I go to raves, I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms), and the whole experience turns into very spiritual session where I dance with my entire being and let myself disolve into the Great Void.
It has lasting effects that go way beyond the effects of the drug.
However I think it's complicated to derive generalisms like saying it's a drug for everyone and everybody should take it. It's definitely not for everybody.
I'm also not going to be a hypocrite and say that you shouldn't do it. What I'll go and say is that it's your journey to figure out what you are going to invite into your life. In any case, depending on what you believe, you aren't actually here to figure things out. You already did. You are here to remember.
In more secular terms, you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you. That will give you the necessary foundational philosophy to withstand and understand these experiences, should you choose to go through them. This is the only way to acquire a foundational respect for these substances and these experiences.
Have I done this work? Have I achieved the required level of understanding to make heads and tails of these experiences? Not for a while at least. It was rough the first couple of times. Very violent and crude, like rushing naked through a sea of people while being completely sure that that night is the last night of your life (I wasn't actually naked, it just felt like that and that everyone was eventually going to merge with me and that I should feel ashamed of it).
But with time and with the necessary exposure to understand the basics of existencialism I think I managed to pin down a more gentle form of this experience that can help me remember how to lay myself bare to the goddess and just be there when I dance.
So I think I can extend this invitation to anyone that feels brave enough to lift the reins of existence and reality and expose yourself to the truth. That everything is a story about the end of the world. About the beginning. And about everything at once.
It's scary, it's blissful and it's totally worth it.
jampekka 7 hours ago [-]
> I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms)
PSA: 100-150 micrograms of LSD is a medium to strong trip. For beginners its good to start low, perhaps 75 micrograms or lower.
Edit: Also testing your reaction psychedelics in more controlled and calmer settings is highly recommended before doing in it raves or other public places. But also note that the effects may vary significantly even in the same person at different times and settings.
shric 5 hours ago [-]
It’s also worth noting that there isn’t exactly strong quality control on the product. There is a good chance what is labelled 150 micrograms is actually closer to 50 micrograms. Or it could really be 150…
berkes 5 hours ago [-]
But that's true for any criminalized substance. It's not like the FDA or EFSA or so is going to do lab tests on, say, XTC and fine producers that lie on their ads or ingredient-list.
Though biological products like psilocybin (or weed etc) are harder to measure and control by producers, in strength than purely chemical products like LSD or MDMA. It's hard to trace what mother nature did exactly when producing this particular mushroom cap, but it could be possible to trace what the chemist did when producing this particular blot. If only it were legalized and we could have actual control, tracability, and prosecution of malpractice...
They can be in more countries than just the Netherlands IIRC. And simple test-kits are available too - these aren't as good obviously, but can e.g. prove the absence or presence of certain (by)products.
Also, these tests are set up in a way that they are anonymous in a way that e.g. even if prosecutors could subpoena a test-location or lab to hand over administration, this administration won't contain any PII or even pseudonymous information.
mettamage 14 minutes ago [-]
Ah funny! You were 3 hours before me. It's not just xtc and coke. It's much more than that. Most things are simply going to be sent to the lab.
The only thing they don't test are things you can somehow get legally, if I recall correctly (so whatever you can get for any psychological condition).
heavenlyblue 1 hours ago [-]
With MDMA if you have 150 mg of powder, you have 150mg of powder, i.e. this is the upper bound on how much substance you will take (be it MDMA or not), i.e. there can't be MORE than 150 mg.
With LSD it's always a solution (either in paper or in liquid), so you can only trust the producer.
dmos62 3 hours ago [-]
Some countries (Germany, Holland) have (or had ~5 years ago when I was interested in this) legal analogues of LSD that are produced and sold in a fully regulated, safe, precise manner.
eru 2 hours ago [-]
Well, cocaine and heroin are still used for certain medical applications, too, ain't they?
mettamage 13 minutes ago [-]
Like what? What was a legal analogue 5 years ago?
mettamage 16 minutes ago [-]
There is in the Netherlands. You can test it there [1].
Ah, I see someone else already mentioned it. I'll still keep this here for increased visibility. Drugs testing in NL is solid.
