Psychedelics: A Personal Take (2021)
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Apologies in advance because it is really impossible to put it in words. When I consumed golden teachers the first time, I was physically in my room but the mental layer was lifted up and it flew up into the outer space, and as I had passed many far away galaxies I was there and eventually into a void. I saw some seriously scary creatures in the darkness of the void and there were millions around me, somehow from the deepest parts of my mind, what I perceived to be the scariest(I never told exactly what to anyone) had materialised in millions right in front of me. I was facing my worst fears a million trillion times amplified. Suddenly everything including me burst into smallest of particles so miniscule and it was just patterns and then I found my mental state inside my own blood stream feeling all the movement and rapid flows. Came out of there and I felt the suffering of death of this planet and fear of every person and every living creature that lived in the past until now combined on this planet at once right then. Sounds like my worst nightmare but throughout the journey there was a back voice guiding me to manage me and suggest me and everything I went through was almost consensual, like the depth was only offered to me when I consented to it and as if there was a friend to help me. There was a point I was getting auditory feedback and I was turning away from that depth and I did not consent to and so I didn't go into that part. When I was facing my fears the voice suggested to observe that they were actually harmless and they were just existing and simply doing their own thing. Something really deep inside of me was fixed. There is a lot more to the experience that I actually cannot put in words.
Reminds me of my own mortality
Embrace this moment, remember
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion
This song especially gives me frisson even when I'm sober.
There's something so beautiful about listening to the right music on psychedelics.
This is a mystery that riddles me.
What are we?
I've flirted with a couple of similar experiences and come away with a very similar feeling — "something really deep inside of me was fixed" — but I find a lot of it fades away after a while. Not all of it, but it definitely feels like 2 steps forward and 1 step back (or, more accurately, like 100 steps forward and 99 steps back).
Lately, it's all just a distant memory. I remember the objective fact that I was that person a few years ago, that I explored the universe while laying on the floor in some dude's living room (how's that for an objective fact?), that I experienced actual happiness for the first time in my life, that I managed to stay genuinely happy for months afterward. But it all faded away.
I've wondered ever since if folks who manage to maintain that sense of wonder afterwards do something different, or approach it differently.
I find that often times the extraordinary ability to be introspective on mushrooms is a detriment. I have the same issue with a lot of the push to be introspective lately. It keeps me in my head and away from properly enjoying things.
I think mushrooms can be a good tool, and at worst a fun drug but they're not a cure all and they don't work for everyone.
If you need courage to face your demons but only facing those demons will give you the courage to do the thing in the first place, then how to solve that circular dependency?
I found the book "Self Awareness" by Red Hawk pretty helpful in disentangling and disambiguating some of this stuff.
Preparing the mind is crucial to using psychedelics responsibly and avoiding that the negative emotions that come up take over you
If someone wants to say "I dropped acid and it helped me," fine. People are allowed to share personal experiences, though it's a mistake to universalize them.
But this "oh you didn't meditate enough" or whatever is such nonsense. It's a claim about these drugs and how they work that you have no grounds to make.
I haven't taken any hallucinogens in over a decade, but my HPPD symptoms still persist to this day. I have visual snow syndrome, warping, palinopsia/tracers, and phosphenes. They're not debilitating, but extremely annoying and for a lot of people it sends them into suicidal ideation or panic.
As with everything else, YMMV. You might be perfectly fine or you might be one of the rare ones like me that acquire unexpected side effects despite the fact that many people tout these drugs as having mild or temporary effects. Choose wisely.
I also did a lot of meditation, and pretty extensive sessions (40-60m) of it for a few months.
Some things to consider if you're interested.
Andrew Callaghan of "ALL GAS NO BRAKES" suffers from HPPD and has started to discuss it openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUbod5t_2oM&t=1247s
I think hearing HPPD stories from popular media figures like Callaghan can help seed healthy discussions about the risks of psychedelic use. In the past few years, the media has been way too optimistic about the potential positives of psychedelics while almost ignoring the risks and downsides.
