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Comment by exikyut | Hacker News Reader

You'd likely need to have already experienced the drug in question in order for this to work, right?

This is kinda interesting. It almost sounds to me like brain plasticity on overdrive, where you can basically dictate the interpretative model your brain uses to create reference points for what it's going through.

It also suggests that there are additional subconscious layers beyond what drugs temporarily make consciously accessible, which this particular compound is activating and causing to behave in a way that filters an experience down that matches a certain set of experiential memories.

Also makes sense why removing all the filters and going straight for "let's see what this thing really is" produces uncomfortableness - the distorted mess that comes out of a set of overdriven speakers is painful, semantically meaningless, and entropic to the point of having no discernible pattern.

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I really like your explanation. It's certainly not the case that psilocyn suddenly transforms into new chemical compounds at will, it almost certainly happens through perception and most likely experience is needed.

> You'd likely need to have already experienced the drug in question in order for this to work, right?

I am genuinely curious about this. It should be but I wonder if somebody who has never smoked a joint in their life would be comfortable with the idea of ingesting it to test this out.

Most people seem to have horrible first trips because they are probably worried about going crazy so they do it in the comfort of their rooms which almost always triggers existential panic.

I just happened to take it on a commute and walking to work, seeing nature, oh my, it was serenity, I felt like it was repairing my soul.

Looking to repeat this I took it in my room alone; big mistake, the trip was quite disturbing but perhaps because my own life experiences were disturbing and I was only waking up to it.

Thinking back, taking mushrooms alone in your room has consistently led to horrible trips but compensated by an overwhelming sense of healing and long lasting anti-depressant effect.

Perhaps it is the ego which is actively trying to resist the Psilocyn Programming. Ego death literally feels like you are dying but on the other side is the realization, it is completely an illusion!

Yeah I did a full 3.5g for the first time in the dark on the bed alone.

It didn't make much sense. I was basically stuck with time/reality changing and moving onward, even though I was resisting it. I think I was physically moving myself in a circle on my bed, trying to resist reality.

Then it ended and that was it. Wasn't enjoyable, and didn't learn much. Perhaps just a metaphor that you can't resist the true reality and moving of life.

Next time I'll definitely do out while hiking instead.

Now that is extremely interesting...

One of the things I've sometimes noticed (just going along normally) is that my mental "track" where I consciously keep up with/label/identify/classify environmental input, my own thoughts, ideas, etc, can sometimes lag, or get into a state where I don't have sufficiently detailed mental mnemonics to consciously tokenize raw perceptions, and as a result I can't correlate info and lose track of it. This happens constantly, especially when I try to learn new things; I'll basically be like "...!!!...wait what?" the whole time, realizing Amazing New Things™ that I'm then unable to mentally articulate to myself and then remember.

What you described, with time/reality changing/moving forward while you were resisting it (trying to pin it down so you could focus on it?) made me think of the above.

If what I described resonates, that could mean that psi doesn't "enhance" or have an altering impact on the fundamental issues/glitches/??? behind this mechanism, to the extent that all that happens is extra awareness of the problem, without really being able to affect it.

Yeah I think it could be along the same lines. That even in our ultimate mental state, you still don't have the capacity to capture the reality of every moment. Our abstractions are how we see life, and they're just abstractions. The psi is doing something to cut those away, which can be beneficial for people who are caught on something (depression, ptsd, etc). It can be bad for some, who blend that raw perception into their lives and "cant be normal" anymore.

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