Psilocybin Alternatives That Should Be Explored in Psychiatric Treatment

In the time I've been sober, I discovered about myself that I have a difficult time with psychedelic therapy endorsement. I wondered about the mentality of the patient, and wondered if it would generally promote drug seeking or substance abuse.

For that reason, I had shot it down. I didn't think it was worth drug seeking or substance abuse outcomes.

One thing that occurred to me more recently was my memory of 2C analogues as discussed by Alexander Shulgin - Wikipedia.



And I was such a tripper and a trooper! I would have told you how I got over the moon smoking and taking things together.

What I want to do with this thread isn't that.

I want to raise awareness about psychedelics use in therapy because I'm concerned we're using the wrong substance as our basis.

 

If I was a psychiatrist who was ready to offer a patient the psilocybin treatment as a breakthrough therapy choice, I would think about the same things as any doctor.

Is my patient an addict?

Will they react well to a psychoactive compound?

And then also the things I had thought in my earlier post, like will this send the wrong message about substance use, will it lead to self-medicating or drug seeking.

What I might not know (I am busy, and I haven't read the journal on this yet, but I see you),

is Alexander Shulgin - Wikipedia did some research on making this work better than it did!

 

The most well-known substances for psychedelic psychoactive effects are arguably LSD and Psilocybin.

And that factors into the therapy! Am I giving you something you've never heard of that's going to do something weird?

Or am I prescribing something you've heard of and may even be curious or optimistic about that I think will make an impact such that you'll make therapeutic progress?

Beyond the way you perceive this remedy and whether you've heard of it, there is something else that I'm aware of that most doctors probably are not.

LSD as well as Psilocybin are considerably harsher than what Alexander Shulgin - Wikipedia had done his research about, or alternates that he helped pioneer.

 

It's serious, and a psychiatrist or pmhnp could make logical conclusions and comparisons to the difference between adderall and vyvanse and the 2c drug, its cousin, and the current mechanism of psilocybin derivation.

 

I am not a proponent of substance abuse.

Usually, we see this come up in conversations and then wonder if there is a 'substance use disorder' prevailing. And at the heart of my interest invested into this is a substance use experience.

If to save my skin, and to remove myself from substance abuse I had to say one thing it's that my interest in the topic is intended as a critique.

We are using a jackhammer when we should be using a chisel.

And if I wanted to offer proverbial 'kid gloves' to someone suffering (with whichever ailment is promoting psilocybin therapy), I would offer them a clinical 'leg up' by pointing to shulgin and something softer, more psychologically polite, more therapeutically intuitive,

and to point very dramatically and say,

'MORE USER FRIENDLY'!

 

To arrive at healthy conclusions, we can remove the difficulty we have experienced with LSD and Psilocybin by correcting the dosage.

We can also eschew the stigma that comes along for anyone who has previously experienced the inescapable consequences and mindless fear of a bad mushrooms experience, a bad LSD experience, or Nbom (25I-NBOMe/N-Bombs), or bath salts.

Let's remove the barrier. This is more medically correct, gentler, and one more time more 'user friendly' and inclusive.

 

Like the difference between hard rock and adult contemporary, as a sober person in search of mental wellness we can be accountable as adults turning our backs on what went wrong, and this can be a healthier viable solution.

 

I guess for me it's no longer a point of contention; illicit substance use is part of my past. They say in 12-Step programs "Once an addict, always an addict" and I can borrow from that for my statement here: I do not like the way it makes me feel.

My psychological journey is mostly in the past as well. Each day is the same challenge though, and often it's comparable to 'walking both ways uphill', but I no longer lean against an experience outside the bounds of what is socially acceptable as an adult.

I do take medication, but I think of this as more of a tool for understanding.

Since I've had enough time to think about life and want to prioritize things that are more socially acceptable, like parenting, like etiquette, like morality, and trying to keep my own understanding of myself outside the reach of others (metaphor... you know how the baby takes off your shades?) and as to who I am as a person without conjecture about who I was not intersecting normally with who I've become as anomalous or awkward (reaching again for the ill-gotten shades),

I no longer associate my priorities with my relationship to substance abuse. I want to be accepted now. Without contingency. It isn't being offered though.

Anyway, my interest in this has too many parallels with my past in substance abuse but it's always in the foreground as I seek out mental wellness, social accountability (emotional responsibility and the etiquette-bound expectation of emotional safety without discrimination), and for maturity and responsibility to characterize my persona (which can be tricky depending on where you live & socioeconomic status).

The better medicine may well be from the Shulgin research.

 

Your point of view is interesting. I'm sure it's grown out of your own experience. At the same time, I must say that some psilocybin experiences I've had were definitely therapeutic for me. In terms of harshness, my personal experience has demonstrated that this is a matter of dosage level.

As with LSD, dosage level plus the social setting and one's mental/emotional set are key factors in how the psilocybin experience rolls out. Of course, psilocybin (which I've preferred for myself, after initial acid self exploration) may not be the right thing for every person or for every therapeutic need.

My experiences have never occurred in professionally guided circumstances, so maybe I've been lucky. But psilocybin therapy often seems to be quite successful outside of North America, for example in Britain. Canada's federal government has authorized psilocybin therapy research, allowing sessions in instances where a psychiatrist has confirmed that the condition of a patient (say, something like clinical depression) has proven resistant to the available array of conventional pharmaceutical treatments plus counseling.

The suppression of psychedelic research and therapy accomplished from the mid-sixties & up to 1970 was unfortunate, though how it happened can be explained. Banning was certainly clearly led by conservative politicians. My hope is that the current wave of extreme conservatism at the U.S. federal level doesn't block the spread of gentle, attentive therapy using either well-known psychedelics or Shulgin's useful substances.