Hearsay af but I have heard of that amount being taken. The dude was never the same again, though. Whether for better or worse is harder to say. He didn’t regret it at least, and seemed to be doing well. But he definitely saw some shit.

I get it. I’ve been down that road within the last couple years after decades of “treatment resistant depression”. The treatments aren’t pseudoscience, but it might make more sense when you realize it doesn’t do anything that can’t be done without them. It just accelerates what you can already do with therapy and positive lifestyle changes - provided you do those things. It can also help people with lingering depression whose circumstances have changed for the better. I’m not saying it’s impossible for them to help you and anything is worth a shot, but I would emphasize that you get what you put in and if your circumstances are a big contributor (like they are for many of us) it’s going to be an uphill battle.

Shrooms have high potential and they’re honestly easier to get. But mindset is still important. For some people, it’s a one and done cure. For many, they need to re dose every few months. For very few, they convince themselves they’ve messed it up and make things worse. They hold the potential for radical shifts in perspective like you never imagined, but only if you’re ready.

TMS and ketamine work by increasing neuroplasticity. Your provider should tell you: the day of and after treatment, avoid things that are stressful and upsetting. Stay off social media, or make sure the media you do use is a carefully curated feed with positivity and things like cute animal pictures. Unfortunately, in my experience, many providers are not great about giving you this information. They lead you to believe you can just go get drugged up or zapped with magnets and magically get better. It doesn’t work like that. It makes your brain more flexible so you can break old thought patterns and develop new ones. If you just feed yourself stress and ragebait during the most critical periods, it is far less likely to help.

Shrooms are different. The mechanisms are less well understood because political fuckery has set research back over half a century, but neuroplasticity is likely only a fraction of it. They also break down barriers, create new associations, suppress the ego, and enhance social connections. It is … an unforgettable experience. I can’t say it’s for everybody because mindset is so important. But for anyone who is really ready to take control of their depression, I think shrooms make ketamine seem like a complete waste of time and money.

It’s the truth. Former domestic policy chief for the Nixon White House, John Ehrlichman, spoke out about it years after the fact:

“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman said. “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

Psychedelics were criminalized in the US to target anti-war protesters. This is in the open and on the record, but they’re still classified as a Schedule I drug: no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Neither of those things are true. It’s completely fucked up.

Yup, it was the first thing we checked when I actually got treatment. I’m sure that didn’t help, but compared to the pain of the migraines it was negligible. Having to refrain from pain meds for a while to make sure was a hell of a ride though. I lasted about three months. The doctor was satisfied with 1-2 but I wanted to be damn sure.

I give people the same warning nowadays. Don’t take that stuff more than once a week.

I’m kinda in this meme. I went through one of those big bottles roughly every 1-2 months for 20 years. Sometimes 12 pills in one day, with 4-8 acetaminophen on top (they do giant double packs of those too). Chronic migraines, but every doctor I asked for help just told me to lose weight so it went untreated and got worse and worse. Our health care suuuucks.

I did lose the weight. It didn’t magically fix my migraines, or affect them at all. Insurance dicked me around for another year and a half while my neurologist tried to help every way she could, but we finally got it down to only one migraine a week. I’m truly glad for that, but I still think about the years of unnecessary suffering, and how much better it might be now if I’d been treated sooner.

I try to minimize what I buy off Amazon, but I allow myself one bag of Frugra per month because I can’t get it any other way.

Steins;Gate. It starts slow, but once it picks up it’s amazing and puts all that slow build up to good use. Not sure if it technically counts though. Visual novels are a weird middle ground that aren’t really book or game, but there are some really good ones. Definitely the way to go if you’re in more of a reading mood but want some art and music to go with it.

My pixel (5a) only does adaptive charging if your alarm is set for the A.M. If you’re second or third shift, it doesn’t even try. There’s no way to turn it on even in developer options. It was a pretty big wtf when I figured that one out.