Source: trust me bro ;-)
Second source: go see for yourself! It's anonymous.
counterpoint: you only get your first time, one time.
const_cast 6 hours ago [-]
Counter counter point: if you mess up your first time, it's likely you'll never be able to enjoy the experience.
dmos62 3 hours ago [-]
Might be true for some, but I had a long series of bad experiences when I was a teenager (tension and paranoia), was convinced that it wasn't for me, and only in my 30s I started having very profound and positive experiences. Now I only experiment alone, in a non-distracted, aware, self-reflective manner, as if it were a meditation aide.
monista 40 minutes ago [-]
And it's a very bad practice. No experiment ever should be taken without an assistant (sitter in this case).
lioeters 4 minutes ago [-]
Bad advice. Yes there should be at least one other person who knows what you're doing, but if you're experienced in the matter, solitude is the best practice. The emergency contact person could be a phone call away, just in case.
netcan 5 hours ago [-]
Continuation the counter points: most traditional uses, guided by shamans or priests use heavy doses.
I had expiremented with moderate/recomended doses of lsd and psilocybin before participating in an auahuasca retreat... and the doses were shocking.
This was a relatively tame centre in western Europe that had trained psych nurses in attendance. Still, the Shaman handed out monster doses... and offered a second one a couple of hours in... and again the following day.
Many traditional practices conceive of "levels" corresponding to doses, and the lower levels are not the ones associated with transformative spiritual experience.
teaearlgraycold 3 hours ago [-]
I know there are higher levels out there, but I’ve found even moderate doses of psychedelics to be more than enough to be transformative. You just need to focus the energy right.
netcan 1 hours ago [-]
valid point, just adding context.
I have no recomendations of my own.
aleph_minus_one 4 hours ago [-]
> Counter counter point: if you mess up your first time, it's likely you'll never be able to enjoy the experience.
That's what drug prohibitionists would love to happen, so they should encourage such a "wrong" experiment instead of prosecuting it. :-)
hoseja 5 hours ago [-]
Counter counter counter point: That's a good outcome.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Yes. And I wish I would have started with 75 microgram.
herbst 3 hours ago [-]
Imo not true for psychodelics
You just open the door for many more first times to come
golergka 5 hours ago [-]
In my experience, first times with drugs like MDMA are very important just because the tolerance builds up basically forever. First time with LSD however... Better safe than sorry. My first time wasn't that impressive, but it was safe and didn't involve any negative emotions. I've had many other times since, much more impressive and important.
berkes 5 hours ago [-]
Drugs' build up and tolerance varies wildly between the drugs, the person and the experience one seeks.
Chemically and physically, LSD for example is gone in a few days and certainly weeks. But taking two days in a row needs "insane" amounts to get you the same (physical, chemical) effect. MDMA is almost entirely gone in months, after which a normal dose will get the same (physical, chemical) effect. Good documentation with even calculators for this can be found online (be aware that it may not be allowed to even visit such sites in some countries!)
I deliberately emphasis the "physical and chemical" because the experience itself may be something you get used to. First time MDMA is wildly different from any time thereafter for many people. For many this is even stronger with LSD or Psilocybin. Many people report that the (first) experience opened up their mind and being profoundly and lasting. The more one gets used to the feeling the more this feeling itself becomes routine.
The intense love and euphoria from e.g. MDMA may be the same on an objective level, after letting the chemicals disappear over months, so technically one can achieve this level a few times a year. But the feeling itself is something one could get "used to" and "become bored by". Similar to how experiencing a rave sober for decades, or even how after decades of traveling it could get boring and a routine.
My point is: indeed first times are important. Even if the textbooks say that tolerance is gone after X time.
dr_dshiv 6 hours ago [-]
Agree! Go into it with great preparation — be sure to read the manual closely.
heavyset_go 6 hours ago [-]
Less is more
jampekka 6 hours ago [-]
First time is rarely especially good. This applies to more or less all substances.
junon 5 hours ago [-]
That's... not true, lol. That can be true, especially for psychedelics, but that's absolutely not true of other drugs.
MDMA comes to mind. I've also heard (though not tried, nor will I) the harder narcotics such as heroine and meth are almost never as good as the first time.
The first time being the best time is often exactly why people become addicts.
chronogamous 3 minutes ago [-]
Know then that what you've heard is incorrect. Heroin especially tends to cause nausea and vomitting on first time use, as the body reacts to something as unexpected. Meth may be great the first time round, and still be nowhere near as good as it can be - the drug has a steep learning curve and requires rigorous discipline for it's effect to be exploited fully - a mindset rarely present in first time users. With practically any drug, initial effects are very much subject to the intention of the person taking it, just as much as physical attributes (fitness, body-type, metabolism, etc).
