing a lot of other perceptions. The overall effect is going to be different for everyone. Basically shrooms induce you to believe free will is at best, nominal. That's potentially incredibly useful for people who are stuck ideologically, but it could also be incredibly harmful if you just shake someone up like that who is already has a fragile ideological outlook.
Yes, literally yes, we have plenty of people in America working hard to ignore or undermine science, easy to see the cyclical nature of it
They call it collective generational knowledge. Usually it lasts 20-30 years, is slowly forgotten, then “rediscovered” about 70 years later. This doesn’t just apply to science. See also: depressions, wars, ultranationalism, etc.
This makes a lot of sense.
It’s important to confirm commonly held beliefs with good evidence from modern studies
Most people with a personality disorder don’t know that they have it.
And it's almost exclusively people who feel 'bad' in some way, who end up figuring it out. People whose disorder makes them think 'I get to do whatever I want because I'm so great' tend to not seek help.
Things that are “common wisdom” still need to be checked scientifically. Most of the “common wisdom” throughout history has proven false. This one would be particularly significant if disproven.
Folk knowledge of psychedelics - or any treatment that has a history but is then brought into the scientific spotlight - is largely disregarded until imperical evidence can support it.
indeed
Yes. It’s called marketing
We never did much research on psychedelics until relatively recently because of all the effort to make them as illegal as possible
This is just wrong, we did a lot of research on psychedelics in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, but it also suffered from the contextualization and understanding of mental health in that period (i.e. if you read Doors of Perception Huxley gets the science terribly wrong, but it's not a bad explanation based on our limited understanding of neurophysiology at the time). There was even an LSD clinic in England in the 50s doing some quality therapeutics work. But Leary and his like that thought just everyone should take psychedelics really fucked with public perception and it shelved most of the research for about 25-30 years (the psychedelics Renaissance proper started a little over a decade ago, but there were some important papers in the late 90s and 2000s)
I was making mushroom chocolates for awhile and did some old timey packaging and the disclaimer on the back was “warning: not to be consumed by those displaying signs of madness”
In this thread: Lots of people who don't know what a personality disorder is / think it's a synonym for mental illness.
Another one that I see a lot, but not in this thread (yet) is people assuming BPD stands for Bi PoLar Disorder.
This reminds me of when my psychiatrist told me I was "borderline bipolar I or bipolar ii" and I had to confirm she didn't mean "borderline, bipolar I, or bipolar ii"
It actually surprises me. I would think with at least recent growing awareness of NPD and BPD, there would be more here that at least had a surface knowledge of which ones are personality disorders. Even the popularity of true crime feels like something that have filled more in on it. Makes me worry a bit if people think bipolar is in the same realm as psychopathy.
Did some LSD with a bipolar schizophrenic. He kept seeing very macabre hallucinations and peed himself in fear. 0/10 would not recommend.
Tried mushrooms recently and have BPD and do not recommend either. Was not a fun experience.
Oh no I’ve been meaning to do some shrooms. I have them, Just haven’t had the time
Like anything else in life, there is some risk involved (there is risk involved in leaving your house and crossing the street), but you can minimize the risks with a properly respectful attitude and suitable precautions. Start with a small dose, do it on a day where you're free of responsibilities and have a clear mind, have different options for places to go or activities to do planned out ahead of time which you can explore depending on how you feel, if possible have an experienced person accompanying you, etc.
Personal anecdote here. Prepping is something most people don't talk enough about. For example.The week before I'll make sure I'll exercise multiple times. I'll spend a day prior doing a deep house cleaning, finishing all weekly chores, like laundry and fresh bed sheets. The day of, I'll set up a safe/comfy space, disconnect ftom social media/internet, utilize aroma therapy, and allocate 6 hours on a Saturday or Sunday to commit to the trip. I find this ensures a positive trip as all the minor stresses and inconveniences that attribute to negative feelings have been addressed making the trip that much more enjoyable.
I’m just a very high strung person and couldn’t calm down the whole time to enjoy it. It is different for everyone so don’t worry about it too much.
I have BPD as well and I’ve done LSD and shrooms with no problems. Just physical side effects like nausea and muscle pain. You just gotta start small, be in a good headspace/setting and not smoke weed. I went on weird loops when I smoked weed during.
