These two things radically shifted my life perspective and resolved a lot of inner issues, both after just a single time.
Particularly the psychedelic experience is great for sparking realizations that things like hate, xenophobia, racism, etc. are all so absurd and non-productive.
Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science. But it's difficult to be anything but subjective about it if you have experienced it. I suspect any critical thinking becomes biased and that relationship requires some analysis as well.
Boring take I know but to pose a question: at the level of society if it is normalised, does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome?
Do you think the two events could be otherwise related?
As you then say "Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science."
>...does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome?
It's a great question, but banning it, so the quality of the chemical supplied then may be suspect, and the dosages may be wildly different - and seeing what happens over 60+ years was an incorrect move.
If everyone took them in a context conducive to healing/therapy it would be positive. Unfortunately that's rarely the case (though it's becoming more common).
For me, despite regularly taking high doses of psychedelics (so far LSD and psilocybin), none of them have been huge life-shattering trips. They're just recreational experiences.
Maybe I'm just neurodivergent in a very specific way that isn't easily impacted by psychedelics. They're still my favorite substances and I still enjoy them, but it hasn't made that big of an impact on my life, other than being something to spend my money on, like you say.
Or maybe people with self-proclaimed life-shattering experiences are just extrapolating more out of their trip than what actually happened.
I'm sure plenty of people have legitimately improved their lives this way, but I don't believe the hype.
> when we need science.
Do SSRIs beat placebo?
That was absolutely unexpected effect. I still don't know what to think about it.
I'm not a psychodelic enthusiast
After LSD he just "forgot" to take them
I remember one trip I was reading this book called Be Here Now by Ram Dass. Very new-agey, acid culture type thing. A very spiritually intense book
I remember having this lingering feeling of "I probably shouldn't be doing these" because of some mental health history on my mother's side of the family. I remember there was this part of it about how people go insane off of psychedelics, turning the page and seeing this lightning bolt hitting a giant tower and seeing a bunch of people falling to the ground out of it. And right when I saw that, I heard the loudest thunder I have ever heard in my entire life (it was raining outside). Like it shook the whole fucking house
Afterwards I looked up the dude who wrote the book, saw he was a "new age" guy with a white robe on and sort of felt like I was tricked, and that the lightning was some type of coincidence. In hindsight I see this as pride from my part. Also that was the last time I did a psychedelic. There's this saying with them where "you get the message and hang up the phone", that was my cue
I was an atheist up to this point but that scared this fear into me that there's something out there. You can rationalize and come up with reasons to deny that (it isn't hard), but I'd rather not personally. At least, I feel more at peace now after accepting that there is
After many years of experimenting with pretty much every conventional and 'research' drug, MDMA is the only one that stands out to me personally as having a lasting impact on how I view the world.
The people using microdosing to be more effective at work, well... good grief.
I think this is overly dismissive. I don’t think we should all be taking drugs to squeeze every bit out of ourselves out into the next jira ticket, but elsewhere in the thread there’s a comment discussing fundamental breakthroughs in networking technology that came about after an LSD trip. If someone believes that microdosing improves the creativity and overall satisfaction with their job, is that a bad thing?
Objectively, those people are normalizing performance-enhancing drugs and the usual vicious cycle that goes with it.
Less objectively, they also tend to be the typically soul-less nerds who have made the technology industry so malicious.
You should run for office with that platform and see how far it carries you.
I don’t believe that mindset exists.
If someone were to grow up in an economy built on coal mining with 13 year old miners, and you’re really effective at organizing 13 year old coal miners, then you’re gonna be very productive.
Even though everything that you’re doing is existentially bad for everybody, they are all ignorant of it’s harms. So even if temporally coal mining with miners might be the only thing that anyone is aware of to do that is “productive.”
You can make no “mistakes” and still lose just from ignorance
All I’m saying is that if someone is to make extraordinary claims “this drug is great against racism”, they should be able to back it up with more than “well I wasn’t racist before, and I’m still not, and besides we’re all one so why would someone else be?”
I’m well aware of the claim. I’m the one who protested it to begin with. And I still have found no evidence that the parent hadn’t realized any of those beforehand.
This is the exact kind of behavior that gets the psychs-solve-everything crowd dismissed.
I think that's about as detailed as I can get without revealing private information.
It was a remarkable experience and fundamentally changed the way I think about the human mind, extreme political views, political dialogue, and most of all how therapy should work.
I had a chip on my shoulder, so to speak.