I sort of understand what you're getting at, but on a surface level, saying that hallucinogenic drugs are boring and played out is like saying music or war is boring and played out. It's a forever topic because it's a static part of the world for every generation of humans since prehistory.
It’s a shame you didn’t actually read the article. You might have contributed something useful.
For the others who ware intrigued but don’t want to read, the article is mostly about research into the mechanisms creating the hallucinations.
Neuroscientists have known since the 60s that you can make people hallucinate shapes and colours by exposing them to strobing lights. It seems that syncing the lights with some of the rhythms present in the brain changes what people experience but the mechanisms at play are still unclear.
Clearly these things are influencing how the brain process information but much remains to be studied.
I read the whole article and yes the dream machine is interesting. I'm just commenting because there have been multiple articles on front page today about hallucinogens and the standard thought on HN is that these things are beneficial to society. I simply disagree.
Be careful in presuming that science is capable of revealing the entirety of reality though. Technically, it doesn't even explicitly make that claim, but it seems that its reputation has kind of morphed into something much more than it is.
I'm curious what you believe makes them a net negative.
Are you saying hallucigens and psychedelics are not enough for you? Maybe you'd prefer deliriants, though that's kind of the dark arts part of the world.
I have to agree. Been there, done that, tried most of them over a decade ago. Tripped with friends, tripped in nature, tripped alone, read Timothy Leary and Erowid reports, went to music festivals, etc. Guess what, it didn't cure my depression or catapult me into enlightenment. I actually had pretty horrible anxiety in my twenties for quite a while after I stopped taking psychedelics, to the point where I was afraid to fly or be in confined spaces. I still had to deal with all the difficult life transitions that everyone else has to go through. I still had to grapple with the fact that I'm going to die one day. I still had to deal with constant doubts over whether or not I was making the right choices in life, in terms of careers, relationships, and goals.
In short, my interest in psychedelics was nothing more than a phase, and one that many young people go through these days. It gave me some interesting experiences and don't regret doing them, but those experience didn't change me permanently.
You think? Based on what? Experience, study? It’s much more sophomoric to discount even anecdotal experience based on nothing more than arbitrary armchair inclination.
Interesting to me is the notion displayed here that hallucinations have a variety of internal response criteria and circumstance, only one of which is psychosis. And yet, psychosis has an overstated influence on hallucinations as a subject matter in the cultural consciousness.
Spot on. When I did LSD for the first time I was honestly shocked at my experience juxtaposed with what I had learned about psychedelics in popular culture (read: Thompson-esque). I didn't hallucinate at all. Rather, my mind was just more amenable to thoughts I wouldn't normally explore. It dropped my fears and judgements alongside making most things somewhat funny and giving me a ton of energy.
I wouldn't call myself a psychonaut yet, but I do love hallucinations. One thing I think the article didn't touch on that I found profoundly interesting is depersonalization. I had a trip recently where I entirely left my conscious reality behind, temporarily, except by a very thin thread. Some context for those that don't follow the fractals, depersonalization isn't super common on things like mushrooms or LSD, but it can happen. The effect is less pronounced than on things like deliriants where things that are not real are overly convincingly real among many other related symptoms. I entered a state of mind where I got to visualize all the paths a thought could branch to and what ark that would carry on my thinking in the long term. At first it was pretty terrifying to leave my body, but once I accepted my circumstances I was able to observe without fear. My experience wasn't as healing as my other trips, rather, this time, I learned a tool for observing without expectation or controls. It was a lot to unpack, especially on a trip where I didn't actually intend to do much, if any, thinking. I'm still glad I did it.
Also, word to the wise, if you're going to dabble in hallucinations be responsible:
- have a sober trip sitter that knows how to dig you out of bad places (change lights, introduce sensations, change music, etc)
- have a benzo or heavy CBD gummy on hand to hit the big red stop button if things get too intense
To comment on getting out of a bad place in a trip... We've found that just talking about the feeling is extremely helpful in moving on. Instead of stewing and digging deeper, somehow that seems to bring us out.
I honestly haven't had to do it. I try to ride my bad trips out as long as I'm rooted in my reality and feel safe doing so. CBD has anti-psychotic properties, CBD also binds to the very same serotonin receptors that LSD does. From what I've read, benzos are like hitting the emergency brakes - all things stop when the pill takes effect. CBD turns down the volume, which likely makes a bad trip more tolerable or turns it into an okay trip.
Now that you have been through it, do you think you would be able to reasonably emulate the cognitive aspect of the experience, leaving aside all of the ~emotional/experiential aspects of it?
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EDIT: I've exceeded my three posts per day limit but am keenly interested in this topic, so will reply here hoping you will see it (if not, I will re-post as a reply tomorrow):
> Like, can I observe myself more readily without judgement and emotion? Yeah, I think these experiences teach me to do that in new and fascinating ways over time, but it is absolutely iterative. If you're asking if I can make the same discoveries without LSD now that I've done it once, maybe - but I doubt it. Many of the chains LSD relieves you of you are so accustomed to having that you may not even know they're present.
I'm aiming for much more nuanced detail (a trick: think of what we are discussing as a project that you are being paid to implement, which can facilitate the application of the full horsepower of your mind to the idea).
I think the key word here is "emulate" - you experienced an alternative but genuinely real & "true" mode of operation of your mind, one that is superior in some ways:
- I entered a state of mind where I got to visualize all the paths a thought could branch to
- and what ark that would carry on my thinking in the long term
- once I accepted my circumstances I was able to observe without fear
- I learned a tool for observing without expectation or controls
If you break your experience down into discrete bullet points like this, and you conceptualize them as services or implementations, and then you apply some of your standard computing analysis skills to the whole thing, do you believe it may possible (for you, or someone) to achieve a (crude or otherwise) reproduction/emulation of these abilities?
Like, can I observe myself more readily without judgement and emotion? Yeah, I think these experiences teach me to do that in new and fascinating ways over time, but it is absolutely iterative.
If you're asking if I can make the same discoveries without LSD now that I've done it once, maybe - but I doubt it. Many of the chains LSD relieves you of you are so accustomed to having that you may not even know they're present.
Responding to the edit: I don't think I could emulate it, but maybe someone with a different mind could.
Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Another thing is that while I am very process oriented and use process to deal with things like emotions, I am still a very emotional human being. It would be tough to separate myself from that trait without some metaphorical grease.
LSD removes a lot of the inhibitions you have with respect to `self` or `this` in programming terms. Observations occur without judgement of yourself or others; it's just a pure observation. In fact, I might say that you actually learn to appreciate things differently. The nice thing is that those things don't stay; you have to choose to copy over the attitudes and incentives you found in your trip to make them stay. Thus, change is pretty incremental.
> Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Another thing is that while I am very process oriented and use process to deal with things like emotions, I am still a very emotional human being. It would be tough to separate myself from that trait without some metaphorical grease.
What if you used a piece of paper to keep track of computation, or even better: custom written software? And then on top of it, used some techniques to remove time from interfering with computation (something which can also be experienced on psychedelics)?
The very first piece of advice the internet should give you if you start googling things about psychedelics is "Have benzos".
Benzos are more important than a trip-sitter. If things go south, no human being can contain the possible damage. Benzos will put you right back down to earth. It could mean the difference between 30 minutes of an unpleasant experience or being hospitalized.
F benzos, use Gabapentin, Pregabalin or GHB. Out of all of them, etizolam (yeah, I know, it's not an "official" benzo, but afaik it works similarly to alprazolam) was the hardest to quit while having meh effects.
There's a difference between acute benzodiazepine/thienodiazepine use, as "break glass in case of emergy" thing, and daily use resulting in physical addiction.
