Magic mushrooms may help with depression, say leading scientists

[sgreger1]

Regarding the positive effects of magic mushrooms, there have been studies into psilocybin which have found a stronger link to increased mental well being than this study did.
http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/16/magic-mushrooms-can-improve-psychological-health-long-term/

In their study, the Hopkins scientists were able to reliably induce transcendental experiences in volunteers, which offered long-lasting psychological growth and helped people find peace in their lives — without the negative effects.

[sgreger1]

I've amused myself with that thought before. Maybe acid is really a reality straightener, and that's what the world really looks like :^)

Imagine you were born with blue shades over your eyes. From birth until death you and everyone you know saw the world as blue. The concensus amongst the human population would then be that the world is blue. Now imagine if they took LSD and it somehow removed this restriction, thus allowing them to see the full spectrum of colors, the greens, the reds, the blues. How would they view this? It would be psychadelic to be sure. They would say that the LSD caused a halucination and that it was all in their head. They would be correct, but similarly the blue tint they observe in waking reality is itself merely a halucination (albeit a persistent one). Which one is the correct "reality", like most things it is all dependent on the observer.


The body never has direct contact with anything in the real world, our sensory detectors take in things like photons and use the raw data to build an image which suits its intended purpose (vision, for survival etc). Yet we know through science that a whole world exist beyond what we are readily capable of viewing with our eyes; microwave rays, radiation, radio waves etc all fly through the sky just like light does but since it isn't necessary to our survival we never adapted to be able to detect them with our stock sensory receivers, and it is therefore rendered invisible to us. Everything you see is really just a halucination that your body produces for you, it takes in what it can via sensory receptors, filters out what it believes to be noise/unecessary, and then paints you a picture of the rest.

To an even even greater extent our eyes only record a very limited amount of data, they are good at edge detection etc but a suprising quantity of what we see is actually colored in by the brain. This is how optical illusions etc happen. Imagine that you essentially only truly "see" the outline and general color/texture of things and the brain fills in the blanks based on past experience etc. Then when it is stored in memory, it only retains what it tags as the "important" elements of the scene so as to save diskspace. No need to keep 100% record of everything that you've ever experienced. This is why often times traumatic or otherwise seemingly "important" experiences are more vivid than the mundane ones we experience throughout our lives.


What's to say though that we, just like the fictional humans who were born with blue blinder on, aren't equipped with blinders of our own? What's to say that our scientific instruments have accurately detected what is "really" there? Perhaps reality isn't as 3 dimensional as we believe it to be, perhaps there are many different things happening at once and they are all interwoven and overlapping, all existing in the same space but on different levels, and perhaps LSD etc allows one to temporarily peek through the curtain as it were. Who knows.

[BlueSaint]

It might make your life better, or it can totally destroy it.

[Roo]

but a suprising quantity of what we see is actually colored in by the brain.

My science teacher at Munich Int'l School did a cool demonstration to illustrate this point. He was wearing a white sweater with a pink collared shirt underneath. Toward the end of the class, he made us all sit closely together, then he placed himself at the very edge of our peripheral vision. He told us to stare straight ahead. He took his sweater off and asked us what color his shirt underneath was. "Pink". he asked if we could see, in the corner of our vision, that the shirt was actually pink. "Yes", we said. He then removed the pink shirt to reveal a t-shirt underneath. When he asked what color it was... we were silent. I remember that although it was difficult to even see him at the far peripheral of my vision, I could indeed see his shirt, and it appeared to almost be every color at once, and no color at the same time. Very strange.

The point was, since our brains had not taken note of his undershirt because we couldn't see it (as we could with his pink collar sticking out), we were relying only on our eyeballs, and we do not have color vision on the peripheral. Cool stuff. There are a variety of ways you can try this at home.

This has nothing to do with mushrooms. It's been a very long time since I messed around with those. I would like to try DMT once.

[sgreger1]

My science teacher at Munich Int'l School did a cool demonstration to illustrate this point. He was wearing a white sweater with a pink collared shirt underneath. Toward the end of the class, he made us all sit closely together, then he placed himself at the very edge of our peripheral vision. He told us to stare straight ahead. He took his sweater off and asked us what color his shirt underneath was. "Pink". he asked if we could see, in the corner of our vision, that the shirt was actually pink. "Yes", we said. He then removed the pink shirt to reveal a t-shirt underneath. When he asked what color it was... we were silent. I remember that although it was difficult to even see him at the far peripheral of my vision, I could indeed see his shirt, and it appeared to almost be every color at once, and no color at the same time. Very strange.

