Neural correlates of the DMT experience assessed with multivariate EEG
nature.com
nature.com
In regards to this, the same thing is found during REM sleep. The brain shuts down the executive functions, while the brain goes into extreme 'story generation mode'. A story in which you are a character. I think this is one of the most overlooked and interesting parts of dreaming. We are able to observe ourselves in our dreams acting without the constraints of our 'executive functioning' brain. This means we get to learn about our purely emotional behaviour, and perhaps spot where it is maladaptive. (I am very bias on this subject, as I have written a paper on this topic - https://psyarxiv.com/k6trz, which was discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143590)
What happened to me is I became more openminded, more fluent in my writing, more daring in my choices, and actually also more socially aware...
I can only compare it to eating the forbidden fruit of the garden of Eden, or to Buddhas awakening. I have such control over my own state of mind that I can calm myself down to such a degree that it almost feels like I smoked a joint, or work myself up into rage or excitement. It’s like playing yourself like a musical instrument as you constantly focus on your breathing.
The other day I had the bizarre experience of sustaining a sexual climax for what must’ve been 20 minutes because I had put myself in such an extremely relaxed state that I could just let it “hang” there forever.
This state of mind seems to be what artists, writers, lawyers and other people who just apply creative thinking in their work are in most of the time, as well as astronauts and professional athletes. The calmness makes you extremely fast and precise.
Interestingly, I began to learn this after taking ADHD meds, but now in need less meds than before. Turns out my ADHD was just a need to stay in a very calm and playful state most of the time. The funny thing is that this has caused me to climb up on Maslow’s pyramid of needs.
I think what ADHD meds often do is help you function but also push you to a breakdown and then your brain starts testing other modes of operation that won’t cause another breakdown. Facing adversity, such as the death of your mother, also seems to be a common trigger for it...
Why the comparison to the forbidden fruit? Because every thought I have now is a double edged sword. Whenever I think something I instantly see the flip side. When I look at other people, I read their body language like a book. Also, self talk has become frighteningly effective.
I wish I had a scientific explanation for it. The closest I can think of is something called psychosynthesis, together with the theories of Jung. I feel like what I’ve done is let the id and ego swap places... or perhaps the id and the superego. Feels like I’m damned near egoless. It’s almost impossible to say hurtful remarks to me.
On the way here, I had something that can best be described as a breakdown followed by a feeling of all encompassing love. A gentle voice told me it loved me and wanted me to be happy and I was overwhelmed with emotion.
I also went slightly paranoid at one point and was convinced everyone was out to get me. I trusted everything my intuition told me, every suspicion and gut feeling felt like reality.
I got over that, but I rely far more on gut feeling now than I ever did before and it makes me very fluent in my writing and very unafraid to ask questions, etc.
It’s been really bizarre.
I guess in a way if I didn’t know breathing and relaxation techniques and didn’t know much about psych stuff, I’d be very confused and would possibly lose it, but since I know these things, and I know science, it’s a thing I can control. I’m not alone in it and I’m sharing these things with friends and while some of them don’t get it, some of them do totally get it.
I think what you should know about my story is that I was a ball of stress and fear before this happened. All my life, actually. The notion that people go through breakdowns at stages of self development isn’t exactly unheard of.
The scary thing, of course, is that it DOES break people down completely at times. It’s too much for them to handle... but when it isn’t too much to handle and you just grow from it? I’d call that self development.
If you're planning on taking doses lower than ~5mg regularly, I'd recommend doing some research on amphetamine sensitization. But, I'm just a guy who likes reading pharma studies in my spare time and definitely not an expert.
"In addition, whereas both groups of rats developed the same degree of sensitization to 0.5 mg/kg AMPH, only the HR rats developed pronounced sensitization to repeated administration of 1.0 mg/kg AMPH. " Individual differences in amphetamine sensitization: Dose-dependent effects https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0091305792...