I’ve had some depersonalization after I took a large dose of mushrooms at a concert in Alpine Valley. I lost track of myself. I would hear people talk, including my own voice, but none of them was more me than any other. I realized my sense of self or identification with thoughts/vocalizations I call myself was not necessary. The mushrooms seemed to turn the identification part down. I was as much the little girl talking to her father as I was Seth talking to friends. The part of my mind that creates the projections of others was still working, but the identification with any one of these projections had dropped.
Part of my purpose is to know the nature of my reality. I wish for those who are seeking the same to be able to do so legally.
Also extremely important: try to figure out exactly what you are ingesting and how much. I can’t stress enough how important the dosage is when taking psychedelics - start low and work your way up to a dosage that you are comfortable with across a handful of sessions ideally.
Unfortunately for some substances it’s hard to determine exactly how much active material you’re getting (eg, LSD tabs, dried mushrooms), but again, start low.
The life-changing effect of LSD for me was a profound shift in the clarity of my thinking, like gaining a new superpower (compared to my prior, foggy brain) overnight. I'll always be thankful for that first trip.
As far as I understand the science, that clarity is in part the perceived experience of reduced inflammation in the central nervous system. Psychedelics are anti-inflammatory. (Profoundly so. The anti-inflammatory effect is orders of magnitude stronger than the effects on the mind, i.e. a dose orders of magnitude smaller than we can directly perceive has a strong anti-inflammatory effect. Which is fascinating as these substances are well known for their unusual potency at changing perception and cognition.)
This is interesting when combined with this study which showed that ketamine therapy with rapamycin was more effective (both are very strong anti-inflammatory drugs), despite the hypothesis being that rapamycin would inhibit the effects of ketamine due to MTORC suppression.
Yes :) Cis-urocanic acid, a sunlight-induced immunosuppressive factor, activates immune suppression via the 5-HT2A receptor (2006) — https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0603119103
It’s super interesting to just stuff the names of the cytokines into Google Scholar and see what pops out. IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-alpha are some of the ones with a lot of papers out. There’s so much more knowledge out there than I could have imagined. It’s like almost nobody reads these papers. It’s wild.
(Many years ago I remember a reddit post of a college student who used his school's lab to convert Ergotamine tablets into LSD and lay blotter. The comments were mostly of people congratulating him for his skill and then telling him to remove his post before he was discovered.)
I think it might be part of it! I also think it might be due to an effect on the Sigma-1 receptor. I can’t elucidate it further, I can only recall glimpses of insight from papers I was reading a while back. I only remember one title at the moment. Warning: EXTREMELY handwavy and speculative!
My extremely speculative guess wrapped in hunch clad in doubt is that, well, as a premise, 5-HT2A activation due to psychedelics causes downregulation of that same receptor (5-HT2A). This is known and accepted afaik. And: The 5-HT2A receptor seems to be intimately related to the Sigma-1 receptor – and the Sigma-1 receptor is inside cells – so potentially it is the downregulation of the “outside” 5-HT2A receptor that then allows the Sigma-1 receptor set to get a bit of a break?
Edit: Thing is, word on the street for literally decades has been that LSD and psilocybin help with migraine and cluster headaches. Finally there has been a study on it, which confirms the effect (to a certain degree; it’s a small preliminary study): Exploratory Controlled Study of the Migraine-Suppressing Effects of Psilocybin (2020) – https://doi.org/10.1007/s13311-020-00962-y
That's very interesting. As someone who has to take a fair amount of ibuprofen etc. for inflammatory arthritis, is it worth just tripping out from time to time?
Well, the reason I was pointed to that Psychedelics and Immunomodulation paper is that an acquaintance ingested some of these substances in a very very responsible and safe way and had a significant, sudden, and obvious remission of a chronic autoimmune condition. Completely unexpected. There was NO expectation of this as far as I know. They started trying to dig up any info on what they might have done to cause it and this paper quickly cropped up.
Edit: Please note that “immunomodulation” can mean immunosuppression! Take care!
There’s lots of science on this stuff. Surprising amounts. I strongly advocate for reading it. It’s surprisingly readable once some key elements of the jargon are picked up!
Nothing that serious! Just one of the annoying ones (and visible). If it were anything as serious as MS I’d be much more sceptical, and not so flippantly confident either.
The papers do outline some mechanisms that at least don’t exclude the possibility •shrug•
That was my exact experience as well. I think the first time I studied anything with diligence was during a trip, and I've taken that ability with me to current day.
I also feel immensely thankful for it. I nearly dropped out of high school and I bounced around manual labor jobs for a few years. I'm so far away from that fate now it's sometimes hard to reconcile internally.
It's a good question, and sort of impossible to answer in that we don't know what might have happened if I hadn't had that trip. However, I'd guess it's a similar answer to @prhn's sibling comment - at school I had terrible concentration problems, failed a bunch of my exams etc including computer studies. Post-acid, I developed a real love of learning and a love of problem solving - the two things combined to provide the entire career I've had since as a creative technologist, programmer, CTO. I do believe that could not have happened without that first trip.
That is interesting thanks for the insights. I am worried about trying it out but i find it tempting particularly since i have a few dots that need connecting in my mind. Just super worried about the side effects.
If you do decide to give it a go, follow @kodah's advice in the top comment on this thread and start with low doses. I did neither on my first time but the setting was perfect so I got away with it.
I'm a bit surprised about the enthusiasm for legalizing hallucinogenic drugs. My homestate of Oregon has legalized them (in certain settings) now but if hallucinogenic drugs are as powerful and life-changing as advocates claim I would think that we should have a good medical and legal framework for their use.
To be fair, a big part of the movement is simply about decriminalizing, which is different than legalizing (at least as is implied in this discussion).
I didn't always have aphantasia, but I believe I ended up with it because when I was very young I had intrusive visual thoughts and developed a habit of blocking them out. By the time I was 30 I could barely remember being able to visualize things in my head.
I was 33 the first time so tried cannabis and I had vivid, colorful visualizations. It was intensely satisfying. I've since regained some ability to visualize in an un-altered state.
Are you saying this because you have aphantasia and this is your personal experience?
When you say 'you probably won’t visualize' do you mean completely internal/mental visualisations or are you including all sorts of hallucinogenic visualisations typically reported?
(I'm asking these because I have aphantasia and have been psychedelic/hallucination-curious, but still haven't given anything of the sort a try. I do engage with mystical practices, though, have had 'mystical visions' (which had actual no visual component!), and have been curious how psychedelics might compare.)
I'm going through John Vervaeke's "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" on youtube and it's fascinating. One thing he means to answer is: why do we have these altered consciousness experiences where we come back from it, and unlike most altered experiences (being drunk; dreaming), we say THAT was more real than THIS? And then profoundly change our lives in a positive way?
Especially since the actual contents of the altered state are usually known falsehoods, and people come back with contradictory propositions (I saw God vs. I saw there is no god.)
He has some very plausible explanations for why these experiences can be hugely positively transformative despite the actual contents of them (and propositional beliefs stemming from them) being largely meaningless.
My thoughts are that the facts don't matter. Even in the real world, people hold beliefs that are largely irrelevant to the facts. For stuff like being drunk or having dreams, your memory of them tends to be even worse rest in other scenarios. It's hard to form a solid belief around something so unclear. It's much easier to form a belief around a clearly remembered falsehood. I find it similar to how friendships are formed - it's less about what you have in common and more about shared context. Clear memory of that context is a prerequisite.
And what are those actual life changing amazing positive changes that happen? Sounds just like weed smokers who convince you they have all these amazing ideas which they somehow can never write down and keep for later. Maybe it's just the drug that makes you feel like something pretty mundane is life changing because you have just traumatised your brain
agreed that almost always hallucinogen users reference some ambiguous change in perception that changed their life. It's hullshit and self delusion almost all of the time.