Not to downplay all obvious and less obvious hazards of these 'harder' narcotics, just saying the whole 'first time being the best time' as an explanation of why exactly people become addicts relies very much on hearsay. It's the sort of language that came with the whole war-on-drugs-thing, and does not reflect reality.
berkes 5 hours ago [-]
Wat? Maybe my bubble is different, but in my surroundings and experience, the exact opposite is true.
Now, an important factor here is that a first time often comes with anxiety, insecurity, and even fear. With many substances these feelings get amplified so that makes the entire experience be mediocre or even bad. Especially for that, I think it's very important to experience this in a safe, loving, caring and depending on the type taken, controllable, silent, busy, energetic, dark, light etc environment.
o1bf2k25n8g5 9 hours ago [-]
> ...you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you.
Just to offer a counterpoint:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The more I experience, the more I think maybe that's a pretty good point, too.
gchamonlive 9 hours ago [-]
It's like the nihilist denying any meaning to the world. It's because they choose to see it that way even if they aren't aware of it.
If you choose to fart around, whatever that means, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless, and at the same time totally meaningful given the circumstances.
ramblerman 8 hours ago [-]
Vonnegut sounds closer to an epicurist.
A nihilist would say fart or don't fart it's all pointless.
jona-f 6 hours ago [-]
As a nihilist my sense of meaning seams to be compatible to yours. I don't deny that we can come up with all sorts of meanings but the point is that there is no intrinsically higher meaning to everything, it's all made up. In fact, the awareness of this is the basis of my nihilism. That doesn't mean, that I don't like some meanings more than others, otherwise I had no reason to act whatsoever.
monero-xmr 6 hours ago [-]
There are certainly universal truths. For example, you exist. Therefore there is something to believe in
fpoling 44 minutes ago [-]
If one thinks about it, even basic truth may not be so evident.
For example, consider Cogito, ergo sum. As Latin has no continues verb time, that phrase may mean I exist because I think. Or I am existing because I am thinking . The latter implies that when one stops thinking the existence stops, the opposite of the former. Philosophers still debates what exactly Descartes meant.
Or consider the notion of time flow. In 1908 John MacTaggart published a paper arguing that the feeling of time flow is unreal. Again, there are heavy debates about the validly of his arguments without any conclusion with quite a lot of philosophers accepting the argument and even arguing that the time flow is an illusion.
vidarh 5 hours ago [-]
Only in the most abstract sense is even that true. I know that I have existence in this very moment. I don't know that I existed a moment ago, for that could be an illusion. I don't know what my existence is, because my senses could be an illusion. I don't know that I have any existence past this moment because that is a belief based in a memory of time passing, which could be an illusion. I can't tell whether time exists, or space exists, because they're all dependent on my senses and a memory I can't trust.
For what I know, my "existence" could be an infinitely short moment, or even an entirely static endless "moment", or any of an infinite variety of other options.
So even most of existence is only assumption. It's a set of assumptions that makes sense to just accept because we have no way of proving otherwise, but they are assumptions, not "universal truths".
somenameforme 4 hours ago [-]
Regardless of the definition, you do exist. Which naturally leads to the question of why you exist. If you write a program to add a couple of numbers, it seems absurd to imagine some entity magically poofs into existence, imagines itself carrying out such, and then poofs back out of existence. I find it no less absurd to imagine the same even if it happens to be 10^100 instructions.
So why do you perceive yourself, and if you aren't you, then who are you? These sort of thoughts eliminated any notion of nihilism from me and gradually pushed me towards a simulation hypothesis. Of course that's just religion for an agnostic, because it doesn't even answer anything - if you die only to 'wake up' and discover it was all just a simulation, you're still back right where you started.
The search for natural explanations feels unsatisfactory because it will always come back to a question of what created that. For instance what if you think the matter for a big bang was quantum mechanically poofed into existence then what led to the creation of quantum mechanics, the void of which emerged, or so on endlessly. You basically have to do a whole bunch of hand waving and assumptions to the point that it starts to rapidly feel like religion for an atheist.
vidarh 3 hours ago [-]
> If you write a program to add a couple of numbers, it seems absurd to imagine some entity magically poofs into existence, imagines itself carrying out such, and then poofs back out of existence.
It may be absurd, but we nevertheless can not rule it out, and so it means that our ability to know anything about existence for certain is limited to almost nothing.
