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Comment by krsdcbl | Hacker News Reader

I can attest to that. In my early tweens i was in a severely depressive state and would be actively rejecting psychotherapy and just keep going further down the spiral - it all changed after a one or two experiences with magic mushrooms.

Despite not using them in a clinical, supervised environment, or in conjunction with therapy, the experience actually had me somehow understand where my depressions came from and helped overcoming them like nothing else did.

Of course it didn't "cure me", managing depression has been a way longer journey - but for me it changed my life from "barely able to get up" to a state where i was actually able to do things, start working, live my life and care for myself almost overnight. Literally felt like it had re-wired my brain, never since relapsed into quite such a dark and hopeless state i was living in back then.

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>the experience actually had me somehow understand where my depressions came from

While I realize that it is an entirely personal matter, I can't help but ask if you can perhaps share some of your insights?

It's really quite hard to explain as anybody who's had psychedelic experiences will probably tell you - but for me it was something like this:

A major reason for my depressions where my fathers early death, which i hadn't really processed up to that point. In my first ever trip, some hours in i fell into a state where all that sadness and regret just overpowered my conscience, quite literally myself. Yet at the same time i was calmly observing myself, and i was able to reflect quite deeply onto my emotional state, ironically all whilst beeing utterly unable to control it.

This "loss of ego", i could maybe describe it as an "out of body experience" made it incredibly obvious to me how to put my regular emotional state into context and understanding how rejecting the process of grief and feeding my fears of loss had created the state i was living in.

Afterwards all those things that had an unshakeable grip on me started to become understandable in a way you'd understand ANOTHER person going through this, reasoning wasn't clouded anymore from my affection. I think that was the tipping point

Tldr; it quite literally "killed my ego" for a short time and allowed for an unclouded view onto what was going on with me. And that way of reflecting my emotional state stayed with me ever since

A lot of the people using them mention killing the ego, I've never done anything like that and wonder what do you think under the word ego? I know the literal term obviously.

The "ego" comprises of what makes you "you" — or more specifically, what you think makes you "you". Your personality, your likes and dislikes, your memories, your history, your judgements. All the things that create your "identity". The ego is your custom filter through which you experience consciousness.

It's helpful to be able to experience the world without the influence of the ego, because then you are able to experience the world in a completely unfiltered way. You are able to get closer to an experience of objective truth.

Many people who have used psychedelics or work deeply with meditation all come to similar conclusions: the ego is an illusion. All beings are one and the same. Your sense of "separateness" from every living thing on this planet is a function of your ego-filter — and your ego-filter is wrong.

Way I see it, the ego manifests as a bunch of defense mechanisms that seek to preserve the status quo of one's existing personality, by distorting one's perception and generating sometimes-intrusive thoughts. The ego is also the thing that always wants more... more adulation, attention, money, etc.

As an example: given that you have free will, at any moment you could say to yourself, "hey, there are X and Y habits/traits I have, let's not do those anymore and do Z instead." Maybe it's smoking, eating badly, you don't treat people the way they deserve, being a doormat, whatever. You could absolutely choose to become an entirely different person overnight. You might also change your career/lifestyle overnight (not everyone is so lucky though).

Now the ego swoops in and says, "Hold on, let's not do anything crazy, it'll be scary and embarrassing if I suddenly act differently, what will my friends think? It's easier to keep on keeping on. These habits are just things that I would do. It's okay when I do these things because I'm me." and so on like this.

Ego death feels and seems and looks, quite literally, like you are actually experiencing your physical death. But then you come out on the other side just fine, or if you don't resist but instead let go, perhaps "enlightened" for a while ... (there are degrees of enlightenment IME)

It's strikingly similar to death experiences I've had slowly waking up as I die in morning dreams ...

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