Merkabah

tovlo said:

I haven't yet gone all the way back in your posts (and may never-I'll just admit it. Lol), but given your areas of interest I suspect you are already aware of the work being done with psychedelics in mental health generally? The article abstract below is just a recent random one to illustrate the point. I am most familiar with the success of organizations like https://maps.org and their research with trauma. Knowing what little I do, the success with end of life care also comes as no surprise. Thanks again for the kind of info you post.

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Great study!
Thanks for posting that!
And thank you for all your kind words and the large amount of likes!

Yes, I actually work with a nonprofit called the Portland Psychedelic Society who also work with MAPS!
I run the chronic pain support group, mainly using entheogens to augment treatment, or keep one from becoming suicidal.

There is so much potential to help treatment resistant mental health conditions - I am living proof.
Tried everything short of electroshock treatment (which I considered).
At one point I was so overcome by anxiety that was being amplified in a huge years long negative pain loop - that I couldn’t even talk to someone like a bill collector on the phone...my heart would pound and I would literally lose my breath and could not talk and would hang up.
I couldn’t meditate properly...10-15 mins at the most.
This doesn’t even get into the depression...this was the first 6-10 months of me trying to cope when I finally had to give up my career assisting with open heart surgery and various other specialties...I drew a large amount of purpose and meaning from what I was able to do for work...and was lucky enough to really be good at, and enjoy what I did.
Even now...there is some remaining PTSD type issues that will eventually be purged out.
But overall they are mostly gone.
When two medications I was taking interacted and beta-blocked my heart to the point that it almost stopped several times.
Twice when I did not know it...and once when it was finally caught at the clinic where I was getting rheumatological infusions at the time and whisked away by ambulance.
Having been in the medical field my entire life only made the situation worse...I knew what all the numbers and wave forms on the EKG meant...the Doctor tried to BS me even.
I had a HR of 30 or less, and a BP of 220/110....so I told her as they were putting IVs in my arms and shit...- If a pass out, please tell my loved ones they are all I care about.
She says - Oh, you’ll be just fine.
I said - I know what those numbers mean, please just tell them if I pass out and never get to.

Anyhow...one medically induced heart attack later...I thankfully never lost consciousness, but had moderate troponin levels (the enzyme that is released when cardiac muscle death occurs or is severely stressed).
Then after several days they released me after flushing the meds causing it out of my system.
But then I had to wait 3 months to see the fucking Cardiologist and have an echocardiogram done to see if my heart was damaged and fucked.
All the while I am driving myself literally insane with the medical knowledge I have of the heart and not knowing what the hell was going on....if I focused on my heart it would throw a PVC or a palpitation just by my focusing on it...which is disconcerting to say the least after such a thing happens.
So finally I get the proper tests and everything is fine.
My anxiety is not however and my depression is not.
(Was born depressed btw...there are quite a few studies out there showing that the mother can cause chemical changes to a child while in utero and breastfeeding, as well as picking up things with mirror neurons...from the moment I could talk I would cry and tell my Mother I hated myself and felt sad, she would ask me why and I couldn’t ever come up with a reason)
I decided mostly out of desperation at this point to look into obtaining the mushrooms that I had so recently been reading many studies on and was incredibly hopeful for the first time in a very long time and the many let downs that eventually cause you to stop getting your hopes up.
I won’t get into the details of how I got them.
Only that they broke me free of the negative pain/anxiety/depression loop that I had been in for decades if not my entire life in the case of depression.
To see and feel something so indescribably beautiful and have feelings of almost religious ecstatic peace and love for the first time in so long if not ever was to clean the lens of darkness that I viewed everything through.

The ONLY thing that has ever worked in a significant manner for me.
With no side effects.
Not needing to take but once in a while.
Incredibly safe in spite of what the drug classification system says (there are of course exceptions, they are not for everyone.)

Anyhow...yes!
I just gave a talk several months back -

tovlo said:

Wow! I kinda figured you had some expertise based on what you post, but wow. I know a celebrity now. ;-)

My heart was feeling the desperation and how trapped without a way out you must have felt. I am so glad you found your way to psychedelics and are now able to be part of the advocacy for others.

I also probably inherited much of what I struggle with from my mom and likely passed some of to my older son. I don't struggle nearly as significantly as you describe, but enough that I could relate. All of the research around mirror neurons etc. is very interesting. I admit I only have a cursory understanding of all of this, even though I practice in the field.