I'm just making this up, and have zero studies to quote, but may it be that HPPD is actually a positive sign, on a path to healed trauma?
I think you need to worry if you're getting into depersonalization-derealization, otherwise you might just have some minor visual artifacts.
It's your decision if the pros outweigh the cons in your situation, but in my experience tackling trauma head-on in a safe environment has measurably improved my overall health.
But regarding mushrooms: on their own, I believe they're not that useful for healing. I have a (layman's) theory that post-trip therapy is probably more successful due to increased neuroplasticity of the brain[1]. There was also some research that suggested the DMN gets a bit "scrambled"[2], so another of my layman's theories is that it's able to reach a new "equilibrium" once it was kicked into this unstable state.
[1]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.17.431629v1...., and a more easily digested version is here https://www.sciencealert.com/one-dose-of-psilocybin-regrows-...
[2]: Can't find the thing I was thinking of now, but googling "psilocybin dmn" will yield some interesting reads regardless!
Like OP, for me personally it has profound effects on me and helps me improve and maintain my mental health.
Everyone is different.
After 2-3 months and giving it another try did not replicate that experience. In addition to it, if anything it lasted for that trip only.
Maybe I should have done something during the trip. I was just watching a movie being cozy at home.
Mushrooms pulled me back from the precipice of suicide, I will never stop advocating for their usage and legalisation - but this is dangerously wrong.
At worst they can shoot you into a horror space from which you will not return, and that needs to be considered before taking them.
There's also a danger zone (Lana) in between a medium dose and a large dose, in which you're not so incapacitated as to be immobile, but too incapacitated to accurately judge reality.
One study, conducted on terminally ill cancer patients, found that most of them rated it as one of the most important experiences of their lives [1], rating it alongside the birth of their children, their wedding day, etc. Additionally, the depression easing effects were shown to persist up to a year by this study.
I wouldn't be surprised if experiencing one of the most important, enliving, and connective experiences of your life wouldn't go on to reduce depression and anxiety for the rest of your life.
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/hallucin...
Guided meditation can be bliss - when u want to sleep and the patterns don't go away, the meditation will carry you into the underbelly of your consciousness. The voice becomes light that sometimes shines like rays into the underwater forests or cave systems of the subconscious.
I once did some hypnosis where you meet your inner guardian and explore the inside of your subconscious. You're allowed to ask 3 questions, I wasn't prepared. Having experienced violence in my past I asked the wrong questions and the guardian threw me out. The trip ended there at the same moment and I felt miserable. I learned that you can't force answers.
Whenever I took something I got headaches, these became more weird over time. My teeth were screaming for help, I asked them what they wanted and they told me they didn't want to be alone. Turns out that I got nerd neck and that's cutting off the oxygen to my face. Now I can feel it, my nose goes cold, headache starts, eyes feel weird, the inside of my mouth is cold. Haven't found the right diagnosis yet, but it likes me to drink warm beverages, sports, yoga, breathing exercises and cold water showers - can't do those when sober.
I learned that my place is no fun or cozy, it's a wasteland when sober. Trying to make it better. No idea, I'd like to have some low budget low energy automated system that generates music, something to decorate time with.
McDonald's Toilet can be the most calming and peaceful place on earth.
Don't talk to conspiracy theorists or esoteric ppl when high.
Have your dog around, they're wonderful guides.
The hardware is boss, stop micro-managing.
The list goes on and on... I do some art, but I don't know how to catch all this
I wonder if the human mind is like a antenna or receiver of sorts. Outside of our physical world or perhaps at a distance so great may exists some greater entities.
Gods if you will, or perhaps spiritual entities.
I wonder if in certain states of dreaming or on certain substances our brain/receiver is more receptive to these “signals”.
