[Severian]

Originally Posted by SuchFriendsAreDangerous

While you're talking science fine I'm not sure the actual experience of mushrooms is the same as you're suggesting. Sure, LSD has this effect, but I have honestly never seen anyone have a negative experience "coming down" from consuming psilocybin. I think you have the right idea, but I'm not sure the math totally adds up here.



Like i was saying...



Did you read the link I PM'd you? Several studies aside from that one strongly suggest the opposite to be true, that ingesting psilocybin can have a POSITIVE impact on neurochemical depression disorders. It can BALANCE the neurochemicals, not put them out of whack which indeed you are right LSD and other stronger hallucinogens can do..



Like i said above, personally I doubt this has ANYTHING to do with the chemistry of psilocybin itself, rather is a strictly PSYCHOLOGICAL rather than NEUROCHEMICAL experience you are having. Perhaps you are not fully ready for what your Vision showed you, perhaps going through a depressive episode is what the Vision wants to show you. Sometimes we are only able to heal our psychological wounds by unpacking the baggage, so sometimes psilocybin might be helping us towards healing by pushing us through our psychological ups and downs.

Again studies have found that many people, even in a laboratory setting, actually leave a psilocybin experience feeling almost supernaturally HAPPY and POSITIVE. One study found this effect can last for over a YEAR or more!!

Part of what psilocybin does is it increases brain activity, streamlines thinking. If there are parts of one's thought processes that are negative, psilocybin will activate this in hypermode because one's might have used a lot of their psychic energy to BLOCK it rather than HEAL it. This is precisely why in parts of Europe hallucinogens are used in combination with psychotheraphy in order to help people deal with post traumatic stress and anxiety disorders.. It helps them really go deeply through buried psychological drama. It is cleansing. Sometimes cleansing can hurt at first, disenfecting wounds might sting, even if these wounds are strictly psychological.

Like I said, mushrooms are not necessarily for everyone or all the time, nor should they be.

Dammit, I wrote a great, diplomatic post and then my phone just shut down. Damned blast!

Anyway, in short it was about how you were speaking from a "spiritual" perspective about "visions" and quests, (not trying to be insulting, just brief — I actually respect that perspective and I've had a number of life changing, beautiful experiences on mushrooms) and how I'm speaking from a technical bd scientific perspective about what is actually taking place in the brain.

My perspective is full of words like "depression" (the resulting from the seratonin depletion following a trip, because that's technically what is occurring in the brain even if it doesn't feel like depression to everyone) and "toxic," but that doesn't mean I don't fully support the continued study of the effects of psil on mental health disorders.

Point being: we're probably not going to see eye to eye on this, because of our respective frames of mind and inclinations of thought. But that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what you're saying.

Blah.