Bill Atkinson's psychedelic user interface

We need to push to make this stuff legal. I wouldn't go so far as to say lets sell it OTC vape pens at gas stations but a middle ground where you can go to a doctor to have this treatment performed.

I personally have never taken DMT though from everything I've read and heard on podcasts it's not something to be taken lightly. I think having a sort of "DMT Clinic" that you can go to would be the best middle ground of allowing the public access to these substances while also ensuring that there is a trained professional there to guide you through the process.

Saying "trained professional" in this context feels wired because this stuff has been underground for so long but I think it's starting to bubble up into the mainstream enough that we need to start bringing all that "into the light". Lets have training programs that teach people how to administer this stuff properly, how to deal with the negative side effects, etc.

One of the things that while I find understandable is ridiculous is the fact that Bill had to use a pseudonym in the community. I feel like if were at the point where you have C-suite types at Apple taking this stuff, it's time to think about making it available to the broader public.

Fwiw, "DMT" usually refers to nn-DMT, which is a lot different than 5-MeO-DMT (or bufo).

Agree, but the proponents of "Big Reality" really really really fight against its disruption.

Could you explain what you mean by that? Who are the proponents of “big reality”? How do they fight against its disruption?

That’s an amazing sentence…

It's a joke. People often have conspiracy theories about Big Pharma trying to prevent access to novel drugs that could disrupt their cash cows. The parent was jokingly talking about "Big Reality" as an imaginary group of people who hate to see "reality" disrupted by psychedelic experiences.

I took it as being a joke in the way "the matrix" was "a movie"

When someone has a profound psychedelic experience that shows them the arbitrary nature of many social constructs, or reveals possibilities for consciousness that mainstream science doesn't acknowledge... that's genuinely disruptive to systems built on those constructs.

The resistance is real, systematic, and rational (from the perspective of maintaining current power arrangements). Not a joke.

"I think having a sort of "DMT Clinic" that you can go to would be the best middle ground "

Well, Ayahuasca (with DMT as the active ingredient) retreats seem more and more common and are for some reasons tolerated more and more in europe. Technically it is illegal, but I can still book them online.

But I won't, as I don't trust the competence of the average new age "shaman".

I'm curious whether you think that resistance is genuinely adversarial or more based on ignorance and institutional inertia.

For example, someone might have insights about the interconnectedness of all life and wants to transition to regenerative agriculture or communal land use, but face zoning laws that enforce individual property ownership. Or someone might experience ego dissolution and wants to create more egalitarian workplace structures, but runs into rigid corporate hierarchies.

The state of Oregon is experimenting along these lines:

https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/preventionwellness/pages/psilo...

"A client may only access psilocybin at a licensed service center during an administration session in the presence of a trained, licensed facilitator."

Psychedelics challenge the post-Enlightenment project of "rational" adulthood. Western civilization has a deep myth: the myth of necessary order - a yoking of rationality, order, and progress together into what forms the basis for modernity. Psychedelics cannot have intrinsic value outside of rationality, so, they must either be accepted on the basis of rationality and order or face rejection. We express this using the rational basis of improved mental health. The contradiction of course is obvious; psychedelics provide us with profoundly irrational experiences that don't obviously fit into our cultural value system.

The point is that western civilization values rationality, order, and progress in a self-justifying way. The values that our culture provides to us form a feedback cycle of myth and virtue. Every argument that assumes this basis, reinforces its truth.

"Order is obviously preferable to chaos", is one of many subjective perspectives. Why should it hold more truth than "Plurality of perspectives are obviously preferable to the fragility of one perspective for the sake of objectivity"? The apparatuses of the state[1] all rely on the same cultural myth and promote it in a way that crowds out all possible alternatives. Thus the myth of necessary order has become synonymous with reality.

