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Comment by nathan_compton | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if my brain is just wired up differently, but I've taken both LSD and Psilocybin many times and I did not find the experiences spiritual at all. I don't even know what people are talking about when they talk about spiritual experiences.

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I recently talked about LSD to a spiritual person (the western esotericism kind).

He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.

Set and setting can make or break the experience. Alone and -> introspection or in the crowd who will drag you along them? Looking around at patterns emerging or resting with eyes firmly closed letting your mind wander far and high? What kind of soothing music is in the background? And so on.

For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).

Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.

I've enjoyed my experiences and find them very interesting, but I just don't feel any like they've revealed anything deep about life or the universe to me.

Like from my point of view each moment of consciousness is bizarre, interesting, impossible to describe already. The experience of taking mushrooms or LSD doesn't really enhance or even change that fact.

Agreed. I really enjoy both acid and shrooms, but beyond appreciating the fractal beauty of trees and the patterns in carpets a bit more I wouldn't describe them as anything life-changing, let alone some kind of spiritual awakening. MDMA is similarly hyped up, but no, I never felt "connected to the mass of humanity" or whatever people talk about, I just got high and danced while gritting my teeth and rubbing on my head.

Decades ago I had the same type of what are people talking about?!, it's certainly not happening to me! surprise, regarding MDMA and the supposed wonders of dancing the night away. I felt the effects of the substance, but to me, nightclub dancing on MDMA still felt about as awkwardly-conscious, performative and unnecessary as it did without!

I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.

Set and setting. None of these drugs are like alcohol that just dulls the brain and lowers your IQ by 30 points. In a way you get what you're prepared to get.

It sounds like the nightclubs you were going to weren't a good setting either. A club should never feel self-conscious or performative. You should be able to get lost in there with the music. The dancing shouldn't feel unnecessary but more of an obligation because the music is so good. If you feel its unnecessary and awkward sober then no drug will fix that except maybe alcohol. I to to clubs and dance 100% sober these days.

> you get what you're prepared to get

For the folks who aren't sure what the rest of us are talking about, this is the important bit.

Yes I think you're exactly right. In my case, the set wasn't there, because my heart was never in nightclubbing or its style of music, in general. Getting persuaded by friends to have enjoyable MDMA experiences with them in that setting didn't change those preferences, or magically turn on some Dance switch.

And in that sense, "MDMA is amazing to dance on" is as much of a general misconception as "Psychedelics give great spiritual experiences". They tend to apply to people who already pursue those particular ends.

Might be you're just different than me, or might be that it's the type of nightclub. For me it needs to be something more ravey, like psytrance, DNB or hard techno. If I went to some lame commercial house nightclub, I'd have a bad time as well. But either way, no reason not to retry, life is an adventure. It beats sitting around and <doing the regular evening passtime stuff>.

From my experience, nor MDMA nor shrums do the work for you. They only help you get there. So if you just pop the pill sit back and wait for things to happen, then it's not going to work. These things amplify your inner state (emotions, feelings, thoughts) thats why set and setting is of most importance. And here is where a good trip sitter also can come in handy.

Same. The hallucinations are fun and the laughter and joy but at the same time I can tell, even though I'm tripping, that it's just my brain mixing up its wiring and nothing to do with god.

I know people personally that psilocybin, LSD, and other substances do nothing for. All of them also have existing mental health disorders (extreme generalized anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.).

Nothing as in there is no outside noticeable change in behavior and they report no change in speaking, or nothing as it relates to the topic of this thread, in that they have no profound or spiritual experiences?

They might get a slight body high even on what would otherwise be considered heroic doses for their weight.

Things like lemon-tek to make the psilocybin more bioavailable were also not impactful to them, while being apparently extremely impactful for others.

It may be worth noting that antidepressant medication has a strong suppressing effect on psychedelics.

Depends on the type! Generally might be true for SSRIs but not always for TCAs or lithium which can have the opposite effect. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8788508/ (just one example)

Well aware and accounted for.

If they’re doing high doses of psychedelics and only experiencing a body high, then they’re either on a drug blocking its effects, or they’re not taking a 5HT2-A agonist. They simply do not just produce a body high at high doses, you will know when you’re tripping.

