>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.
>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.