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Responses to your comment are contrary, but my anecdata: Just after I moved away from a particular social scene, a bunch of close friends in it got very into psychedelics. Weekly usage or more frequent, all different kinds of che,ical (‘pure’ lsd, street acid, shrooms, DMT, RCs, etc.)

Many of them did adopt some real wacky beliefs that they have held onto many years past their use. ‘Radicality’ of belief seemed proportional to volume of use. I’m talking Q-anon levels of delusion and beyond. They all felt they were in touch with greater truths and pitied me and my judgement; my self-restriction of perception. They have a lot of flowery language about how I can’t know what I can’t see that you have to be some sort of logician to parse.

In one case, I have watched this ‘enlightenment’ morph over the years from communicationg with beings from beyond the veil to potentially violent political extremism. The guy has been sober for years but low-key views all of his actions and work through a lens of ‘ultimate battle of cosmic good and evil’. Naturally ‘good’ cosmically aligns with whatever his interests at that time are.

If you’re a young person reading this: taking psychedelics a couple times is an interesting experience, perhaps worthwhile. But I’m real damn certain that the ‘enlightenment’ is basically being high. Drunk on a false sense of peace with the universe which exists only as a malfunction in your brain’s wiring. Beware people who tout those effects. They are out of touch with reality.

*I have read there is clinical potential to help PTSD sufferers. I’m not denying this. But 99% of usage is not happening is carefully, scientifically studied and controlled situations. Keeping a trip journal is not scientific, even if you have a chem phd.

> They all felt they were in touch with greater truths and pitied me and my judgement; my self-restriction of perception. They have a lot of flowery language about how I can’t know what I can’t see that you have to be some sort of logician to parse.

This concept has been promoted by philosophers and mystics for centuries and is completely consistent with mainstream neuroscience and psychology. I'm not saying that your friends genuinely transcended this barrier, but that they didn't and thought they did is not a proof that such a realm does not exist.

> They are out of touch with reality.

Surely. But, do you believe that you are accurately in touch with reality?

> Responses to your comment are contrary

Saying anything that isn't 100% positive about psychedelics on the internet tends to bring out a lot of psychedelic fans who vehemently disagree. Any time I comment about psychedelics online without a unilaterally glowing endorsement, my comments' score bounces up and down as much as any other controversial topic.

It's fascinating to see even the counter arguments here tap into exactly the sort of mystical beliefs I was talking about: Questioning reality, suggesting that maybe psychedelic induced experiences are revealing an alternate reality and so on. A common theme is a belief that psychedelic users are seeing the real reality through their drug use, which is supposedly unavailable to those of us who aren't inducing these artificial altered states with drugs.

> But I’m real damn certain that the ‘enlightenment’ is basically being high. Drunk on a false sense of peace with the universe which exists only as a malfunction in your brain’s wiring. Beware people who tout those effects. They are out of touch with reality.

Well said. I haven't known anyone to go as deep as your friends, but I have known a few people who started to believe that their drug-induced states were something more than just a drug-induced feeling. It's scary to watch someone lose grip with the difference.

It's also scary to read all of the deadly serious comments here on HN suggesting such clearly false beliefs might be true.

> I have read there is clinical potential to help PTSD sufferers. I’m not denying this. But 99% of usage is not happening is carefully, scientifically studied and controlled situations. Keeping a trip journal is not scientific, even if you have a chem phd.

I've read just about every study on psychedelics and therapy recently. In every* single trial, the psychedelics are part of an extended therapy program involving as many as 20 therapy sessions for every 1 psychedelic session. Anyone taking psychedelics ad-hoc at home and expecting to replicate the study results is not coming close at all.

When reading advice before my last trip, it occurred to me there's a lot of fear-mongering around psychedelics due to judgment.

People judging experiences as positive/negative distracts from what's going on. Simply labeling challenging-to-accept experiences as "bad" and large doses as "heroic" is enough to establish a distracting delusion. It was upon realizing this that I decided I understood how to approach the mushrooms for my last trip:

4g of the mushrooms were measured out by someone. Another unknown and (visibly less seeming) amount was gifted to me by someone else. At first, I was torn on whether to take just the amount measured out or to take more. Upon reading a bit of advice to remind me about how to navigate mushroom journeys, I remembered we can't KNOW anything (like how much mushrooms by weight was in front of me) and also taking the unknown amount was completely in line with my values of courage, embracing uncertainty, and deep analysis.

Most of the harm reduction guidelines seem to be designed for people who are living in a society that's automated judgment of experience and haven't unlearned that, yet.

Fair enough, but I would disagree on the point about taking an unknown amount (unless I misunderstood?). In my view correct dosing is one of the best ways to achieve a safe experience. One of the biggest issues with such substances is that most users will have no idea how strong the dose is, or if it is even what it says it is.