However, here is 1 concrete example from my own life.
I had a friend who was extremely manipulative and would lie to me constantly to get sympathy or compliment me to ingratitude himself. He would steal from me,but most of the time he didn't need to because he knew I was generous and I would give him basically anything he asked for. Cause we were "friends"
I took acid, and watched him come over to my house and completely commandeer a party. I just sat watching his mannerisms. How he interacted with people. It became so clear immediately that he was an absolute fucking sociopath. When I sobered up I booted him out of my life for the better.
And this was not a case of me reading things into him that weren't there. When I sobered up I talked to all my friends and they were like "yeah that guys a fucking bastard we all wondered why you put up with him"
Something about the trip allowed me to perceive him in a way that I could not or would not have otherwise. I saw right through his flattery and fake charm.
Weird example, but in my life it's the only concrete example of a positive change from psychedelics.
Now I've got about a million negative stories, but there's a positive one for ya.
This is something that's actually studied in cognitive science, you're free to watch the (very long) lecture series if you're interested, the transformative experiences being discussed are very much not about "some weed smokers."
The series is pretty clear about the actual contents of altered states being largely garbage, so your observation and skepticism regarding "amazing ideas which they somehow can never write down and keep for later" is exactly in line with some of what's being discussed there, not contrary to it.
Very fun thing that can happen on heavy doses of hallucinogens: seeing your thoughts visually. His experience of seeings geometric patterns that shift depending on what/how you're thinking is what I've seen too. It's like putting every thought in a multidimensional space that includes color, and going around it while thinking. Similar thoughts or thought threads look similar in color, shape and texture, while jumping from one thought to another can be almost strobe-like. Going deep into a thought can make it materialize from the weird neon geometry mash to something resembling hyperrealism.
I didn't find it a very spiritual experience actually. It was like playing with the visual part of the brain and seeing what the hardwired stuff is, felt very physical. The Dreamachine seems similar in that regard.
Another weird parallel: when AIs create those pictures of stuff that looks like something but under further analysis is just random parts of different things it's similar to the hyperrealistic bits' texture.
I had that but it was a kaleidoscope vision. Every time I closed my eyes, any small sounds would cause the kaleidoscope to shift. Was actually bloody annoying while I was trying to sleep!
As someone who came down with visual snow syndrome (permanent HPPD) after an anxiety attack, why anyone would roll the dice on joining this hell is beyond me.
All depends on perceived risk. Many people don't even know about those risks, or think it's scare tactics. Even people who do know them might still take it because the risks are relatively rare. Even very common medications, like Tylenol and hormonal birth control, have serious rare side effects and/or strict usage guidelines. Many people taking these don't know about the risks.
It's the inverse affect of TV news. New products have hype or buzz (even if they're previously recycled). The news only shows the bad stuff. I guess it's just how our brains work.
Perhaps from a study perspective they're mostly focusing on the "normal" responses and ignoring outliers. Although I have seen some safety studies on various things that do look at the negatives. Those don't really get shared here (or anywhere really).
I’ve had two hallucinagenic experiences (acid and 2c-I) and I never got any life changing experiences. Is it like hypnosis where you have to believe in it to have it work? I know someone cured of an addiction from her hypnosis so I know these things happen.
I would say I absolutely had hallucinations and the experiences were powerful and long lasting, but I’m still aware it’s a trip.
I would consider it older... it comes down to how quickly does each individual grows up. I think the wisdom teeth are a good paremeter to gauge/compare many individuals together.
people's brains, specifically male brains get to full adulthood around 22-25; iirc women get there a couple of years earlier.
I first used LSD around 15-16. It was fun in that novel kind of way. Not life-changing.
Around a year later I moved to a new place where LSD was much more accessible and much cheaper. Myself and some new friends started using it frequently (i.e. every 2-3 weeks). I was also smoking pot regularly at the time. Some months later I had become complacent and we decided to go into the city centre on a busy Friday night while under the influence. I had a very bad time. Bad set and setting as they say. Strong paranoia set in - not unlike a lot of people would be familiar with through smoking pot, just much more intense.
That bad trip stuck with me. It really was life-changing. I developed strong anxiety, especially in social situations. It was as though, during that trip, my brain had learned some new associations and they persisted.
I have a large extended family that includes some with bipolar disorder and one schizophrenic. Knowing this, I was privately very concerned for myself. It took me roughly five years to learn to overcome that anxiety (no drugs or counseling, largely just self reflection). As with most things in life, I don't regret it as it is a part of what made me the person I am today. I know that I missed a lot of opportunities during those years, but I appreciate that I understand myself in a way that I otherwise might not have. I actually feel that I have come out psychologically stronger - able to recognise what is triggering certain feelings and having simple strategies for dealing with them (or even avoiding them in the first place).
Part of that whole process was learning that pot wasn't for me (fun as it was initially). Today I don't actually enjoy it at all.
Surprisingly, I do occasionally use psychedelics these days. I feel very safe doing so and I put this down to the hard work I put in following that initial bad trip 20+ years ago.
What I get out of psychedelics now (largely psilocybin and occasionally LSD) is very different from what I was looking for when I was young. I don't seek out an experience with strong hallucinations in general. I'm there for the psychological insight. I relish the opportunity it allows me for 'objective' self reflection. I know of no other way to be as honest with myself about my self. I get real insights that I later reflect on and that really help me get the most out of my meditation practice.
There's a question that you might have come across sometime. "When did you realise that you were the arsehole?" When I first saw that, I didn't give it much thought. Now I do. It's just part of the development of the self. I now welcome those moments where I catch myself being selfish, or reflexively and narcissistically defending the (always) inadequate conception I have of my self.
Psychedelics for me are a useful tool for honest introspection. Sometimes it can be exquisitely uncomfortable and you need to be prepared for that but I find it invaluable. Psilocybin seems to be better for this than LSD. It is the only drug I have ever experienced that leaves me feeling noticeably better the following day (I have similar thoughts when using LSD, but somehow it leaves my brain feeling a bit 'frazzled').
TLDR; When younger I chased strong 'fun' hallucinations using psychedelics and paid a price that taught me an important lesson. Today I use them for self reflection and the way they (ironically) help me to maintain and conceive of a more realistic self.
Yeah I've never understood why people say that hallucinations are real, and even "more real" and the "actual reality". The very definition of a hallucination is that it's not real, it's false. What am I missing here?
You may be assuming that your ("the") normal conscious experience is base reality, as opposed to simply a much more common hallucination, which is what it can be revealed to be with a relatively small amount of investigation.
Also, there is a distinction between the words that we use to conceptualize and communicate about reality, but consciousness (presumably due to evolution) tends to filter such things out.
>> You may be assuming that your ("the") normal conscious experience is base reality
> Yeah normal consciousness is normal, of course. That's not an assumption that I make, that just a basic fact.
To me, this is fascinating: I clearly compared normal consciousness to base reality but you decided(?) to reply as if I had said "normal consciousness is normal". To me, this is an excellent demonstration of the very thing I am talking about...both the phenomenon itself, but also this part: "...which is what it can be revealed to be with a relatively small amount of investigation" - more precisely: compare how people describe (their) reality, to the objective, shared reality that is literally printed on this web page.
Unfortunately, it is child's play for the subconscious to filter this sort of thing out before it reaches the "conscious awareness" stage of the pipeline (and then it still has to contend with ego, pride, cultural norms, post-hoc rationalization, etc) which may make this local maximum extremely difficult for humanity to break out of.