Amphetamine Sensitization Alters Reward Processing in the Human Striatum and Amygdala https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3981726/
Amphetamine-Induced Time-Dependent Sensitization of Dopamine Neurotransmission in the Dorsal and Ventral Striatum: A Microdialysis Study in Behaving Rats https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1859849/
That sounds like hypomania. If you're relatively smart it's like a superpower, but most medical professionals do not believe its something you can control.
I know nothing about you and you could very well have experienced a spiritual awakening, and if so I'm happy for you. From what you say a lot of this stuff sounds pretty recent; if you've lived like this without the heavy down periods for many years then it's likely not what I'm talking about.
I just wanted you to know that if it is mania or hypomania, in which case you will eventually come down, you'll be OK. You'll get through it and it's OK to get some help.
All the best to you.
It’s of relatively recent date, but thinking back on it, I’ve had vaguely similar experiences before. Difference is that there wasn’t the same bringing online of feelings and abilities. It wasn’t as powerful.
“In the oldest texts of Buddhism, dhyāna (Sanskrit) or jhāna (Pali) is the training of the mind, commonly translated as meditation, to withdraw the mind from the automatic responses to sense-impressions, and leading to a "state of perfect equanimity and awareness.”
I don’t know if it’s perfect exactly but the whole training the mind to reduce automatic responses to sense impressions sounds exactly right to me.
I still have some difficulty controlling it but it gets better every day. It seems that the more I dare myself and confront my fears, the better I get at self regulating my emotions.
And damn do I wish there was science to this, because I was very committed to a scientific viewpoint before this happened, which is rather inconvenient at the moment, because my only source of information about what I’m currently experiencing is religion.
Now, ten years later, I feel much further away from it than I have before. However, your experience isn't the first I've read where breathwork allows you to control mental "elevation" (for lack of a better phrase) at will -- it makes sense, given the way that breathing integrates into the mind/body connection.
I think the book Waking Up by Sam Harris gave me what I needed to take a step in trusting my own subjective experience. And realizing that there is knowledge and wisdom that science has not enveloped. And that that is okay--it doesn't mean it's out of reach for science, just not there yet.
My two cents.
If your honestly doing better I’m happy for you.
But if you’re doing _anything_ without the supervision of a medical professional with experience with amphetamines and ADHD, please please please, for the good of yourself and those around you seek out one.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration was amazingly helpful and kind to my dad. Their number is 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
I’m just an internet stranger, but your words are eerily similar, and I couldn’t in good conscience not say anything. <3
I find it very funny that themes of self-realisation, self-discovery and insanity are often mentioned together. It's almost as if you have to be slightly mad to actually live a little.
And the moment you begin to express your joy of living, people come out to say "You should be careful. You might be going crazy." and other people, who have lost their fear in a similar way, come out to congratulate you on your self-development.
It's almost as if every idea is a double-edged sword if you take the time to examine it.
This goes out to every person who thinks they suffer from ADHD and believes the only solution is an amphetamine: Explore other options.
I would similarly warn that stimulants+mania is dangerous -- make sure you get enough sleep! My friend just went through something very similar and now he is much more on the paranoid side.
Stay positive, be moderate, and consider Platonism or Western Esoterism. May you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be filled with loving kindness and peace.
What egoless person spends this much time talking about themselves to strangers? It seems logically contradictory.
Good luck and maybe consider seeing a therapist and show them these posts.
Would also recommend you check out Gary Weber's other videos and book, it might help you better understand what you have been experiencing.
Because that is associated with
> ingestion of psychotropic substances
>Unlike retrograde amnesia (which is popularly referred to simply as "amnesia", the state where someone forgets events before brain damage), dissociative amnesia is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication, DSM-IV Codes 291.1 & 292.83) or a neurological or other general medical condition (e.g., amnestic disorder due to a head trauma, DSM-IV Codes 294.0).[7] It is a complex neuropsychological process.
The portion you quoted is part of the criteria that excludes an episode from being labeled a Fugue state.
Alcohol in our system at bed time impacts sleep as well. We’re consciously at rest (or blacked out from over consumption if that is ones thing) but our body is busy metabolizing.
Poor signal, YouTube isn’t loading. Not sure if the clip is similar, but as I understand it recording a dream and restless sleep from metabolizing substances are separate processes.
