In my defense, I specifically noted that the methodology was garbage. If you compare and contrast with the essay I wrote about my experience with the psilocybin trial, I was far more meticulous (or at least the actual doctors and scientists running the trial were, and I was piggybacking on their hard work).
The main reason for sharing is not to endorse LSD as a treatment for TRD. I’ve noted that the evidence is far more robust in favor of ketamine or psilocybin, though the trials for the latter are still ongoing.
Why did I share, then?
It is very common (or at least over-represented) for people to do serious damage to their epistemics because of inadvisable doses of psychedelics. Many trip reports involve people “finding God”, and the rat community has plenty of folks who are “spiritual but not religious”. This scared me, and to be quite honest, still does, because I do not think that BSOD-ing your brain is a reliable means of improving your understanding of metaphysics. The fact that I almost (but didn’t quite) succumb and remain a committed materialist is… something. At least it’s something I’m happy about. Evidence, perhaps weak evidence, for the ability to do these things with therapeutic intent or even plain curiosity without compromising yourself.
My mistakes are a learning opportunity for myself, and for others. As I’ve mentioned, I’m a psychiatry resident, and more than passingly interested in psychedelics and other mind-altering substances. Yet I did not know just how significantly THC alters the experience of an otherwise tolerable-yet-potent dose of LSD. Noticing that I was surprised/blindsided despite having a far better than average (I hope) understanding of the pharmacology and mechanisms involved was a good reminder to maintain even more epistemic humility. It should at least caution the reader to be even more careful about what they intend to do than even their base inclination towards due diligence implies.
In other words, not every post on a rationalist forum has to be advice on the right thing to do (though I do try and tell people the right thing to do). Noting the mistakes someone has made, or even the mistakes they almost made is often even more helpful for third parties.
And I am not sure why you think that somewhere around 400 ug (nominal, street estimate) of LSD is not a heroic dose. Even if my suspicion that it was weaker than advertised are correct, I think that the knowledge that a lower dose and even a modest amount of THC can produce extreme and potent synergistic effects was new to me, and probably to a lot of people. If you knew better and wouldn’t have done this in the first place, good for you. I didn’t. I want to share my experience. You are, of course, entitled to think that this information is of minimal value to you. I acknowledge that you have the right to say so.
Sorry to sound mean about it! I didn’t really mean you shouldn’t have shared, just that the most important part should’ve been up front and emphasized, like in the title.
I think that the knowledge that a lower dose and even a modest amount of THC can produce extreme and potent synergistic effects was new to me, and probably to a lot of people
That’s why I was suggesting that should’ve been the headline. Expecting people to read a long (and entertaining!) post in case there’s a nuggest of wisdom in there isn’t realistic; there’s too much good stuff on LW let alone in total.
I was objecting to your drawing conclusions against LSD from this experiment. Maybe your conclusion wasn’t about LSD but about heavy psychedelics in general. That’s more reasonable, but it’s a stretch to think you’d get the same results from other psychedelics. The weed will have had strong and distinct effects that could block the effects of acid. Even a couple of puffs of modern weed is a pretty heavy dose if you’re not a regular smoker (it seems like tolerance effects of weed are extreme, and weed is of course bred, grown, and sold by enthusiasts; those of us who smoke rarely would pay more for weaker weed that wouldn’t make us way too high by accident).
I read some of the remainder, and it’s great. I always enjoy your writing and get insight from it. Sorry to sound like I was saying you shouldn’t have bothered.
It’s really weird that people become convinced that god exists from psychedelic trips, when what it should tell you is wow yeah my mind is clearly a product of my brain function.
I think people just don’t understand how good the human brain is at hallucinating. It’s kind of a hallucination machine that’s ordinarily guided by sensory experience. But both perception and imagination/simulation are improved by making it good at extrapolating/hallucinating.
Edit: now I see that the weed mistake wasn’t the main point, and “God can send an email” is a great title. So I’d settle for the weed mistake in a TLDR.
>Sorry to sound mean about it! I didn’t really mean you shouldn’t have shared, just that the most important part should’ve been up front and emphasized, like in the title.
That’s a reasonable take. I think it is valuable to find out why doing something is bad for you, and that’s why I put effort into making the trip report entertaining (and hopefully educational). If someone told me that “don’t mix THC with a large dose of LSD because of highly variable and unpredictable interactions when CB1 and 5HT2A receptors are strongly stimulated”, it would be valuable advice, but not as valuable as a vivid example of how it went wrong.