Like all deeply rooted cultural myths, this is something that's going to appear obviously true which coincidentally serves as a way of shielding it from honest critique. If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that questioning foundational myths feels like a cultural violation. René Girard’s theory holds; when a community is anxious or unstable, it lashes out most viciously at people who somehow threaten its central, but unspoken, truths or anxieties. The greater the received response that a cultural axiom obviously true; the more certain I am that it reflects a core cultural myth than any semblance of reality.

1. See Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 1970.

"wired" -> weird

Last year I underwent treatments for my treatment-resistant major depression using Ketamine. It was a clinical setting, where you'd get wired up to blood pressure, pulse-ox, and other monitors while you were monitored by an RN via video camera. This was IV Ketamine, so not the inhalants that are available now. According to the clinic, the inhalants (which they also offered) are also generally less effective than IV, and the IV was safer in my case because I have other medical conditions where being able to "shut it off" was a good thing - you can turn an IV off, but once you inhale, you're on your own.

So... this clinic was not entirely unlike what you're proposing w/ DMT.

FWIW, the results were incredible. I was effectively "cured." But unfortunately my insurance changed, and it became no longer covered, and I couldn't afford the $2000 every six weeks for the treatment anymore. And it's not super convenient to take two hours off from work to go to the trip-sitter's to get the treatments.

I hope that they figure out what it is in psychadelics that make them effective at treating stuff like depression and PTSD and make it more accessible because it seems like there's so much potential there.

(Also: fuck Elon Musk for making Ketamine a punchline)

N,N-DMT is very intense and not to be taken lightly - but you could say the same with LSD, psilocybin, etc. Personally, I am much more wary of large doses of LSD/psilocybin than DMT, in part to the substantially longer duration of the former. Ego death and the complete dissolution of reality makes it harder to have a bad trip

As RAW wrote in Cosmic Trigger: "Why does the gnosis always get busted?"

immediately jogged my memory for one of my favorite stupid Simpsons moments:

"why, there's no magazine called 'Weird' is there?" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjZ0GBL9ArA

I'd generally agree with you, but:

  > substantially longer duration of the former

When time stops until the end of this universe gives way to the beginning of this universe and the snake eats it's tail, "longer" doesn't hold much meaning...

True, I should have qualified "actual" duration, not perceived duration!

Moloch devours breakthrough potential not through conspiracy but through everyone rationally optimizing for their individual/local situation while collectively producing suboptimal outcomes.

Individual insight doesn't map to institutional action. Systems can't integrate experiences they can't measure or systematize.

I do think that there are some truths to government desire for narrative management, too. It is unwise to be a hugger in a knife fight, and you don't want the populace to get high, see God, and deteriorate national security.

All in all though, it all boils down to life being complicated. The resistance isn't adversarial - it's structural. Which makes it both less intentionally evil and harder to overcome.

I dislike the idea of potential life threatening toxicity, the constant vomiting, the feeling like shit for days.

Ayahuasca trips seem to be like edging with poison. But maybe the documentary I saw was biased.

I like the potential healing value of Ketamine.

But that doesn't make replacing every instance of ketamine with "horse tranquilizer" any less funny.

Oregon had gone with a broader decriminalization as of February 1, 2021, but rolled that back in 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_110

A wise legalization might help with access & harm-reduction... but legalizations are sometimes bungled.

In the SF bay area – & plenty of other regions around the world – the criminal enforcement against hallucinogens is, de facto, a very low priority as long as you're not flagrantly endangering or inconveniencing others.

The sheer existence of established and (partially) self-reinforcing sets of cultural standards doesn't strike me as a good basis to explore the fundamental complement of it all, or to describe it altogether as something assuredly misleading and "bad". This should be especially apparent if you've ever tried creating something that is self-justifying (it's usually a hard, valuable, and sought after effort).

Put differently, while an idea being established and self-justifying doesn't necessarily mean it's exclusive in these traits and should be bolted in, sure, an idea being fringe also doesn't necessarily mean it's unjustly fringe at all, or that it's being unfairly discriminated against. To claim so without evidence is little more than conspiratorial thinking and self-victimization.

