Curious about people's experiences with weed/shrooms to treat depression

[iw2live_idkhow]

I saw that there's been studies on using these to treat depression and it seems somewhat promising, can anyone share their experiences and if it helped even a little bit?

I have some people I could potentially contact about getting access to these and so I'm curious about them.

 

[J&L383]

interested in this as well. Psylocibin is sort of legal now in this state, where you can have an "experience" at a treatment center. But I haven't tried it yet because I've heard of mixed results.

 

[de_cache]

interested in this as well. Psylocibin is sort of legal now in this state, where you can have an "experience" at a treatment center. But I haven't tried it yet because I've heard of mixed results.

Colorado?

 

[divinemistress36]

Weed never helped. Microdosing shrooms hasnt helped. But Id like to go to a legal state like Colorado Or Oregon and do a big heroic dose with a therapist. On my bucket list

 

[EvisceratedJester]

A lot of those findings are largely from clinical settings and may not fully reflect the results seen in non-clinical settings (i.e., there might be more variability when it comes to its effectiveness at treating depression). Shrooms and psychedelics in general are not a magical cure for mental health issues, and, in some cases, they can also worsen them. You shouldn't just start self-medicating, especially on a substance whose effects can vary a lot depending on your environment and headspace.

My first trip on shrooms was actually quite horrible and involved a lot of mood swings and a lot of disorientation. For reference, I'm not even mentally ill, rather, I was just in a rough patch mentally back then. If it weren't for the fact that I was in a self-destructive phase at the time and was looking for things that could cause me pain, I probably would not have done them again. I won't lie and say that they didn't help, because they did once I started to get the hang of tripping, and I haven't really had any bad or rough trips outside of the first two times I tried them. At the same time, I can easily imagine someone who is mentally ill and is currently having a rough time coping with their mental illness finding themselves going through a horrible trip (one worse, my first one) and coming out of it traumatized. That is not even getting into the potential risks that come from psychedelic use for those who have or who have a family history of schizophrenia, or just issues with psychosis in general. Psychedelics can also cause things like thought loops, which can have a detrimental impact on your mental health.

While I don't mind people using them recreationally (hell, that is what I use them for), I wouldn't recommend using them to self-medicate. It's probably better to look into doing psychedelic-assisted therapy instead.

 

[Whole-Ad]

Yeah it helped me kind of. I smoked weed pretty much every day for a year. It allowed me to focus and made me happy when I was high, you know everything was funny, nothing was serious. I found it almost impossible to sit and be alone with my thoughts, but when I smoked weed everything was okay, I could watch a movie, I could play games on my computer.

It was all good when I smoked weed, until it became an issue. If I ran out of weed, I'd be stressing the whole time, even become more suicidal because I had to face the world without it. I tried to stop smoking so often but I couldn't. If I had weed, I would smoke it everyday without fail. I hated it. I started getting paranoid when I was high. I got a new puppy, and I would always get paranoid that she was dying. I know it doesn't make much sense but at the time it felt so real.

I even started to get bad highs. I felt like I was dying. You can't die from weed and I knew that but what I was feeling felt real. There was this one time, I was going abroad the next day and I just thought I was going to die that night, and dying wasn't bothering me it was the fact that I would have ruined the holiday for everyone else lol.

I quit weed last November. It was hard because weed was the best way for me to escape reality. If you gave me weed right now I would still smoke it, I don't want to, but I would. It never cured me. I'm still depressed. I still want to die. It just gave me a way to escape for a couple hours.

 

[J&L383]

A lot of those findings are largely from clinical settings and may not fully reflect the results seen in non-clinical settings (i.e., there might be more variability when it comes to its effectiveness at treating depression). Shrooms and psychedelics in general are not a magical cure for mental health issues, and, in some cases, they can also worsen them. You shouldn't just start self-medicating, especially on a substance whose effects can vary a lot depending on your environment and headspace.

