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"There is, of course, a catch. For mice, having a critical period open for too long causes neural disruptions. Some experts fear that, for people, carelessly flinging wide the doors of personal development could put the very core of their identity in jeopardy by erasing the habits and memories that make them them. A critical period is also a time of vulnerability. While childhood can be filled with wonder and magic, children are also more impressionable. “We can really screw kids up much more than we can adults,” she says. This is why responsible adults intuitively know to protect children from exposure to potentially scary or disturbing material. Or, as Dölen puts it, “You want to teach children new things, but you don’t want them to learn Japanese from Japanese porn.”

An adult who undergoes this kind of treatment to heal PTSD could, in the wrong hands, end up traumatized further. In the worst scenarios, patients could be vulnerable to abuse. Unscrupulous therapists or other predators could try to use psychedelics to manipulate others, Dölen says. This is more than paranoid speculation. Quite a few experts, Dölen included, think that Charles Manson’s ability to completely brainwash his followers relied on the high doses of LSD he regularly gave them prior to bombarding their minds with hate-filled lectures and murderous orders."

> An adult who undergoes this kind of treatment to heal PTSD could, in the wrong hands, end up traumatized further.

There's a lot of variables there. I can only speak to my experience. I started seeing psychedelics getting talked about in veterans circles and was curious about them. My trauma stems from many sources, but what's common is a lost of innate trust, and the end result is that trust is easier to tear down quickly than build up. Not great for healthy relationships, communication, and a number of life's necessities. I decided to wait on trying them and went about doing things like CBT to change my behavior and focus on getting out of this anxiety riddled loop I was in.

Fast forward a decade and I was really at a point where I just needed help letting go of my trauma. I'd dealt with it, there was nothing more to be done, yet still the door would not shut. If you're at a place where the metaphorical door won't shut, psychedelics can be a helpful tool. You're really going to already need to be in a place where you can be mindful (present) and focus on what you want to change. After you've tripped you really need to unpack where your mind went and why; that's to say separate the garbage from the work to be done.

Not everyone should do psychedelics just because they're seeking healing. They can provide that, but you need to be in the right place and willing to do the work. Being triggered in the middle of a trip is a good way to really re-traumatize yourself in the way that reading about trauma identical to yours can be traumatizing.

Sounds like the reason why there's a backlash against exposing kids to all of these controversial topics in the "culture wars" in the West.
Nah. That would be because one political party sustains itself by keeping it's voter base on a treadmill of fear and outrage, is moving strongly towards authoritarianism, and has a large contingent specifically intent on implementing a flavor of religious fascism called Dominionism (cf. "Seven Mountians Mandate").

These latest "topics in the culture wars" are simply that, the latest usable tools that can be used, along with exaggerating and flat-out lying about the topics, to maximize the outrage of their voter base to drive turnout.

Meanwhile, it also helps the authoritarian causes to maximize the demonization of these same "other" minority groups, and trans groups are both easy and fresh targets. (Nevermind the facts: there are essentially zero cases of people in drag being any kind of threat to children, while there are literally thousands of cases of religious 'leaders' from the very same sects, sexually abusing children, with new cases every day.)

Stop trying to normalize marginalizing people.

I think you're right.

On one side, you see adults who believe that sexuality and cross-gender identification are immutable, or at least practically immutable. Their goal is to expose e.g. heterosexual kids to the idea that some of their peers will be different from them so that they aren't shocked and scandalized by it later, then lash out unfairly as a result of prejudice against the unknown.

On the other side, you see adults who equate deviations from acceptable expressions of sexuality and gender - you don't see many conservatives boycotting national brands over young boys at hooters or child beauty pageants featuring little girls - as being inherently obscene. They naturally want to protect children from what they see as obscene and abnormal.

They both believe that they have children's best interests at heart.

That said, based on all available data, it seems like sexuality and gender identification are mostly immutable and that truth will slowly win out in the end. For example, nearly every conservative has met a little boy who acted remarkably girlish since toddlerhood and grew up to be gay unsurprisingly. Seeing that process play out, then claiming that gayness is a social contagion requires cognitive dissonance.

It's a part of the process of social change.... The last huge wave of homophobia that had legal consequences was in the 1970's and was led by a group called "Save the Children" -- it's all just the same dynamics repeating, except today it's more-so around broader gender norms, as opposed to a narrow focus on "men sleep with women". This video does a great job of laying it out through that sort of lens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6qUxa30SFA

Can you expand on this? I find it hard to understand what similarities you see to what children today are being “exposed” to and Charles Manson drugging people with LSD and convincing them to kill other people.
DISCLAIMER: all advice given here is given under the assumption that you did your research, and that you have good reasons why you're interested in psychedelics as a tool. They're a powerful tool, and powerful tools cut both ways. Turning into a new age woo head is a real risk, I've seen it happen to the staunchest of sceptics, no one is immune. Do your research, people, test your drugs, and be careful.

I think this research sort of puts the kibosh on microdosing as a paradigm, which has been my intuition all along. If you really want the potential from psychedelics, microdosing is sort of the wrong approach I always thought.

