[ferryman]

I think that there is always a survivorship bias with such anecdotes. We mostly hear about stories of people who have had good experiences with it - they share the recommendation to others too. On the other hand people who have had bad trips are less likely to talk about it.

[127]

To prove survivor-ship bias, you would have to show that somehow either bad or good experiences never gain visibility, which to me doesn't seem to be the case at all.

With natural medicine there's always people who point out the downsides, but with products made by the pharmacological industry, there's always those who defend SSRIs.

Is it even possible to gather some actual data on this issue without obvious bias either way?

The medical industry seems to have obvious motive to downplay any natural remedy as it doesn't make them money, and actively competes with their own products. On the other hand what motive would the average person have to unreasonably hype up things like the healing power of shrooms?

[pessimizer]

The medical industry has obvious motive to unreasonably hype up the healing power of shrooms, because they are illegal to distribute and use, and their dosage is uncertain. If they are judged effective, they will only be distributed by big pharma in specific, approved preparations and distillations.

> what motive would the average person have to unreasonably hype up things like the healing power of shrooms?

It's something to hang a personality from.

[servercobra]

Big pharma is not going to be pushing for shrooms, LSD, etc. Many studies show these substances can have curative effects after a single use, which means no more money for them. Things like Ketamine that need to be taken more often are far more useful to big pharma, which is why that is being prescribed now IMO.

[pmoriarty]

Big pharma is not the main driver of ketamine use for treating depression right now, as it's no longer patented so nearly as profitable for pharmaceutical companies. There is a newly patented ketamine derivative called esketamine that is making inroads in to depression treatment, but plain old ketamine is still used quite a lot.

There are a couple of drivers of ketamine's popularity for treating depression:

First, it actually seems to work astonishingly well for a lot of people (certainly way better than standard antidepressants), though not for everyone.

Second, it's a big money grab for ketamine "therapists" (I use "therapists" in quotes because many of them just sit around while you get your injection, and don't actually provide much if any therapy) who can charge $500 or more per treatment (which usually isn't covered by insurance), and people often come back for treatment multiple times a week or month for long periods of time. The cost of ketamine itself in these treatments is negligible.

An interesting development in ketamine therapy is the use of ketamine lozenges, which patients can take at home and therefore are way cheaper than having a medical team inject you with ketamine in their office.

[Leparamour]

>On the other hand what motive would the average person have to unreasonably hype up things like the healing power of shrooms?

Ego and I'm-better-and-more-enlightened-than-you attitude. You find this very often with cannabis smokers or "ents" as they fancy themselves. Also it's not that hard to find people peddling any type of dubious method : Homeopathy, crystals, acupuncture, Chakra meditation, putting up angel figurines. Often with the same amount of conviction and zealousness.

[pmoriarty]

Read trip reports on Erowid.[1]

There are plenty of both good and bad trip reports.

The thing about bad trips, though, is that many people actually get a lot out of them, and find them to be therapeutic or something they learned from.

I've personally learned a lot more from my bad trips than my good trips, and ultimately found them a lot more rewarding. Not that I'd want to have a bad trip, but I found them to be a lot more insightful and those were the trips that really helped me grow, while the good trips were just fun.

[1] - https://erowid.org/experiences/

[hutzlibu]

"On the other hand people who have had bad trips are less likely to talk about it."

Depends, it can also go the other way around.

I remember from my teenage years, that mostly the horror trips from some persons, with the scary anecdotes of people who stayed on the trip and never came of it and stayed in some asylum, were openly shared.

One of the reasons, I was very cautious and never did a mushroom trip at that time and especially not in a potential bad environments like parties, focused on drinking.

[Leparamour]

That was my experience as well. In my later teenage years there was a pretty successful movie around where the protagonist develops schizophrenia after using LSD one single time and his subsequential descent into "madness". That scared me off psychedelics for decades.

[hutzlibu]

Sounds like "Das weiße Rauschen"? (The white noise, but I think he did mushrooms)

If so, I saw that one too ...

[Leparamour]

That's the one and you're right, according to wikipedia they were doing magic mushrooms not LSD.

Great and intense movie. So far the only time where I can say with certainty that a movie changed my life.

[pps]

The thing is that even bad trips can be very, very useful if you treat psychedelics as a tool for exploration of your mind. I had two super bad trips - with 7g and 5g dose, in both I felt like I'm trapped in my mind and there were no world outside of my mind, and that idea was constantly repeating, with me feeling that there is no time and it will be forever like that - it was like pure hell :) Ultimately it was mind opening for me and I would recommend mushrooms to others if I knew that they are mentally strong and healthy.

[BiteCode_dev]

That's because:

- bad trips are rare if your respect set and settings, which every responsible consumer will tell you to do.

- they have been used politically in bad faith. It's only fair to not add to the stack of propaganda.

- most of bad trips are not a bad thing. It can be spectacular, but rarely dangerous, and may actually be a good thing. My only bad trip helped me grow just like my good ones. It was not pleasant, just like throwing up stale food is not, but I was mentally healthier after it. Some dark things are inside of us all, and it's good they come out, but the experience is likely not something we crave for.

[pvaldes]

Talking about survivor bias, I meet a girl that tried magic mushrooms first time in a Saturday night. She was minor, young and naive at that time. Her night ended with a CPR.

She learned a valuable lesson that weekend about buying funny stuff in plastic bags from strangers.