Note that I'm not saying I believe this to be the case. What I'm saying is that I see looking for "universal truths" to be entirely futile, because we can't possibly know much of substance with certainty.
Instead we have to accept that unless someone "pierces a veil" and shows us that there's a reality past the one we observe, we are limited to talking about what is observable and measurable within our observable reality, knowing that we are dealing with assumptions and probabilities, not universal truths.
> I find it no less absurd to imagine the same even if it happens to be 10^100 instructions.
This seems fundamentally at odds with saying you were gradually pushed towards a simulation hypothesis...
> if you die only to 'wake up' and discover it was all just a simulation, you're still back right where you started.
A simulation hypothesis does not need to imply that there's anything to wake up from for anyone. Indeed, even if you were to wake up, by confirming that simulation is possible, this would seem to strongly suggest that you should consider the probability that the world you wake up in is simulated to be extremely high.
> The search for natural explanations feels unsatisfactory because it will always come back to a question of what created that.
It may feel unsatisfactory to you. It doesn't to me. I accept that whenever we push the horizon of knowledge, we're likely to discover more things that we don't know, and for the set of things we know we can't know to expand as well.
> You basically have to do a whole bunch of hand waving and assumptions to the point that it starts to rapidly feel like religion for an atheist.
You don't have to do anything. You can accept that we don't know.
somenameforme 22 minutes ago [-]
I am implying that consciousness, so far as we can prove, does not exist. The only reason I know it exists is because I am conscious. And I take an extremely pragmatic view of the simulation hypothesis. If such were possible, it would be an absolutely perfect tool for everything from education to entertainment to punitive reform. This subsequently encourages me to behave in a pseudo-religious fashion with regards to morals and ethics, in that this life could very well simply be a test, a game, or even a program of reform.
As for natural explanations - what I am saying is that the natural explanations for 'why' seem, currently, to be far weaker than other explanations. And in fact the natural explanations rely on various ad-hoc constructions (like inflation theory) that are completely unnatural. A simulation hypothesis is, to me, the only hypothesis that doesn't seem to have glaring holes in it and/or rely on defacto magic.
And obviously I understand that magic of one millennia is the mundane tech of another. But we do not live in that other era, and there's no guarantee that such an understanding will ever come to pass. Assuming otherwise requires having faith that such discoveries will come to pass in the future, and essentially assuming your own conclusion, instead of looking at the evidence as available. And that's why I referred to natural explanations as religion for an atheist.
NetRunnerSu 5 hours ago [-]
Fascinating thread on existence and the nature of ideas. What if 'existence' isn't about the substrate (carbon or silicon), but the integrity of an internal model's predictions? If a system can consistently build and maintain a coherent, self-correcting model of reality, does its 'existence' become a verifiable, quantifiable state? Perhaps the 'truth' of any experience, psychedelic or otherwise, lies in how well it integrates into and refines that predictive model, rather than its 'physical' origin. The 'mind' then becomes a function, not a form.
piva00 1 hours ago [-]
The mind is necessarily a function, it's performing its function over a vast array of inputs (memories, senses, etc.) and making sense of it as it goes, and it doesn't exist without energy expenditure to keep computing itself.
To me psychedelic experiences break through the inputs, they become fuzzy and integrate in ways they aren't supposed to in normal functioning, it's why we feel a different sense of connection to anything else, filtering in different ways inputs from our senses and experiences, including the sense of one's self dissolving.
My existence is negligible, especially in the grand scheme of things.
rags2riches 7 hours ago [-]
> Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless
That's begging the question. I'd argue that all meaning is in how we fart around.
baq 6 hours ago [-]
Meaning is what you want it to be.
If you don’t know what it is and don’t know what you want, you either fart around or resign.
golergka 5 hours ago [-]
I think you might be confusing nihilism with absurdism in this case.
flir 5 hours ago [-]
I don't believe Vonnegut beleived that for a minute.
> Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
kgwxd 1 hours ago [-]
Some babies hear that and just "nope" out? What was the narrative before seasons, science and over population?
AnthonBerg 8 hours ago [-]
One is not counter to the other.
illiac786 8 hours ago [-]
Would you say the following are (individually taken) red flags for trying it:
* being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
* having zero belief in the mysticism
AgentMatt 7 hours ago [-]
> being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
In that case, I would suggest working a bit on that first. Meditation can help, but "terrified" sounds strong enough that trying out therapy if available may be worthwhile.
