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Comment by maxbond | Hacker News Reader

> How do you expect me to support something that has destroyed mine and others' mental health?

I'm sorry to hear that you were hurt by psilocybin and other drugs. Unfortunately I think a recreational drug culture is ill equipped to understand and manage the hazards of powerful hallucinogenics drugs, and that too many people are left with bad and even traumatic experiences.

But doesn't this go both ways? How do you expect people who found a profound benefit from psilocybin not to discuss their experiences? I can understand advocating for caution, absolutely, but you're implying in your earlier comment that you believe they're deluding themselves. Why would your experience invalidate theirs?

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Because I personally believe that we should learn to live with our lives as the mind presents it to us instead of trying to fool ourselves into thinking our altered drug states give us some kind of deeper insight into reality, which they obviously don't. They disconnect us more from the universe and our own lives

It's far from obvious to me. Drugs have helped me to understand myself, the way my perception works, and the nature of reality. They've also helped me to manage my anxiety and depression.

You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken. And how would you know whether my experiences were false? You couldn't possibly.

> Drugs have helped me to understand myself, the way my perception works, and the nature of reality.

They haven't, you just think they have. There are real ways to gain such insight, but not through breaking your brain's pattern recognition capabilities.

> They've also helped me to manage my anxiety and depression.

Well, they are drugs.

> You can tell me that's an illusion, but you'd be mistaken.

What is an illusion and what isn't? I'm not saying you aren't having those experiences, I'm just saying that they are not actually related to some biological element of yourself, such as you living a human life. Psychedelics breaks our pattern recognition, sense data starts to get interpreted in different ways and we see, hear, and feel sense data in a different way. They just fuzz up the control system of your brain. While it's true that your normal experiences are not somehow "less illusory" than those drug experiences, it is true that they are a more accurate model of external reality.

Your mind is constantly refreshing its own model of reality, according to received inputs. Psychedelics totally mess up your model of reality. The problem is that now you are attaching to this messed up model of reality as somehow real and insightful. It's not, it's just what happens when your brain isn't functioning properly.

It's very strange to me to hear a Buddhist argue that I should forgo something which eases my suffering and advances my spiritual practice because of my biology! Also very strange to hear a Buddhist proclaim they not only understand reality, but reality from my perspective. I'm not a Buddhist, but I've been studying Zen lately (though I understand you may subscribe to a different interpretation), and this really flies in the face of everything I've learned.

There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.

> It's very strange to me to hear a Buddhist argue that I should forgo something which eases my suffering and advances my spiritual practice because of my biology! Also very strange to hear a Buddhist proclaim they not only understand reality, but reality from my perspective. I'm not a Buddhist, but I've been studying Zen lately (though I understand you may subscribe to a different interpretation), and this really flies in the face of everything I've learned.

Well, Buddhism is very strictly anti-drug compared to any other religion that I know of. Of course, Buddhism would argue that it isn't easing your suffering but is actually increasing your ignorance and your likelihood of creating bad karma, leading to a worse rebirth in the future. It is more likely to be reborn in a hell realm if you are on drugs than if you have a clear mind through mindfulness and concentration. If you train mindfulness and good ethics then you can achieve a heavenly rebirth or even eventually exit samsara. Btw, I trained in Soto Zen under an ordained, authorised teacher. Drugs are considered a hinderance, that's why alcohol is a violation of the precepts.

> There's only one person in this world who gets to decide whether my brain is functioning properly, and whether my understanding of reality is advancing my material and spiritual goals. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine who that person is.

Here's a hint: it's not you, since you are, according to Buddhism, an ignorant, deluded being. Those aren't even terms to be rude, those are the technical terms we use. A vast majority of beings are not in a position to judge whether their understanding of reality is materially or spiritually beneficial, because they lack insight.

Whew. That is certainly a take. I'm gunnuh go ahead and pursue my path, and I wish you safe travel along yours. I'm sorry you had such terrible experiences.

I don't have a path, I'm just randomly here in a body with a mind

Shrooms helped me quit alcohol. Drank for 10 years every night, took shrooms twice in my life, never drank again after the second time. That was many years ago. I guess there are some things more useful than an accurate model of reality?

Some drugs can have positive effects. That doesn't mean they unlock the secrets of reality. It also doesn't mean that we should praise their positive effects without extreme caution.

Ketamine is a great anti-depressant for people who are resistant to all other treatments, yet you don't see people going around indiscriminately praising the effects of ketamine like you do with LSD or shrooms.

The synapses in your brain change anytime you experience, learn or remember something. Your "natural" mind changes with time, and mind-altering substances can do the same thing in shorter time spans.

Whether you want to experience this or not is up to you, but you're wrong by thinking that others are fooling themselves. Some people do gain deeper insights of themselves and reality, while others merely do it for recreation. Neither "disconnects us more from the universe"—quite the contrary.

Okay but the brain exists to provide an accurate model of reality. Changing it so as not to do so and then thinking that new model is "real" is fooling yourself.

> Some people do gain deeper insights of themselves and reality

No they don't. Literally anyone who thinks they do is "deluded" (in the Buddhist technical sense)

Well, to sum it up what you wrote - you are a proper mess, you took drugs without supervision despite literally everybody, everywhere, all the time since 50s advising to NOT take any drugs (including alcohol and cigarettes/nicotine) in such conditions.

