Trying two dozen different psychedelics
psychotechnology.substack.com
psychotechnology.substack.com
As a mathematician I can assure you that the feeling of understanding is an emotion. It's mostly disconnected from truth/false values. People can be emotionally happy, be exited and have a group feeling of understanding - but then you give them a counterexample and it turns out everything was just wrong.
A drug might be able to trigger the emotions, but the things about deeper understandings are most likely just illusions. I think I understood that when some guy who was a very simple mind (he was into sniffing glue - and bummed for alcohol) told me about his wonderful experiences of understanding the world.
This is mostly disconnected from true/false values. The facts haven’t really changed. Yet it can be so powerful and rewarding few would trade it regardless of the risks/pain/hardships that can come with it.
Experiences can be profound and change perspectives in a way that’s so rewarding and wholistic it’s really impossible to describe.
Comparing such experiences to math doesn’t really work, apples and oranges.
But I think your concern about negative fundamental modification seems higher than the reports suggest it ought to be. There are thousands upon thousands of people who've used these drugs without serious consequence. I'd say that in general they're less of a concern than alcohol.
Here's one link I found supporting my intuition: https://www.psypost.org/scientists-say-psychedelic-drugs-lik...
Every experience we have changes us; every job, every family interaction, every book we read and travel we enjoy (hopefully). Learning musical instruments of foreign languages changes neuronal connections. Is there a goal to maintain a static brain over time? (honest question, reasonable if some people think the answer is "yes").
If you are deeply curious about these types of drugs, you need to remember that they all wear off eventually. Lots of very smart and happy people have taken these drugs and experienced no harm.
The acronym WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, a term used in psychology and behavioral sciences to describe the populations that have historically been the subject of research.
It’s a shortcut to a wildly unique experience that you might otherwise struggle to achieve, or go a lifetime without finding. It also, in my experience, helps clarify what ‘normal’ is, by giving you first hand experience with something radically different by comparison. And this touches on every part of your being - your physical, mental, and emotional sensations can all be increased, decreased, blended, redirected, synthesized, or otherwise fundamentally altered in ways you might otherwise never even be able to imagine - or may have only previously experienced once or twice and never thought accessible again.
In short, it’s a trip, man.
But shrooms have low potential for addiction, no hangover and its a pleasant experience. So that's my vice of choice. I take them in moderation in social settings. I generally feel like my mood is lifted and my mind is sharp following a dose.
For me, I'm not really curious at all, but otherwise feel the same way that you do. Pretty content, faults included.
Because sometimes that is the last thing that's left. When everything else has failed it may be the only hope that stands between you and the abyss.
Like an international vacation, it's really what you get out of the trip, and if you consider the ticket worth the price of admission.
Rotting in the grave is also going to eventually fundamentally modify what you are. Why care about consistency when it's an illusion?
We only live once.
If your default live model is going to school, then going to unviersity, partner, kids, work, work, living daily live, getting old, dying and you are happy and content, great!
But that image is not true for a lot of people for a lot of different rasons.
LSD gave me a lot of empathy for people who have some mental illness for example. MDMA gave me a very empathic experience i never had before.
And just getting old might be a goal for people, also something like not dying but again, thats just a default thinking not necessarliy what other people conclude for their lives.
The reason I took psychedelics the first time was also some combination of curiosity, recreation, and frustration at feeling like I'd fallen into a local min. As a cousin comment mentions, their power is giving you a different perspective which you quite literally cannot conceive of in your current mental state.
Those who have been to therapy (and had a good therapist) know the value that an honest and different outside perspective can have on your life. But there's also a barrier between you and that other person - they don't really have the full context of what motivates or worries you. Psychedelics are a new perspective on the thoughts going through your head, the sensory experience you're having, the emotions you're physically feeling.
That's not to say it's all good and no bad, but I'll leave that to the droves of comments exaggerating their risks. If you're looking for an altered mental state, mushrooms / LSD / MDMA pose far less harm than alcohol or cannabis.
I'm open to considering the possibility that I can't conceive of it in my current mental state if you're open to considering the possibility that I can.
The dogmatic way some people speak about the life changing potential of psychedelics is reminiscent of how other people speak of religion. It sounds compelling, but the more detail they go into, the more I grow suspicious that maybe this person just wasn't particularly imaginative in the first place.
I'm not saying that's the case! But it's difficult for me when people are asking me to be open minded (about the possibility that there are insights and truths that I'm literally incapable of accessing without psychoactive substances, which most people agree aren't capable of creating anything that isn't, to a greater or lesser extent, already present in your brain) but use language that categorically deny possibilities outside of their experience (there must be such insights, and no human is capable of arriving there without psychoactive aid, because they personally didn't).
I don't know, I know it's a bit childish for me to feel this way, but it also doesn't feel unreasonable.
(A sufficiently high dose will probably get you experiences you "cannot conceive of", assuming you haven't gone through psychosis or delirium, but this is not recommended by most).
Of course for many there is no choice. But that only makes it more horrifying not less.
2 weeks ago I took shrooms with my friend, we went to the basement of an arcade and crashed a bdsm costume party, then i spent the night at her place. This weekend, I played music with 4 talented people for 15 hours, and we finally collapsed giggling and covered in sweat at 2:30am. Thats living life! These are the kinds of things you can do if you are willing to take risks. You think I want to retire to a life of watching wheel of fortune? Why???