There's a common way people from scientific communities (such as HN) look at the world - there's a "real world" out there, and in order to improve our understanding of things we should approximate (discover the rules that govern) this real world and try to minimize our subjective experiences as much as possible. I fully subscribe to this view, the real world has to be same for everyone, right?
But there's another way to look at things which is prevalent in other circles, and if someday you decide to learn to meditate, I'm confident you'll get it.
How do you know the "real world" exists? Maybe you're a brain inside a jar "in the machine", and all the things you experience are being generated by the machine. In that case, how is an hallucination any different from any other experience you have? It isn't, it's exactly the same, it's just another experience. How you interpret it may be different, if you realize it's an hallucination, but the process itself is the same.
When you look at a tree, you can't just see the tree, you can only see the model that your mind creates of that tree, from the light that reaches your eyes, the sound, maybe touch etc - this is true for everything you experience.
Obviously the first perspective is very useful, it's science. But the second perspective is also very very useful, if you want to know why I can elaborate : )
Purely anecdotal, but when I took acid once in college, I became strongly aware of these patterns in the concrete outside my house, kinda of a swirly "leaf like" structure. Long after the trip had ended, I could still see that pattern, although less pronounced. I had to look a bit harder to notice it.
My theory is that the pattern was always there, it just took acid to let me really notice it for the first time. Something about the way that the concrete dries, or maybe an artifact of whatever they do to freshly poured concrete to make it grippy.
Could also be pure delusion, so, grain of salt. But I think there is something to the idea that a new / different frame of reference and attention can show you things you may otherwise not have noticed.
This is some absolutely wrong dosage, please don't ever take actual 400ug doses unless you really know what you're doing. Most tabs sold as 200ug are in the 30-80ug range, so people tend to severely overestimate the dosage.
I absolutely agree that non-experienced users should start off with low doses, no more than 100μg. I am very experienced with psychedelics and knew what I was getting into when I took higher amounts. My point was simply that low doses may not result in "life changing experiences", for some to experience that (such as myself) higher doses may be required.
Didn't the scientist discoving it take a "small" amount which is like 10x that much? I always find that story funny for some reason. In this day no scientist is just like "let me try a few mgs of this thing I created" lol
Very interesting article, but I thought they should have at least mentioned the central role of the serotonin receptor 5HT-2A in psychedelic drug activity in the brain:
This receptor also seems involved in synesthesia, a psychedelic-like condition thought to involve a cross-wiring of visual and auditory brain pathways that result in 'seeing sounds' and 'hearing colors'. Here's a bit of research on that:
> "Synesthesia has been reported with LSD5 as accompaniment to other visual hallucinations. These sound-induced visual perceptions and the visual hallucinations can be well formed and complex. The cause of synesthesia is thought to be chemical deafferentation of lateral geniculate body, which will deprive the occipital cortex from visual stimuli. LSD is known to selectively activate serotonin 2A receptor. Brang and Ramachandran19 hypothesized that serotonin 2A receptors are the “synesthesia receptor”. Auditory visual synesthesia also has been reported with other serotonin 2A agonists including mescaline and ayahuasca. Ayahuasca contains serotonergic psychledic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and beta-carboline, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. DMT is a partial agonist of serotonin 2A receptors and beta-carboline inhibits the visceral metabolism of DMT, increasing its systemic levels."
Incidentally, static output from old analog CRT televisions tuned to dead channels is a kind of ideal 'blank sheet' for producing hallucinations. Unfortunately there don't seem to be many good simulations of this once-common phenomena (the YT videos of TV static seem to suffer from replication issues of various sorts and aren't that realistic). Similar natural effects might be obtained by looking at fog and clouds, waves breaking on a beach, wind blowing over a field of grass, etc.
I'd argue that one of the great potential benefits of psychedelics is that they encourage us to look closely at the world around us.
I can't speak for myself, but I can offer a piece of anecdata.
I had this buddy, who, at the time we became friends, was writing stuff in assembler that I had trouble putting in pascal. To my kid mind, he was an absolute genius. Eventually, he told was he was talking acid and disclosed how he could tell his mind was not as sharp as it used to be as a result.
I have no knowledge if it was laced with anything or he simply had one trip too many, but it was definitely life changing. I was trying to reach out recently ( you know.. the whole nostalgia thing to see where everyone is these days ).
I will admit that made me hesitate on trying it myself on my own. If I were to do it now, the one thing I would make sure of is that there someone there to watch over me.
I think the less obvious point is that you don't really know what the effect will be. Thanks to crazy drug policies gone amok, we still have very rudimentary understanding of their impact until recently passed mostly on a word of mouth basis.
There are stories of actual mind blowing experiences that truly do expand your mind. I did not share my personal experience, because a feeling of absolute peace while being engulfed by light is not that uncommon and hardly life changing unless you are easily swayed anyway.
There is a chance your mind will expand. There is a chance something bad will happen. It is a gamble, but I personally think we are still in dark ages of drugs. Maybe one day we will know how exact dosage affects specific mental profile.
I've never taken hallucinogens, but I had many friends that did:
Best friend and his girlfriend did LSD, the girlfriend had an immediate mental breakdown and was hospitalized. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following months, has been a life long schizophrenic ever since.
The best friend developed "schizoid personality disorder" over the next year and was never the same. Both were normal, happy go lucky teens that changed dramatically over a summer.
Another friend took mushrooms several times without issue, but one time had a breakdown afterwards and developed a severe anxiety disorder immediately after that never went away.
I could list about 5 other friends with similar experiences, but the point is, some people have extremely negative reactions to hallucinogens, and I'm glad I never tried them.
They are in their 40's now. The girlfriend struggled with mental health and never really held a job. The guy on mushrooms went through years of therapy and anti-depressants, and seemed to have a normal life. The best friend still struggles with what he calls random "dissociation" and " depersonalization" episodes. He's a fairly self-destructive person that clearly has https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder#...
It's all anecdotal - maybe the drugs accelerated something that would have happened anyway? Maybe they were more vulnerable as teens? who knows! I do know that none of them would ever touch hallucinogens today.
One friend's mom, who was a "natural medicine healer", noticed we were all into computers (early 1990's), and thought we had "Electric Fungus". I always thought that would make a good band name.
Or maybe the X-rays from CRT monitors fried our brains.
I suspect doing random amounts of acid or mushrooms as a teen = some increased % of developing anxiety disorders.
I find the idea that you personally know 8 people who have suffered significant mental health issues after using hallucinogens to be absolutely shocking. I can't think of even a single person I have known where mushroom or LSD use resulted in any acute problems. And I do a lot of drugs! I frequent drug-friendly events and hang with drug-friendly people and I even used to sell hallucinogens a lifetime ago. It's not that certain drugs can't trigger or exacerbate mental illnesses - I believe that is actually very well-documented - but by most accounts those types of reactions are incredibly rare.
Sometimes I wonder if it's also a matter of dose, impurities, or other ingredients. There's already so much variance among people before introducing exotic compounds.
> "I frequent drug-friendly events and hang with drug-friendly people"
Adults or Children?
My friends were all "gifted kids" who hung out in the same social circle, and did lots (and lots) of drugs (acid, DMT, mushrooms, coke, weed) from age 15-18.
In all cases it was great until one time it was suddenly NOT great. Yes, I actually witnessed at least 3 "meltdowns" where someone started acting really, really scary-strange, "We should call his mom!" strange.
All of them have negative feelings towards drugs as adults. There was no internet then to look up correct dosage, "safe" usage. No reviewed darknet dealers selling "real stuff" vs. random shit you'd buy from a stranger at Lollapalooza. I don't know what to say, but it's true, I saw people get messed up (long-term) from hallucinogens and swear them off forever.
