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Comment by hulucinate | Hacker News Reader

I do feel like selling the "interesting" part of Hallucinogens as the visuals is hugely under selling the entire experience. Feel like that's the LEAST interesting part. It's the ability to step into a different experience of reality / head space that's simultaneously engaging and terrifying.

Strong synesthesia between sounds, words, taste, colors, textures: e.g. distinctly "feeling" the word "blueberry" as a taste and color. (Psilocybin)

Spatial reality distortion that's stable over a trip (Psilocybin). Linked with time distortion "literally feels like we've been walking for an eternity where on the previous day it only took 5 minutes"

Coming "closer" to reality and seeing it at a higher "frame rate" (LSD).

Complete disassociation from your normal reality and being projected into a complete different spatial relationship to existence (Ketamine).

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I would describe it differently: Psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD deactivate filters in your brain (parts of the default mode network to be precise). These filters are unconscious and do not only block weird visual effects but also thoughts and emotions. Some of the thoughts and emotions they block are scary and we probably installed those filters in our childhood during "traumatic" events but some of these thoughts and emotions were filtered because we were taught to ignore them or that they would be false or we tried things while growing up and always failed with them (not because they were impossible but due to the circumstances, e.g. parents not allowing it).

Well with those filters removed you don't only see "raw", unprocessed images, you also get all those thoughts back. Some of them can be very scary and lead you into a "bad trip" but some are also incredibly(!) freeing. And it's impossible to explain this feeling of having no mental filters to someone who did not experience it because all those filters are not conscious. You don't even know you had them until they are gone!

Great summary! What books would you recommend on this area of default mode network and psychedelic interactions?

Pollan's book "How to Change Your Mind" has a good section on it. Curious to learn more.

I don't have any book recommendations but I can recommend taking a look at their publications and resources: https://maps.org/

The Doors of Perception - Aldous Huxley

Food of the Gods - Terence McKenna

Alien Information Theory by Andrew Gallimore

Excerpt reading https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxC2cyg-cTg

Less about psychedelics, but a great accessory read is Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson

> Some of the thoughts and emotions they block are scary

Building on this, if someone is scared of the 'psychedelic' part then there is also MDMA which too lifts 'filters' and makes the subject aware of those thoughts and emotions so they can be processed, but takes away the fear and anxiety.

MDMA is not classified as psychedelic and currently studied for treatment of PTSD (among other diagnoses).

Psychonauts found a way to combine those effects: candyflip (a combination of LSD and MDMA) or hippieflip (psilocybin and MDMA).

Also 2C-B is a psychedelic with a entactogenic (think like mdma) effect.

It’s much more manageable, calmer and reliably positive than psilocybin or LSD

Mdma utterly jacks my cardiovascular system. People with high blood pressure or other cardiovascular issues should be careful using that.

Yeah, people with high blood pressure or other cardiovascular issues should be careful using all psychotropic drugs, including psychedelics - some if which are 5HT(2B) receptor agonists, and those receptors are expressed on the heart valve. But MDMA has still more dangerous physical effects than LSD/psilocybin.

As a fully abled person with strong body and ego, what I've taken out of the experiences is the humbling effect of not being able to trust my own senses or conclusions about the world. It's what I call "Mental Handicap Experience", but with a positive twist where coming out of heavy experiences made me re-evaluate my cognition, surroundings, life choices under a completely different light. I am not sure everyone would agree with me calling this the famous death of ego. But each of these experiences felt like my previous self has died and a second person came in to my body to reevaluate the state of reality. Even though, in hindsight, I don't think I have changed much in a long term, I recall positively the short term effects on quality of my life.

What you've written is reflected pretty well under the title "ego death" on the site in question...

https://effectindex.com/effects/ego-death

I've found that the "reborn" person only lasts as long as you put into practice the new relevations. This requires thinking of actionable items, or behaviors to think on, but otherwise it's worked.