The feeling is fantastic, nothing like weed or booze. You feel relaxed and warm in the sense that you want to be around people and talk to people. Like it fills you with love for humanity (I wanted to call my mother and tell her I loved her and so on.) BUT it makes you hyper aware of emotions so be sure your environment is relaxed if you're inexperienced. As you come down you will then start to wrestle with your own buried emotions which can really be a roller coaster. However, as long as the environment is relaxed you will feel safe and be able to handle them.
The trick is go slow for your first time, take a little and see how you feel as it take 30-45 min to kick in (for me 45 min like clock work almost.) Make sure you are in a good mental state. Had a bad week or something really bothering you? Not a good state. Don't trip. Make sure the environment feels safe and relaxed.
I’ve been taking doses of around 600mg ibogaine TA, every 6 months or so, bought online at the first place that comes up in google. You can experience cardiac arrest from taking it, which will quickly kill you, and I based this (IMO) safe dosage on some papers I read. Don’t consider me an authority! And there’s also certain gene mutations that can raise or lower your risk of heart problems, related to how you metabolize ibogaine/noribogaine.
(I have also tried microdosing, based on another paper I read about a woman with bipolar depression. But I don’t have much to report there.)
It’s tough to describe any altered state. But for someone who’s thinking it’s like acid or mushrooms, note that it’s not really fun or pleasant. Your heart beats slower and softer, your body feels weak and uncoordinated, and there’s little to do besides rest.
But the mind is so, so active. And it’s like an excavator. Just pulling things from wherever and throwing them into your mind’s eye. I don’t like therapy and find it tedious and unhelpful, but this feels like years of therapy squished into a 12+ hour trip. Has helped me a lot with my relationships, especially with my mom.
You see a lot of yourself. What’s ugly, what’s beautiful, what’s neutral. You feel somehow distant from your problems but close to your “self”, which makes it more comfortable to face things.
After it’s over there’s a glow and calm that lasts a while. Days, or weeks, or months sometimes. Sleep feels a little more restorative, laughs come a little easier, the dusty baseboards of the mind feel cleaner.
So these are the effects of the lowish doses I’ve been taking. Some day in a safer environment I’d love to do a real full dose. But even at this “low” dose, it’s by far the most powerful drug I’ve ever taken, in a positive way.
I’ve only heard it being useful in the treatment of alcoholism, I have never tried it because it sounds relatively unpleasant.
My motivation is just to live a happier and more peaceful and healthy life.
I find them wholly unpleasant on the stomach, difficult to dose and quite intense.
If I was recommending psychedelics to people on the internet, which I totally am not, I would recommend LSD. I know I’m in the minority.
Also don't forget you can couple your psychedelics with valium. (This isn't medical advice)
> And to discover these they use a LLM-based platform that ingests tens of thousands trip reports online and combines with receptor/chemical interaction data (including affinities).
That's wild.
A single small dose of any given psychedelic can be enough to generate new mental benchmarks to process the world with (love, empathy, timelessness, selflessness, etc)
The drug itself is often irrelevant to the experience and it's impact, but we've unfortunately dragged along the ego of the underworld where each dose needs to be bigger and more exotic for bragging rights. In that light it's just another drug, and quite sad in my opinion.
https://thefilmstage.com/john-lilly-and-the-earth-coincidenc...
but we had a visitor at home and enough to deal with. I read Lilly's books like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Center_of_the_Cyclone
and they were a bit of a hoot as he nearly killed himself multiple times injecting LSD and then testified that LSD was perfectly safe. I've known a few people, all male, who took LSD and developed a sort of "messiah complex" where they felt not a general spiritual "sacrament" experience but rather the opposite and some kind of hypertrophy of narcissism like the 'False Self' that Kohut warns about.
The article mentions 2-C-T-2 which I got in Europe which I understand was the closest people got to a commercially viable psychedelic in that it has a nice stimulant effect (easy walk from the German border to Děčín) and very nice visuals but seems to have little cosmic element so you are sitting on the toilet and feeling like a constipated sinner and that's about it.
Myself I don't have a lot of interest in LSD and company these days because for a while every time I take it it makes me aware of how I have many more nerve endings in my gut than I have on my skin so I feel turned inside out which isn't quite a "bad trip" but isn't very good either. Best thing that happened the last time was I laid down in the leaf litter and watched a pair of snakes having sex but I later picked four ticks off myself.
Lilly though had a bad relationship with drugs, he crashed his bike when he was high on ketamine long before ketamine was fashionable.
In the early 1990s accounts of drug experiences on Erowid were mostly positive ("I smoked weed and got high and had a good time") but by the early 2000s it started to look like anti-drug propaganda but I think it was a lower quality tranche of users [1] and you started seeing negative ones ("I took a fistful of random pills, went out on the street, lost motor control and was laying flat on the ground, everybody was really sympathetic until I rolled over and a huge baggie of pills came out of my pocket, then I got kicked by a cop.")
[1] y'all know I am not inclined to believe in natural hierarchies but I think that early adopters of most things are "better" than later adopters however you define "better"
I needed this phrase 20 years ago. Very well put.
And near death experiences are just experiences and miracles/murders are just events.
Some people are not spiritual/mystical, others are.
The drug itself might actually be relevant. I suspect far more people per 100k have had negative reactions to say DMT than mushrooms, due to speed of onset, other receptors hit, etc.
The Great Smoke Off
Psychs are just drugs like any other. I think people get too wrapped up in the mysticism of them, or think the debilitating effects of heroic dosing is unique to them. How many uncs in the chat can't smoke weed anymore because it makes them have an awful time emotionally? How do you think dabbing a gram of wax would work out?