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Comment by brandall10 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotally, I experienced an effect that was indistinguishable from an MDMA roll toward the end of a 3-day Landmark Forum session I attended a little over a decade ago. I had been a somewhat regular MDMA and psilocybin user during my early 20s.

What took me by surprise was I felt the company/teaching itself was largely bs, but something about how the whole room of 100 or so people seemed to come together in a giant ball of positivity put me in that state, and it was an immediate shift. It was so overwhelming on the drive home that I had to pull over a few times to get my bearings. I woke up the next morning still fully rolling, and it wasn't until lunchtime that it really abated.

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Something in the punch/coffee? Seriously. Did anyone else attending have a similar experience?

I actually wondered if somehow I had been slipped something, but I hadn't eaten for hours by that point and had been sipping out of the same water bottle all day.

Many attendees were acting fairly happy/goofy but it's just one of those things that would be inappropriate to bring up or ask. I attended a follow-up 3 day advanced seminar to see if I could recapture that feeling and left disappointed.

This stuff falls under what I would consider the 'cult' umbrella and I think one of the reasons why such orgs are so successful is because group empathy sessions are really powerful. Unsure if my experience itself was in essence an MDMA flashback or if MDMA (and psilocybin) is a conduit to what group empathy can achieve.

Landmark takes the cult-like tactics to a whole new level. Avoid at all costs.

Can confirm, I know someone that's spent over $100k on landmark.

That is really sad

I've noticed that whenever I describe my MDMA experiences to others, I feel a faint a faint version of the effects, sorta like a flashback. I chalked it up to something about the effects being associated with those memories, so activating the memories also activates the effects.

I get a light version of it whenever I do yoga, meditation, or get a deep tissue massage. This was different, like a min 150mg dose - intense body rush, light sensitivity/nystagmus. And it just went on for about 16 hours or so, impairing my ability to function.

I too feel this. More me, the feeling is about regular strength but much more brief

Fasting can increase awareness. The rationale behind it is that,

1.) your immune system isn't bogged down by foreign matter, plus

2.) your mind needs to focus to find food in times of scarcity and avoid predators.

I wasn't fasting per se, it was about 8 hours since I had eaten (it was 9pm and lunch ended at 1).

Sleep dep, food dep, and states of high emotional arousal are textbook brainwashing techniques.

The MO of a cult introduction is to love bomb the victim and/or to build up tension and then release it cathartically. This is often enhanced by deliberately disturbing food and/or sleep cycles.

The superficial content is not the message. The feelings are the message.

These events are designed to make people leave on a high, so they imprint on the source and keep coming back to it. The high is far more effective than anything that's said, whether or not it makes sense.

Oh for sure. In addition they created their own lexicon used in the context of the teachings and did all sorts of compliance exercises (making the room repeatedly stand up, forced us to call friends/family to confess and recruit).

The thing is, I went in knowing all this. I knew exactly what they were doing, knew the background of the org, and went anyway to support a couple friends. It still got me right at the end, as I was sitting in my chair thinking how ready I was to go home, within the second to last hour of the 3 day retreat.

I didn't come away thinking better of the event, but I was damn curious about the psychological impacts of group empathy, how the room had almost attained some resonant frequency of emotional harmony and I was swept up in it.

During fasting the immune systems is dialed down significantly. If anything, the increase in awareness may be due to a reduced CNS inflammation.

I mean if you think about it the effects from the drug are caused by the human brain, thus the human brain should be able to recreate something similar to it if it wanted to. Sort of like how people report having “acid flashbacks”

/my uneducated theory

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