What you want to do instead is take them maybe once a year at most, though just one trip in a lifetime can be sufficient depending on your situation, then spend the following period of plasticity putting a lot of effort into changing your life the way you want to, establish habits, pick up new techniques, whatever it is you want to accomplish. You will learn faster, be more able to establish habits. And that learning is forever. You can reap the benefits for the rest of your life, completely sober.

I have done extensive self experimentation with microdosing of various psychedelics and the results were fairly clear to me. I felt smarter, and overall pretty great. I felt like I was making all these brilliant connections. But whenever there was an objective source of truth available, it became clear this was all an illusion, I was struggling to make connections that would otherwise be obvious to me, and that made it feel more significant than it was.

Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usual level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off.

>Chess, for instance, was one such source of truth. Played a couple long games against evenly matched opponent(rated and everything). Made a complete ass of myself. Played easily 3-400 elo points below my usually level. And all the while thinking I was playing brilliantly and calculating deep lines, I was really just imagining lines that never worked. My working memory was terrible. Time management completely off.

As a supplemental anecdote, I won my first chess tournament at Manhattan Chess club in the early 1990s while dosed on a significant amount of mushrooms. Certainly the perception of time is an issue and I'm certain the results would have been different if the game had been shorter (as most games are these days), but in a 120 + 60 it wasn't an issue.

Interesting. What kind of state of mind are we talking about here? Threshold, above threshold, etc? I've never played a tournament game on a threshold or above dose before. I did play a casual game on a very large dose(probably 50 or 75mg) of 2c-b once, but I could barely discern the board at that point, and the results were... as expected.
> I felt smarter, and overall pretty great. I felt like I was making all these brilliant connections.

And here I thought the whole point of micro-dosing is the dose is too small to feel anything at all.

AIUI what you're calling microdosing is still in the realm of macrodosing, and no shit your working memory and time management was affected. What you were feeling were low-key hallucinations.

Well, I guess what do you mean by feel? I've taken micro-dose amounts, 10-20ug, and have definitely realized I had taken something, but only if I really focused on it. It's certainly not the same as taking 50ug, but you can feel your body working a little differently. Maybe you have to get into amounts even smaller than that? Or maybe it's just placebo? I don't know, hard to say.

I do agree with the GP though, sometimes the thing you need is to just jump into a full on 100-150ug trip and hang out in it for the day. Let yourself regain some of that open state and change up the habitual patterns you may not know you're locked into over the course of the next days and weeks. I personally end up doing it about once a year, give or take, and it always ends up being a positive experience (if sometimes difficult).

Sure, I tried doses that literally didn't do anything, but they literally didn't do anything. There was no magical functional in between land there. It was either nothing at all, or very slight lift in mood and significant side effects, especially as it went on for days.
> And here I thought the whole point of micro-dosing is the dose is too small to feel anything at all.

That is not the point of micro-dosing. What would be the purpose of taking it, if it does absolutely nothing at all?

The idea is that you are taking a very small dose, to cause a mild effect, and not so much that you trip out and start hallucinating.

So you are convinced the real benefits lie in macro and not micro?
Yes. I should have specified that. Rare, larger doses.
Interesting factoid in the preamble: the biochemical basis of the addictive nature of social media?

> "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction."

LSD and similar drugs can definitely improve one's 3D-visualization capabilities, but I think this requires putting in a fair amount of work on the concepts beforehand. It's reminiscent of the saying, 'chance favors the prepared mind', so if you spend say a month working extensively with 3D models of molecules, proteins, platonic solids and what not and then (under controlled conditions) ingest a psychedelic, a cognitive breakthrough is possible, such as gaining the ability to visualize what a 3D object looks like after successive x-, y-, z- axis rotations and so on, which is useful skill in many fields, from auto mechanic to protein chemist to structural architect.

Nice to see this subject finally being studied in a rigorous manner, at least.

> "Oxytocin and serotonin, she found, work together in a brain region called the nucleus accumbens to produce the good feelings that come from social interaction."

Well, this supports my hypothesis on why talking to people was a really good coping mechanism for ADHD. As far as I can tell, oxytocin isn't dampened(?) like dopamine presumably is.

(I say presumably because of the specific symptoms I had and also the specific ways in which stimulants help with them, but I've never had my brain dissected or anything to confirm, seeing as I'm still alive and all.)

https://archive.is/jd5oW
There is so much psychedelic research happening right now. But when will it reach patients outside of trials?
Beginning of my MD PhD program a guy who was big in that field and tried small scale trials gave a whole schpill about how big pharma was unfairly blocking this. Then I spent over an hour talking to him about it. This field has a huge challenge finding a consistent and reproducible outcome to aim for. When I pressed the guy he was pretty clear that there were participants in these studies that has pretty bad outcomes and would have been in bad shape if there wasnt a medical team on hand.

Im sure we will find a use for this someday but research has to do more than prove it is sometimes good for people. We need to know how to consistently identify those people who need it and the outcome desired.