Regarding substances, I found mushrooms to be easier than LSD, with a kind of warmth that softens the psychedelic experience (without taking anything away from it). The effects also don't last as long. A non-psychedelic which can allow one to face difficult emotions is MDMA. In some countries you can find MDMA based therapy. This could prepare someone to become more open to what psychedelics have to offer. (Edit: Also, all of these substances have effects that are not comparable to alcohol at all. Trying to understand the effects of psychedelics/empathogens based on experiences with alcohol is a category error.)
Based on my limited experience, I would roughly categorize the relation of these substances to the idea of control like this:
LSD: you might feel like there's some control, but you're actually the playball of the substance
Mushrooms: the substance draws you in some direction, and it's best to just lean into it, but it'll support you in doing so
MDMA: there's no need for control, things are okay the way they are
> having zero belief in the mysticism
That depends on what exactly this means.
Have some knowledge of "mysticism" or some eastern worldviews / philosophy, without taking it too seriously, would be a good basis IMO.
Actively rejecting any ideas related to mysticism while clinging tightly to a specific world view / metaphysics (and related beliefs like "I can only allow something if I understand / can explain it") may lead someone to have a really bad time on psychedelics.
---
Note that this isn't advice about whether to consume anything or what to consume, and experiences can vary widely between individuals, settings, dosages etc. (For both assumptions above, is possible to construct higly positive outcomes, where the substance helped overcome problems, opens one up, etc. and negative ones, horror trip, lasting trauma from the trip, ...) Having someone experienced present when doing something like this for the first time is highly recommended.
heavyset_go 6 hours ago [-]
> being terrified of letting loose (even with something common in the local culture, for example alcohol)
Do you have good reason for this fear, like fantasies of hurting yourself or others? If so, yeah, you probably shouldn't ingest substances that can lower your inhibitions.
illiac786 6 hours ago [-]
I am not terrified, rather scared of loosing control, hurting people I like, feeling ashamed forever afterward, the usual. I use to not give shit but I’m old now and I have a much bigger social net I care about.
But I do know people which I would categorise as really terrified of loosing control.
Maybe “letting loose” was the wrong expression here, I meant “loosing control” rather.
quchen 5 hours ago [-]
Losing control is something that happens at higher doses. It’s hard to quantify this without prior experience, but most substances can be taken on a level of »three beer drunk« where you’re very clearly not sober, but you can still talk, and take care of the essentials of life like going to the toilet and walking home in public without attracting attention.
For example, the average person will feel altered mood states and mild visual hallucinations (patterns on surfaces, think very detailed mandalas or fractals), in the 50-75μg range of LSD. They will not see pink elephants, they will not try to call their dog on the phone, they will not strip naked, they will not make growling sounds at trees.
Now, I do voluntary work in drug education, and there’s one important thing to say, it’s that everyone’s different, and it’s fine not to do psychedelics, or any other substance.
illiac786 21 minutes ago [-]
Thanks, that’s useful feedback.
kgwxd 1 hours ago [-]
You weren't always in control. You still mostly aren't.
illiac786 22 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, it’s not binary, let me rephrase: “relinquish more control than when having 2-3 beers”.
There are things I can’t control even when sober, that’s clear, but I’m used to it. Giving up the control over things I usually control is a different thing (for me).
GuinansEyebrows 7 hours ago [-]
1. yes, that can be an issue, up to the point that you willingly or unwillingly "go on the trip" so to speak. i kinda prefer take more than less (not a brag - never done more than 2 tabs of acid at once before) because of that - it's a lot easier to ride it out when your conscious brain isn't making you self-conscious and anxious.
2. i never have and probably never will be a spiritual person. doesn't lessen the enjoyment or impact. i literally just think of it as a "reset button" - it makes you forget some previous anxieties, reframe others, let go of stuff that's dragging you down. it's not therapy but sometimes just shaking things up a bit gives you enough of a new perspective to really benefit you. or... you know, sometimes you just watch tv with your roommates for 3 hours. whatever.
latexr 2 hours ago [-]
> I wasn't actually naked, it just felt like that and that everyone was eventually going to merge with me and that I should feel ashamed of it
This reminded of Deep Space Nine’s Great Link. The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes a drop.
Some of the best writing on the uses of LSD come from Alan watts. In his early life he said "it was impossible to bottle mysticism" and yet on dropping acid the first time felt like "they have completely bottled mysticism!".
