I'm really happy to hear things like this. The potential benefits (and drawbacks, of course) been evident to lots of us psychonauts for a long time, and finally the sentiment seems to have turned enough so some money can actually get into the research to see if these things can help us today via treatments. A real joy to see after so many decades of the failed war on drugs that influenced policies across the globe.
Mind-altering drugs played key role in rise of Andean civilization (science.org)
112 pointsby geneticdrifts10 hours ago80 comments
embedding-shape 6 hours ago
> The work also benefits from recent research into the use of hallucinogens in treating mental illness, which has promoted broader acceptance of these substances. “There was long a feeling that drugs made you sick and addicted,” says José Capriles, an archaeologist at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) who excavates in Bolivia. “Today, there is a new openness,” he adds, which is freeing grant money and attracting graduate students.
GuB-42 3 hours ago
The problem with psychoactive drugs, as I understand it, is not the lack of positive results. There are plenty of well recognized cases.
The problem is the the unpredictability, because there are plenty of catastrophic results too, and we don't really know why. We can't tell "in your case you should take this dose, the risks are quantified and acceptable, and this is what we should do if things go wrong". And it is not for the lack of trying.
People tend to forget that LSD is a product of "big pharma" and they definitely tried to make a safe and effective treatment out of it, so that they could make money out of their patent.
The "war on drugs" certainly didn't help, but research never really stopped, but we are struggling to turn these drugs into treatments that up to modern standards. And by the way, many controlled substances are used in mainstream medicine: heroin, fentanyl, amphetamines (incl. meth), cocaine, ketamine,...
jareklupinski 2 hours ago
> The problem is the the unpredictability, because there are plenty of catastrophic results too, and we don't really know why.
i can think of a way to find out :)
we'll have to take it in stages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_trial
Aurornis 2 hours ago
> The problem with psychoactive drugs, as I understand it, is not the lack of positive results. There are plenty of well recognized cases.
There is a long way to go toward solid research on this topic. The studies that exist have small sample sizes and usually very limited monitoring periods after the dose, which makes them extremely prone to placebo effects. There’s no real blinding in a study with powerful psychedelics, so long-term comparisons against active comparators (therapy, other antidepressants) are needed.
There is a lot of reporting that would make the studies seem like slam-dunk, case closed results, but every study I’ve read so far has felt very weak compared to traditional antidepressant studies. That’s expected for early stage research, but it’s going to take a lot more to quantify the treatment effects.
> The problem is the the unpredictability, because there are plenty of catastrophic results too, and we don't really know why.
The studies go to great lengths to have controlled circumstances like therapists monitoring and guiding the situation for hours, including integration sessions afterward in a lot of the studies.
This helps control the situation for those studies, but it’s hard to translate that to real world practices. If the current proliferation of poorly-run ketamine clinics by cash grabbing providers is a clue, it would be really hard to ensure the level of trained therapist oversight that happens in these studies if this every becomes mainstream.
There’s also the big problem of occasional majorly negative outcomes, as you noted. There are a lot of reports around the internet of even seasoned psychonauts who eventually had a trip that left them depressed or dissociated for months. For the longest time these anecdotes were dismissed as having triggered an underlying mental health disorder as a way to avoid blaming the drug. The advice was always that people with mental health problems shouldn’t take the drugs. Well now that we’re talking about using these as antidepressants (maybe) then it would be exclusively people with severe mental health conditions taking them.
I don’t think it would take very many severely negative public cases to shut it down or at least severely restrict it.
999900000999 an hour ago
The War on Drugs only serves to give law enforcement unlimited extra constitutional powers.
Even the bizarre murder of Central American fishermen is justified by someone somewhere having a dime bag or something.
Who needs trials , or evidence. Drugs are bad.
Government good.
Drugs bad.
daseiner1 18 minutes ago
i don't dispute that the "War on Drugs" was (is?) pretty much just a glorified jobs program for law enforcement but nevertheless some drugs are very bad. ironically enough alcohol, despite being the most readily available drug after caffeine, is probably the worst drug of all in terms of societal destruction.
bitexploder an hour ago
We have pretty strong indications of when and why things go wrong. Openness vs rigid thinking are an axis that are very strong correlative factors. A lot more nuance but there is a lot we do know about risk factors so it isn’t a complete question mark.
slowin 5 hours ago
It's thought that a lot of the geometric designs in Indigenous pottery and architecture are directly influenced by hallucinogenic plants like datura.