I know I keep thanking you for your posts, so this next bit will sound hypocritical, but I like what you post and thank you for it because I appreciate it. No need to thank me for liking what you have to say. I promise, it's it's own reward. ;-)

I'm now heading off to a MBSR class at a local Zen center. Wish me peace and calm?

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May your heart be at peace!

Thank you!

Yes...here is a short selection:

https://www.healthline.com/health-n...reases-childs-risk-of-mood-disorders-100913#1

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/a-fetus-can-sense-moms-psychological-state.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/...g-stress-and-depression-back-to-the-womb.html

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3710585/


And I quote - "The researchers concluded that children born to depressed mothers were, on average, 1.5 times more likely to be depressed at 18 years old.”

That is a fairly significant number.

It’s very interesting...I’m sure you can look back into the thread and find my progression, lol.
But the first time enabled me to once again not only meditate, but meditate for as long as I wanted to - which was one of the biggest godsends ever!
Just the ability to meditate properly once again and even to a deeper extent than before was so helpful in getting not only the pain, but everything else under control.
The anxiety basically almost vanished overnight after the first few doses.
I still have waves of depression and anxiety now...but they don’t stop me in my tracks anymore.
We can discuss it more if you like!?
Take care and much love!

For those of you with chronic pain issues this will be interesting.
For the rest of you it probably will be as well, since ACT therapy is used across the board for all types of issues.
On my journey toward accepting my chronic pain, I came across ACT.
It does have to do with mindfulness though, and like I have said...you need to be ready for mindfulness if you have depression and anxiety.
And though I don’t prescribe to all it entails or proclaims, it has been most helpful personally imho...I have been incorporating my own “treatment” ideas into many others creating a melange of something interesting...not sure what will come of it...but it all seems to be helping!
(Especially when “augmented” )

JennyDaniella said:

Oooooooo very interesting Skare!! First time I ever heard of ACT! Will need to look more into that. Hope you are doing well! Much love.

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Thanks, I hope you are well too?

Yes, I am going to write a short critique of it here.
I don’t agree with certain stances the authors take and feel they jump to certain conclusions regarding chronic pain and what it takes to bring that to an even slightly controllable place...especially with secondary symptoms interfering and long established amplifying loops.
But that would be expected from someone who has not experienced it themselves.
I also have some disagreements on the value of “pain management” and feel they are slightly painting all such clinics in a negative light as co-conspirators to "pain avoidance" when this falls short in the reality I have witnessed both with myself and others.
The author also immediately demonizes pain medication for chronic patients...and while I can understand the recent backlash in the past decade against those who were overprescribed or were unnecessarily prescribed too strong of pain meds - there is a considerable amount of people who had/have no possibility to live in a semi-normal state while in the depth of severe chronic pain.

The statements -
"When pain was unavoidable, we tolerated it. When pain became avoidable, it became intolerable. What we have created, with all of our painkillers and pain management strategies, is an intolerance and increased sensitivity to pain.”
(I see the point trying to be made, but disagree that we tolerated pain when we had no other choice, and that somehow reverting back to more needless suffering is the best practice?)

"A radical and provocative conclusion drawn by the authors of a Swedish government evaluation (van Tulder, et al., 2000) of all established medical treatments offered today was that the best treatment a primary care physician could give a patient with chronic pain was nothing. Providing no treatment at all had far better results than any of the medical solutions offered today for chronic pain. Most of the pain treatments are designed for and useful for acute pain but used in the long run may create more problems such as substance abuse and avoidance of important activities. Pain, in itself, is an inevitable part of living. Without it we could not survive.”

I disagree in part...I find the drug profiteers and companies pushed such drugs knowing they were addictive and that meant greater profits for them and so now those who have legitimate pain live under this stigma that Doctors have and helped to create...this preconceived notion that pain medication will lead everyone down a pathway to addiction and ruin is hogwash and only furthers negative stigmas keeping more people in chronic pain who could be living more active and fulfilling lives.

To especially now begin to turn their backs and even drop those being successfully treated with pain meds is terrible and inhumane imho as a very strong patient advocate.
We saw suicides across the US when the Reagan admin started to randomly drop disability patients off their coverage.
We are repeating that in another way now...but the results are going to be the same if not culled.