But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it.
As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.
josephg 8 hours ago [-]
> "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics."
This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done.
I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow.
A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Ok, that was a theoretical lesson I learned before when reading books about it. You cannot do productive work while tripping.
And I also had my laptop close by to maybe take notes, but the screen was really stressfull.
Watching wild nature in the sun was much more enjoyable.
ttoinou 4 hours ago [-]
Ahh I had a similar trip with Ableton GUI on acid, all the gui controls went in fire and animated in a psychedelic way
gchamonlive 9 hours ago [-]
It's because meaning isn't essential to the universe, but derived from human experience. The universe needs us just as much as we need the universe. Actually this separation is an artifact of reductionism we have to let go.
In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
throwaway7783 9 hours ago [-]
Nothing is essential to the universe, the universe does not need us. We need it exactly as it is today, and that is it. Everything else is stuff we made up to understand the universe weakly, or to cope with life. This is not nihilism, but meaning to life is meaningful only in the context of humans and has nothing to do with universe needing us.
josephg 8 hours ago [-]
If we’re gonna talk trip philosophy, then:
This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both.
You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
andsoitis 6 hours ago [-]
> But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind.
As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
josephg 5 hours ago [-]
Is an LLM "a mind"? They certainly seem to encode brain-independent ideas.
> We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
Its symmetric. We can also only access the physical world through our minds too. We have no way to verify it exists without a mind. Actually we have no way to verify it exists at all in the form we perceive it - since it might just be a big simulation.
In that sense, I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly. (I say "my ideas" not "our ideas" because I can't tell as easily if you exist.)
ostwilkens 6 hours ago [-]
It's a nice thought. If an idea could be encoded... that each persons idea of a concept, viewed in the right dimensionality, has a rough, similar outline. At least, that's my interpretation of your idea. :-)
Your comment either triggered, or made me notice an ongoing shift in my worldview. Thank you!
SlowTao 8 hours ago [-]
I have nothing more to add but... Yep, spot on!
randomtoast 5 hours ago [-]
There is a nice quote by Robert M. Pirsig: "The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
This translates well to psychedelic drug use.
abhaynayar 22 minutes ago [-]
I think the mountain does help with Zen. How much, depends on the individual.
But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.
Nursie 7 hours ago [-]
> If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death
I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain.
Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
"would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense."
How come?
The mystics of all the religions are the most approachable to agnostic me. Mysticism to me means mainly, the universe as its whole is a great mysterium and those who claim "it is exactly like this and this, because this holy book says so!" are rather the aggressive fools to me.
So genuinly curious, what do you perceive as aggressive from mysticim?
Nursie 6 hours ago [-]
Offensive to good sense, not aggressive.
Mysticism usually seems to me to imply a poor grasp on reality and can be accompanied by all sorts of baseless claims to knowledge and (often naturalistic) fallacies. It often goes hand in hand with silly beliefs about crystals, alt-med and all sorts of other crap.
"We don't know" is fine. "We don't know, therefore these specific lines of bullshit" less so.
But I didn't post the above to say that my views on mysticism are correct or even to provoke a discussion about it. I posted it to provide a counterpoint to the bizarre notion that one must be into mysticism to experience aspects of the psychedelic experience.
We may interpret the experiences very differently, of course, but the claim that part of it is closed to those who don't subscribe to witter about "the goddess" is ironically very egotistic.
lukan 5 hours ago [-]
No need to debate about. It was just for my curiosity what triggered you and indeed what you describe I rather label esoteric new age stuff and that mostly puts me off as well.
PoignardAzur 5 hours ago [-]
The other replies were making me think "maybe this shit isn't for me", but your comment made me actually want to try it, so thanks for the alternate perspective.
thinkingtoilet 10 hours ago [-]
I would go as far as to say most people should have a psychedelic experience at least once in their life. There's nothing like it. It's one of the great pleasures of being alive.
enjo 6 hours ago [-]
My experiences have been universally negative often very much so. I have given LSD a good go. It has led to intense hallucinations with very long lasting PTSD like consequences for me. I have done it under the guidance of "professionals" (as close as you can get in a world where these substances are completely unregulated). Even in very small doses I have experienced intense anxiety and general feelings of dread.
This isn't to discount your experience but rather a general warning: all drugs aren't for everyone. It's easy to take away from these threads that psychedelics are universally positive and that negative trips are generally the result of misuse.