Weed and alcohol specifically suppress REM sleep, where most of dreaming happens.
Suddenly stopping weed or alcohol leads to a REM rebound, and people experience very vivid dreams. This association suggests they were actually not dreaming much before.
Enjoy...
It is one of the primary reasons I indulge.
Interestingly this can also be achieved while awake through meditation.
It's interesting to map out that our predictive tooling (from primal emotion to top executive function) is pretty good so that we appropriate the "right" amount of energy against constantly monitoring our surroundings. The higher we go the more energy it requires.
There's a weird relationship between coffee and sleep, or I make the leap to say any substance which have lasting effects on mood. It sort of offsets against the deeper primal moods and corollary activations. I argue that caffeine in this manner is pro higher-mental function through disrupting this summating sleep process (letting you naturally figure it out) and letting your brain attribute "= good mood" to it all. (humans are terrible at knowing how they felt at some point in time when the current is different).
It's good to be wary of cheap spirituality. Thanks for sharing your story. I've seen similar. It's that whole Steve Jobs taking LSD kinda thing, isn't it?
Or perhaps people who seek power and aren't afraid to take risks are the sort of people who end up trying ayahuasca.
We'd need more data about people who had ayahuasca to establish a link :-)
That's what the term 'yuppie' implied for a lot of people.
All these people from the late 1960's and 1970's that spoke about dropping out or how awesome it would be join a short lived commune and so on and so forth only to became intensely materialistic and image obsessed in their 30's.
Which then spoke to the idea that a lot of the 'ultra spiritual' stuff that hippie movement was involved in was nothing more then getting wasted and being fashionable. And when it was fashionable to be materialistic and image-obsessed they turned into that.
This may confuse people who associate hippies with anti-war movement, but the anti-war movement was largely a separate from the hippies.
The thing about spiritual awakening I believe is you have to do something with it, nurture it, or it fades away.
Or maybe many of the hippies got married and got children and that way became more materialistic. The spiritual way is the way of the monk. Or nun. Maybe
Indeed, integration is key but often elusive without doing a lot of work outside of psychedelic experiences.
>> I think (have no proof) that many people who identified as hippies got later involved with non-hallucinogenic drugs like cocaine and that made them forget about spirituality and they became yuppies.
There's a cycle that seems to have happened to a lot of people in that era:
Breakthrough experience, followed by a failure to integrate. The adept then attempts to replicate or revisit the experience (to varying degrees of success) followed by further failures to integrate. Eventually, a bad experience (or lack of access to the tools) leaves the voyager with a malaise (or worse) to which causes them to either abandon the quest, or else to apply simpler, more 'reliable' chemicals which then lead to a much more mundane cycles of drug use.
>“Now you see here,” I said. “Everyone in this conversation is in favor of universal love and transcendent joy. But I’ve seen the way this works. Some college student gets his hands on some DMT, visits here, you guys tell him about universal love and transcendent joy, he wakes up, says that his life has been changed, suddenly he truly understands what really matters. But it never lasts. The next day he’s got to get up and go to work and so on, and the universal love lasts about five minutes until his boss starts yelling at him for writing his report in the wrong font, and before you know it twenty years later he’s some slimy lawyer who’s joking at a slimy lawyer party about the one time when he was in college and took some DMT and spent a whole week raving about transcendent joy, and all the other slimy lawyers laugh, and he laughs with them, and so much for whatever spiritual awakening you and your colleagues in LSD and peyote are trying to kindle in humanity. And if I accept your message of universal love and transcendent joy right now, that’s exactly what’s going to happen to me, and meanwhile human civilization is going to keep being stuck in greed and ignorance and misery. So how about you shut up about universal love and you factor my number for me so we can start figuring out a battle plan for giving humanity a real spiritual revolution?”
>“Universal love,” said the cactus person.
>“Transcendent joy,” said the big green bat.
Now if you could only tell me how to drive to the exit so I can get out of the car...
In their particular evolutionary ladder, how many stairs they jumped?