Courage is one thing, but overdosing is not a pleasant experience, even if it is usually not (physically) unsafe. Cannabis edibles are famous for this since most people have no idea how strong their brownies even after they make them. It was one of the main reasons I made an online calculator as a side project (http://www.scientificedibles.com) to help people to estimate dosage, rather than "take one" and end up on the floor.

I agree. It really depends on the substance, of course. 5g+ (for the species I was visiting with) is considered the high end. I was also not necessarily seeking a pleasant experience. I was seeking to uproot violent urge within me that kept rising up from chronically not being heard (and that includes not hearing myself).

A high dose of mushrooms is way way different than a high dose of LSD or cannabis.

> “thoughts and feelings imparted by psychedelics aren’t real...”

I mean, in what possible way are they “less real” than thoughts and feelings imparted by any other cause? This is your body, doing the thing in reaponse to a stimulus. This may be an atypical stimulus generating very different than usual responses, but they’re certainly real

Clearly it depends on your definition of real.

But it’s not a complicated concept to get. Like a person who is drunk might see double, when in fact there is one object. A person who is on a lot of amphetamines might believe they are being purposely followed when in fact there are no people intentionally following them.

Those perceptions are not real, in any commonly understood meaning of the word. It’s easy to understand what the parent comment meant in that context as well.

If you get angry at someone and later realize it was just a misunderstanding, is that "real" anger?

I think a lot of people miss this very important yet ~subtle (easy to completely miss) aspect of what can be learned from psychedelics.

Ok, thanks. Yes, hallucination causes you to see and hear things that aren’t there. That are not real objects or soundwaves.

Respectfully - there is still a bit of a category error in the GP, and a bit of a goalpost move here on your part.

Here’s the whole paragraph: > “ These belief-shifting outcomes aren’t mentioned in harm reduction guides. In many cases, they’re actually celebrated by users with an implicit assumption that all belief changes from psychedelics must be inherently good. I think it’s important to understand that thoughts and feelings imparted by psychedelics aren’t real and may likely be entirely meaningless.”

At a minimum, “what the parent comment meant in that context” refers to experiences that themselves alter one’s general perspective, mood, mindset, state of being, etc after the experience. If you prefer, taken word-as-written the GP is saying every thought you have at all under the influence isn’t “real.”

And reading the rest of the post, GP is concerned with permanent, potentially irreversible change to beliefs and brains.

So, shifting the conversation to hallucinations themselves is a bit of a dodge from the original context.

The other reply comment to yours has a salient point: emotions fall into a more durable category of experience than a hallucination. So, in what sense can any shift of perspective, mood, mindset, state of being, etc. in a person be counted as “real” or “not real?”

I dont think anyone informed say psychedelic are "extremely bad for you"

Well, these plants obliterate tons of (anti-depressant) revenues for the pharma industry, which is why they deploy their FUD and disinformation army. Hence the "extremely bad for you" astroturfing.

Fair enough

> Not everyone of course, but even a large number of psychedelic researchers who were supposedly doing it the “right way” were still walking away with bizarre and irrational beliefs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...

That article gives examples of folks who most definitely were not using psychedelics safety. Timothy Leary is famous for his controversial experiments.

Moreover, LSD and mushrooms are often conflated in discussions like this, but it should be noted that the two drugs have widely different outcomes and safe usage parameters.

The link itself conflates them.

Also, there's this from the link:

"The third possibility is the one that really intrigues me. A 2011 study found that a single dose of psilocybin could permanently increase the personality dimension of Openness To Experience. I’m emphasizing that because personality is otherwise pretty stable after adulthood; nothing should be able to do this."

The fact is everything IS able to do this and it's up to the person to choose it. Most people don't.

The idea that personality is a stable feature after adulthood is simply a cultural phenomena. As a person who has accidentally/intentionally constructed different identities with different voices in the head after out the mouth, it's very clear to me people's identities are incredibly malleable and most people are simply unaware/unpracticed in how to do it.

> The idea that personality is a stable feature after adulthood is simply a cultural phenomena

No it's not. Twin studies show that personality is largely genetically determined, ie. twins that were separated at birth and raised separately largely have the same personalities, levels of happiness and life satisfaction, and even similar jobs and spouses. People tend to overestimate environmental influences.

And how did the twins do when one was raised in a culture of beliefs about fixed identity/personality vs a culture of normalized self-reinvention?

Well Western cultures predominantly assume tabula rasa, and these studies largely undermined that assumption, so I think that's a sufficient answer.

I think there's also an assumption that because there's a genetic component, it's a fixed thing.

Gene expression is controlled via the epigenome, which can be affected by trauma.

Why can't it also be impacted by healing?

Also, since you didn't answer the question I asked, it's not a sufficient answer. I'm not talking about tabula rasa. I'm talking about static vs dynamic personality.