Perhaps bad trips … occur since you are in a receptive state “drugged lsd, etc” and a negative spiritual entity is able to access in this state.
Perhaps in a good trip … you are able to increase your signal reception to a greater will, a more benevolent, a spiritual entity that is more positive, creative, loving, forgiving, etc.
When you are cut off from these forces or the signal is diminished perhaps … depression sets in… no sense of purpose.. etc.
While I dont ascribe any spirituality to these "entities" as you describe, I do wonder if they exist in some physical form. If they do we'll no doubt find and classify them eventually.
> I felt like I was exhaling after a life spent holding my breath.
Splendid stuff you can grow yourself for <$100, but it's also exciting to watch it become more legal in places and easier to access. Seems that we're finally recovering from the exuberance of the 60s.
I bought shrooms, ate them alone in a room and soon felt the effects. First, some dizzyness and nausea, then, slowly, an increased brilliant feeling radiating from my stomach and soon encompassing my entire body. With it, a mental focus on small patterns, light projected through leaves of a tree outside into the room. For the first time that I could remember, actually feeling well inside my body, and feeling energetic, comfortable, not nervous. I looked at the wallpaper but my negative feelings about it were amplified a lot, I knew set and setting were important, so I dared to go outside into a park. For the first time that I could remember, I could smile. And someone smiled back. I sat down, and watched, and thought. For the first time that I could remember I felt connected to the world, in a way I died. I could see patterns if I wanted. Dare I say, I felt a bit human.
It even seemed like people were there for me. This made me sad and contemplative, being aware of my past and present, but I could think about these things without extremely negative emotions disturbing my thoughts. I saw people in groups and for the first time believed I could be part of it if I wanted.
Unfortunately these feelings faded soon after the trip, my life riddled with even more rejection and pain. I took shrooms again, but the second time I knew what to expect, and it didn't feel very special. The saying "if you get the message, hang up the phone" made some sense, since I felt I already got it the first time.
The third time, I took a bit of DMT with someone who was there for me in the right moment. It was the first time in my life I dared to be close with someone. Yet again, I was rejected, but it didn't matter.
A few weeks ago I took LSD. I enjoyed some music and patterns. Enjoyment, but exhausting enjoyment. Maybe I haven't gotten the full message after all. Ultimately, I think these substances can show someone that life can be worth living, that happiness is possible again, and help in reconsidering ones relationship to ones own body, other people and the world. For me, they did not have significant permanent effects however. I do not recommend taking these substances alone, especially if you are in a mentally extreme condition.
Until that point, dancing for me was something that just you do socially because that's what people do, and (in my head) most people did it drunk because that was the only way it felt bearable to do.
I know it wasn't some lifechanging discovery, but it definitely was one of those realizations that I thought i would never reach in my life (or that it was possible at all, i assumed it was something you either like or you don't, without much wiggle room for a change).
Psychedelics do seem to break down lifelong mental models and thus increase your level of self-awareness but I've personally never been able to integrate these trip experiences to anything meaningful in my daily life. The insights I've gained from psychedelics have had little to no impact on my overall mental health, emotional regulation, interpersonal relationships, etc. There seems to be a large gap between the psychedelic state of mind and the "ego" mind that we must embrace in daily life. Sure, I've had interesting trips that made me question the nature of consciousness and reality. I've alos had trips where I broke down all my mental models and experienced pure randomness/chaos, which I believe is just somewhat incompatible with my Earthly existence, which makes integration difficult.
This "self-awareness" is a common theme I've experienced in trips is just the pure randomness of reality/existence. There is no "reason" why anything happens. There's no reason you are you, and there's no reason to be anything different. I think if you truly explore self-awareness, you will reach this point. You are a configuration that has no inherent "reason" to be that particular configuration. You can hope to transform into a different configuration, but there's no compelling reason to be anything else because at the core, everything is arbitrary. The best you come out with is a sense of disillusionment or depersonalization. Maybe you can overcome this point in the journey and reach "enlightenment". I've yet to experience what's past this, but maybe someone else can shed some light on that.