In the end the best way to understand this, is to understand what they tell you about themselves, how they were before and after the experience. It may not look much from your perspective, but it may be something better, from their point of view at least, then what was possible before..
This study does not "find that DMT produces a dream-like state"; that was already well established. This study identifies the subtle brain activity that differentiates the hallucinations from dreaming.
> This experience is often characterized by a sense of entering into an entirely ‘other’ ... dimension. It is not uncommon for people to describe encounters with sentient ‘entities’ or ‘presences’ within this perceived other world and for the experience to subsequently challenge beliefs about the nature of reality and consciousness.
These effects are what makes this drug so interesting and differentiates it from most hallucinogens and dreaming. It doesn't just leave you with strange memories you know are nonsense. It creates experiences that feel real and invokes thoughts that cause you to question your understanding of reality.
However, it's possible that a common environment or shared experience before or during the trip could seed similar or related experiences.
I didn't have "sleep." So now what?
"So we're gonna do a little experiment, memorize these words, then write them down, now I'm gonna read ... oh will you look at the time, it's been almost 2 minutes, that is we're almost at the end of your attention span, so here's the conclusion, bye."
He could have at least read the (supposed) entire list, then tell us which ones weren't actually on the original list, or ask us which ones weren't. Or something.
Is that the old you saying that, or the new you?
It's just like normal learning really, if you learn something, you become a new you that has knowledge of the old you and the new you might then say "what I learned right now was better."
I know, I'm not the best at philosophy.
Another way to look at the question "how do you know if the change made you 'better'": Say you took a drug, and suddenly you changed from being a liberal, to being a Nazi. (This happens a lot, not with drugs, but with events; an event happens, and suddenly someone turns from very liberal, to very far-right conservative) How do you know if the change has made you better? The new you is perfectly fine with Nazi-hood, and thinks you are better. But the old you would be pretty sure that the new you is the exact opposite of better. How can one tell if a change has made them better? Which version should we listen to? How do we define better, and how do we measure it?
The point is what changed is the perception of your emotions. Instead of feeling stuck following your every negative thought you suddenly realize that you can influence how you feel. You dont just feel better then before, you arent still high, you found a way to influence how you feel. You are no longer stuck to the road, but realized that you can leave the road, turn the autopilot off. The way you deal with emotions has changed fundamentally by leaving the observer role. And who are we if not our actions. I would also say, anything that makes me decide to be a more aware and happier person is a fundamentally positive development as it gives me the opportunity for more meaningful decisions. And with me being happy, these decisions will likely be positive.
At the core of this question is your view on humankind. I dont think happier more self reflective people are a bad development. I think the best way to make the world a better place is by making more people happy. I think you have a higher capacity for doing good things for others if you arent miserable yourself, if you arent just coping with day to day life. And you have better chances to reduce bad unintended consequences if you work on being more self reflective.
I think the examples you bring are more caused by reevaluating ones moral compass then by changing how you function.
Curious what "high" doses of "plain old psychedelics" might be? I've never gone further than 200ug LSD.
I dunno about a major way, but I've had dreams which took days to properly snap back after, because the experiences felt so real that I felt an emptiness similar to bereavement for the fictional people that I dreamed about. That felt just as real to me as my experiences on DMT. I've also had Ketamine experiences that were similarly profound and have stuck with me since. Once I had a K trip which felt like I was outside of time, watching the cogs of the universe tick past instant by instant for all eternity. That experience snapped me out of a pretty depressive period of my life.
People of course have profound meaningful experiences on DMT, but I don't think its exclusive to it and any strong hallucinogen or dissociative can, in my opinion, have similarly strong impacts for some people.
Note: The experience lasts significantly longer than a non-ayahuasca DMT experience.
2C-X family gives me some very weird sensation on the chin before I even feel the main effects. Also the visuals tend to be techno-alien-geometric-engineering-architecture themed if that makes any sense. Also, especially 2C-E in high doses, creates time/perceptual distortions I haven't experienced with anything else; as in, I say something to my buddy, go to a different room, and hear what I said with my own voice coming from the original room.