Then unsurprisingly you got hurt, and now you are sour on whole world and want to tell everybody how to live their lives, since you obviously know what's best for all of us. And of course you understand very well literally every single human being in this world in these ways. Did I miss anything?

With great power comes great responsibility, you skipped the second part. Me, just like many others, had wonderful, enlightening experiences and I've done the best decisions in my life with help of those (but not only those). Those decisions stood the test of time and literally decades after they happened they are still right ones and I am profoundly thankful for them. And it literally doesn't matter what anybody sour writes on internet, you do you and we do us, in both good and bad ways.

> Did I miss anything?

I mean, yes, since this quite poorly summarises the situation. (I was not born in a place where I was told not to do drugs, I did drugs in a very safe environment with people I love who were supervising and caring for me, I dosed accordingly and carefully, I thought my mental state was conducive to the experience, etc. etc. etc.)

> Me, just like many others, had wonderful, enlightening experiences and I've done the best decisions in my life with help of those (but not only those).

I mean, yes, it's called being on drugs. When on MDMA people feel very empathetic and happy, similar on psychedelics. In Buddhism we call it "delusion"

> And it literally doesn't matter what anybody sour writes on internet

If you don't care at all, why are you even telling me? Your response does not read like an enlightened person. My Buddhist teacher did not speak in the way that you are speaking

I am responding to what I perceive as incorrect subjective statements, welcome to internet and its forums :)

It may shock you but not everybody strives to be buddhist or adhere to their core values (not everything in that religion is a-OK as per modern moral standards). I don't even care about some enlightenment, its some concept of one specific religion not particularly close to my heart. I like buddhists in their original countries a lot, shiny glowing people regardless of their often hard lives, westerns lost wannabes eternally looking for salvation usually not so much.

Some of us, 'enlightened' by spiritual aspects of psychedelics (just to be clear, I talk about psylocibin, it gave me all I ever needed from it and much more, no need for me to go into MDMA or further) realized that spirituality tells us a lot how humans are wired internally and what happens when you mess with brain's receptors, but absolutely nothing about existence of actual higher power(s).

And I don't need the existence of those powers, since I don't believe in them any more than in Santa claus. I am content with my own death (as extreme sports bring you close to it often), life so far figured out, I know exactly what my purpose in this life is, how to make myself long term content and happy, caring for my wife and kids, have cca good creative work, living in amazing place in Switzerland, taking care of my body. I really don't need anything else, and for none of that any kind of religion or ancient philosophy is necessary.

If you mention the word "enlightenment" then I can only relate it to what I learnt from my religion, Buddhism, since that is where the term has been taken from. I'm aware of no other form of enlightenment than Buddhist enlightenment. I'm not sure how you want me to relate to the word outside of a Buddhist context.

> I like buddhists in their original countries a lot, shiny glowing people regardless of their often hard lives, westerns lost wannabes eternally looking for salvation usually not so much.

You are too ignorant to comment on such things. All Buddhist are "wannabes eternally looking for salvation", that's the whole point of Buddhism, that we want to become a Buddha and save ourselves and others from suffering. Most Buddhists in the world are Pure Land Buddhists, so they pray to Amida Buddha so they can be reborn in his Western Pure Land.

I recommend to just use a different word than enlightenment and avoid getting so involved in something you clearly know very little about.

> Okay but the brain exists to provide an accurate model of reality.

There's no such thing. Reality is subjective for everyone who experiences it, as our senses dictate how we perceive it. The model of reality we agree with is a general overlap of our collective senses, and is not any more "real" than the one experienced when under the influence of mind-altering substances.

And this is fine. The way we all experience life is different, but claiming one way is "real" and the other "delusional" is a mistake.

> There's no such thing. Reality is subjective for everyone who experiences it, as our senses dictate how we perceive it. The model of reality we agree with is a general overlap of our collective senses, and is not any more "real" than the one experienced when under the influence of mind-altering substances.

I honestly think it's a cope to assert that there aren't really existing objects out there. The best you can do is a Hegelian argument, i.e. that everything is undetermined without a pure concept or language, but that doesn't really tell us whether or not there is "stuff" out there.

Here's a question for you: do you think that there was no universe before sentient beings started to see it? Your argument here would mean you should answer "yes"

That's the age old question of a tree falling in a forest.

I'm not disputing the claim that the universe exists even if there is no observer. What I'm saying is that the perception of that universe depends entirely on our senses. After all, to a blind person, the universe appears much differently. In that same vein, altering our senses by taking various substances expands our perception of the universe in a way a person who doesn't will never experience. My point is that choosing to do so or not is fine, and neither is better than the other. So my objection is to your claim that the people who do make that choice are deluding themselves, or not experiencing "true" reality.

> What I'm saying is that the perception of that universe depends entirely on our senses.

And there is a right way to perceive it, and a wrong way to perceive it.

> After all, to a blind person, the universe appears much differently.

And? They still perceive the senses they can still access accurately.

> In that same vein, altering our senses by taking various substances expands our perception of the universe in a way a person who doesn't will never experience.

I agree except replace "expand" with "confuses". It makes our perception of reality incorrect.

> My point is that choosing to do so or not is fine, and neither is better than the other.

One is objectively better than another. Try driving a car on a strong LSD trip. You can't, because it isn't allowing you to have an accurate perception of reality.

> So my objection is to your claim that the people who do make that choice are deluding themselves, or not experiencing "true" reality.

You haven't adequately justified your objection.

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