The point was, since our brains had not taken note of his undershirt because we couldn't see it (as we could with his pink collar sticking out), we were relying only on our eyeballs, and we do not have color vision on the peripheral. Cool stuff. There are a variety of ways you can try this at home.

This has nothing to do with mushrooms. It's been a very long time since I messed around with those. I would like to try DMT once.

What an awesome experiment! I love cool teachers like that who can drive the point home by showing you examples.


They have been doing a lot of research into how the brain/eyes work together to produce what we see in hopes that they can replicate it and use that to make robots that can accurately "see" things as we would describe them (that way they know which is the right beer to get me when my robot man-servant goes to the fridge).

So far they have realized that the brain first takes a rough outline of things (namely the edges of things), then looks in 4 key areas first (photographers will be familiar with the rule of three's), then samples the main colors present in the area etc. With just this basic info it is able to color things in and make it all appear "smooth" and at a good frame rate, but a surprising amount of what you see is literally just guesswork on the part of your brain. Pattern recognition is also one of the key traits of the primate brain, we tend to recognize patterns before we see the full picture, this is why you see patterns in the wall stucko that look like faces or why clouds look like notable objects sometimes, it's better to THINK you saw a tiger in the tall grass than to not notice patterns and perhaps miss it and get eaten, so the brain errs on the side of seeing paterns even if one definately isn't there.

This is also why Tom seems plants on mars, and on a more serious note, why we thought the face on mars was actually that of a face. Our eyes are looking for faces more so than looking for rocks on a subconscious level, so it is more likely that someone looking through photographs would readily identify the mountain that depicted a face over the other mountains that seemed to form no noticeable pattern. It's just a survival thing, the brain labels the face as relevant and labels the mountains that don't form patterns as irrelevent and un-noteworthy so you pay little attention to them.

[sgreger1]

It might make your life better, or it can totally destroy it.

My third girlfriend did shrooms with me once when we were younger. She went completely crazy, we broke up about a week later and she ended up in a psych ward for several months. She then became a die hard lesbian and has been absolutely bat-shit crazy ever since then despite a heavy regiment of pills. True story.

[lxskllr]

My third girlfriend did shrooms with me once when we were younger. She went completely crazy, we broke up about a week later and she ended up in a psych ward for several months. She then became a die hard lesbian and has been absolutely bat-shit crazy ever since then despite a heavy regiment of pills. True story.

That was estrogen poisoning. She just got it worse than average ;^)

[Kaplan]

In case anyone didn't know this, it's actually legal to buy the spores for magic mushrooms in the U.S. in all but about three or four states. There are sites you can buy the growing kits from and do it yourself. Of course, that part is not legal, actually growing and using the schrooms, but who's going to know? Barring the possibility you haven't given the police some other reason to raid your house.

[precious007]

The bottom line that abusing LSD can lead to psychotic illness - that's a fact.

[wa3zrm]

Did anyone read the article in Ansel's post? I find this of particular interest:

"Nutt, from Imperial College London, was sacked as a government drug adviser after claiming tobacco and alcohol were more dangerous than cannabis and psychedelic drugs such as ecstasy and LSD."

Gotta just love this guy's name and his rationale?

[wa3zrm]

My third girlfriend did shrooms with me once when we were younger. She went completely crazy, we broke up about a week later and she ended up in a psych ward for several months. She then became a die hard lesbian and has been absolutely bat-shit crazy ever since then despite a heavy regiment of pills. True story.

And my friends wonder why I find this forum so interesting

[heders]

The bottom line that abusing LSD can lead to psychotic illness - that's a fact.

So can alcohol.

[Snus Boost]

Every once in a while I'll feel like I need to reset my brain chemistry, aura or mood whatever it is and I drop acid or eat shrooms. It works every time. I'm not talking about daily use or "abuse" just maybe once every 2 years or so. If I see a pattern of negativity in my thoughts and I put limitations on myself and what I can accomplish frequently I know it's about time. I get much more accomplished with delusions of grandeur than I do with negativity. Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're right.

[precious007]

So can alcohol.

It's called alcohol dementia, rarely alcohol induces psychosis.

tobacco and alcohol were more dangerous than cannabis and psychedelic drugs such as ecstasy and LSD.

that's just crap, don't listen to all the crap out there.

you take LSD, ecstasy and cannabis daily and you'll end up a junkie

[lxskllr]

You can't take LSD daily. You build a tolerance lightning fast.