Psilocybin and analogs create a very dreamy, child-like, earth loving mindset, not always very visual, but when visual everything seems to be covered in native-americanesque patterns.
DMT visually is absolutely alien. As in colorful liquid metal moving in very organic ways. The "curtain" for me is basically a sea of colorful alien robot matter. If ayahuasca feels more like psilocybe mushrooms, earthy and human, in terms of visuals, DMT is a supercharged, sharper, edgier, faster, stronger, out of the galaxy and in your face version of such.
After you have oddballs like DiPT, where the mindset doesn't change much, visually there's nothing, but there are loads of audio hallucinations and distortions. My own voice sounds like Barry White on it; most women sound like talking through Coke cans. Slapping a table sounds like drums, and playing drums sounds like dropping cutlery on the sink. Some music sounds better, some worse. Very strange.
LSD and derivatives, my favorites overall, I find them the most malleable by the set and setting in the feelings it can create and the visuals you will see. On the other hand I feel the experience more "on-rails" and even doing large amounts (800µg my max) I felt nowhere near a bad trip. I wouldn't 8x the average dose on mushrooms because the mushrooms have shown me things I wouldn't be able to handle at bigger doses. LSD for me is very, very forgiving.
Would love your thoughts on near-death experiences and "horizontal worlds". For me what's interesting about psychedelics has always been that it is about death and consciousness. Any sort of hallucinations that could be categorised as "visual" or "audio" were just the side-effect as ultimately all senses converge to a single point, or a zero-dimension singularity if you will, an infinity encapsulated in the void, and that is death itself - or at least that is my interpretation of my experiences.
Also could you describe things that mushroom had shown you that you wouldn't be able to handle at bigger doses? I had only taken mushroom once. I'm always under the impression that mushroom is a weaker psychedelics than acid but perhaps that is inaccurate. Would love to learn more.
DMT is not known to be produced by the human brain.
And even if it were... the large amounts of monoamine oxidase naturally present in the blood would all too quickly break it all down.
The only way too get enough DMT to temporarily overwhelm the MAO is through exogenous sources.
Interesting nonetheless.
I've been "joking" with my friends that I want to take a trip to Costa Rica to do Ayahuasca with them.
The "story" of how Ayahuasca came to be is quite fascinating: Ayahuasca, the drink, is actually comprised of two plant-based ingredients. One of the ingredients supplies the "DMT" portion, but the effects would last a very short time (something like 20 seconds to a couple minutes. My numbers might be off).
Then they stumbled on this second ingredient, which grows in a completely different area of the jungle, which prolongs the effects of the first ingredient (I'm guessing this is the MAOI portion, but I'm not 100% sure). Combining these two ingredients into the "Ayahuasca" we know today, the experience went from short 30-second trips to these 6-12 hour "sessions".
The most interesting part is that the shamans claim it was the "plants" or the "plant spirits" that told them to seek out the second ingredient and combine the two.
The effects of smoking it are only ~15 minutes long from what I've heard. Blowing it up each others nose can't be that common recreationally at least given that there's much easier ways to consume it (smoking it).
That's been my experience with it. For me, the literalness of "plant spirit" is accepted reality. In the circles I hang out with, we don't put the term, plant spirit, in air quotes.
Generally, the two plants that are combined are the Ayahuasca vine, which contains the various MAOI, and Chacruna, which contains DMT. Many plants yield DMT, though only some plants yield a sufficient concentration to be useable.
From an experiential point of view, the plant material of Ayahuasca and Chacruna are the material body. They each have a specific intelligence that is sentient, and conscious, and responsive to the ikaros (the song sung in ceremony).
It does imply that, it should be possible to contact the intelligence named Ayahuasca by ingesting the vine alone, or without ingestion. After all, what is contacting the plant spirit (plant consciousness) is your own spirit (consciousness). That has happened with me as well.
To followup: Marijuana, the plant material, should also house a plant spirit, with its own intelligence, knowledge base, and purpose. Likely, also responsive to songs that are related to it. And indeed, that has also been my experience with it too. I call that spirit by the Sanskrit name, Ganja, and tried it with the Sanskrit mantra.
