Hallucinogens Could Ease Existential Terror

[MAPS]

Hallucinogens Could Ease Existential Terror
Erica Rex/Scientific American
06/02/13

The therapeutic benefit of psilocybin lies in its capacity to provide a neurochemical bridge between spiritual guidance and talk therapy. Although questions remain about psilocybin’s precise mechanism of action, researchers agree on this point: the drug’s value depends entirely on the patient’s feelings and perceptions during the session and the way he or she processes the memories afterward.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hallucinogens-could-ease-existential-terror

 

[edgarshade]

I was lying on a lumpy off-white sofa under a mountain of blankets, wearing an eye mask and listening to a Brahms symphony playing through my headphones. The notes of a violin solo lit three strands of deep red light, which trickled like water in my right visual field. Deeper tones poured from above in huge blue clouds in the middle distance. Another violin flourish turned the sky yellow and brought with it a comet's tail of body parts flying from the upper left of my visual field to the lower right, disappearing behind me.

Wow! Where can I get this "Brahms" stuff?

 

[panic_the_digital]

"Could"?????????

 

[23536]

Is there a sudden epidemic of "existential terror"? This is the second recent article about that condition (the other one was about APAP as treatment).

 

[RobotRipping]

existential terror is an issue for people with terminal illnesses and psychedelics have shown to help people cope with the thought of death. I wouldn't say there's an epidemic but with people questioning science/religion and becoming more critical, it may be something that is of more relevance than in the past.

psychedelics are helpful for all issues existential. Either that or religion, or both. Though i could see the probability that a psychedelic could make ones existential worries worse.

and fuck why do they keep calling psychedelics, hallucinogens.

 

[Shameful]

Psychedelic experiences have been known to induce existential terror for a lot of individuals as well.

Not trying to take away validity from the approach/mode of thought/push for clinical applications/whatever, in fact I'm all for this kind of shit... just figured I might as well point that out, though.

 

[23536]

existential terror is an issue for people with terminal illnesses and psychedelics have shown to help people cope with the thought of death. I wouldn't say there's an epidemic but with people questioning science/religion and becoming more critical, it may be something that is of more relevance than in the past.

psychedelics are helpful for all issues existential. Either that or religion, or both. Though i could see the probability that a psychedelic could make ones existential worries worse.

It sounds like a made-up condition.

Why not use a term with current medical relevance, like depression-associated anxiety (i.e. hopelessness)?

There is a worldview called existentialism that afflicts mainly 19th and 20th century European intellectuals, but most of these are cured (i.e. dead).

It just feels like I'm grading freshman essays again, so maybe I'm biased. (Seriously, those fuckers cannot write at all. They're practically illiterate. I don't know what they did throughout high school).

 

[RobotRipping]

well to be fair they don't really teach you much about anything in high school lol. My favourite thing about existentialism is to pronounce it with a french Canadian accent.

Someone did make it up at some point but the term has been used quite commonly to describe terminally ill patients and how they feel about death. How do people deal with the idea of death when they believe life is absurd/meaningless? but yeah that's the same thing as hopelessness. I'm not sure why it's existential terror in the case of a terminally ill patient as their freedom really has nothing to do with it but maybe they are just referring to dealing with a meaningless absurd life that is not predetermined by God or some other principle or whatever. That's particular to a certain belief system though and definitely seems like it's being misused in this context.

Will psychedelics help me to deal with responsibility and freedom of my actions? or that my essence is not preceded by my existence? or that there is no inherent meaning to anything other than what we give to it? I guess existential terror would be the realization of existentialism in the first place lol.

I was far more influenced by rationalism then later logical positivism by my profs so i'm not sure exactly what is meant by existential terror of if people are even using the term correctly to describe such an experience. It's the same as when the media says kids of today are dealing existential anxiety or angst, no they aren't. I guess it's just trendy to say.