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Comment by galaxyLogic | Hacker News Reader

My guess is that depression is basically caused by the feeling that "nothing changes therefore there is no reason to do anything, which means nothing changes...". But psychedelics are in essence a difference-experience, a changing experience. You are different after that. That proves to you that things do change, and also that there is love because we are all one.

But as earlier post pointed out, we don't really know why they do these things, why should they be so beneficial to us?. Let's say they are poison to thwart off plant-eaters. Then why do they work towards GOOD in small doses? Have humans evolved the capability for psychedelic experiences meaning experiences of unity which is a trait that helps survival of the specific species which experiences it?

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The effect a natural deterrent causes in species that it didn't evolve to deter is pretty random. Even if the effect is positive sometimes, as long as its presence yields an overall fitness advantage (or at least no particular disadvantage), then evolution preserves it.

Like humans can be outright killed by touching some jellyfish, while turtles just eat them. I wonder if to turtles, jellyfish taste pleasurably spicy due to what chemical poisons us, like onions taste for us, which poisons insects. Overall, they're still good deals for the jellyfish and onions, since the traits are preserved.

> But as earlier post pointed out, we don't really know why they do these things, why should they be so beneficial to us?

Why does St. John’s Wort, passionflower etc have antidepressant effects? Why does penicillin mold produce an antibiotic? Why does gingerols act as anti-emetics? Why do coca leaves, coffee beans give a buzz?

There is nothing magical with an active compound to have a specific dose-response curve either.

> Why does St. John’s Wort, passionflower etc have antidepressant effects? Why does penicillin mold produce an antibiotic? Why does gingerols act as anti-emetics? Why do coca leaves, coffee beans give a buzz?

I don't know what listing a bunch of similar mysteries does to make the question less mysterious. Are you implying that these questions can't have answers and everything is unknowable? Is this one of the arguments where someone says that we can't answer your question until we answer every other question first? I don't get it.

The context of the thread is that somehow there is something romantically magical about mushrooms especially for humans. Me (and bunch of other people in the thread) throwing bunch of other compounds at it is to disprove that there is anything necessarily magical or secretly meaningful about them. It is mostly incidental or phenomena not specific to humans, therefore there is not much mysteriousness about it.

Not magical not romantic but yes mysterious. Or at least interesting.

The question is why do psychedelic drugs hit our brains in the peculiar way they do, which also has a therapeutic effect.

First why do they cause the experience that they do, and secondly why is that experience therapeutic? I think these are interesting questions without clear answers as of yet.

It has been speculated that mushrooms caused religion. Religion is spread all over the world so there must be something "fit" about it. It is as if mushrooms and human societies are in some kind of symbiotic relationship.

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