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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

This is news?

I thought every hippie from the sixties knew this.

Not that I would know anything about it

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"The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest." - G'Kar

Blob,
.
This is supposed to be an evidence based, scientific website, where you should back up your assertions with reports, articles or papers that are peer reviewed of otherwise reliable. A newspaper saying "recent studies show" means nothing!

How about doing a little web research to find the provenance of that newspaper report? You might find, as metricyard says, why this old news is being re-released.

John

It's that "the plural of anecdote is not data" idea again: a whole bunch of hippies from the sixties do not constitute a scientific dataset; a double blind trial does.

Grant Hutchison

Although it does seem a bit strange to use the phrase "mystical experiences". I could see "experienced mystical sensations" or "mystical imagery", but to call the experience itself mystical suggests more than can be measured in a double blind test, I fear. It's a tricky wording, but if I'm watching a travel show about Hawaii, am I having a "Hawaiian experience"? Drug-induced hallucinations that are perceived as mystical experiences hardly seem like the same thing, if indeed anything that could truly be called a mystical experience even exists (on this latter issue I will offer no opinion). I'm sure some would debate the distinction between something perceived as mystical and something that actually is, but to me it's like asking someone if they feel like they've been cured of cancer, versus actually having an objective way of determining that. It's a loaded term, is all, and I hope the experimenters had a way of offering a concrete definition that was clearly described in the article, or the results of the experiment could be easily misinterpreted (I practically want to go to New Mexico right now!).

If you follow my link to the original paper, you'll find out possibly more than you wish to know on what is deemed to constitute a "mystical experience". Among other assessment tools they used: I fear you may be objecting to a piece of standard psychological terminology.

Grant Hutchison

I don't think it is the simple inducement of hallucinations that defines the so-called mystical experience. I believe the hallucinations are a surface layer of something much more profound - the actual mind-altering that takes place with psychoactives. Like you say, it's difficult to judge psychological states objectively even in sober subjects, but it's virtually impossible to quantify psychoactive mind-alteration when we don't even have a language to accurately describe it. Imagine seeing a new primary colour that no-one else has ever seen, and then try describing it to someone.

clop

@JohnD
Hum,
i was just have a chilled out day
The original article (with PDF link) was
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press.../07_11_06.html

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Heck, nitrous oxide causes a mystical like experience for me. I never had until about 8 or so years ago, when I needed a dental implant because a tooth rotted out under the crown of a bridge. The periodontist insisted on nitrous (I think because most of his patients we were really squeamish -- I'm not, and he later realized that) and I didn't argue. Heck I wanted to see what it was like once.

Anyway, it was the darndest thing. The part of my consciousness that I think is "me", the thing that is behind my eyes sort of decoupled from reality so to speak.

I was sort of floating off in never-never land, and then something blew my mind. The dentist asked me a question, and I heard myself answering him, but the part that I think is "me" didn't have a darn thing to do with answering him. I was off in my world, and my little brain carried on a conversation without "me" having anything to do with it.

I later found that nitrous oxide was sometimes used for "truth serum" like properties. Heck, that would probably work for me, as my speech circuits would blab anything whether the "real me" wanted to say anything or not. After that, I don't want any more nitrous.

-Richard

That does appear to be the conclusion of the paper, and as Grant points out, they do use a testable version of the term mystical. Unfortunately, the tests are subjective, I suppose this is a standard problem in psychology. (It's akin to admitting that almost everything is a placebo effect in psychology!) That's hardly a satisfactory state of affairs, but I can't offer any alternatives. I guess with a lot of things in psychology you can look at acceptable behaviors, but how does someone behave when they're having a mystical experience? It's the old problem of when to say that someone who talks to God is insane, and when they are having a "mystical experience". But I suppose I should leave those questions to the psychologists (and the religious authorities, on the other hand), they've been grappling with them for a long time.

That's quite interesting, too bad you didn't have that questionnaire handy at the time! But the image of someone floating in space while hearing themself betray their countrymen under interrogation is pretty chilling indeed, I can see why you'd want to stay clear of it. It is different, but brings to mind something I experienced when I listened to someone else's hypnotic tapes. They were trying to quit smoking, and even though I don't smoke I listened just out of curiosity. It wasn't having much effect but I thought I was learning something about how to hypnotize. Then the next day I was driving down the road and for no reason I heard the guy's voice in my head, unbidden. That spooked me a bit, I think I'll just not start smoking.

Ether did it for me when I had my tonsils removed at 7. A full-on multi-colored neon locomotive swerved around me as I stood in a curve of the tracks. Then ice cream and jello for a week or two following surgery---heaven!

Blob,
The Johns Hopkins News and Information Service is no better than the Toronto Star when it comes to peer review. The reference you should give is right at the bottom of the JHNIS webpage:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press...Psilocybin.pdf

And, Grant, I take your point about ancient anecdotes and DBTs. But was this really a DBT? Selection of the participants was biased - they were "adults reporting regular participation in religious or spiritual activities".

