Psychedelics for health and healing. Psychotherapy and shamanism.

[Satya]

The question/subject of psychedelics (specifically plants) for mental health was raised on another thread. I thought it was worth creating a separate thread for, for anyone interested, and, to stay on topic re: commemorations for the great funny man Robin Williams. http://thetaobums.com/topic/35932-robin-williams-dead-at-63/page-2

 

White Wolf Running On Air

-Posted Today, 02:54 AM

I wonder what teacher planets could have provided, John Hopkins University has some studies with Psilocybin being very effective with PTSD and other

Iboga also very effective in breaking drug addictions

Psilocybin has been shown to be effective in lots of other areas too. Anxiety, depression. I know some of the psychiatrists who were involved in one of the studies around it. One of them was personally injected with it before going into an fMRI scanner.

Lots of other psychedelics (not just plants) too. MDMA, DMT, Ayahuasca (specifically, rather than pure DMT), LSD. Generally they seem incredibly useful for psychotherapeutic work as they help break down barriers in minutes that can otherwise take months; they make the mind/self/perception much more malleable, less rigid, which is self evidently beneficial for therapy and internal work (also, of course, this aspect of them means they can be very dangerous in the wrong settings).

You've got the biochemical effects which can be beneficial, the psychological effects, and, the spiritual effects. It'd be interesting to see if in the future, like we have many health professionals trained in alternative medicine overtly, or privately, if we'd similarly ever get psychotherapists who are trained in the psychotherapeutic use of psychedelics, AND in shamanistic skills for their spiritual use.

They used to be commonly used in psychotherapy settings, and often to good effect too (there'll always be exceptions). This was before one of the most ignorant, costly, dumbest, insidious wars was ever initiated, by nixon, "the war on drugs." All war is bad of course; protective use of force, and self defence are necessary; generally, war, not so much. If you look at the figures of what has been spent on fighting this war, how long it's been going on, and the victims of it -

(who range across all demographics and classes, from the abused unregulated worker in the poppy fields, right up to the upper class heroine user who ODs because of un-standardised dosages, mixed drugs and having a stigmatised illness that has to be hidden)

- then you'll see that, though it may seem incredibly innocuous, it is in fact one of the most costly wars on many levels.

If you haven't heard of it already then MAPS http://www.maps.org is pretty much THE go to organisation for the modern use of psychedelics for health.

Ibogaine IS incredibly interesting. I was contemplating taking it, not for addiction, but to help break anxiety patterns/issues. Though, after a bit of research I came across some studies that discussed how some have died after taking it, days later, from subtle minor heart problems that are seemingly un-detectable before.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc0804248

https://wiki.dmt-nexus.me/w/images/d/d8/Fatalities_after_ibogaine_use.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22458604

If I ever did do it now then I think It'd either be in a clinic where I was monitored for a few days after, as well as during, OR, if I could get the necessary kit myself, and see if any of my friends are trained in life support.

This is generally just a response to the quoted post, (and an opening up of the topic), there's a lot of info on it all.

Edited August 13, 2014 by Satya

[silent thunder]

psilocybin have on several occasions, opened up aspects of awareness about myself that allowed me to release decades of useless and unwanted modes of seeing and behaving. I'm profoundly grateful for the experiences, so is my family as they are the direct beneficiaries of the results

 

http://thetaobums.com/topic/34813-gratitude-for-psilocybin-experiences/?hl=psilocybin

 

more details in this old post of mine.

[Nungali]

Ooo fav topic but I been online too much already - I just posted about LSD and corpse visualizations (your own corpse that is) and elsewhere yesterday or the day before about Ex0-psychology.

[eye_of_the_storm]

Cool stuff Satya

I'll be back to read Silent Thunder