There's a really great YouTube channel called Desert Lore and he covers this topic in depth in this episode. It was really fascinating:
zakki an hour ago
The top comment when I clicked it does not agree with the narrative:
@rkozakand 10 months ago
The so called "southwestern motif" is found wherever people weave. Our native rugs in the mountains of Ukraine use the exact same motif, only in different colors. It is a natural outgrowth of weaving techniques, which encourage triangles. We also have ancient pottery from what is called the Trypillian culture, which includes spirals and what you call 'zen tangle' motifs, which we call 'bezkonechnyk'. This pottery looks very similar to Southwest American pottery, even being executed in the same colors. I therefore doubt that they are as tied to specific plants as you think, although patterns repeat in nature, and maybe we have similar plants.
slowin an hour ago
He actually talks about that in the video and compares and contrasts the weaving based patterns, nature based patterns and hallucinogenic patterns. The datura pattern being nature based.
clickety_clack 7 hours ago
Given that many of our current-day subterranean environments are also covered in art and strewn with drug paraphernalia, can we really say that it played a key role in the rise of the civilization?
dyauspitr 7 hours ago
You can 100% say that European civilization was heavily, heavily influenced by the consumption of alcohol.
Gualdrapo 7 hours ago
What do you mean "was"?
kekebo 7 hours ago
Supposedly there was a time when drinking beer was often safer than drinking water from available sources, including for children. I guess there are levels
onlypassingthru 6 hours ago
They didn't make Arnold a saint for nothing.
AngryData 4 hours ago
A lot of it was weaker small beer though too, like 1-2%.
dyauspitr 2 hours ago
Each person was going through a gallon a day though, that’s still 4-5 standard drinks which is a crazy amount to drink all day everyday.
gchamonlive 7 hours ago
All you can really say is that negligence is corrosive to civilization, and maybe that drugs act as an amplifier of sorts for society's illnesses and qualities.
boogieknite 6 hours ago
could also say a corroded civilization makes vulnerable people feel bad and drugs make them feel good
TimTheTinker 5 hours ago
drugs have been making people feel good (and messing with their sense of motivation to behave responsibly) regardless of society's state
theplumber 5 hours ago
Yeah, like this zombie civilisation:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i2k7KQ5L5Jg
I am not sure if you can say it’s raising or falling by their posture
fhdkweig 3 hours ago
My spidy sense is tingling on this video. The related recommendations on the side include these videos:
In particular it is the thumbnails that look identical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6NeLNYCGo0 The Zombies Of America! (i have never seen anything like this..) by Frank van Dam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snN0PNZVWNA Inside Philadelphia's Real Life Zombie Outbreak by Tyler Oliveira
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZCX1Y0ZiA THE ZOMBIES OF AMERICA (I'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE THIS) by Joe HaTTab
sophacles 5 hours ago
Yeah, it's really gross that coffee cups are left all over the place. But yeah, rise in caffeine consumption in place of ethanol is thought to have enabled and fueled the enlightenment, and been a major factor in the industrial revolution.
clickety_clack 5 hours ago
I meant the graffiti and needles in tunnels and under bridges etc.
sophacles 5 hours ago
I know what you meant. But the words you used apply to my reply too. It's a reminder that any attempt at an objective definition of "drugs" includes alcohol and caffeine, and that there is a huge cultural component to "good drugs" and "bad drugs". In fact, coffee was considered one of the bad drugs by many cultures it when first introduced to them - including European culture.
krispyfi 19 minutes ago
"If I couldn't, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigt_stille%2C_plaudert_ni...
GMoromisato 2 hours ago
I love Tom Standage’s book, A History of the World in Six Glasses. It talks about: beer (Mesopotamia), wine (Greece/Rome), spirits (Spanish colonization), tea (British colonization), coffee (world wars), and Coca-Cola (American empire).
It’s amazingly coherent.
baxtr 7 hours ago
Didn’t mind-altering drugs like alcohol play a key role in the rise of any civilization?
LoganDark 7 hours ago
Alcohol is a poison, not a drug, but I also think so.
I honestly wish mind-altering drugs were more accessible sometimes, mostly because of safety. Millions are killed by adulterants in their street drugs.
nickff 7 hours ago
As the saying goes: “the dose makes the poison”. Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage.
embedding-shape 6 hours ago
> Many (perhaps most) drugs cause harm at the wrong dosage.
Not only drugs, almost everything is bad at the wrong dosage. Case in point: water.