Which isn't true. Before going into this doing some deep introspection about yourself and your abilities is really important. Use these drugs with extreme caution.
winterpunk 5 hours ago [-]
so who did you kill
gchamonlive 10 hours ago [-]
Totally. It's just that that realisation must come from within, because the experience changes the very perception of reality and the relationship between yourself and everything else. With the wrong circumstances what would otherwise be a blissful experience can turn into a nightmare and this gate is likely forever closed for this person. I'd never forgive myself if I had this happen to someone else because of ill advice given by me.
reactordev 9 hours ago [-]
And if that’s the case, do it in your early 20s in college or shortly after. Don’t do it in your 70s.
BLKNSLVR 9 hours ago [-]
Why not in your 70s? Purely due to being more physically fragile, or more spiritually "settled"?
Would it make a difference if it was a 70 year old who is still open minded and curious about life, the universe, and everything? (given that I'd guess that any 70+ year old willing to do LSD is likely to be as per this description).
Legitimately interested in your answer / reasoning (mainly because my plan was to experience a number of different drugs once the rest of my life, that could have been put at risk by drugs, is kinda setup and done well enough).
reactordev 8 hours ago [-]
It’s all about protecting your brain from possible stroke or other brain injury from it. Your balance isn’t the best - add dripping walls and it’s ripe for life alert.
Some drugs increase heart rate dramatically - the older you are the more susceptible to atherosclerosis or other circulatory diseases. There’s more medical risk the older you are for sure. However, you may find you only need a little bit. Some drugs are funny. Some work on first try, other takes a couple tries before your brain understands the chemical.
gchamonlive 9 hours ago [-]
That is assuming everyone is ready to do it at the age of 20. If you are only ready to take them at 70s, why not do it? At that age you have other things to worry about anyway.
james-bcn 5 hours ago [-]
This reminds me of the grandpa advice scene in Little Miss Sunshine:
Had one once. It was not a pleasure at all. Best I can say is that it was interesting and that I did 'experience' interesting stuff. But that has no profound effect on me, since I consider it, like a dream, to have no basis in reality.
Generic statements like this are dangerous since different people may respond VERY differently to the same substance. This can depend on long term traits like personality or short term like the current state of mind. People reading such statements might think there's no way it can go wrong. If it isn't a profound experience, they might also think there's something wrong with them, which isn't the case.
swayvil 8 hours ago [-]
It is a fine cure for arrogance too.
heavyset_go 6 hours ago [-]
I used to think this until I learned the most racist person I knew dropped acid every weekend. Seemed to only make him more racist.
lynx97 7 hours ago [-]
It amplifies things. If your core it truely rotten, only rotten stuff can come out.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
And further manifest itself. I have limited experience with LSD myself, but lots of experience with pseudogurus, who believe they know and understand everything, because holy wisdom was brought to them while tripping.
asveikau 8 hours ago [-]
I think some people are shown to be more arrogant and egotistical after psychedelics.
I know some folks in the HN audience will not like this example, but Elon Musk is one.
An older cannonical example is Timothy Leary.
No names are coming to mind, but I feel like there have been plenty of psychedelic informed cults, with cult leader narcissists who continue to abuse people despite experiencing psychedelics.
It may open some doors and cause you to consider more angles, and for many people it helps them with empathy and connectedness, but in another sense it's amplifying what you've already got. A "bad" input can get amplified too.
heavyset_go 6 hours ago [-]
> No names are coming to mind, but I feel like there have been plenty of psychedelic informed cults, with cult leader narcissists who continue to abuse people despite experiencing psychedelics.
Manson would dose himself and his followers to, IMO, lower inhibitions and make them more receptive to his ideas.
LoganDark 34 minutes ago [-]
> I know some folks in the HN audience will not like this example, but Elon Musk is one.
Isn't he also a ketamine junkie? Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, although some call it psychedelic, it's not exactly the same thing.
wickedsight 4 hours ago [-]
> I go to raves, I take very modest amounts of LSD (100 maybe 150 micrograms), and the whole experience turns into very spiritual session where I dance with my entire being and let myself disolve into the Great Void.
Cool. And good for you, but this has honestly ruined 'raves' for me.
I'm a huge fan of different types of electronic music and really, really enjoy it. The music itself is a spiritual experience and allows me to 'disolve into the Great Void'. But these days when I go to a festival or something, I'm surrounded by people I can't share this feeling/experience with, since everyone seems to be on some type of drug and either in their own world (X, LSD, etc) or think the world is in them (coke).