> When I pressed the guy he was pretty clear that there were participants in these studies that has pretty bad outcomes and would have been in bad shape if there wasnt a medical team on hand

Are you aware of source-able examples of this?

I’ve been paying attention to the field for awhile, and I was under the impression that between pre-screening (people at risk for psychosis and a few other specific psychiatric issues should not participate), and proper set/setting, negative outcomes have been rare, and there is a high percentage of extremely positive outcomes.

Most of the psychedelic research I've seen boils down to "take psychedelics and do stuff to get a result, here's why you get the result". You can absolutely take psychedelics and do stuff yourself.
The American Medical Association says 'no no this is so unsafe, you need a Physician who completed US residency, doesnt matter if they are a lifelong expert in the craft from Europe, you pay our cartel or else. Ignore our blood letting, opioid, and ivermectin dark pasts.'

I dream of a science based medical system in the future.

But what stuff to do?
When they create a synthetic derivative that can be patented.

Exactly like happened with ketamine as esketamine.

I just acquire mushrooms on my own and discuss the trips with my psychiatrist. He’s always quite enthusiastic about it and I’ve found them to be very helpful.
Move to California. Order mushrooms from literally thousands of local websites and surprisingly reputable proprietors.
When it can be sufficiently monetized.
Move to Australia.
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley is pretty accessible and although not scientifically rigorous, provides an ahem ergonomic framework for thinking about psychonautics (which I have, of course, never engaged in)
Lone and meandering article refusing to get to the point promised in the headline.
Yeah, just skimmed it and it comes down to:

Psychadelics seem to have the ability to leave the user (after the actual 'trip' has worn off) in a state of heightened receptiveness for a long duration (length is different dependent on the drug, but counts weeks in some cases). This state is called a 'critical period' and is usually experienced in childhood.

This state might allow for easier digestion of new material, forming new habits or skills or allow the user to be taken advantage of (Charles Manson, and his LSD fueled cult, is mentioned in this regard).

It's worth noting this is not new knowledge, it's completely obvious to anyone who's tried psychedelics. I haven't properly dug through the paper for all the details yet, maybe there's some interesting nuggets of new insight in there.

But so far it's looking like this is further confirming what us psychonauts have always sort of understood. It's very encouraging to get rigorous science to back the intuition up though. It will obviously help guide future research in clinical applications.

Here's the actual most recent research paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3

I wonder if that would be a way for adults to acquire perfect pitch?
This publication by the same scientists is probably more interesting:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06204-3

"Here we demonstrate in mice that the ability to reopen the social reward learning critical period is a shared property across psychedelic drugs."

Thank you for that! I was going to ask if a scientific abstract is available.
Thank you for finding so mild words to describe the style of this article.
I use LSD for similar reasons.

I actually ordered a lifetime supply of acid and got into big trouble from that.

Really good stuff, makes me joyous.

How do you keep a lifetime supply of LSD? Isn't it an unstable molecule with a limited shelf life?
Someone accidentally tripped on LSD while cleaning a vintage synth from the 60s

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/1960s-rock-music-s...

Er no... LSD stored correctly can last an awfully long time. A lifetime supply for one person? Sure unless that person is Timothy Leary and his entourage!
The plan was to order 350 tabs to Finland.

The 300 tabs letter was scanned with lights and got caught.

The 50 tabs letter actually arrived but was obviously lost because customs began their investigation.

In Finland, LSD happens to be "an extremely dangerous" substance and 350 tabs gets "offensive / serious drug crime" (349 would not necessarily). I didn't know this; kind of funny.

However, this was all calculated in the sense that with all probability I will not go into prison nevertheless. Simply cannot try again any criminal activity in Finland / ever / for a long while.

LSD will last long time stored properly. Putting those small bags that packages use to remove moisture into airtight plastic bag and that into dark place where tempest doesn't vary lots.

I refuse to take any despite wanting to.

I have thoughts on how it works, at a not physical realm.

What makes you flip bit to joyous? What chemical or physical or physiological change happens? Does it wear off?

I'm not depressed. I was at one point and found the solution. I have extensive joy. Yet I want to try because I think it does something that isn't the same bit flip you're experiencing.

Where can you order that stuff?
Her interview on the Psychoactice podcast was really good if you want more than this article delivers.

Primarily she’s getting closer to a more appropriate definition of what a psychedelic is, with the more common modern usage including ketamine and MDMA instead of just tryptamines. All of them seem to re-open a critical period of learning through different mechanisms.

The headline sounds exactly like the premise of Crouch's Recursion.
Anybody have a tl;dr? I don't want to read about the seashell collection on the researcher's desk.
Research seems to prove that psychedelics can be a tool for opening up the so called critical periods. Critical periods are, in my understanding, the highly receptive periods of learning - brain wiring and rewiring. Childhood is abundant in these periods, but they open up in adulthood naturally after trauma, e.g. stroke as high plasticity periods, which go away quickly and possibly are too short. Totally subjective take: future result might be able to explain /why/ psychedelics have profound effect. Interestingly the life-changing traumatic experiences have similar effect, creating these critical periods - body responds to extreme conditions with risky high brain plasticity periods.