These days, adults. But I had a similar group of friends in High School and the people I was closest to - including a core group we referred to as the Fry Kids - are now all successful and well adjusted adults in their early 40s. I did mushrooms with one of them the other day! Though most of them do few if any drugs any more.
As for "meltdowns" aka "bad trips", I have seen plenty and heard about plenty more. But what I never saw or heard about were long-lasting effects after the bad trip.
I'd also note that DMT is known for it's intensity and dramatic after-effects. I wouldn't lump it in with those other drugs.
Sounds like they had some underlying issues if they were doing "lots" of hard drugs at age 15. Hallucinogens likely didn't cause their issues, just made them more apparent.
Of the people I've known who did hallucinogens, I knew them all before and after.
NONE of them were better off afterward
You can read all the "life changing experiences" that people have online, but when you take these you roll a dice. Keep this in mind. There's a lot of people who shill them super hard, and they might've had a positive experience, but consider the risk vs the reward and tread lightly
edit: And even the people who had "life changing experiences", they weren't better off. They never came out of it "enlightened" or any better than where they were before (based off of their behavior and the lifestyle choices they made)
> I'm curious as to what differentiates cannabis from other psychedelics such that you think there is a healthy path to it and not to anything else.
Experience. Also you're more likely to come across it due to legality. When you cross the threshold of legality you're more likely to find yourself in bad company
> I personally think turning to psychedelics as form of subjective exploration is perfectly healthy, despite the risks.
Maybe it is, but if I had kids I wouldn't allow them to take that risk
This is a great example of why the war on drugs has been such a tremendous failure. You shouldn't have to risk life and limb to explore your consciousness
I would say it is human, as in humans are social animals, to do drugs socially. I think of alcohol or cigarettes and maybe pot as a rebel cult of teenagerhood.
To seek or try drugs that may change your whole life is not healthy because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough and something else needs to be on the other side: be it a nice trip, the most powerful high, or rush. The rejection of one’s existence is a concept that bothers me.
that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.
> because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough
> that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.
Is it only drugs and religion though? And not just illegal drugs, but the legal ones as well?
Couldn't one argue that people seek out religion for emotional needs, and that emotional needs force people to reject themselves in favor of the community? Or is this a misguided take?
This can be applied to anything that gives us comfort. I take the view that we do these things because of a deep psychological knowledge that we will die.
There's a book called The Denial Of Death. It's speaks all about how a lot of choices we make (almost all) once you still down deep enough, are because we are creatures who know the power of our own minds but also are aware that we will die one day.
Another way to think of it is, we have kinds that can imagine and simulate anything. We are practically gods in our own minds. The tragedy is that we have this power but will sooner or later die. This is a tragic a deep realization we all have.
Just curious, were they already fairly normal? I'm wondering if the benefits are only in a narrow group, setting, condition, etc.
For example, I could see these being useful for an alcoholic who has already decided that they need to get sober, but need help beating the dependence. On the flip side, I have a feeling that people who just take it recreationally (not for a conditions nor in a controlled/guided setting) probably aren't getting any benefit. These are all just guesses though.
> Just curious, were they already fairly normal? I'm wondering if the benefits are only in a narrow group, setting, condition, etc.
This is the problem: is anyone? Does anyone have a perfect upbringing? How could they be sure?
Tbh I really don't know whether they were normal, one of them had an abusive dad and afterwards decided to cut family ties, drop out of college, and do more drugs
The problem here, and why I don't recommend hallucinogens to anyone, is that people read the warnings about hallucinogens and think their upbringing was "healthy enough" to handle them. How could they actually know that for a fact?
Yeah, I can see that. I was wondering more along the lines of taking a medication you don't need. At that point it's all risk an no reward, even if the risks are small.
If you do decide to partake, make sure you have someone with you, not only in case things go awry but just to help guide you along. It can be very disorienting and scary, when you start realizing the shop has sailed, so to speak. Hard to put it to words, and I'm sure people experience it differently, but if you start to panic things can take a turn. I had a friend once call me, terrified and barely coherent, when I showed up they were not even sure how much time had passed or what they'd done. Luckily I was able to calm them down, and things went smoothly from there.
Most importantly do research and be very very careful with doses or combinations, as (depending on what you have and where you got it) it's possible to overdo it when you think you didn't take enough. Better to err on the side of caution than to be overwhelmed, and because people react differently don't just think because someone else's dose worked for them that it will work for you.
From my experience with psilocybin-containing mushrooms, I didn't hallucinate. Rather, my senses grew incredibly sharper and everything was super-vivid. I could see why they would be great for hunting in a prehistoric setting and would give one an unfair advantage. Shrooms are even known to increase visual acuity. It was like watching 4K video for the first time after watching standard definition your whole life.
As for my mind, I had what people call a 'mystical experience' but I was so young (20s) that I didn't have the necessary words to describe it or put it into words. It's only when I read up about Gnosticism and went down various conspiracy-theory rabbit-holes on Youtube that I could piece it all together, and have the right words to describe it (escaping the Matrix etc).
I would never try them again though. Too risky. I value my mental health too much. If I want shroom-like hallucinations though, I use the Lumenate app which everyone should try:
I had the exact same thoughts my first time. Everything became HD. I was noticing the smallest of details everywhere. It was kind of nice because noticing the little things became second nature. I had no desire to go do something else other than sit and watch life around me.
On one July 4 years ago I walked alone to a beach on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. I lied down on the sand and put a hat over my face. I listened to the waves.
The beach was busy - I could also hear the ambient sound of many people chattering in different languages. So many languages. It was profound to me that those people came from so far around the world to that place, bringing with them an unimaginable depth of experiences and cultural diversity. Seeking the best for their families. Who did they leave behind? It was emotionally overwhelming. I cried.
After a while of focusing on sounds I started to focus on touch - the individual grains of sand against my fingers, the mass of sand below me. The wind on my exposed skin. The radiant warmth of summer.
As I focused on the feeling of touch, a remarkable thing happened. I felt the boundary between me and the universe start to dissolve. With each crash of the waves, the dotted line between me and the universe receded bit by bit.
Eventually I felt I was no longer separate from the sand, the waves, the air, the people. I was all of those things and I was nothing. I was a clump of cells on a rock.
Then I stood up and walked away, utterly at peace. My life was changed forever. Thanks, LSD.
This sounds very similar to the experience Henry Shukman had in his teens on a beach in South America. It started his journey to becoming a Zen teacher. He writes about it in the early chapters of "One Blade of Grass" (which I'm currently reading).
I remember doing a bunch of hallucinogens in late teens early twenties. It changed me a lot, not how I expected. I never felt like I was "one with the universe", never felt God or any of that. I never saw the "white light". I definitely hallucinated, but the weird part was you don't just see the hallucination, your thoughts are the hallucination. You only start to hallucinate once the barrier between your thoughts and the stability of what you're looking at weakens
It also changed what society looked like. Growing up I was always highly sceptical of religion, but after doing hallucinogens (and not while doing them) I started to see the same sort of irrational craving for religion in other places also. It made me realize how inherently irrational we all are, and how much of our society is built on top of fear. Also how our own emotional needs can be exploited
I started reading a lot more, and read a bunch of late 19th early 20th century literature because I wanted some sort of sense of direction. I also became a lot more conscious of whenever people exhibit manipulative tendencies or try telling other people what to want. In general I became less trusting than how I was before and more content with my own life plan. This changed the relationships that I had and made me stop talking to old friends (who really weren't very good people), and made me more assertive about boundaries and expectations of respect
The downsides of doing them: infrequent feelings of disassociation (feeling like life is a dream) and preoccupation with death (also infrequent now). Also being less trusting and more sceptical of how people try to direct each other through life. Most of the positives came about after a couple years of being drug free, so I don't know whether they happened because of me getting older or the hallucinogens
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 58.4 ms ] threadFor the others who ware intrigued but don’t want to read, the article is mostly about research into the mechanisms creating the hallucinations.