It further sounds really quite self-serving to paint e.g. me as some misguided sheep part of some malicious cabal for this. It's a little more than just a variation on the all too common ill faith ways of argumentation; mixing in the semantic specifics of psychedelic experiences, name dropping people, movements, and quotes, and deferring to a "specific" culture's particularities serves at most as a distraction from this.

"But maybe the documentary I saw was biased."

Seems like it.

I did it one time and there was no vomitting and feeling great the day after.

But that maybe was, because the plant that was used was apparently not so strong. So yes, it is from natural plants, that can have very different concentrations. I suppose this is what the documentary means with life threatening poisening? Getting a plant that had a unusual high concentration?

But I never heard of those horror stories from people who do it regulary. (Vomitting is quite normal, though) Otherwise I have limited knowledge in that area, but I do know with mushrooms for example, you can use different ones of the same species to mix them to average out concentration differences. I assume the same can be done with Ayuahasca. But like I said, I would not recommend the commercial retreats anyway.

(I did it when I was invited into a ceremony in a remote place by people who were not frauds)

user name checks out

5-Meo is kind of nasty because it has a non-linear pharmacology.

the normal dose is 5-10mg, but LD50 in sheep is about 100mg, it might be as low as 30mg in humans.

It absolutely should not be legal, at least to anyone. Perhaps require training in dealing with drugs with a low therapeutic index

With pharmahuasca or ayahuasca analogues maybe. With a normal/traditional brew it's essentially impossible to overdose (think like 3-4 liters of the stuff). Analogues like syrian rue are a lot easier to overdose though, it's a pretty small amount of material needed.

Also the vast majority of people are done purging within a few hours...not "days"

(Source: work at retreat center and have drank hundreds of times)

I'm not sure where you got "malicious cabal" from. Cultural values are the water in which fish swim. They look normal, obvious, trivially true, or just the way things "are". No one is secretly directing cultural truths while believing they are lies. Cultural truths are self-perpetuating ie: socially reproduced.

It's actually quite the opposite. True-believers overwhelmingly disseminate cultural myths. It's the police officer who believes they can positively affect the enforcement of order, educators who base values in the rational order of the mind. It's journalists and pundits who frame news as a tension between order (good, stable) and chaos (bad, dangerous). Where deviance is newsworthy primarily as a threat to order. See news cycles on crime, protests, economic instability, all in terms of order must be "restored."

Look at the modern workplace, for instance, obsessed with order, predictability, and process (think: KPIs, best practices, Six Sigma). And corporate culture manuals and onboarding training reinforcing norms of punctuality, control, and rational planning.

It's present in engineers, scientists, architects, IT managers - professions often celebrated as the apex of rational, orderly progress and as solutions to messy[chaotic] problems. Even here, it's easy to gain karma dunking on the liberal arts, all because science is assumed more value because it more closely aligns with necessary order.

None of these roles form a secret cabal. Still, they enforce and perpetuate the cultural value system whose results are judged on the basis of order.

No one is saying that chaos is good or order is bad. It’s that the binary itself is a function of our cultural mythmaking. When psychedelics make that myth visible, the reaction isn't to consider the critique, but to defend the myth as "reality."

> No one is saying that chaos is good or order is bad. It’s that the binary itself is a function of our cultural mythmaking.

Respectfully, this is nonsense. Ask anyone who lived in Libya under Gaddafi and then in the years since, or who lived under any other despotic regime and compare it to the chaos that ensued when the despot is removed.

Civilization’s association with order is not random (or a function of “cultural myth making”); chaos _sucks_.

All myths contain a seed of truth. I can accept that living in Libya sucks while also accepting that our culture mythologizes order. I'm not sure how to see the world in such black and white terms - that acknowledging one invalidates the other.

> it might be as low as 30mg in humans.