Your experience with your guide reminds me a bit of Hank Wesselman's experiences, written up in his memoirs.
https://www.dmt-nexus.me/forum/default.aspx?g=posts&m=694095
> I too can corroborate that shrooms "come with a built-in shaman"
Fun fact: the ayahuasca alkaloids glow brightly under black light. I've never done ayahuasca, but I tried making some fluorescent body paint via crushed syrian rue seed "tea". It was extremely effective: glows very bright, soaks into the skin a bit so it stays for a couple days before fading, and is completely invisible under normal light. Kinda fun - could potentially cause minor psychotropic effects if you paint a large surface area, but I didn't notice any.
Black light?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight
We had one of those at home when I was a child, it was a lot of fun.
If it's true that the DMT plant has no psychoactive effects when taken alone, maybe someone had already had a routine of taking the MAOI and just eating most plants they came across, to see what would happen.
Everyone knows the state between sleeping and awake, its great.
But to go to sleep while still conscious, is like advanced meditation. I've had similar experiences during meditation.
The world around you merges into a dream-like state, but it all seems to feel more real than the world we usually experience while awake.
Dreams are more of a direct experience than reality, the feelings and emotions are always much more powerful for me than real life.
OP was talking about falling asleep in such a way that you never lose waking awareness, you just watch as your sense of the world as it was is replaced by a dream world, and then you can explore the dream world as you like. Also known as Wake Induced Lucid Dreaming.
Not sure I understand the difference, you can as w ell start exploring from inside the dream. At least this is how it happened to me, without any prior plan I would realize I'm dreaming and start experimenting. That's kinda funny because I thought everyone is doing it, until much later when I started sharing this experience :D
In other words you will see something like this |\-oo\-- and your mind will say "ok this means train station is this way". The key to this and all other tricks is attention, just think how many times a day you pay attention to exact shape and font of letters? Usually it's not much :)
Im kind of shy to say this out loud here on HN with such a distinct crowd of people who really study those subjects, but given is more of a personal believe, i guess i can be forgiven if it sounds stupid or even a uninformed point of view.
I make my own dried San Pedro powder to consume now. It's great. Two to six tea spoons of this stuff will give you more than 10 hours of dream state. Be sure to fast from the day before. Go out in nature if you can, it's great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3lWVLuc6CE&vl=en
It clearly frightened him to some extent, but in the end he did learn something of himself that hadn't occurred to him before.
I have experienced both LSD and shrooms but have heard DMT is on another level.
I wonder if other people would agree with that description, but it sounds almost palpable.
In a ceremony I saw a woman drink ayahuasca just once and she had a much stronger trip that the rest of us, but this is uncommon.
careful there, some people had really bad trips on DMT with their deepest fears coming to haunt them. Set and setting...
All that being said, there are experienced groups, in Holland for example, that lead safe group Ayahuasca ceremonies, such as a long weekend with 2 ceremonies. Peru is an option but it's much more of a raw experience and less gentle to a western mindset.
Edit: This works when you smoke changa. I never tried it pure so I don't know how well that would work in a cig.
I'd be really interested to hear the participants (who weren't given the placebo) describe their experience and what, if any, lasting impacts it's had.
If you've gotten to your mid 30s (participant mean age was 34.4) and you don't have any prior hallucinogenic experience, DMT is one helluva introduction.