Neuroscientists have known since the 60s that you can make people hallucinate shapes and colours by exposing them to strobing lights. It seems that syncing the lights with some of the rhythms present in the brain changes what people experience but the mechanisms at play are still unclear.
Clearly these things are influencing how the brain process information but much remains to be studied.
Are you saying hallucigens and psychedelics are not enough for you? Maybe you'd prefer deliriants, though that's kind of the dark arts part of the world.
In short, my interest in psychedelics was nothing more than a phase, and one that many young people go through these days. It gave me some interesting experiences and don't regret doing them, but those experience didn't change me permanently.
Also, word to the wise, if you're going to dabble in hallucinations be responsible:
- have a sober trip sitter that knows how to dig you out of bad places (change lights, introduce sensations, change music, etc)
- have a benzo or heavy CBD gummy on hand to hit the big red stop button if things get too intense
---------
EDIT: I've exceeded my three posts per day limit but am keenly interested in this topic, so will reply here hoping you will see it (if not, I will re-post as a reply tomorrow):
> Like, can I observe myself more readily without judgement and emotion? Yeah, I think these experiences teach me to do that in new and fascinating ways over time, but it is absolutely iterative. If you're asking if I can make the same discoveries without LSD now that I've done it once, maybe - but I doubt it. Many of the chains LSD relieves you of you are so accustomed to having that you may not even know they're present.
I'm aiming for much more nuanced detail (a trick: think of what we are discussing as a project that you are being paid to implement, which can facilitate the application of the full horsepower of your mind to the idea).
I think the key word here is "emulate" - you experienced an alternative but genuinely real & "true" mode of operation of your mind, one that is superior in some ways:
- I entered a state of mind where I got to visualize all the paths a thought could branch to
- and what ark that would carry on my thinking in the long term
- once I accepted my circumstances I was able to observe without fear
- I learned a tool for observing without expectation or controls
If you break your experience down into discrete bullet points like this, and you conceptualize them as services or implementations, and then you apply some of your standard computing analysis skills to the whole thing, do you believe it may possible (for you, or someone) to achieve a (crude or otherwise) reproduction/emulation of these abilities?
If you're asking if I can make the same discoveries without LSD now that I've done it once, maybe - but I doubt it. Many of the chains LSD relieves you of you are so accustomed to having that you may not even know they're present.
Categorically, my mind isn't visual with things like math. It's more process oriented. Visualizing DFS on thought paths would probably be very short lived for me; like maybe I could imagine an outcome being possible but I wouldn't fluidly move down that graph node-to-node the way it was visualized that time. Another thing is that while I am very process oriented and use process to deal with things like emotions, I am still a very emotional human being. It would be tough to separate myself from that trait without some metaphorical grease.
LSD removes a lot of the inhibitions you have with respect to `self` or `this` in programming terms. Observations occur without judgement of yourself or others; it's just a pure observation. In fact, I might say that you actually learn to appreciate things differently. The nice thing is that those things don't stay; you have to choose to copy over the attitudes and incentives you found in your trip to make them stay. Thus, change is pretty incremental.
What if you used a piece of paper to keep track of computation, or even better: custom written software? And then on top of it, used some techniques to remove time from interfering with computation (something which can also be experienced on psychedelics)?
Benzos are more important than a trip-sitter. If things go south, no human being can contain the possible damage. Benzos will put you right back down to earth. It could mean the difference between 30 minutes of an unpleasant experience or being hospitalized.
Part of my purpose is to know the nature of my reality. I wish for those who are seeking the same to be able to do so legally.
Unfortunately for some substances it’s hard to determine exactly how much active material you’re getting (eg, LSD tabs, dried mushrooms), but again, start low.
As one start onto the trail of established science on the phenomenon, here’s a review paper from 2015: Psychedelics and immunomodulation: novel approaches and therapeutic opportunities – https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2015.0035...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-020-0644-9
https://tim.blog/2022/07/27/matt-kaeberlein-life-extension/
There's a transcript linked if you'd rather read/skim it.
It’s super interesting to just stuff the names of the cytokines into Google Scholar and see what pops out. IL-6, IL-10, and TNF-alpha are some of the ones with a lot of papers out. There’s so much more knowledge out there than I could have imagined. It’s like almost nobody reads these papers. It’s wild.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotamine#Medical_uses
(Many years ago I remember a reddit post of a college student who used his school's lab to convert Ergotamine tablets into LSD and lay blotter. The comments were mostly of people congratulating him for his skill and then telling him to remove his post before he was discovered.)
Chronic activation of sigma-1 receptor evokes nociceptive activation of trigeminal nucleus caudalis in rats – https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pbb.2014.06.023
My extremely speculative guess wrapped in hunch clad in doubt is that, well, as a premise, 5-HT2A activation due to psychedelics causes downregulation of that same receptor (5-HT2A). This is known and accepted afaik. And: The 5-HT2A receptor seems to be intimately related to the Sigma-1 receptor – and the Sigma-1 receptor is inside cells – so potentially it is the downregulation of the “outside” 5-HT2A receptor that then allows the Sigma-1 receptor set to get a bit of a break?
Edit: Thing is, word on the street for literally decades has been that LSD and psilocybin help with migraine and cluster headaches. Finally there has been a study on it, which confirms the effect (to a certain degree; it’s a small preliminary study): Exploratory Controlled Study of the Migraine-Suppressing Effects of Psilocybin (2020) – https://doi.org/10.1007/s13311-020-00962-y
Edit: Please note that “immunomodulation” can mean immunosuppression! Take care!
There’s lots of science on this stuff. Surprising amounts. I strongly advocate for reading it. It’s surprisingly readable once some key elements of the jargon are picked up!
The papers do outline some mechanisms that at least don’t exclude the possibility •shrug•
MS is in my family so, yeah. It’s no small thing.
I also feel immensely thankful for it. I nearly dropped out of high school and I bounced around manual labor jobs for a few years. I'm so far away from that fate now it's sometimes hard to reconcile internally.
That's...that's what legalizing is.
I was 33 the first time so tried cannabis and I had vivid, colorful visualizations. It was intensely satisfying. I've since regained some ability to visualize in an un-altered state.
When you say 'you probably won’t visualize' do you mean completely internal/mental visualisations or are you including all sorts of hallucinogenic visualisations typically reported?
(I'm asking these because I have aphantasia and have been psychedelic/hallucination-curious, but still haven't given anything of the sort a try. I do engage with mystical practices, though, have had 'mystical visions' (which had actual no visual component!), and have been curious how psychedelics might compare.)
Especially since the actual contents of the altered state are usually known falsehoods, and people come back with contradictory propositions (I saw God vs. I saw there is no god.)
He has some very plausible explanations for why these experiences can be hugely positively transformative despite the actual contents of them (and propositional beliefs stemming from them) being largely meaningless.
However, here is 1 concrete example from my own life.
I had a friend who was extremely manipulative and would lie to me constantly to get sympathy or compliment me to ingratitude himself. He would steal from me,but most of the time he didn't need to because he knew I was generous and I would give him basically anything he asked for. Cause we were "friends"
I took acid, and watched him come over to my house and completely commandeer a party. I just sat watching his mannerisms. How he interacted with people. It became so clear immediately that he was an absolute fucking sociopath. When I sobered up I booted him out of my life for the better.