I do disagree more strongly with:
>Expecting people to read a long (and entertaining!) post in case there’s a nuggest of wisdom in there isn’t realistic; there’s too much good stuff on LW let alone in total.
After all, people share rationalist fiction here too. I can’t see Scott or other writers putting up a “TLDR: This is the intended takeaway of the story” at the top. Sometimes you do need to read to the end to understand a piece, sometimes the compression, while possible, is lossy.
I don’t think this essay would be improved with a submission statement saying:
“LSD is a somewhat interesting but not optimal treatment for TRD. Do not mix THC with a nominally high dose of LSD. You might experience ego-death, and I did, but pulled through.”
It would not capture the intended intensity. I have a generally high opinion of the patience and intelligence of readers here (not claiming you think otherwise), and I write to both entertain and inform. If this was merely a trip-report, I wouldn’t have considered sharing it here. I think that the fact that I’m an archetypal rat, reasonably well-informed about what I was doing (from a medical perspective, though probably not an exceptionally experienced psychonaut), and faced genuine challenge to the integrity of my ego/ontology—but came out intact to warn others—that all adds up.
>You did seem to come down against acid in there near the end, and that’s just not justified by the experiment
I think you’re drawing too broad a conclusion here. I’m not against LSD. It’s a remarkably safe substance, with a better profile than many things I might prescribe in clinic. What I am cautioning against is taking very large doses, or combining it with THC. My understanding is that while the THC did potentiate the strong dose I personally took, nothing I experienced is out of the question for “just” heroic doses of THC. Do correct me if I’m wrong about that.
And that amounts to caveat emptor, not a general injunction to never try the stuff. Just to take even more care about how to do it, more than I did, despite me thinking I did my due diligence.
Another way to put it is that if I had read such a report myself, I’d have been far more cautious. I think I am close enough to the modal LW reader that the validity of the advice transfers. If your first reaction was to groan and shake your head when you read that I introduced THC into the mix, then you don’t need my advice, and that is a good thing.
There is a version of this essay that I am contemplating writing, which explores the psychopharmacology in more detail (just like the psilocybin one). But I haven’t written it, and might not. It will probably be heavier on nuance, or less nuanced in favor of more general and more specific disclaimers, depending on what’s better for a more general audience. But I target other rats by default, and I think they don’t need me to spell out everything.
In my defense, I specifically noted that the methodology was garbage. If you compare and contrast with the essay I wrote about my experience with the psilocybin trial, I was far more meticulous (or at least the actual doctors and scientists running the trial were, and I was piggybacking on their hard work).
The main reason for sharing is not to endorse LSD as a treatment for TRD. I’ve noted that the evidence is far more robust in favor of ketamine or psilocybin, though the trials for the latter are still ongoing.
Why did I share, then?
It is very common (or at least over-represented) for people to do serious damage to their epistemics because of inadvisable doses of psychedelics. Many trip reports involve people “finding God”, and the rat community has plenty of folks who are “spiritual but not religious”. This scared me, and to be quite honest, still does, because I do not think that BSOD-ing your brain is a reliable means of improving your understanding of metaphysics. The fact that I almost (but didn’t quite) succumb and remain a committed materialist is… something. At least it’s something I’m happy about. Evidence, perhaps weak evidence, for the ability to do these things with therapeutic intent or even plain curiosity without compromising yourself.
My mistakes are a learning opportunity for myself, and for others. As I’ve mentioned, I’m a psychiatry resident, and more than passingly interested in psychedelics and other mind-altering substances. Yet I did not know just how significantly THC alters the experience of an otherwise tolerable-yet-potent dose of LSD. Noticing that I was surprised/blindsided despite having a far better than average (I hope) understanding of the pharmacology and mechanisms involved was a good reminder to maintain even more epistemic humility. It should at least caution the reader to be even more careful about what they intend to do than even their base inclination towards due diligence implies.
In other words, not every post on a rationalist forum has to be advice on the right thing to do (though I do try and tell people the right thing to do). Noting the mistakes someone has made, or even the mistakes they almost made is often even more helpful for third parties.
And I am not sure why you think that somewhere around 400 ug (nominal, street estimate) of LSD is not a heroic dose. Even if my suspicion that it was weaker than advertised are correct, I think that the knowledge that a lower dose and even a modest amount of THC can produce extreme and potent synergistic effects was new to me, and probably to a lot of people. If you knew better and wouldn’t have done this in the first place, good for you. I didn’t. I want to share my experience. You are, of course, entitled to think that this information is of minimal value to you. I acknowledge that you have the right to say so.