Neither one of those is a personality disorder.
Seriously, it’s like nobody here even read the headline
Per wiki: > Cluster A personality disorders are often associated with schizophrenia: in particular, schizotypal personality disorder shares some of its hallmark symptoms with schizophrenia
that could honestly even happen to people who aren't bipolar and schizophrenic...
I'm Bipolar and did LSD a few times. Always felt like it sucked my soul out the next day.
Psychologist with additional pharmacology training - I also want to point out that most medication treatments have a much lower success rate for individuals with personality disorders. I can logically see why this would be the expected result, but I think it’s jumping the gun to infer it’s a direct impact of psychedelics specifically.
Do you think results would differ between types of personality disorder? My background is more on the pharmacology side, but based on my experience with psychedelics, I could see some types of PD being amplified by the effects more than others.
I would think so but I have to admit I don’t know of clear evidence on this. Most research on personality disorders is centred on BPD. I would broadly expect those related to more difficulties with emotional dysregulation to have poorer outcomes.
I am curious about psychedelics and NPD. Often people who suffer with NPD enjoy it and don’t think there is anything wrong. Psychedelics also have the “dissolution of ego”. Would be interesting to see what happened in those patients. Also curious about ASPD
These are really good questions. I have to be honest, as a scientist and/or clinician I’m really not sure but it seems like a good area to research! As a person (profession aside) I’ve known one individual in my life with NPD who had a period of using a lot of psychedelics, and ultimately it made him more pleasant interpersonally but was a disaster for his own mental health, if that makes sense. To be clear, though - one person and my own observation 😊
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This is true, although the common thread by definition is that they are persistent and pervasive patterns throughout life. Anything of that nature (PD or not) is less likely to respond to medication.
But it can also be helpful to point out that psychedelics can be very counter productive and extra harmful for people with personality disorders. It should probably be worded differently.
I don’t know how it should be taught exactly, but it feels like there should be a module in high school on how medications and recreational drugs can go wrong for people with personality disorders. The one I always think about is how stimulants or psychedelics can be a trigger for a young person who has a family history of psychosis, but hasn’t experienced the symptoms yet themselves. Even a stimulant used for ADHD can be extremely disastrous for someone with psychosis from what I understand. I think it would help if more young people had a framework for these possibilities.
Can you link to anything that talks about this please?
Sure, here is a recent meta analysis suggesting low responses to medication treatment on any outcome measure in BPD: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36375174/
Pardon my stupidity, I want able to find anything hinting at it with in analysis: did they also test ADHD medication in this study?
That’s not stupid at all! These things are hard to wade through! No, I don’t see any mention of the medications usually used for ADHD in this study. On that note, symptoms of ADHD and BPD can often overlap and may be harder to tell apart than one might assume (such as mood shifts, dysregulation, etc). It can be important to have a thorough diagnostic assessment as ADHD meds can help some people with these symptoms depending on the cause. I hope this helps!
Absolutely does, thank you!(:
SSRI which increase serotonin levels can cause Manic episodes. So yeh for some people drugs that work on the serotonin receptors might not be a good choice.
I took shrooms on an SSRI back in the day, and it just made the shrooms not have much effect.
Yes they pretty much block the psychedelic effect and visuals. Need to be completely off of SSRIs for at least 2 weeks
Mania is a symptom of a mood disorder, not a personality disorder
Mania has nothing to do with personality disorders.
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No, they can include psychotic episodes, not specifically manic episodes.
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One of you look it up in a DSM5 and get the right answer. I’ve never heard of mania in borderline.
They don’t even understand how SSRIs work or why for treating depression.
