The difference between a psychedelic experience and mental delusion is that the former brings a newly found perspective on and (knowingly or unknowingly) appreciation for the "big illusion". The latter usually reflects a degenerative condition and the delusion may never end.

Both no doubt lead to fascinating experiences but they're intrinsically non-sense. There are tantalizing connections to be made that are _just_ out of grasp, and always will be.

As a child I once had a fever so high that Lego blocks began to fall from the ceiling and stack up around my bed. I ran out of the room before I could be crushed. Also as I child I learned how to lucid dream; only marginally less non-sensical, though at least there's the interplay between conscious thinking and the dream world. I've also befriend a few far-gone schizophrenics over the years; quite fascinating but, again, it's pointless to try to unpack the delusion. For me these personal and recounted experiences _reinforce_ my appreciation for the "big illusion".

What bothers me about people who promote psychedelics is that they ignore the utter fragility of the human mind. Most people will come back from their experience but in others it can instigate or hasten mental decline (e.g. schizophrenia, psychological dependency). That may or may not have happened regardless, but if you want to promote self-knowledge, IMO the most important thing to _know_ is how precious and fragile the "big illusion" is, and maybe lead with that.

It's sort of like promoting fasting by exclaiming that hunger is awesome. I don't think starving people think hunger is awesome. Fasting isn't a way to learn that hunger is an illusion; it's a way to appreciate what you have and your relationship to it. (I've also experimented with fasting.)

I've never taken psychedelics and wouldn't do it recreationally because, frankly, I'm too scared. And it's unnecessary. More power to people who do but it'd be nice if they were less flippant about it.

We don’t yet fully understand exactly how these alterations work objectively. But they do suggest that our subjective constructions of reality are just that: constructions.

So the only illusion to lose is the entire nature of reality: in some sense there is more than one “reality”, as far as your brain is concerned.

I think this is the sober, science backed version of this notion and I think it is profound.

For example, if you imagine the brain as a big Bayesian classifier, which is filtering and shaping the inputs through the prior "knowledge", then the psychedelics block the prior and let you experience the inputs in a different way from your sober, usual, daily experience. Now they don't completely block all the priors all the time, so you can consciously understand what's happening. Also, "inputs" don't come exclusively from the external world, they can be your thoughts, memories and so on. And without the priors blocking and shaping them, they re-surface (which is the basis of the name psychedelia) and show themselves in a new light. So you can process them again, in a better way, for example.

The human experience of the world (thoughts, vision, audition, pleasure, fear,...) is triggered by the nervous system (including the brain) that reacts on bio-chemistry.

Changing the bio-chemistry changes the human experience but gives no super powers. Most likely your thoughts on drugs are less smart but appear smart to you. Similar to other drug intoxications that disturb the normal brain activity and the sober judgement of your thoughts and experience of reality.

Granted, some people have been able to solve some of their problems with psychedelics because they are strong destabilizers.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/how-doctors-tr...

I am in favor of using psychedelics as last resort medicine under supervision of a medical expert.

But I am against the promotions of psychedelics by people who are either lucky (no bad life changing effects for months or years because of drug induced trauma with PTSD or bad neuroplasticity) or suffer already from psychosis.