This of course may just be my experience

Thought inducing observation, where we understand chemistry of our brain as something maluable by exercise and habit creation. I would have taken a different stab at this idea by proposing that the "new revelations" which appear in hightened state of consciousness, are our prior experiences boosted and unfiltered, allowing for previously weak and seemingly unimportant ideas, to be manifested and actually recombined into actionable items. Our opinions are verified in a dream-like alternative reality and if they are actually as profound as they seemed in that dream, then we turn them ibto actions even unconciously.

> synesthesia

Fun anecdote: When I was finishing my undergrad I had a housemate that was studying synesthesia. One of the tests for number/color synesthesia was a regular sheet of paper filled with typewritten letters and one number (this was pre-printer days). The test was to measure how fast a person could find the number. Synesthetes could spot it in a few hundreds of milliseconds, non-exhibitors took up to 30 seconds or more. It was a fascinating test. I never considered taking it under the influence of psilocybin or other drugs but am now curious, but way past my drug-taking prime.

I was part of a similar project (as a control) the majority of people who claimed synesthesia did not see any kind of benefit compared to those that didn't.

But a small cadre (I'd have called the people with actual synesthesia) were spectacularly good at some of those tasks.

Another task was doing maths with notes. You got to specify the numbers attached to the sounds.

It'd be like beep-beep-bop and they'd shout 14! Or whatever it was

I would say that math with notes is more likely to be a case of absolute pitch: some people is capable of recognize notes without any reference - no other sense is involved.

As someone who used to have a shade of number color synesthesia, I don't think psychedelics would temporarily induce this in a person. Someone on psychedelics however might find themselves better at this task for different reasons though! My guess is it's depend heavily on the dose and even the substance though...

I wrote a script to try it. It's boggling that anyone could do this task in milliseconds.

  import os
  import random

  cols,rows = os.get_terminal_size()
  numchars = cols*rows
  randletter = lambda: chr(random.randrange(ord('A'), ord('Z')+1))
  randnumber = lambda: chr(random.randrange(ord('0'), ord('9')+1))

  letters = []
  placement = random.randrange(numchars)
  for i in range(numchars): letters.append(randnumber()) if i == placement else letters.append(randletter())

  for l in letters: print(l,end='')
  input()

  CEND      = '\33[0m'
  CSELECTED = '\33[7m'

  for i,l in enumerate(letters): print(CSELECTED + l + CEND,end='') if i == placement else print(l,end='')
  input()

Psychadelics seem to mean a lot of different things to differwnt people because for me none of what you mentioned was that profound or interesting about taking psychedelics. For me it was the 5 or 6 hour come down window after all the above stops where i seem to have perfect clarity on what is wrong in my life and the steps I need to take to fix those things. I try to go to Amsterdam and pop a box of their strongest magic truffles once every couple years just for that window. The self criticism and self correction that has come out of that has been utterly life changing for the better for me.

> I do feel like selling the "interesting" part of Hallucinogens as the visuals is hugely under selling the entire experience.

who's selling that? the article simply focuses on that aspect.

The visuals are interesting because they're the only aspect that can even come close to being shared with people who don't use the drugs.

Right. I think they're a good metaphor too. See how warped and weird the visuals are? Imagine that kind of process being applied to everything. Sound, touch, even thought itself, or the experience of the passage of time. Its all warped.

While yes the other effects are also strong, alone the experience that my vision can change like this just which some chemical utterly impressed me.

It definitely humbles you when you know something such fundamental can change.

I don’t know. I find all that pretty boring with LSD in particular for the simple fact that I can’t share the experience with anyone. It’s masturbatory.

i'm too neurotic to enjoy drugs. i think you have to be slack, the kind of person who easily falls asleep on a plane or bus ride.

i envy your experiences.

All your examples involve visuals though. Given our visual system is such a critical part of how we experience and interpret the world, I wouldn't say focusing on the visuals is "hugely underselling" hallucinogens.

Your last point - complete disassociation from normal reality - is a hallmark of all hallucinogens, in my experience.

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