This isn't completely true. Tolerance to psychedelics is a thing, and can often ve extremely long lasting. I have a friend that when given heroic doses of 2C-B(50mg or more, orally), hardly experienced more than threshold level effects. This was 2C-B tested and confirmed to have 95% purity, and it affected me exactly as expected. He was not on any drugs except hash, which is typically synergistic.

In his case, according to him he yad used 2C-B very heavily many years previously, and it seems he developed an extremely high level of tolerance which remained unchanged for many years of non-use.

In the cases discussed in the thread, it's possible that something similar was happening. Indeed, many antidepressants also alter serotonin receptor expression over time, and it's plausible that in some people, these effects could linger for a long time.

I agree in that case, long-term SSRI and psychedelic use complicates things. But in general, I would not say the literature points to tolerance being long lasting. Tolerance is built up quickly, and then quickly lost. There have been many (reproduced) studies on the effects of psychedelics and tolerance build up, and they show it doesn't last for more than a few weeks (psilocybin / LSD).

I'd be interested to see those studies. I think there could be a couple different types of tolerance, one of which only occurs with rather heavy use. It's something I've seen reported anecdotally from a number of people who've used psychedelics very heavily. It might not show up in human studies because of ethical concerns. There could be some interesting pharmacological differences too, where this only occurs with specific drugs. The psychedelics are quite varied in terms of pharmacodynamics beyond just the 5-HT-2 receptor subfamily.

Here's the OG tolerance study done on psilocybin and LSD: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00407974

We need more studies on the long term effects of heavy psilocybin use. We know how chronic use of alcohol and cannabis affect people fairly well at this point. We also know a lot about regular psilocybin use, but not a whole lot about what happens to people if they take it for 20 years.

Imagine being on a med for 30-50 years.

I'd call that a case of the drug(s) they were on blocking the effect due to an apparently permanent change to their brain chemistry.

Some of them were younger, in their 20s with long lasting depression and no history of medication in the last ~2y.

This wasn't some like, "weekend experience" but more multi-decade "experiments" with some extremely well educated friends, coworkers, etc.

Group size of around 30.

Many psych meds diminish/block psychedelic effects.

That could be an interaction with the meds they take for those conditions, couldn't it? I seem to recall that SSRIs in particular could mitigate the effects of the hallucinogen.

Yes, also that was accounted for with doctors notice and slow tapers off medications over months.

Fwiw I find that, due to my antidepressants, i need 3x the dose to have the equivalent experience as my friends.

I find mushrooms in particular delightful, just not deep.

Higher dose.

EXACTLY! The same to most of the posters with “meh-effects”: up the dose! LSD and psilocybin can be very psychedelic and hallucinogenic

Dosage might play a factor, I presume.

Impurities as well.

I've taken enough to melt into the furniture.

it is there. in a former life ive only felt it under the spell of either of those substances mixed with others popular with today's party goers, but it is. very fleeting and hard to describe but I have the sparse memories of the feelings during the experiences and once you get there you will know and definitely remember

I think it's a mix of set and setting combined with people who have probably never taken any kind of drug aside from alcohol and maybe infrequent cannabis usage. People who take LSD "many times" usually come to it after already being able to handle themselves on some psychedelic substance, so the experience is less all-encompassing and more mundane. Some priest who's never even been contact high, sitting in a room with religious iconography and being prepped to experience something spiritual, seems likely to have a very different experience.

Lsd did it for me. Psilocybin was not spiritual at all.

For me the "spiritual exlerience" was just a profound sense of gratefulness. And then the idea that god and objective truth are one and the same. Whatever that means

Take twice the dose in a safe environment with only your best friend

are you otherwise spiritual? I think that might be a prerequisite. Outside of spirituality did you have any experiences that were "profound" or "thought provoking"?

From my point of view all experiences are more or less equally strange and profound. I would describe the experience as interesting, moderately thought provoking, but not informative about any deep human question.

From my point of view most people's "spiritual" musings are like putting a clown mask on the world.

Try it alone, without a phone or a tv or anything particularly distracting.

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