Actually, I wonder if more self-awareness can be a bad thing for some people, and if that's what it comes down to. Often times when I feel the most self aware, I'm the most lost in my own head and disconnected from reality and other people. This isn't objectively a bad thing, but I don't see how it leads to realizations about love and connectedness, which I think are the real antidotes to things like depression and emptiness.
These have been helpful to me:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffability
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%C3%AFve_realism_(psycholo...
I've often struggled with existential depression: Along the lines of "The sun is going to explode in a few billion years, what's the point in doing anything today?" This didn't really affect my day-to-day life that much, but I often struggled to be motivated because of this overhanging existential "what's the point?"
Dosage: 5g dried golden teachers, ground with burr grinder, soaked in lemon juice, and then consumed in one go.
Felt like nothing was happening all that much for an hour, but then a gradual come-up of an altered state, euphoria. My senses started merging: words had taste, sounds had color, etc. then I felt I was losing touch with reality (later realized this was my ego fighting to hold on).
Things that I thought were intrinsic to the human conscious experience started to break down: I lost an understanding of the concept of time (looking at my bedside clock was nonsensical), as the trip became more aggressive, I actually started losing the concept of 4D space-time. There was no differentiation between having my eyes open or closed. I felt like I had been blasted into a high dimensional space of many possible realities.
My brain couldn't make sense of this new experience. This was actually REALLY scary, not in a bad trip sense, but in a "holy shit, I'm kind of lost in this incomprehensible set of realities and have no way of navigating back home." I distinctly had the feeling like I was a god-like being that was literally constructing reality with my thoughts.
Ultimately I remember just completely relaxing into it and finding a crazy inner peace: white light, no sense of personal identity, no sense of time.
As I was coming out of the trip, I started to "rediscover" things: Oh! Time is just the relative ordering of events. Oh, THIS particular reality I'm in has 3 spatial dimensions.
Out of all the infinite, confusing, scary possibilities of existence, I returned to my life here on earth in this body. This made me feel so so grateful for THIS existence, in THIS body, in THIS reality. Almost felt like I'd again found the oasis of our reality in the desert of all possible realities. The gratefulness I felt after being on some metaphysical trip that had felt like a lifetime and being able to return to the familiar made me appreciate how wonderful existence is and how great it is to inhabit this reality.
tl;dr; Being blasted out into a scary confusing set of all possible realities and somehow finding a path back to this familiar reality made me really appreciate what I'd previously taken for granted.
There probably isn't a teleological reason why, but there are certainly reasons why. That's why biology etc. exist.
> You can hope to transform into a different configuration, but there's no compelling reason to be anything else because at the core, everything is arbitrary. The best you come out with is a sense of disillusionment or depersonalization. Maybe you can overcome this point in the journey and reach "enlightenment". I've yet to experience what's past this, but maybe someone else can shed some light on that.
There are limits to the utility of desire. How can life be meaningful without a body? Without contentment, how can anything have value?
Be careful out there. I think the upsides are balanced by a general under-performing malaise which gets worse over the decades.
5 years of bloom, but it's burning adaptation capacity and resilience which you'll need later.
Be conservative of yourself. Experiment gently if you must.
Would not recommend.
Be safe, be smart, and consult a professional. I don't recommend doing it "street-style" where you buy it off the black market and take it at a rave :)
But also, spores (which lack that chemical) are often legal, so if you want to avoid an illegal purchase, you could just get spores and grow your own.
It is legal to purchase the spores and have them shipped across state lines in the US because the spores do not contain psilocybin. Somewhat fool-proof, takes very little space, can be done in under 2 months.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unclebens/comments/el1da3/part_1_ho...
uhhh.... ಠ_ಠ
Stopped reading right there. These over exaggerations and platitudes are really eye roll inducing.