Moreover, and maybe I allow a litle paranoia to enter here, although the paper itself does not state this, the JHNIS does; the study was funded by grants from the NIDAS (National Instituite on Drig Abuse?) and "the Council on Spiritual Practices". One of the authors is a member of that council. It is normal to state funding sources and any conflict of interest that might be seen to influence researchers.

I know, I know. This is boring, but this site should not descend into speculation and tittle tattle. Let's keep it scientific! And that means evidence based and peer reviewed, where at all possible.

John

@JohnD
Hum,
tnx for your insight,
unfortunately, i think that you'll find that most of my posts are based on speculation and not peer reviewed; and i can predict that my posting style will not change.

Please in future regard my input into the forum as a sort of recreational alternative to quake 3d - or put me on your ignore list.

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`Irony` actually does mean `metal like`...

Nothing wrong with that, in terms of constructing a valid double-blind trial. One would have to do something (stratification of the randomization, exclusion) with regard to religious or spiritual activities, otherwise one's results might end up strongly distorted by a preponderance of folks with spiritual leanings in one group or the other. As it is, their sample is clearly described, so their results are valid for populations similar to that sample.

As far as I'm aware, the journal Psychopharmocology (in which the research appears) is peer-reviewed.
Journals vary in their requirement for authors to declare conflicts of interest, but I agree a grant from the Council on Spiritual Practices seems like it would be something worth declaring in this context. But this journal, and these authors, wouldn't be the first by any means to omit mention of a funding source with interest in the outcome: such involvement is very common indeed. One would need to hunt down the journal's advice to authors to see if such a declaration was a requirement before suggesting that the authors were involved in any wrong-doing.

Grant Hutchison

Medicine generally, to a lesser extent.
How do I know a patient is unconscious during their anaesthesia? They behave like they're unconscious, and report having being unconscious afterwards. There are a few "unconscious-ometers" nowadays, which process EEG signals, but all of them have problems - it turns out the "EEG style" of unconsciousness varies from anaesthetic drug to anaesthetic drug!
And the whole of pain research in humans would be impossible if we didn't follow the mantra that "Pain is what the patient reports to be painful."

Grant Hutchison

And that may also be why pain mitigation is one of the more effective types of placebo effect. But if there were objective measures of pain that correlated beautifully with each other, but not as well with what the patient reported, would the placebo effect prove weaker with those measures? And which would be more authoritative, i.e. can there be a difference between what the patient thinks they feel and what they really feel? I guess a classic example of this are the new anesthetics that seem to work more on our memory of pain than the pain itself. If someone is obviously in excruciating pain, and has no memory of it five seconds later, is that pain mitigation? What if the pain lasts for hours, but the memory of it is constantly disappearing every five seconds, and when it's all over the patient doesn't even know it happened? Is it any different if you wait until the end of the procedure to apply the drug, and just ignore the cursing? I once was anesthetized for an electric charge to my heart that would last less than a second. I was awake minutes later, so the pain could not have lasted long. Before they did it, I asked if I could be left aware, I was curious what that would feel like and even if it hurt a lot it would be short. They said there's no way I would want to do that, and I wondered if the few short moments of pain would be that bad, or if it was really the lingering memory of that pain that I was being spared. If the former, then those new anesthetics are a bit problematic.

I'm just going to poke you in the eye with this pencil but dont worry I'll make you forget it afterwards!!!!!!!!

Not in the case of a sensation that exists only in the processing activity of the cerebral cortex. There is no independent entity, "pain", that you can point to: you can only "see" another person's pain through the filter of their consciousness. If you were to invent an objective measure of pain, it would necessarily identify cortical activity which correlated precisely with their report of pain, because you've no other way of knowing if they're in pain. You'd be no farther forward.

Same deal, I think, with the "mystical experience": "mystical" is what the patient reports, although it appears, from the paper we're discussing, that it's possible to break that down into characteristic components. The difference with "mystical", however, (and I think this is what you were getting at, too) is that it makes claims about the outside universe as well as the person's internal state. So there's a category error in all this "Doors of Perception" stuff: the confusion between feeling like you have an intuitive knowledge of ultimate reality and actually having an intuitive knowledge of ultimate reality. We are all mercifully protected from such revelations by their intrinsically ineffable nature, however: which explains my personal observation that people who are experiencing a drug-related insight into the nature of ultimate reality talk nothing but complete bollocks.

These would be more precisely called "amnesics", and they're not that brilliant at hold people still during painful procedures. From a practical as well as an ethical point of view, they don't generally get used for procedures involving pain.

Honest. There's no way you'd want to do that.
And, again from a practical point of view, your body's reaction to that jolt of pain would release a burst of adrenaline that might immediately undo any useful work the electricity did on your heart rhythm.

Grant Hutchison