That seems quite unlikely given that there are many 30mg dose trip reports, going as far back as TiHKAL.

> being able to "shut it off" was a good thing - you can turn an IV off, but once you inhale, you're on your own

How does it work? Is the half-life of it shorter when administered IV?

LD50 in sheep:

1–5 mg/kg IV

1–2 mg/kg SC

85 mg/kg O

In mice:

75–115 mg/kg IP

48 mg/kg IV

113 mg/kg SC

278 mg/kg O

They were administering over 30mg to humans in trials. (Metzner (2013); Shulgin and Shulgin (1997); Ott (2001); Davis et al. (2018); Uthaug et al. (2020a))

Sheep are susceptible to toxicity from certain tryptamine alkaloids because of their physiology.

These alkaloids, especially those that are N,N-dimethylated, can trigger neurological symptoms in sheep, such as convulsions, spasticity, and gait issues. The alkaloids are suspected to affect the brain and spinal cord by interacting with serotonin receptors.

5-MeO-DMT is an N,N-dimethylated compound. Its full chemical name is 5-methoxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine. That indicates the presence of two methyl groups attached to the nitrogen atom of the tryptamine backbone.

Stay safe, everyone!

Only a little. Not enough to serve as an escape hatch. It depends on the infusion rate, of course, but you’re talking a difference of maybe 15-20 minutes.

Fun fact: the cost of the ketamine in that $2000 treatment is about $1. Even factoring in trained staff to monitor, you’re up to a few hundred bucks for the hour. It’s mostly just the failings of the US medical establishment, and, of course, arbitrarily constrained supply that results in gouging.

Just go buy $100 in street ketamine (still marked up 100x, fwiw, also because laws) from someone reputable, test it for fentanyl, and blow lines of it. Same deal, $1900 less cost. Breaking some dumb rules is far preferable to living with untreated depression.

You seem to know, what you are doing. Is the retreat center where you work located in europe?

> I'm not sure where you got "malicious cabal" from.

You didn't literally write that of course. Instead, you said these:

- "the proponents of "Big Reality" really really really fight against its disruption"

- "the post-Enlightenment project of "rational" adulthood"

- "Western civilization has a deep myth"

- "[list of values] must either be accepted (...) or face rejection"

- "western civilization values (...) [list of values] in a self-justifying way"

- etc.

All of them painting "Big Reality" as a group that:

- exists

- is just following myths

- unjustly represses the exploration of alternatives

- is western for some reason?

I hope we can agree that this is not a positive or even a neutral characterization, and that it suggests coordination. Hence, malicious cabal.

> It's present in engineers

I mean yeah, hi. Every time I'm able to work with something tangible, something measurable, it's always an intrinsically better experience, both on a personal level as well as socially. And every time I run into the opposite, the end result is confusion and misery. To paint this as just cultural doesn't feel even remotely right. Especially since I really don't see culture having come first, or since there are neurodivergent people who have a particular fascination with exactly these concepts (counting, hard logic, etc), suggesting the existence of biological biases and drivers towards these.

> Even here, it's easy to gain karma dunking on the liberal arts, all because science is assumed more value

Art is incredibly technical, actually, especially the better stuff. And when you engage that technical side, you get incredible richness in return, much more levers you can push on with much more intentionality. These wouldn't be recognized things if people didn't try to see a "method to the madness" and instead just kept on going by vibes.

I cannot know what threads you've been visiting that gave you this impression, and I'm sure that there are people here who do what you describe. But as far as my anecdotal experience goes, I cannot confirm having experienced this (people taking cheapshots at liberal arts here) by the way.

> When psychedelics make that myth visible

But you don't need psychedelics to appreciate that the vast majority of the things we experience and reason about have an excessive serving of manmade components. Even something trivial as chairs or names are just artificial constructs. What this requires is a philosophically intrigued mind, not necessarily a drug-addled one. If your idea is more that "okay, but these are more tangible and readily apparent while on drugs", sure, maybe that's true. That's really not the position you've been portraying though - but that this is some exclusive perspective, that only arises when you let your mind magically throw everything else away temporarily via chemical means.

