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Comment by Aurornis | Hacker News Reader

As a counter-antidote: I know several people now who have experimented with psychedelics with the goal of addressing mental health issues who ended up significantly worse.

One of them got stuck with a nagging feeling that the world wasn’t quite real that lasted for a very long time, which resulted in a lot of anxiety.

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Depersonalization and derealization are truly awful. Having experienced them for non-psychedelic reasons, it's almost indescribable.

Sometimes people say "seeing events in third person". My experience was that my consciousness and actions were completely disconnected from my observations of reality. Like, I questioned whether I had any influence at all over my existence. Basic, predictable events were suddenly uncertain and terrifying. It left me with no mental capacity to do anything but uneasily exist.

With treatment, it goes away gradually over months. I never want to go back there.

One wonders if that's how it actually is and the rest is just the brain fooling us into having control by way of rationalizing the actions we were going to do anyway.

We kinda know its like that dont we. Perhaps those who suffer such condition see throuh the abstractions our brain makes. Like seeing things in a rawer form that doesnt align well with more normative views of society.

> Like seeing things in a rawer form that doesnt align well with more normative views of society.

Psycedelics in a nutshell

There’s certainly a lot of research and a lot of philosophical thought leaning in that direction.

Without the lies our brain tells our consciousness, we couldn't function. Even core stuff like the way that we see or our experience of choice, are dependent on our brain fooling us in some way.

Luckily, we an pretty good at being hypocritical. This allows us to learn and think about this stuff while still believing the lies.

This suffers from the homunculus fallacy.

It definitely depends on the person and the state of mind they have when they go into it. I've had really overwhelming de-personalization episodes on LSD as well and they were extremely positive, life transforming experiences. I had studied and practiced Buddhism for years prior to having those experiences, though, which helped me integrate what was happening. It was like all of a sudden getting a direct experience of what was previously just words and philosophy -- "oh, this is what he was talking about."

Had I gone into it totally blind with no way to frame it it probably would have been a nightmarish scenario though. There's a reason why Right View (samyak-drishti) is the first of the 8 Noble Truths [1] and the one really emphasized in the beginning of your Buddhist practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_(Buddhism)

Yup - they can also give you migraines (or worse) if you introduce bugs into the "software", just as I was able to debug my problems away.

I firmly oppose the use of LSD under any circumstances, as it often marks the beginning of self-destruction, no matter how justified the reasons may seem. In my experience, those who have used LSD inevitably see their lives spiral into chaos.

There's something to be said about psychedelics and introversion in general being a two-edged sword. There's also something to be said about how we get into trouble when we consider beliefs or abstract feelings as something outside our control.

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