So last year someone told me about a shaman that comes to my city twice a year and that he conducts ayausca ceremonies. I thought what the heck, let me try it. So I paid the fee and drove out to the mountains to meetup with this shaman person. I did followed the diet that they recommended. Basically the weekend goes like this: on the Friday night at around 19:00, you drink some of the brew, it's black and weird and taste disgusting. Revolting actually. You then lay down and try to relax.. and after about 30 minutes your journey begins. I'm not going to ellaborate on that as it is ultra subjective and in a way very private, but what happens in the next few hours is life changing. He chants and sings, burns different plants (similar to smudge stick), play instruments (bells, drums, flutes, kalimba etc)... the most profound for me is that a highway of empathy gets opened up and you feel everything. I thought about my mom and I felt EVERYTHING that she has ever carried on her shoulders. It was deeply valuable. I also met my soul or inner god or true spirit. It was a childlike, pure and powerful being, sitting in a garden. I knew it was me because I was sitting where he/it was sitting. The amount love and power and purity and brightness that radiated from it was just beautiful. It had no age and lives outside of time (time is messed up in that place..), is indestructible and immortal. I'm stil agnostic but I now believe that I do have a soul and it is immortal in a way. I was also shown that we must propagate. Over and over, the concept of propagation showed up. I'm unmarried with no children (and never really wanted children), but it showed me I need to find my people (same race, culture, language, same mannerisms, someone that will aknowledge me - basically I need to find my equal mate) and propagate. That's all I want to share about the Friday night for now.
If you can sleep that night, you sleep. I did not close my eyes at all after the journey ended. I was to scared to stand up and walk back to the cabins. I just waited for the sun to come up to walk back to the cabins to take a shower. All the people there make some small talk. We were 8 poeple the first time I went. Nobody eats breakfast. Then at 09:00 on the Saturday morning the shaman gives everyone San Pedro cactus powder. It also tastes disgusting, but this experience was the best for me. After about an hour the effect come on. Then, for the next 16 hours or so you walk around in the fields/gardens at the resort. We are not allowed to speak to each other. Everything slows down. Time goes away. You are in a dream but awake. Throughout the Saturday you can ponder what happened the previous night. For I received lots of small truths about plants and foods and trees and stuff. Awesome experience. I did not vommit from the San Pedro, my body 100% accepts it. I made me feel like a timeless monk, just there to observe the tree.
At about 15:00 they serve some fruits. It is the most amazing taste to eat fruits while under the influence of San Pedro. Not only were you starving but you get to eat the fruits of nature and that in itself is a worthwile experience.
The night winds down and people go to sleep. I did not sleep that night either. I was too afraid of the dark like the previous night. The sunday morning I went home.
All in all, coming from a non-religious person, the experience was mind-bogling. It showed me where religions/spiritually possibly came from and it allowed me to peer behind the curtain a bit. I haven't explain above the full extent of the experience because it is very difficult to explain with human words what it's like. October last year I attented again and and had different experiences, example, for a few minutes when I laid stil, I could feel the electricity flowing through my body, I could feel my arms vibrate AND BEST OF ALL, I could hear everything vibrate. You know all that stuff they say about everything vibrates? I've experience it for about 10 minutes, and it was awesome.
Last year November I ate 5 grams of the Golden Teacher (a very good mushroom). I was home alone on a Friday night, so I ate it and had another mind bogling experience that night, followed by about 6 hours of CLEAR introspection. I could see my life in front of me and move pieces around as if it was my body/organs. Awesome night.
After the first session with Shaman person, that very next week I quit my theraphy cause I also saw how it was non-sense - it became a moaning session that convinced me that I'm solving my problems and moving forward, without actually making progress.
Would I recommend this stuff to anyone? Yes and NO!. You will not come out the same way afterwards and it is a one way ticket. You cannot unsee and unfeel any of it.I think about it EVERY DAY. I now eat much less meat, NO processed foods, are empathetic to the max, I do cold showers everyday. I bought small instuments (a Kalimba, Occarina and humming bowl). I burn incense a few times a week (and regularly smudges), listen to VERY different kinds of music now... basically it changed my life. I also drink camomile tea every night, with candle light (no artificial light) and play the kalimba while almost falling asleep.
Before all this I was most likely a very toxic, typical arrogant programmer type. Listened to metal all the time and ate fast foods all the time. I had a "I dont care" attitude about everything and everyone in life, including myself. All that has evaporated and it feels like that person was a different person. I also started respecting most religions, specifically buddhist and some indian philosophies. My tollerance for fundamentalist religions decreased a lot (basically christianity + islam), specifically when it comes to churches and "spiritual leader" (priests, rabi's etc). It all feels fake because it feels like I've seen/touched/felt the true religion (cannot actually call my experience that but it felt like the true reality).