And this was not a case of me reading things into him that weren't there. When I sobered up I talked to all my friends and they were like "yeah that guys a fucking bastard we all wondered why you put up with him"
Something about the trip allowed me to perceive him in a way that I could not or would not have otherwise. I saw right through his flattery and fake charm.
Weird example, but in my life it's the only concrete example of a positive change from psychedelics.
Now I've got about a million negative stories, but there's a positive one for ya.
The series is pretty clear about the actual contents of altered states being largely garbage, so your observation and skepticism regarding "amazing ideas which they somehow can never write down and keep for later" is exactly in line with some of what's being discussed there, not contrary to it.
I didn't find it a very spiritual experience actually. It was like playing with the visual part of the brain and seeing what the hardwired stuff is, felt very physical. The Dreamachine seems similar in that regard.
Another weird parallel: when AIs create those pictures of stuff that looks like something but under further analysis is just random parts of different things it's similar to the hyperrealistic bits' texture.
Also LSD has been linked to speeding up early onset schizophrenia in individuals who are susceptible: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4813425/
Perhaps from a study perspective they're mostly focusing on the "normal" responses and ignoring outliers. Although I have seen some safety studies on various things that do look at the negatives. Those don't really get shared here (or anywhere really).
I would say I absolutely had hallucinations and the experiences were powerful and long lasting, but I’m still aware it’s a trip.
becuase I've been wondering recently what would have happened if I only tried hallucinogenics for the first time now that my brain is much older?
That's an interesting idea.
people's brains, specifically male brains get to full adulthood around 22-25; iirc women get there a couple of years earlier.
I first used LSD around 15-16. It was fun in that novel kind of way. Not life-changing.
Around a year later I moved to a new place where LSD was much more accessible and much cheaper. Myself and some new friends started using it frequently (i.e. every 2-3 weeks). I was also smoking pot regularly at the time. Some months later I had become complacent and we decided to go into the city centre on a busy Friday night while under the influence. I had a very bad time. Bad set and setting as they say. Strong paranoia set in - not unlike a lot of people would be familiar with through smoking pot, just much more intense.
That bad trip stuck with me. It really was life-changing. I developed strong anxiety, especially in social situations. It was as though, during that trip, my brain had learned some new associations and they persisted.
I have a large extended family that includes some with bipolar disorder and one schizophrenic. Knowing this, I was privately very concerned for myself. It took me roughly five years to learn to overcome that anxiety (no drugs or counseling, largely just self reflection). As with most things in life, I don't regret it as it is a part of what made me the person I am today. I know that I missed a lot of opportunities during those years, but I appreciate that I understand myself in a way that I otherwise might not have. I actually feel that I have come out psychologically stronger - able to recognise what is triggering certain feelings and having simple strategies for dealing with them (or even avoiding them in the first place).
Part of that whole process was learning that pot wasn't for me (fun as it was initially). Today I don't actually enjoy it at all.
Surprisingly, I do occasionally use psychedelics these days. I feel very safe doing so and I put this down to the hard work I put in following that initial bad trip 20+ years ago.
What I get out of psychedelics now (largely psilocybin and occasionally LSD) is very different from what I was looking for when I was young. I don't seek out an experience with strong hallucinations in general. I'm there for the psychological insight. I relish the opportunity it allows me for 'objective' self reflection. I know of no other way to be as honest with myself about my self. I get real insights that I later reflect on and that really help me get the most out of my meditation practice.
There's a question that you might have come across sometime. "When did you realise that you were the arsehole?" When I first saw that, I didn't give it much thought. Now I do. It's just part of the development of the self. I now welcome those moments where I catch myself being selfish, or reflexively and narcissistically defending the (always) inadequate conception I have of my self.
Psychedelics for me are a useful tool for honest introspection. Sometimes it can be exquisitely uncomfortable and you need to be prepared for that but I find it invaluable. Psilocybin seems to be better for this than LSD. It is the only drug I have ever experienced that leaves me feeling noticeably better the following day (I have similar thoughts when using LSD, but somehow it leaves my brain feeling a bit 'frazzled').
TLDR; When younger I chased strong 'fun' hallucinations using psychedelics and paid a price that taught me an important lesson. Today I use them for self reflection and the way they (ironically) help me to maintain and conceive of a more realistic self.
Also, there is a distinction between the words that we use to conceptualize and communicate about reality, but consciousness (presumably due to evolution) tends to filter such things out.
> Yeah normal consciousness is normal, of course. That's not an assumption that I make, that just a basic fact.
To me, this is fascinating: I clearly compared normal consciousness to base reality but you decided(?) to reply as if I had said "normal consciousness is normal". To me, this is an excellent demonstration of the very thing I am talking about...both the phenomenon itself, but also this part: "...which is what it can be revealed to be with a relatively small amount of investigation" - more precisely: compare how people describe (their) reality, to the objective, shared reality that is literally printed on this web page.
Unfortunately, it is child's play for the subconscious to filter this sort of thing out before it reaches the "conscious awareness" stage of the pipeline (and then it still has to contend with ego, pride, cultural norms, post-hoc rationalization, etc) which may make this local maximum extremely difficult for humanity to break out of.
But there's another way to look at things which is prevalent in other circles, and if someday you decide to learn to meditate, I'm confident you'll get it.
How do you know the "real world" exists? Maybe you're a brain inside a jar "in the machine", and all the things you experience are being generated by the machine. In that case, how is an hallucination any different from any other experience you have? It isn't, it's exactly the same, it's just another experience. How you interpret it may be different, if you realize it's an hallucination, but the process itself is the same.
When you look at a tree, you can't just see the tree, you can only see the model that your mind creates of that tree, from the light that reaches your eyes, the sound, maybe touch etc - this is true for everything you experience.
Obviously the first perspective is very useful, it's science. But the second perspective is also very very useful, if you want to know why I can elaborate : )
My theory is that the pattern was always there, it just took acid to let me really notice it for the first time. Something about the way that the concrete dries, or maybe an artifact of whatever they do to freshly poured concrete to make it grippy.
Could also be pure delusion, so, grain of salt. But I think there is something to the idea that a new / different frame of reference and attention can show you things you may otherwise not have noticed.
I have had extremely realistic hallucinations mostly from side/withdrawal effects, but they were not "life changing".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-HT2A_receptor
This receptor also seems involved in synesthesia, a psychedelic-like condition thought to involve a cross-wiring of visual and auditory brain pathways that result in 'seeing sounds' and 'hearing colors'. Here's a bit of research on that:
> "Synesthesia has been reported with LSD5 as accompaniment to other visual hallucinations. These sound-induced visual perceptions and the visual hallucinations can be well formed and complex. The cause of synesthesia is thought to be chemical deafferentation of lateral geniculate body, which will deprive the occipital cortex from visual stimuli. LSD is known to selectively activate serotonin 2A receptor. Brang and Ramachandran19 hypothesized that serotonin 2A receptors are the “synesthesia receptor”. Auditory visual synesthesia also has been reported with other serotonin 2A agonists including mescaline and ayahuasca. Ayahuasca contains serotonergic psychledic N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and beta-carboline, a monoamine oxidase inhibitor. DMT is a partial agonist of serotonin 2A receptors and beta-carboline inhibits the visceral metabolism of DMT, increasing its systemic levels."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3218766/
Incidentally, static output from old analog CRT televisions tuned to dead channels is a kind of ideal 'blank sheet' for producing hallucinations. Unfortunately there don't seem to be many good simulations of this once-common phenomena (the YT videos of TV static seem to suffer from replication issues of various sorts and aren't that realistic). Similar natural effects might be obtained by looking at fog and clouds, waves breaking on a beach, wind blowing over a field of grass, etc.
I'd argue that one of the great potential benefits of psychedelics is that they encourage us to look closely at the world around us.