Yes, pain IS an inevitable part of living as the quote states...but the way it is said is so fucking apathetic and patronizing it’s almost angering.
I have been both on and off pain meds for long periods of time - they both have their upsides and downsides.
However...there comes a point in the severity of pain where medication is warranted and the moral thing to do.
We don’t let animals suffer needlessly in chronic pain, barely able to walk - we euthanize them or we treat them.
Why do we have less value?
Because humans have the potential to become addicted so they are hereby unable to maintain themselves on such medications?
Because some have abused the medications and not followed the proper rules they were told to specifically and strictly follow?
Again...simply not true and the negative stigmas could hurt those who truly rely on pain medication to do even simple things sometimes like shower themselves.
(Been there)

Yes...your brain does control the pain, but we don’t have very many people who have the ability to block pain using their mind - not yet anyhow.
There are techniques to learn to lessen the suffering...but for certain people pain meds mean functioning or not functioning - it doesn’t matter how much ACT or CBT you do with them...there is a point of chronic pain intensity that people can reach where suicide seems perfectly acceptable to otherwise reasonable people.
Those who suffer cluster headaches for example...or CRPS...are in high, high, levels of pain...suicide from both are very common.
The therapy seems to be more tailored toward those with chronic pain who are still suffering - but not acutely...and are in some form of denial.
Acute suffering does not seem to fit here.
And many chronic pain patients are acute sufferers without pain management and medication.
There is a balancing act and it is a fine line.
But I hate how Physicians are too frightened to even prescribe those in pain the proper medication to keep them from further physical, mental, and emotional suffering.
It’s a travesty and what many Doctors are calling “guidelines” specifically warn against withholding pain medications from those who need treatment.
Yes - monitoring is highly important to curb abuse...but to demonize and withhold treatment options from those deserving is no excuse.
So that kind of hit a nerve in the paper...not sure how the author would feel about what I said - probably that I don’t know the data.
Except I do...and I live it.

Anyway...I think this is far more popular and well known in Europe in general than the US.
Still has much great information and helpful ideas to glean.
Overall I got a lot from the read.
Those are my only disagreements...but then again, I’m not strictly following any script with my own personal ideas of how to treat the pain and what has been working.
Much love!!


Edit - Also forgot to mention the almost immediate go to of mindfulness for people in chronic pain...I still stand by my opinion that this is wrong wrong wrong for those suffering out of control secondary anxiety especially.
You can do nothing with the pain until the anxiety is taken care of and under control.
And mindfulness imho exacerbates anxiety for a large portion of people, especially those who have it as a secondary physiologic reaction from long term pain signals and not from a specific event per say.
Imho you have to come about it in a round about way and not the in your face - MINDFULNESS.

Edit Edit - Also perpetuation of the stigma painting the pain medication using patient as some kind of willpower lacking person, being avoidant, or as some kind of drug seeking junkie or eventual junkie...I find that offensive and inaccurate and a personal bias of the author.

Skarekrow said:

Edit - Also forgot to mention the almost immediate go to of mindfulness for people in chronic pain...I still stand by my opinion that this is wrong wrong wrong for those suffering out of control secondary anxiety especially.
You can do nothing with the pain until the anxiety is taken care of and under control.
And mindfulness imho exacerbates anxiety for a large portion of people, especially those who have it as a secondary physiologic reaction from long term pain signals and not from a specific event per say.
Imho you have to come about it in a round about way and not the in your face - MINDFULNESS.

Edit Edit - Also perpetuation of the stigma painting the pain medication using patient as some kind of willpower lacking person, being avoidant, or as some kind of drug seeking junkie or eventual junkie...I find that offensive and inaccurate and a personal bias of the author.

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Just in case these bits gots missed...

Wildfire said:

I wish that everyone working to frame the problem and identify the solution would approach it with the same nuance and care that you do.

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Thanks @Wildfire !
Between myself and working with the chronic pain group I lead from time to time I get very protective against practices that could negatively impact people.
The article and the approach of the therapy as a whole I find to contain a lot of worthwhile perspectives and to be of great help overall.
It is mainly certain language used, probably not to be purposefully insulting or biased...and there are certainly those who would still argue with my stance altogether that there needs to be a place for these medications - even if that is highly regulated....but I stand by my position.
Anyhow...just more bits of the puzzle!
Much love, glad to see you around!

Pin said:

@Skarekrow

This is for you.

Spoiler

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They should burn all footage of that film...I disliked it greatly as a child, lol.
Thanks for the thought!