Sorry to sound mean about it! I didn’t really mean you shouldn’t have shared, just that the most important part should’ve been up front and emphasized, like in the title.
That’s why I was suggesting that should’ve been the headline. Expecting people to read a long (and entertaining!) post in case there’s a nuggest of wisdom in there isn’t realistic; there’s too much good stuff on LW let alone in total.
I was objecting to your drawing conclusions against LSD from this experiment. Maybe your conclusion wasn’t about LSD but about heavy psychedelics in general. That’s more reasonable, but it’s a stretch to think you’d get the same results from other psychedelics. The weed will have had strong and distinct effects that could block the effects of acid. Even a couple of puffs of modern weed is a pretty heavy dose if you’re not a regular smoker (it seems like tolerance effects of weed are extreme, and weed is of course bred, grown, and sold by enthusiasts; those of us who smoke rarely would pay more for weaker weed that wouldn’t make us way too high by accident).
I read some of the remainder, and it’s great. I always enjoy your writing and get insight from it. Sorry to sound like I was saying you shouldn’t have bothered.
It’s really weird that people become convinced that god exists from psychedelic trips, when what it should tell you is wow yeah my mind is clearly a product of my brain function.
I think people just don’t understand how good the human brain is at hallucinating. It’s kind of a hallucination machine that’s ordinarily guided by sensory experience. But both perception and imagination/simulation are improved by making it good at extrapolating/hallucinating.
Edit: now I see that the weed mistake wasn’t the main point, and “God can send an email” is a great title. So I’d settle for the weed mistake in a TLDR.
>Sorry to sound mean about it! I didn’t really mean you shouldn’t have shared, just that the most important part should’ve been up front and emphasized, like in the title.
That’s a reasonable take. I think it is valuable to find out why doing something is bad for you, and that’s why I put effort into making the trip report entertaining (and hopefully educational). If someone told me that “don’t mix THC with a large dose of LSD because of highly variable and unpredictable interactions when CB1 and 5HT2A receptors are strongly stimulated”, it would be valuable advice, but not as valuable as a vivid example of how it went wrong.
I do disagree more strongly with:
>Expecting people to read a long (and entertaining!) post in case there’s a nuggest of wisdom in there isn’t realistic; there’s too much good stuff on LW let alone in total.
After all, people share rationalist fiction here too. I can’t see Scott or other writers putting up a “TLDR: This is the intended takeaway of the story” at the top. Sometimes you do need to read to the end to understand a piece, sometimes the compression, while possible, is lossy.
I don’t think this essay would be improved with a submission statement saying:
“LSD is a somewhat interesting but not optimal treatment for TRD. Do not mix THC with a nominally high dose of LSD. You might experience ego-death, and I did, but pulled through.”
It would not capture the intended intensity. I have a generally high opinion of the patience and intelligence of readers here (not claiming you think otherwise), and I write to both entertain and inform. If this was merely a trip-report, I wouldn’t have considered sharing it here. I think that the fact that I’m an archetypal rat, reasonably well-informed about what I was doing (from a medical perspective, though probably not an exceptionally experienced psychonaut), and faced genuine challenge to the integrity of my ego/ontology—but came out intact to warn others—that all adds up.
>You did seem to come down against acid in there near the end, and that’s just not justified by the experiment
I think you’re drawing too broad a conclusion here. I’m not against LSD. It’s a remarkably safe substance, with a better profile than many things I might prescribe in clinic. What I am cautioning against is taking very large doses, or combining it with THC. My understanding is that while the THC did potentiate the strong dose I personally took, nothing I experienced is out of the question for “just” heroic doses of THC. Do correct me if I’m wrong about that.
And that amounts to caveat emptor, not a general injunction to never try the stuff. Just to take even more care about how to do it, more than I did, despite me thinking I did my due diligence.
Another way to put it is that if I had read such a report myself, I’d have been far more cautious. I think I am close enough to the modal LW reader that the validity of the advice transfers. If your first reaction was to groan and shake your head when you read that I introduced THC into the mix, then you don’t need my advice, and that is a good thing.
There is a version of this essay that I am contemplating writing, which explores the psychopharmacology in more detail (just like the psilocybin one). But I haven’t written it, and might not. It will probably be heavier on nuance, or less nuanced in favor of more general and more specific disclaimers, depending on what’s better for a more general audience. But I target other rats by default, and I think they don’t need me to spell out everything.