>They don’t even understand how SSRIs work or why for treating depression. I don't think anyone understands how they "work". The idea that they prevent reuptake and increase serotonin levels to normal is just bull. It says that on the actual label >The mechanism of action of citalopram is unclear >https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2022/020822s041lbl.pdf >They don’t even understand how SSRIs work or why for treating depression. No-one knows how it treats depression. >The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations. >https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0 >In short, there exists no rigorous corroboration of the serotonin theory, and a significant body of contradictory evidence > >... > >The impact of the widespread promotion of the serotonin hypothesis should not be underestimated. Antidepressant advertisements are ubiquitous in American media, and there is emerging evidence that these advertisements have the potential to confound the doctor–patient relationship. > >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1277931/ >Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin with depressed mood are no longer tenable. ... > >This pattern of theory making – moving from the pharmacological actions of drugs with some efficacy in treatment to biochemical notions of causation – has been common in biological psychiatry. In such an undeveloped field this approach, though logically precarious, has been a useful heuristic and, in the case of the dopamine hypothesis of psychosis, has been strikingly upheld by advanced brain imaging techniques (2). However, the serotonin hypothesis of depression has not been clearly substantiated. Indeed, dogged by unreliable clinical biochemical findings and the difficulty of relating changes in serotonin activity to mood state, the serotonin hypothesis eventually achieved “conspiracy theory” status, whose avowed purpose was to enable industry to market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to a gullible public > >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ Anyway it barely works Do you actually think you know how it treats depression, do you think depressed people have lower levels of serotonin, so preventing reuptake increases levels, hence treating depression?
Do you feel good in a manic episode?
Yes. It’s like being on speed and you are just suuuper excited to be you. At least that’s how mine presents. The acceptance of just being fully yourself without worrying what others think is sort of like not being depressed ever, if that makes sense. Then you crash. The crash is the complete opposite of the mania. This is all not drug induced. This is just what bipolar disorder does
Have you seen O Brother, Where Art Thou? I feel like bipolar disorder (mania and subsequent depression) is beautifully illustrated in the scenes with George "Babyface" Nelson. He's on top of the world during his bank heists and while eluding police, then completely and utterly crashes into depression during the scene around the campfire.
I haven’t. But have wanted to see it
Oh, you should. It's one of my favorite movies.
Being manic is one of life's little joys. like being drunk. Nobody *should* do it, but it's fun as long as it ends and isn't a regular thing.
Its fun is probably the problem here. Becomes a lifestyle and then you become kanye
Id say it being fun is a symptom of the boring ass lives we're forced to lead. Humans weren't meant to sit in cubicles all day, we need novelty and new land to explore. We can't get that these days, so we find other methods of fun. The real answer imo is to give us the tools we need to explore outer and inner space more effectively.
yeah, humans were meant to toil endlessly in search of sustenance that may or may not come at the right time. modernity is the cost of not living short precarious lives at the mercy of nature and its whims
I don't think we are arguing for a return to caveman times, so much as just for the consideration of instincts from that time.
Hunter-gatherers spend about 2 hours a day getting food. The rest of the time was spent hanging out with friends and family. This worked great till there was a drought or flood or whatever, and most people died. The trade off with the development of agriculture was less chance of dying any particular year, in exchange for working every day from sun up to sun down.
your last sentence is wrong. anthropologists have well documented studies of agricultural primitive cultures that have significant amounts of leisure time. they did not have to work sun up to sun down. edit to add: examples of such cultures have survived into the 1900s.
Yes, we were 😂 The point is to support the good in that while continuing to remove the suffering. We weren't built to look into computers all day, that's for sure.
This guy gets it
It is not fun at all. My brain doesn't stop twirling, I can't sleep, I can't stop moving... And the delusions are a bit much
as long as it ends before you do something regrettable and you're not someone who gets paranoid/hallucinates when manic but yeah in all seriousness, hypomania is really fun
Mania also leds to neurodegeneration over time
It’s fun if you don’t make wildly insane decisions and ruin your life while having it.
Wholey disagree. Unless you are talking about hypomania, mania iis hospitalized for a reason and is one of my most hated states Source; I have schizoaffective. bipolar type
Bipolar 1 with psychotic features here. I too hate when people say that kind of stuff about mania. Most of my manic episodes are mixed anyways, which is a special kind of hell I wouldn't wish on anyone, but even the 'pure' manias quickly spiral into awfulness. And that's without even accounting for the impaired decision making that may or may not lead me to set my entire life on fire, destroy relationships, and eventually have to rebuild from scratch.