LoganDark 6 hours ago
Tonicity matters too. Deionized water will suck the ions right out of you. All the way to your death if you're so determined.
quchen 6 hours ago
Depending on your definition of poison of course, but at least for LSD and magic mushrooms, all that's known is a lower bound for their biological toxicity. For LSD IIRC it's somewhere in the 30mg (!) range, for mushrooms it's more than can comfortably fit a stomach. I'm afraid I don't have sources handy though.
That said, the state of mind must be so wild that "is it poisonous in this specific/usual sense" is probably not the right thing to discuss.
LoganDark 4 hours ago
> That said, the state of mind must be so wild that "is it poisonous in this specific/usual sense" is probably not the right thing to discuss.
I've struggled to tell the difference between doses of LSD that exceed 100µg. Maybe I just take it too frequently to make much of a difference. It's also possible that it only increases duration, but not intensity.
mannanj 5 hours ago
So for mold, low enough doses aren't poison? Can't you just say this about anything. If you have poison in a low enough dose it's not poison. So it means jsut about nothing to say alcohol isn't poisonous because you can have a small dose of it.
nickff 3 hours ago
Fentanyl is actually much more toxic than the mycotoxins produced by mold (which I'm guessing is what you're referring to), and yet fentanyl is generally recognized to be a useful drug because of its therapeutic effects. If something has no possible therapeutic, recreational, nutritional, or culinary effect, while being toxic, it might be fair to characterize it as a 'pure poison'.
talon8635 7 hours ago
Poison is a function of dosage. Water is a poison in a high enough dose.
What’s you’re arguments it’s not a drug?
LoganDark 6 hours ago
Alcohol requires an astronomical intake compared to most drugs, and I'd say the indiscriminate action and lack of any particular affinity is what makes it a poison as opposed to a drug. It is also generally assumed that alcohol is not exactly in the same category as drugs. ("drugs or alcohol" etc.)
archonis 5 hours ago
That's purely because it's usage is accepted nearly as a default, and drug in common usage is most often a pejorative term if it doesn't refer to a medicinal context.
Most people who use drug as a pejorative term also wouldn't use it to describe caffeine.
adgjlsfhk1 5 hours ago
> Alcohol requires an astronomical intake compared to most drugs
That's primarily because it's most commonly diluted 90%. Spirits (or everclear) have much lower intake required.
LoganDark 3 hours ago
I did not say alcoholic beverages, I said alcohol. Even pure ethanol still requires a far higher dosage than most drugs.
aeonik 5 hours ago
But the "Active dose" to "lethal dose" ratio, aka "therapeutic index" of alcohol is pretty bad.
fc417fc802 4 hours ago
Don't you mean that it's quite good? It's easily more than an order of magnitude for many people (not sure about chronic alcoholics with high tolerance). How many medications can you 5x your dose and not have some risk of ending up in the hospital?
aeonik 2 hours ago
Heroin (IV) ~6x
GHB ~8x
Ethanol ~10x
Methamphetamine ~10x
DXM ~10x
Cocaine ~15x
MDMA ~16x
Codeine ~20x
Methadone ~20x
Mescaline ~24x
Flunitrazepam ~30x
Ketamine ~40x
Phenobarbital ~50x
Nitrous oxide ~150x
LSD ~1000x
Cannabis/THC ~1000x or greater
Citation: Gable RS. Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances. Addiction. 2004;99(6):686–696. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00744.x
fc417fc802 an hour ago
Well given "therapeutic index" I had said "medication" as opposed to "commonly abused substances". I think your list skews heavily due to psychedelics tending not to be acutely toxic to the same extent as other chemical species.
Statins for example are probably 10x to 20x (quick napkin math based on an animal study I found). Tylenol is 10x and is OTC.
Personally I consider alcohol to be much safer than many other substances given the form it typically takes. Utterly irresponsible binge drinking aside, most people will suffer serious adverse effects long before they're in danger. Compare that with pills or injections where an OD can be entirely inadvertent even when observing basic common sense.
cobbzilla 5 hours ago
It’s much more of a poison to some of our primate relatives. iirc the genes that facilitate alcohol metabolism evolved in great apes millions of years before homo sapiens, and we inherited them; we’ve been boozing long before we were even human.
asphodele 5 hours ago
if alcohol can damage your short term memory,
Imagine what effect alcohol has
dominotw 7 hours ago
yes coffee is reason behind our current civilization
cyberpunk 7 hours ago
I can't quit it. When I do, after about 2 weeks I completely lose the ability to be a good worker bee and sit in my open plan office,and hide my contempt for the absolute rank ineptitude of almost everyone else there. Load me up with the happy brown juice and I can pretty much make it through. I'm not convinced this is sustainable tbh.
