>> As psychedelic therapies for mental health go mainstream, companies are recruiting chemists to create patentable versions of hallucinogens.

Same old same old. Let's tweak this molecule to make it "novel" while retaining it's cool properties. Then we can patent it and own the market. In this case they also get the advantage that the existing molecule is illegal.

There was an NYT article not too long ago whose entire point is that "true" psychedelic drugs are too dangerous to go mainstream, but isolated chemical compounds that provide some of the chemical effects of LSD / Mushrooms / Ketamine without the "trip" were a much better way to go. The reasoning was that they could engineer a way to chemically induce neuroplastic change in the brain without the liability of visual or auditory hallucinations.

Talk about missing the forest from the trees.

The whole transformative experience is the "trip" itself. Dosing myself in a therapist's office sounds terrifying. The best experience I've ever had was taking a hit of LSD in my living room and spending the day with a pen and paper, writing down thoughts as they came to me.

Do we really need new ones? Maybe, we just need to decriminalize nature and let a shamanic class arise to guide us on a spiritual journey of self-awareness.

I recently did LSD. It wasn't my first encounter with psychedelics but none have done what LSD did. I have a good bit of trauma that I'd attempted to work through throughout my life. The thing is, many of those things are settled. I cannot change them, I've course corrected my life away from my actions being influenced by these things, and on the exterior I think most people would find me well adapted. I was pretty miserable on the inside though; those traumas hue the depths of your soul in ways that intentional and advertent action cannot rectify, only mask.

LSD gave me the power to set those things to sea and give them the burial they needed. Not all of them are gone, but I'm in a much better place because of it.

There is nothing different that I need, just make it so I don't have to order it on the dark web.

Edit: Happy to answer questions about my experiences. Can also be reached on Libera if public questions are not what you want.

With the collapse of the SSRI hypothesis, I feel like there was a missed opportunity to interrogate what it is about the affluent, technological society that makes such a staggering number of people so depressed. It seems that we will instead (characteristically) plow forward with even more powerful drugs.

It's sad that the only way to legalize is to force people to see a qualified therapist and take patented psychedelics in order to benefit from the experience, but that's what the normies want.

I've taken them with a therapist and it was meh because the doctor/patient relationship became weird under the influence. On the other hand I've had peak experiences by myself alone in a redwood forest on a fresh clear morning.

'Engineered' experiences, huh? To what end?

At least the article 'tuned in' to Shulgin. More on Sasha and Ann's prolonged studies, along with a big bibliography, here (Web 1) [https://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/shulgin_alexander/...]

I have a friend who has severe depression, including self harm and thoughts of suicide. So far guided meditation sessions and antidepressants have had little effect.

I have read that some illicit drugs can be effective in treating depression, even after just one or two uses. Can anyone suggest what might be the best option out of ketamine, shrooms, LSD or MDMA?

Here's a legit question - what is single driving factor for increases in substance abuse? Asking for a friend.

It seems like we should find ways to excite people about life and discovery rather than drum about the worker bee life. That's why people want drugs so much.

Go build something interesting - physical, not on the computer, stop doing drugs.

Sad really. As this headline might as well be: "Big Pharma: Patents Equal Profits."

There are plenty of cultures and associated history to support using what we already have available.

The only reason to invent anything new would be to control access and make a buck. We're going through that with the Covid vaccine. What does it take for us to learn from our mistakes?

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/13/1111137...

> The line tops out at a dose of 10 mg/kg, or “mig per kig,” as chemists pronounce it.

So that would make the sweet-spot dose for someone my weight about 800mg, which doesn't sound very 'potent' to me. I haven't read PIHKAL, perhaps that dosage is in line with the kind of substances Shulgin tested.

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"High" stakes? Someone at Wired likes a good pun...

Just legalize the ones we got already.

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