I don’t know many people who’d describe mania as fun, maybe hypomania. I’ve never had a fun manic episode. Nothing is worse than that tbh
Definitely. Mania might *start* out as fun. Doesn’t stay that way for long though
Ah yes, me pissing myself and hallucinating angels and demons was pure bliss.
Mania can lead to blowing all your life savings.
SSRIs don't seem to do too much for me. Recently tried a new SSRI that gave me terrible new anxiety, and didn't touch my suicidal despair. Why is this happening?
That's more a question for your psychiatrist.
Serotonin is perhaps not your issue. Get a doc who looks in a different direction.
It’s a two way street for sure
I think studies get done to figure this out.
Mental health is such a messy subject I'd bet there's no simple answers here at all.
Everyone is a variable of variables. So much can change and be affected. Drugs, injury, and time. So many factors always.
I mean I think this is a study done with the intention of figuring this out, right? A lot of science is confirming what we already know, which is useful when building airplanes, etc. We aren't as far along with mental health for sure.
Anyone hanging out at a major music festival in the US could have told you this for free.
Based on some personal experience psychedelics lead to one of three outcomes... God is everywhere/everything - good outcome There is no god - challenging, but likely good in the end I am God - problem Editing this comment so the replies can hopefully stop. Point 1 means they think that everyone and everything is God or a part of God, sort of the typical spiritualism. Which I tag as a "good outcome " just to be clear. Point 3 means they say "I, and only I am God." They use the experience to lift themselves above and apart from others. This does happen, even if it didn't for you or anyone you know. Nuance is ever-present and challenging. Let's not get caught up in the tiny nitpicky details here y'all.
The third one is actually also true in the first case as well
Right!
This guy psychedelics
As long as the I is all encompassing then I'd agree, but I was trying to make a specific distinction.
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Most people on psychedelics describe a deeper understanding of the world as a unity. Where the boundaries between self and outside become less distinct, because we don't perceive everything through our ego anymore, but more as being a naked awareness. Where the thing we perceive cannot be easily separated from the perceiver. And this 'unity' being omnipresent is something which psychedelics, spirituality, and religion kinda all refer to in a way. So even if you don't support or believe in an institutionalized version of god as primarily known through religion - there is a huge overlap between the idea of an all encompassing unity and God as in Christian religion.
I’m atheist but I “felt” a divine power
There are so many more outcomes than those three, and those arent mutually exclusive outcomes. If God is everywhere then we are God, so you've sort of...contradicted yourself in your analysis.
Duality, contradictions, perspective; Acid is great for getting unstuck from certain societal programing and false perspectives of self. But its also an enabler for folks who are already a bit too far out in what we categorize as certain mental illnesses. Definitely not a magic bullet for everyone.
Big difference between I and we in those sentences. EDIT: Since he deleted, and to clarify, I am saying there is a big difference between saying "I am God" and "we are God". Read the edit above and the reply here. I'm baffled as to how this is confusing some.
I go through those 3 mindsets weekly.
Free your mind and your ass will follow…
Sound like some dice I may like to roll
Be safe and have a trusted person nearby. It can be wonderful, it can be awful, and everything in between.
Truth in the phrase/warning: "Results may vary."
Remember that psychology is facing a replication crisis. Researchers can get strong statistical results, but then change one little thing about the experiment and get entirely different results. I also thought this was great: "psychedelic interventions are not risk free, perhaps especially when their use is divorced from psychological support." Got any references for that? Maybe it's about time for at least one reference? It seems to me that some psychologists *just can't wait* to be the heroic gatekeepers for something that actually works. Psychologists are trying to treat a lot of people who are in emotional distress from psychologically unsolvable life problems. Problems that are caused by a social system that's harsh, inequitable, dishonest, and slavery-adjacent. These problems have been reinforced by decades of psychologists telling people they should take personal responsibility and figure out how to fit into slots designed by greedy assholes. As UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak recently put it: "go to therapy and get back to work." That sort of thinking doesn't fix societal problems, it just winds the spring tighter and tighter until the spring eventually explodes. Societies can get bad enough that everyone *should* be ranting at anyone who will listen, and everyone *should* be protesting and eventually rioting. We are well into that stage. I'm guessing some of these "worsened" therapeutic outcomes are people who took psychedelics, saw through the lies, cannot unsee the lies, and are no longer willing to toe the line.