EMIRELADERO 6 hours ago
Chesterton called it, quite fittingly, "The Puritan's opium".
shagie 6 hours ago
> ... I completely lose the ability to be a good worker bee ...
Caffeine in Floral Nectar Enhances a Pollinator's Memory of Reward - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1228806
> Caffeine improves memory in humans, millions of whom find that their daily dose enhances clarity, focus, and alertness. The human relationship with caffeine is relatively recent, however, and thus its impact on our brains is likely a by-product of its true ecological role. Caffeine occurs naturally in the floral nectar of Coffea and Citrus plants. Wright et al. (p. 1202; see the Perspective by Chittka and Peng) found that caffeine presented at naturalistic levels significantly improved the ability of bees to remember and locate a learned floral scent and potentiated the responses of neurons involved in olfactory learning and memory.
PBS Eons Why Does Caffeine Exist? (5:13 for the bit on bees) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzshAqowsyI
> In experiments on bees, researchers have found that once they've had a sip of caffeine-laced nectar, it boosts their memory, makes them preferentially revisit the plants, and even helps them pollinate faster and more efficiently. So, for plants, caffeine is a multi-purpose molecule with a lot of adaptive benefits. But, for us, it has one main benefit: it gets us through Monday morning. ...
TimTheTinker 5 hours ago
And nicotine, don't forget that. Smokers built the modern world (and then developed lung cancer for their troubles).
adzm 6 hours ago
Alcohol and fermentation have a much different role with food safety and preservation though; the inebriation is just a pleasant side effect for some (and a curse for others)
sophacles 4 hours ago
Beer may have lead to the domestication of cereal grains. This is not my theory, here's an article about it: https://nautil.us/beer-domesticated-man-234697
Specifically, we have evidence of beer older than we have evidence of cereal domestication. There is evidence that beer's side effects were considered important for social and religious gatherings (as they are today as well). People wanted to make more beer and so figured out how to plant it. The process to make bread is actually a lot more involved than to make beer and porridge... and porridge just doesn't make as much sense as a motivating factor for domestication when the grains ripen at the same time as many many other easier and tastier foods are also ready in the natural environment.
Arguably, the domestication of grain and invention of agriculture played a role in the rise of many civilizations.
There's no reason to think that humans 10k years ago didn't enjoy getting buzzed, just like humans today do.
ButlerianJihad an hour ago
It's proposed in a Niven-Pournelle novel that grain domesticated humans: we gave it the largest premium territories, we carefully propogated the finest varieties, and we elevated it to a holy sacrament and a symbol of sacrifice, divinity, and unity.
An often missed point about grains is that distilling or fermenting them into beverages made for easier transportation, storage, and resilience. Yeah, you could store grains in granaries nearby, but there is a lot of volume that makes it unwieldy for ox carts or train cars. If farmers can bottle their excess grain, then there is a diversified portfolio that can smooth over crop failures or market dips.
Of course, today the tail is wagging the dog, because liquor production is demanding far more than just the excess harvest or a portion to transport. But you can see historically why its benefits were being touted to the consumer.
theturtletalks 7 hours ago
I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness. And it’s supported by the fact that psychedelics are also a network like the brain is. And when taking them, your brain experiences plasticity and that’s what allows profound changes.
A big part of our consciousness is the default mode network (which is a default of how we operate day to day, things we think about, etc). Psychedelics allow us to change that DMN, but may it have created it too?
plufz 7 hours ago
Just for clarification. The default mode network is what activates when we are at rest or ”not focused on the outside world”. Ie daydreaming and mind wandering, even if it also can be active during detailed thinking.
It has also been shown to have negative correlation to networks in the brain associated with attention.
titanomachy 7 hours ago
> psychedelics are also a network like the brain is
Sorry to be rude, but what the hell does that mean?
theturtletalks 7 hours ago
Fungi grow as a vast interconnected network and can communicate to other fungi. Similarly to how the neurons in the brain communicate.
In fact, when you take fungi, it tones down common neural pathways and allows new ones to form between new places.
titanomachy 7 hours ago
Ok, but there are plenty of psychedelics that don't come from fungi.
theturtletalks 6 hours ago
True, but my point isn’t that. It’s that fungi operate as an interconnected network so it makes the connection between them, neural networks, and consciousness interesting.
boothby 6 hours ago
Meth is a crystal, and crystals vibrate in synchronous harmonicity. What does this tell us about meth?