I had this buddy, who, at the time we became friends, was writing stuff in assembler that I had trouble putting in pascal. To my kid mind, he was an absolute genius. Eventually, he told was he was talking acid and disclosed how he could tell his mind was not as sharp as it used to be as a result.
I have no knowledge if it was laced with anything or he simply had one trip too many, but it was definitely life changing. I was trying to reach out recently ( you know.. the whole nostalgia thing to see where everyone is these days ).
I will admit that made me hesitate on trying it myself on my own. If I were to do it now, the one thing I would make sure of is that there someone there to watch over me.
There are stories of actual mind blowing experiences that truly do expand your mind. I did not share my personal experience, because a feeling of absolute peace while being engulfed by light is not that uncommon and hardly life changing unless you are easily swayed anyway.
There is a chance your mind will expand. There is a chance something bad will happen. It is a gamble, but I personally think we are still in dark ages of drugs. Maybe one day we will know how exact dosage affects specific mental profile.
Best friend and his girlfriend did LSD, the girlfriend had an immediate mental breakdown and was hospitalized. Diagnosed with schizophrenia in the following months, has been a life long schizophrenic ever since.
The best friend developed "schizoid personality disorder" over the next year and was never the same. Both were normal, happy go lucky teens that changed dramatically over a summer.
Another friend took mushrooms several times without issue, but one time had a breakdown afterwards and developed a severe anxiety disorder immediately after that never went away.
I could list about 5 other friends with similar experiences, but the point is, some people have extremely negative reactions to hallucinogens, and I'm glad I never tried them.
It's all anecdotal - maybe the drugs accelerated something that would have happened anyway? Maybe they were more vulnerable as teens? who knows! I do know that none of them would ever touch hallucinogens today.
Or maybe the X-rays from CRT monitors fried our brains.
I suspect doing random amounts of acid or mushrooms as a teen = some increased % of developing anxiety disorders.
Adults or Children?
My friends were all "gifted kids" who hung out in the same social circle, and did lots (and lots) of drugs (acid, DMT, mushrooms, coke, weed) from age 15-18.
In all cases it was great until one time it was suddenly NOT great. Yes, I actually witnessed at least 3 "meltdowns" where someone started acting really, really scary-strange, "We should call his mom!" strange.
All of them have negative feelings towards drugs as adults. There was no internet then to look up correct dosage, "safe" usage. No reviewed darknet dealers selling "real stuff" vs. random shit you'd buy from a stranger at Lollapalooza. I don't know what to say, but it's true, I saw people get messed up (long-term) from hallucinogens and swear them off forever.
As for "meltdowns" aka "bad trips", I have seen plenty and heard about plenty more. But what I never saw or heard about were long-lasting effects after the bad trip.
I'd also note that DMT is known for it's intensity and dramatic after-effects. I wouldn't lump it in with those other drugs.
NONE of them were better off afterward
You can read all the "life changing experiences" that people have online, but when you take these you roll a dice. Keep this in mind. There's a lot of people who shill them super hard, and they might've had a positive experience, but consider the risk vs the reward and tread lightly
edit: And even the people who had "life changing experiences", they weren't better off. They never came out of it "enlightened" or any better than where they were before (based off of their behavior and the lifestyle choices they made)
I personally think turning to psychedelics as form of subjective exploration is perfectly healthy, despite the risks.
Experience. Also you're more likely to come across it due to legality. When you cross the threshold of legality you're more likely to find yourself in bad company
> I personally think turning to psychedelics as form of subjective exploration is perfectly healthy, despite the risks.
Maybe it is, but if I had kids I wouldn't allow them to take that risk
To seek or try drugs that may change your whole life is not healthy because it means you are implicitly deciding your current existence is not enough and something else needs to be on the other side: be it a nice trip, the most powerful high, or rush. The rejection of one’s existence is a concept that bothers me.
that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.
> that is what bothers me with religion as well: it is a rejection of ourselves and reality traded for comfort. I get people need it due to bad life circumstances, but like any addiction it is just a pain killer for a festering wound.
Is it only drugs and religion though? And not just illegal drugs, but the legal ones as well?
Couldn't one argue that people seek out religion for emotional needs, and that emotional needs force people to reject themselves in favor of the community? Or is this a misguided take?
Another way to think of it is, we have kinds that can imagine and simulate anything. We are practically gods in our own minds. The tragedy is that we have this power but will sooner or later die. This is a tragic a deep realization we all have.
For example, I could see these being useful for an alcoholic who has already decided that they need to get sober, but need help beating the dependence. On the flip side, I have a feeling that people who just take it recreationally (not for a conditions nor in a controlled/guided setting) probably aren't getting any benefit. These are all just guesses though.
This is the problem: is anyone? Does anyone have a perfect upbringing? How could they be sure?
Tbh I really don't know whether they were normal, one of them had an abusive dad and afterwards decided to cut family ties, drop out of college, and do more drugs
The problem here, and why I don't recommend hallucinogens to anyone, is that people read the warnings about hallucinogens and think their upbringing was "healthy enough" to handle them. How could they actually know that for a fact?
Most importantly do research and be very very careful with doses or combinations, as (depending on what you have and where you got it) it's possible to overdo it when you think you didn't take enough. Better to err on the side of caution than to be overwhelmed, and because people react differently don't just think because someone else's dose worked for them that it will work for you.
As for my mind, I had what people call a 'mystical experience' but I was so young (20s) that I didn't have the necessary words to describe it or put it into words. It's only when I read up about Gnosticism and went down various conspiracy-theory rabbit-holes on Youtube that I could piece it all together, and have the right words to describe it (escaping the Matrix etc).
I would never try them again though. Too risky. I value my mental health too much. If I want shroom-like hallucinations though, I use the Lumenate app which everyone should try:
https://lumenategrowth.com/
The beach was busy - I could also hear the ambient sound of many people chattering in different languages. So many languages. It was profound to me that those people came from so far around the world to that place, bringing with them an unimaginable depth of experiences and cultural diversity. Seeking the best for their families. Who did they leave behind? It was emotionally overwhelming. I cried.
After a while of focusing on sounds I started to focus on touch - the individual grains of sand against my fingers, the mass of sand below me. The wind on my exposed skin. The radiant warmth of summer.
As I focused on the feeling of touch, a remarkable thing happened. I felt the boundary between me and the universe start to dissolve. With each crash of the waves, the dotted line between me and the universe receded bit by bit.
Eventually I felt I was no longer separate from the sand, the waves, the air, the people. I was all of those things and I was nothing. I was a clump of cells on a rock.
Then I stood up and walked away, utterly at peace. My life was changed forever. Thanks, LSD.
A remarkable autobiography, and a balanced and compelling account of his practice. I'm inspired to find a good community :)
It also changed what society looked like. Growing up I was always highly sceptical of religion, but after doing hallucinogens (and not while doing them) I started to see the same sort of irrational craving for religion in other places also. It made me realize how inherently irrational we all are, and how much of our society is built on top of fear. Also how our own emotional needs can be exploited
I started reading a lot more, and read a bunch of late 19th early 20th century literature because I wanted some sort of sense of direction. I also became a lot more conscious of whenever people exhibit manipulative tendencies or try telling other people what to want. In general I became less trusting than how I was before and more content with my own life plan. This changed the relationships that I had and made me stop talking to old friends (who really weren't very good people), and made me more assertive about boundaries and expectations of respect
The downsides of doing them: infrequent feelings of disassociation (feeling like life is a dream) and preoccupation with death (also infrequent now). Also being less trusting and more sceptical of how people try to direct each other through life. Most of the positives came about after a couple years of being drug free, so I don't know whether they happened because of me getting older or the hallucinogens