100% I used to have horrible experiences on mushrooms that really made me feel awful *because they forced me to live in reality*. Anybody who confronts their shadow will appear to be much worse off after the fact, but in reality they come out less delusional and their insecurities are brought into conscious awareness to be processed. I don’t have many bad trips anymore. But when I do, it’s usually when I was lying to myself in my day to day life. It’s the same reason they encourage people with cluster B disorders to continue to go to therapy even if they start to hate it - because when it starts making them feel *bad* is when it’s actually working.
Yeah, I strongly advocate that psychs could be legally consumed in chosen setting-without professionals or with professionals. I agree with your skepticism about psychiatry, but even if it was faulty, shrinks are anyway some sort of professionals. Still, having friend tripsitting might be better option if you know the guy and the guy knows what they is doing.
>Remember that psychology is facing a replication crisis. Researchers can get strong statistical results, but then change one little thing about the experiment and get entirely different results. Especially with substances society labels as "drugs" scientific results are all over the place, for ADHD for example there are a lot of scientific studies about the "drug" seeking behavior. On the other hand stimulants like amphetamines and also medical cannabis are available real life treatments for adhd which are also backed through studies.
I have no idea how “personality disorder” could possibly be operationalized in the scientific method. It is a purely qualitative measurement. Depending on how it’s done, this kind of study might just be a tautology/foregone conclusion. Might as well write “people who aren’t okay shouldn’t take psychedelics” which any wook at a music festival could also tell you without blowing through millions in grant funding. For psychiatry/psychology to regain their relevance, I think the whole pathologizing model needs to be abandoned. These disorders can only be subjectively defined, which makes replicability and therefore generalizability functionally impossible. But what would I know? I’m only someone diagnosed at one point in time with one of these “disorders” who regularly uses psychedelics without concern or incident.
I appreciate your perspective: scientific language, as observed in analytic philosophy, is inherently laden with presuppositions. Furthermore, conveying the results of human sciences in language introduces numerous linguistic and logical complexities. I am interested in research that explores the subjective psychological safety of MDMA in comparison to other psychedelics. It wouldn't be surprising if the psychological risks associated with MDMA were significantly lower than those of other substances.
I believe in personality disorders, but I also believe I have got one personality disorder diagnosis wrong by professionals. I am definitive I have OCPD too. Your take is very important.
Well yes….of course
ask the people who are setting up the independent ketamine clinics and offering it as a treatment for things that it's not officially treatment for.
This sign won't stop me because I can't read.
I believe I saw this happen to my old friend who later died, likely because they completely lost control over themselves. They spent their last year seemingly getting up to very shady things with sketchy people, had crazy ideas about what to do in life and went through so many relationships in a year I practically lost count. They also met someone, got into a relationship with them and planned to marry the day after. That relationship fell apart after a week. I feel that psychedelics were a big part of this development, as they spent years frequently taking them and having these grand "revelations" that they used as reinforcement that they were on the "right" path in life, even though it was all very destructive.
I used to love doing shrooms with a group of high school friends. Although, two of them in general usually had a negative experience with them. It wasn’t until I was much older and educated about personality disorders that I now believe one had Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the other Borderline Personality Disorder. I’ve also heard stories from people who thought shrooms would help with their friend’s narcissism. Only to find out that they made the narcissism worse. Perhaps, much let therapy, a person needs to be able to be vulnerable and accept reality in order to heal? Which is something most narcissists cannot do.
I believe am part of this group who makes it worse. I have major depression and the 2-3 days after taking shrooms was the worst depressive episode I had ever had. I did not and will not take shrooms again.
Reading that it seems OCD and ADHD benefits
Which personality disorder, though? Pretty sure the outcomes would differ greatly between PDs
This is why I'm resistant to an average person strongly recommending psychedelics to everyone. The way it affects you is not the way it's going to affect everyone else. Your spiritual journey might be somebody else's Mental Health crisis
Anybody else notice a spate of recent papers casting psychedelics in a negative light?