... no, the fact that some hallucinogens are derived from fungi does not give rise to consciousness. I accept that you read that somewhere; that does not make it true. But, really bad ideas do seem like amazing epiphanies if you're under the influence!
LoganDark 6 hours ago
> really bad ideas do seem like amazing epiphanies if you're under the influence!
Sometimes really bad ideas can actually turn around when taken to irrational extremes. Tons of evidence in history of people who are batshit crazy, somehow figuring out something amazing simply by being impossibly committed to something really, really stupid. But of course, being batshit crazy has other problems, and nearly all of the really stupid stuff does not turn around like that.
theturtletalks 6 hours ago
Nice strawman you got there. Meth is a man made synthetic compound. Fungi cover this earth and are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity and can cause personality change.
The theory is real and, of course, controversial[0]. The formation of consciousness is still a mystery and I’m simply discussing a theory. If you have another theory you deem right, let’s argue on merit, not personal attacks.
boothby 6 hours ago
A theory can be "real" in the sense that people believe it, and also controversial because it has little consistent evidence behind it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_Earth
Nowhere in my comment did I attack you personally. I made an analogous argument; reductio ad absurdum. LSD is also a man-made synthetic compound, and promotes neuroplacticity. And if you've ever known a meth addict, you'll know that the substance can cause significant and enduring personality change.
You're advancing a pseudoscientific theory, and I'm ripping it on its utter lack of merit. Please don't take that personally.
indlebe 25 minutes ago
For the record, the first time LSD was created it was made using lysergic acid derived from ergot, a mold found on rye. It is a semisynthetic drug, and cannot be created without an organic source.
quchen 6 hours ago
Or take DMT as a crystalline, naturally produced substance. As far as I know, there's no Methamphetamine in nature, although I've become very careful with the terms none/all in biology.
talon8635 7 hours ago
How are psychedelic chemical compounds “a network”? Are you referring specifically to fungal mycelium? Of course there a tons of non psychedelic mushrooms and tons of non-mushroom psychedelics
fugalfervor 6 hours ago
There is no evidence of that. What you say is not supporting, but rather "conveniently makes sense".
I don't dispute the utility of psychedelics. But I have observed (and this is anecdotal) that the fanatic devotees of the drugs tend to engage in magical thinking around the power/history/whatever of psychedelic substances, no matter their intelligence or accomplishment, or rigorous critical thinking in other areas.
theturtletalks 6 hours ago
It’s a controversial theory, but it does exist[0]. As far as I know, there is no prevailing theory about where consciousness came from so speculating based on existing theories isn’t claiming it’s the truth.
Is it such a leap that fungi are one of the few natural drugs that cause brain elasticity so maybe our early ancestors took it to get the evolutionary process started.
robbiep 6 hours ago
One of the reasons this is such a long bow to draw is that, as you have absurdly reiterated and an earlier commenter posited, this is Lamarckism.
If it is true, where are all the sapient reindeer and other animals that have consumed these substances as a species for as long or longer than we have existed?
fugalfervor an hour ago
I'm aware of the theory. I'm not aware of any explanation offered by the theory as to how those who first experienced consciousness via psychedelics managed to pass consciousness on to their descendants. It doesn't make any sense. If you cut the tail off a rat, it doesn't have tailless children.
archonis 5 hours ago
Reconciling the profound interiority of the experience with a mere external catalyst can be quite challenging.
Consider the question yourself next time you are in the throes of an exoerience and see how hard it is to maintain objectivity...
anramon 6 hours ago
> psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness
This reads like recycled lamarckism.
nephihaha 6 hours ago
"This reads like recycled lamarckism."
Recycled Lamarckianism would be Lysenkoism. :)
whakim 6 hours ago
There are a number of problems with these statements, but a major one is that psychedelics are associated with reduced activity within the DMN (but increased activity between the DMN and other networks). It is not clear the direction in which this causality runs.
BigTTYGothGF 5 hours ago
> I read many years ago that psychedelics are what lead to the formation of consciousness
I have never taken psychedelics but I believe myself to be conscious.
dyauspitr 7 hours ago
So if you take a lot of psychedelics you end up with a civilization that ritually murders 20,000 people every couple of months.
Just imagine the power you could wield as a shaman with drugs like DMT and psilocybin it would look like a literal magic
TFNA 7 hours ago
Are you thinking of the Aztecs or Mayans thousands of kilometers away? Andean human sacrifice involved customs unable to provide that level of throughput.