My first trip on shrooms was actually quite horrible and involved a lot of mood swings and a lot of disorientation. For reference, I'm not even mentally ill, rather, I was just in a rough patch mentally back then. If it weren't for the fact that I was in a self-destructive phase at the time and was looking for things that could cause me pain, I probably would not have done them again. I won't lie and say that they didn't help, because they did once I started to get the hang of tripping, and I haven't really had any bad or rough trips outside of the first two times I tried them. At the same time, I can easily imagine someone who is mentally ill and is currently having a rough time coping with their mental illness finding themselves going through a horrible trip (one worse, my first one) and coming out of it traumatized. That is not even getting into the potential risks that come from psychedelic use for those who have or who have a family history of schizophrenia, or just issues with psychosis in general. Psychedelics can also cause things like thought loops, which can have a detrimental impact on your mental health.

While I don't mind people using them recreationally (hell, that is what I use them for), I wouldn't recommend using them to self-medicate. It's probably better to look into doing psychedelic-assisted therapy instead.

Thank you. Very helpful. I think I have "thought loops" already and doubt I need more. Best to wait and see as more data comes in and definitely won't try a heroic dose without a good professional consultion.

 

[SovietSuicide]

It's too subjective, it affects everyone differently.

Something definitely changed my consciousness the first time I took acid.

I think I make a lot more connections between things. Like I'm more aware of patterns of thoughts and phenomena. It sheds a new light on the nature of reality for sure.

If you're depressed because of an internal struggle IG they'd help and if it's because of material conditions they'd make it worse. Idk just my thoughts.

They inflate ego, don't dissolve it. Just be aware of that. When people talk about ego death they're talking about their ego getting so inflated on a high that they start having truly mystical experiences, that takes massive ego inflation because you are experiencing being the absolute centre of the universe and it sticks around.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

They inflate ego, don't dissolve it. Just be aware of that. When people talk about ego death they're talking about their ego getting so inflated on a high that they start having truly mystical experiences, that takes massive ego inflation because you are experiencing being the absolute centre of the universe and it sticks around.

No, they aren't. When people talk about ego death, they are referring to essentially losing their sense of self. Psychedelics tend to act on brain areas involved in different aspects of self, from self-bodily consciousness to self-narrative, basically disrupting them. Ego-death has been found to correlate with decreased levels of activity in the Default Mode Network, a set of brain areas that become active when the brain is at rest (they become more active when we aren't focused on external tasks, especially those requiring higher-order cognition). The DMN plays a role in things, from self-referential thinking to the retrieval of autobiographical memories. Higher levels of DMN activity have also been linked to multiple mental illnesses, such as depression. The DMN is also involved in the construction of self-narrative. It is thought that decreases in DMN activity are what causes ego-death.


Basically, ego-death being caused by an inflation of ego (besides completely going against the definition of that term) also wouldn't make much sense from a neuroscientific perspective, since research shows that ego-death is linked to decreases in brain activity in areas of the brain involved in our sense of self (our "egos", if you will).

 

[iw2live_idkhow]

A lot of those findings are largely from clinical settings and may not fully reflect the results seen in non-clinical settings (i.e., there might be more variability when it comes to its effectiveness at treating depression). Shrooms and psychedelics in general are not a magical cure for mental health issues, and, in some cases, they can also worsen them. You shouldn't just start self-medicating, especially on a substance whose effects can vary a lot depending on your environment and headspace.

Basically, ego-death being caused by an inflation of ego (besides completely going against the definition of that term) also wouldn't make much sense from a neuroscientific perspective, since research shows that ego-death is linked to decreases in brain activity in areas of the brain involved in our sense of self (our "egos", if you will).

Thanks for both these replies, they were really informative and has given me stuff to think about.

It was all good when I smoked weed, until it became an issue. If I ran out of weed, I'd be stressing the whole time, even become more suicidal because I had to face the world without it. I tried to stop smoking so often but I couldn't. If I had weed, I would smoke it everyday without fail. I hated it. I started getting paranoid when I was high. I got a new puppy, and I would always get paranoid that she was dying. I know it doesn't make much sense but at the time it felt so real.

Thanks for sharing your experience, I will definitely keep this in mind going forward.