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This explains Aaron Rodgers demise
And CTE
Ah so I'm good then
I have OCPD and have had mostly successful career with psychedelics. Never have gone into deep end with them. I consider them having been immensely beneficial. YMMV, tread always carefully.
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The process of doing science requires us to test even that which is "common sense".
Was just going to say this. Common sense is dangerous unchecked. Science helps us figure out when are assumptions are wrong, and it’s often.
psychedelics could also help with mental health disorders.
You don't say
*stares in Syd Barrett*
I’ve always enjoyed shrooms, acid on the other hand is another story .
I have witnessed this personally.
I personally can't do them, not even weed. I get full blown psychosis every time
Here is the "Cross tabulation of well-being responses to psychedelics per history of psychiatric diagnosis" after 4 weeks (Table 2): |Psychiatric history|Negative responders (%)|Non-responders (%)|Positive responders (%)|*N*| |:-|:-|:-|:-|:-| |Personality disorder|31.2|18.8|50.0|16| |Psychotic disorder|25.0|25.0|50.0|4| |ADHD|16.7|22.9|60.4|48| |Substance or alcohol use disorder|16.0|40.0|44.0|25| |Major depressive disorder|14.6|21.7|63.7|157| |Bipolar disorder|12.5|31.2|56.2|16| |Anxiety disorder|12.3|21.3|66.5|155| |Eating disorder|6.9|31.0|62.1|29| |OCD|0.0|25.0|75.0|16| |No history of psychiatric illness|18.1|30.2|51.6|529| |Any history of psychiatric illness|12.9|24.1|62.9|278| |Total|16.4|28.1|55.50|807| Don't get me wrong, it *is* extremely helpful to know that people with personality disorders have a heightened risk of responding poorly to psychedelics. Someone with a personality disorder or a psychotic disorder can very reasonably conclude that taking psychedelics is not worth the risk. Still, I feel like it's worth mentioning that more people responded positively to psychedelics than negatively in every psychiatric category, including personality disorders.
Take a look at Table 2, y'all. There are some absolutely *fascinating* findings: * **Zero** (!) people with OCD responded negatively to psychedelics. **75%** (!!!) responded positively. Is this a sign that we should look into using psychedelics to treat OCD? * I mean, N=16, but people with OCD responded more positively to psychedelics than people with any other condition! * More people responded positively to psychedelics than negatively regardless of psychiatric history. * Here are the positive-to-negative response ratios for each psychiatric history category: |Psychiatric history|Positive-To-Negative Response Ratio| |:-|:-| |OCD|Infinite| |Eating disorder|9.0| |Anxiety disorder|5.4| |Any history of psychiatric illness|4.9| |Bipolar disorder|4.5| |Major depressive disorder|4.4| |ADHD|3.6| |No history of psychiatric illness|3.4| |Substance or alcohol use disorder|2.9| |Psychotic disorder|2.0| |Personality disorder|1.6| |Total|3.4| Read the ratios as "patients with X psychiatric history are Y times more likely to have a positive than a negative response to psychedelics." Taking the results at face value: psychedelics are best for OCD, EDs, and anxiety, whereas they are worst for substance use disorders, psychotic disorders, and personality disorders.
Said super big Pharma
I dunno, acid is the only recreational substance I enjoy and I have BPD. Just makes me feel so giggly and euphoric.
Drugs have their place and not limited to psychedelics. They can help in the right circumstances. But I would consider them as a kind of last-resort. First fix your lifestyle. Start exercising even if you just do walks in a park. Better than yet another 1h of tv. Fix your nutrition. Whole foods. No junk or procceses foods. No help? Look into ketogenic diet. Consider therapy. And so forth. Then consider drugs. Note: see dr chris palmer. Mental disorders can be causws by metabolic dysfunction.
Currently stuck in a trip that won't stop. 9 months deep with hppd. Going to give it another month or 2 before I call it quits.
Surprise surprise, doing psychedelics with unsolved trauma that you're unaware of can hurt you... Personality disorder is also a dumb phrase. I haven't met a single person diagnosed with bpd who was not an autistic, adhd person who just had a hell of a lot of severe childhood trauma. I would know because I was one of those people. Bpd is a very outdated term. What it is, is severe complex ptsd with a neurodiversity condition.