Anyway I'm gonna stop writing now, I have some code to commit!
edit: english not my first language and the above was typed with haste.
edit 2: for interest sake, I was the youngest person there, both times. Was mostly people above 30 and 40, guys who are ultra successful and rich, not knowing what to do next with their lives. My purpose for going was just to try and understand consciousness better since I'm a programmer. I didnt know I was about to take the most powerful substance, and as my first psycedelic. I've decided I won't consume it again (it's too hardcore for me), but I will consume San Pedro again as my body seems to love it!
But we all have our own internal language which really express what we experienced. What we express to others is not the truth of the experience. I understand people can function in society. It's not difficult to function in society to at least pass by unnoticed. Even in the face of ultimate authority, we will not express the complete truth. Unless these authorities are aware of some way of seeing it all, how do we know these people aren't affected by this in a serious way? I just don't know how people can go through these experiences and not be affected.
Thinking they are gods while under the influence, seeing the true nature of it all, and yet go back into traffic the next day. How can these two things coexist.
So we get someone who had a moderately intense psychedelic experience for the first time and it overwhelmed them. That person has heard a lot about the mind-expanding properties of psychedelics, and figures "hey, that must really profound. That must have been religious. That must have been a mystical experience."
And they go about their daily life enjoying the totally-real benefits of taking LSD here and there. They feel happy and sociable. They feel more appreciative about their life. Great.
but look....
sometimes... folks who have mystical experiences have a difficult time integrating that experience. They obsess over it. They attempt to repeat it, but fail because they discover that it is not repeatable. They change their priorities in accordance with their new knowledge, to the bafflement of their friends. They find themselves unable to relate to other people because their priorities have become so far-fucking-out. They seek out people who may have experienced something similar by immersing themselves in religious practices, befriending religious teachers, and devouring everything they can get their hands on.
and so on and so forth.
My only point is that psychedelic experiences can seem very important and religious in nature. How genuinely important that experience was tends to be reflected in the person's reaction to it.
It seems like an incorrect mischaracterization to say they are all fatally flawed throwaway papers, no?
It's a commonly used journal, and a reasonable impact factor of 4. It's not like this is a predatory journal or a complete bullshit journal.
Do you have more information on why you don't like SR?
This experience can be very challenging or disillusioning for many people. Integration of these experiences is a super important part of the process of using psychedelics to systematically level up your consciousness. That said, once you've used them to a level where you have moved past shadow work and into more realization work, these substances seem almost miraculous.
My favorite quote on this is by Terence McKenna: "People say, 'is there risk, to DMT? It sounds so intense. Is it dangerous?' The answer is yes, it's tremendously dangerous. The danger is the possibility of death by astonishment."
Edit: Context
But I can't think of anyone more genius than Tesla or Da Vinci.. and knowing their thoughts on these things is interesting =)
John von Neumann might make the list of "more intelligent," depending on how we define intelligence... not that I'm trying to idolize him, either!
Edit: To not be a total downer, I'll add my favorite Tesla quote (from 93 years ago):
> When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television and telephony we shall see and hear one another as perfectly as though we were face to face, despite intervening distances of thousands of miles; and the instruments through which we shall be able to do his will be amazingly simple compared with our present telephone. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.
Mystical experiences change beliefs, ideology, and alter the way we interpret reality in the long-term. Whether or not those beliefs exist in the physical brain, is, I guess, an open question.
All that said, I'm not entirely convinced that mystical experiences are particularly beneficial. I suspect that the changes in beliefs they engender can indeed be malignant.
But then again, I also low-key suspect that LSD was popularized by the CIA among hippies in the 60s in order to destabilize and undermine the anti-war movement, replacing activism with pointless psychedelia and the search for ultimate reality, mannn.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3lWVLuc6CE&vl=en
One of the authors in the study, Robin L. Carhart-Harris, appears in the video
Good to see progress in connecting what has been understood forever through experience with physical analysis, one must however not be fooled into thinking that one will understand anything about plant medicines by analyzing their physical effects -- what happens here starts on a much deeper level.