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Comment by jamal-kumar | Hacker News Reader

I read this book written by one of the psychologists who was doing early research into psychedelic therapy when I was a kid called "Thanatos To Eros, 35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration" and it was really interesting. It's still available on maps.org (Although they kind of muntzed the formatting) [1] but the takeaway is that besides MDMA there's a whole range of other substances with a variety of therapeutic merits to explore. MDMA may hit a sort of sweet-spot quality for more people to tolerate it without adverse reaction kind of sweet spot, however I think the substance Stolaroff was most interested in for enhancement of insight was actually very small doses of 2c-e (you can ctrl+f for it in the link), which I think is something we might end up seeing in more scientific investigations as interest grows.

[1] https://maps.org/2014/11/19/thanatos-to-eros-35-years-of-psy...

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Having done both MDMA and 2C-E (mid 00s were pretty good in that sense), in various amounts, I'm not sure I'd agree (or disagree, really).

Threshold dosages had noticeable impacts in vision or mindset, but I didn't feel anything particularly introspective/exploratory. That wasn't until higher dosages, and only then I felt like it was a rollercoaster, in the sense of intense but very well psychologically attached to the rails. But then again, in those dosages I could hear the echo of my own voice with 15s delay, and just going to the toilet was an adventure full of unexpected events, so I'm not sure how a therapist can guide that either.

MDMA on the other hand softens everything from the smaller doses to the heavy ones, at least until the amphetamine edge starts to take hold.

What I remember reading about small doses of 2c-e (Maybe in this book, maybe somewhere else - My interests have shifted a ton over the years to other things) is that the insight enhancement is something that actually ends up happening in the aftermath of the primary effects of the drug. Day after and things start hitting differently kind of effect, that you have to go into with intention in a way.

2C-E gave me the most intense open eye visuals. Posters turned into cartoons. The linoleum in my bathroom looked like swirling chocolate milk. Tracers from my fingers. Breathing walls. Intense motion sickness. But psychologically, I almost felt sober. I don't remember the dose. I used it a handful of times in 2010/2011.

I did 2CE a few time in the 2000s, and it was the harshest teacher. On 2CE I had incredible hallucination in ritch technicolor but if there is anything remotly looking like a problem to be addressed in my life, I would mentally suffer until I made a plan to adress it. There was no way to ignore or rationalize away the problem, like I usually did.

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