> the reaction isn't to consider the critique, but to defend the myth as "reality."

Doesn't help if you set up the rhetorical framework that way... Mind you, every belief is like this. It's not just those inherited from culture.

But your original commentary paints the world's entire cultural backdrop as myth driven. There was no representation of this subtlety you now acknowledge must be addressed.

For those who don't remember what it was like when LSD was still legal, this is an accurate synopsis of what could be observed as it quickly was prohibited to the max degree and categorized along with truly more toxic dangerous drugs like opiates. When things like opiates had been recognized for their potentially devastating effects for thousands of years, while psychedelics were still experimental substances.

Realistically an entire new agency (DEA) was chartered to enforce the new regulations, and the greatest threats were those thought to disrupt an "ordained" vision of reality that was not to include the kind of experimentation which made clinical evaluation possible.

Rapidly, before the most thorough experiments could be conducted which would have more accurately informed the established pharma regulation process.

Rather it was superstition that was included in the new regulations, and the enforcement agency was mustered to fight to preserve more superstition than should ever be allowed.

This really really stands the test of time, and if kelsey did not personally observe this phenomenon, it's even more amazing than it appears on the surface.

I had a Ketamine infusion done at a clinic in Miami.

It was $600 (discounted) for the first infusion.

You go through a pre-evaluation with the doctor, where they determine a dosage for you based on prior experience and bodyweight.

My clinic also offered to co-administer IV benzos to prevent panic attacks or negative experiences, which was a HUGE plus for me.

During the experience you're given a button, which you can press to call them and have the drip turned off or turned down.

If it wasn't so expensive or covered by my insurance, I would've certainly repeated it.

Highly recommend.

You're much safer and cheaper buying Ketamine from the darknet via a reputable vendor.

You get to decide whether you want racemic or S-Ketamine, and your money is held in escrow until you've got the product and release the funds to the vendor.

Tell me you never studied basic med chem or pharmacology without telling me...

You can't use animal models for dose, you have to convert to hED (Human-Equivalent Dosage). You can estimate this generally with allometric scaling:

https://drughunter.com/practical-pk-calculators

Also, animal physiology varies.

Beta-adrenergic agonists like clenbuterol make mice wildly muscular, which unfortunately is not the case in humans, for example.

The Human-Equivalent Dose for IV administration is roughly ~300mg for a 100kg human.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! I’ve read that you can get your hands on a solution for Ketamine injections (or, if you have pure Ketamine, just prepare one yourself). Most go for intra-muscular injections instead (~70% bioavailability compared to IV, still great compared to ~10% when snorted). The reason they give is, when administered IV it wears off way too quickly – I guess drip solves this one!

This is, of course, way more risky and pretty much illegal I guess, but it should probably be cheaper?

It'll be significantly cheaper, and assuming you purchase the Ketamine from a reputable source/vendor and use a test kit on it, the risk is comparatively "minimal".

Not necessarily "condoning" the behavior, so much as sharing harm-minimization info here:

For safe/sterile injection, you need three things, all cheaply + easily available on the internet.

1) Bacteriostatic water - https://www.amazon.com/bacteriostatic-water/s?k=bacteriostat...

2) Sealed, sterile vials for preparation of the solution - https://www.amazon.com/Sterile-Vial/s?k=Sterile+Vial

3) Insulin syringes. 29g 0.5" work well. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=29g+1cc+1%2F2+inch+insulin+syring...

See my comment in this thread about IM administration of 4-AcO-DMT for more info:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44535690

No (and sorry I don't know enough european centers to suggest any. My perspective is that the substance you drink is only one part of it, the curandero and their experience is the other, and I can't imagine there would be a lot of traditional experience over there)