Hi, very cool that you’re doing this, thanks! Here goes my question:
How likely is it that taking psychedelics makes patients weird? Scott Alexander wrote up some anecdotes about many early psychedelicists getting weird as they experimented with these substances. He emphasizes it’s all very speculative and of course subjective. And it probably involved pretty high doses / frequencies. But my very superficial understanding is, that it’s hard to find good studies on this sort of thing, precisely because of the regulatory environment. Is that accurate or am I missing something? So should patients seriously consider the risk that their personality, motivations and view of the world would be significantly altered in a way their current self wouldn’t necessarily endorse? Would that be a bad thing?
There is a lot here. One is that at least some of this pattern is likely not causal but due to common predisposition. Those who are open enough to something outside of the mainstream and willing to consider topics that others consider beyond the pale, are likely to be interested in both psychedelics science and other fringe topics. Keep in mind a key issue is that we often (or ever) don’t know ground truth, so there is a balance between being too closed and too open. For the statisticians this is the balance of type I and type II errors (false positives and false negatives). Another thing is that my impression is that at the extremes, there is a causal effect of psychedelics to cause negative personality problems (e.g., narcotism) and to adopt delusional beliefs. This is likely dose and frequency dependent but doesn’t even show up for all folks who use high doses frequently. But for some, my guess is that yes, psychedelics can push people into these terrains. Of course, again, common predisposition is also at play, with those who are self-absorbed or into extreme conspiracy theories from the beginning also being attracted to psychedelics. I should say I have seen no evidence for any of this in either the older or modern sciences (including my own) with screened (for psychotic predisposition) participants with a limited number of sessions conducted with proper safety guidelines at play. Also, I wrote a receive piece that argues against the notion that as currently conducted, psychedelic therapy is likely to have substantial effect on political or religious affiliations ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/theres-no-good-evidence-that-psychedelics-can-change-your-politics-or-religion/ ).
Hi, very cool that you’re doing this, thanks! Here goes my question:
How likely is it that taking psychedelics makes patients weird? Scott Alexander wrote up some anecdotes about many early psychedelicists getting weird as they experimented with these substances. He emphasizes it’s all very speculative and of course subjective. And it probably involved pretty high doses / frequencies. But my very superficial understanding is, that it’s hard to find good studies on this sort of thing, precisely because of the regulatory environment. Is that accurate or am I missing something? So should patients seriously consider the risk that their personality, motivations and view of the world would be significantly altered in a way their current self wouldn’t necessarily endorse? Would that be a bad thing?
There is a lot here. One is that at least some of this pattern is likely not causal but due to common predisposition. Those who are open enough to something outside of the mainstream and willing to consider topics that others consider beyond the pale, are likely to be interested in both psychedelics science and other fringe topics. Keep in mind a key issue is that we often (or ever) don’t know ground truth, so there is a balance between being too closed and too open. For the statisticians this is the balance of type I and type II errors (false positives and false negatives). Another thing is that my impression is that at the extremes, there is a causal effect of psychedelics to cause negative personality problems (e.g., narcotism) and to adopt delusional beliefs. This is likely dose and frequency dependent but doesn’t even show up for all folks who use high doses frequently. But for some, my guess is that yes, psychedelics can push people into these terrains. Of course, again, common predisposition is also at play, with those who are self-absorbed or into extreme conspiracy theories from the beginning also being attracted to psychedelics. I should say I have seen no evidence for any of this in either the older or modern sciences (including my own) with screened (for psychotic predisposition) participants with a limited number of sessions conducted with proper safety guidelines at play. Also, I wrote a receive piece that argues against the notion that as currently conducted, psychedelic therapy is likely to have substantial effect on political or religious affiliations ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/theres-no-good-evidence-that-psychedelics-can-change-your-politics-or-religion/ ).
Very helpful, thanks!