I recently prematurely left an artist I was really looking forward to because of exactly this. It was incredibly disappointing, though not surprising.
gchamonlive 2 hours ago [-]
Totally get your point. And I feel the same way.
It's really hard to maintain a healthy state of mind when there is a dude overdosing with several paramedics trying to stabilise him. I still remember that time and it hurts me every time I think about it.
But there are smaller raves, with 50-500 people, where I think this feeling is maintained.
I'd maybe recommend avoiding what we call here "commercial raves" and go to "pvt's", private raves, which are not private, just with more modest economic goals.
I think this notion that one must engage in philosophical study or appreciate "the goddess" to survive, enjoy and appreciate psychedelics is ridiculous.
There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self - while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound. People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
It makes your brain go haywire in all sorts of fun and interesting ways. But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
2 hours ago [-]
lynx97 7 hours ago [-]
Joscha Bach summed this up in a very succint way in an interview once. Paraphrasing him, psychedelics tend to result in overfitting. Suddenly, everything is about them. Leary and McKenna are actually good publicly known examples. And the phenomenon of "I have found the soltuion" without being able to actually name it, is also pretty common.
cjaackie 5 hours ago [-]
Found what I think is probably the video if anyone else is interested:
Yup, thanks for digging that up, that is the soundbite I was refering to.
gchamonlive 1 hours ago [-]
> I think this notion that one must engage in philosophical study or appreciate "the goddess" to survive, enjoy and appreciate psychedelics is ridiculous.
Cool. I think it's very important. I'll think really hard about philosophy when on drugs, you go do your thing ;)
> There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self
What is the "outside of the self"? Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world? What if everything is world? And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
> while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound
What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
> People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
> But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
Is there a meaning to life to be found? I always thought the meaning of life is something you never stop pursuing, every day all the time. So please, tell me the right ways so I don't dread you. I'm being sarcastic in the same proportion you are being arrogant.
Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
Nursie 1 hours ago [-]
> I'll think really hard about philosophy when on drugs, you go do your thing ;)
Yeah sounds great. It's the imputation that it's the only way that got my back up. I don't imagine 5% of people who've taken and enjoyed LSD have taken the time to understand the basics of existentialism or done "the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants..." and all that guff.
And we still had an absolute blast.
> Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world?
There is, it's called your body and other humans generally recognise yours as distinct from themselves and from other objects.
> And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
Acid-like thinking detected.
> What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
Well, given the nature of the 'profound' realisations people on acid tend to have, I think "a modicum of common sense" would suffice.
That fascinating plastic lemonade bottle you're contemplating so hard probably isn't going to have much impact on space travel, no. Or on a larger scale, many of the proclamations that LSD will fundamentally change society when people 'realise' one thing or another that they 'learned' while under the influence turn out to be hopelessly naive - see the various late-60s to early 70s hippie communes in the US that generally fell into disarray and outright collapse when it turns out optimism and LSD weren't going to solve everything and someone still has to do the dishes eventually.
> I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
Your experience is certainly a data point, I would be surprised if this is as widespread as "I wrote it down and now realise it's all nonsense, it felt so meaningful at the time", but I don't imagine anyone's done a study.
> Is there a meaning to life to be found?
That's an interesting question, but looking for it in psychedelic experience seems to me a path that could lead to all sorts of odd places, mostly concerned with weird echoes of your own mind.
> Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
The necessity of philosophy to an internet argument is one thing. Its necessity to a fulfilling life is arguable, given so much of it is navel-gazing bollocks, and the necessity of deeply studying philiosophical principles before dropping acid even less clear.
You do you, but your original post was full of pretty arrogant assertions about how everyone else should do them. I agree, I shot back with some of the same.
gchamonlive 32 minutes ago [-]
Thanks for the thought out response, I think I can let my guard down. We were both arrogant and there's nothing wrong with it.
I'm coming from a personal point. I don't care about space travel or these enormous projects. I'm a simple guy with simple needs, and I like people and serving people. I am grateful there are people out there like you that spend time on this so I can focus on alienating myself with things I find interesting, like drawing and philosophy of consciousness.
It's just that not everything has to be a data point or a general abstraction on a larger scale. You can meet people in their own grounds so you can find common ground without imposing yourself.
And about drugs, I reflected on what you said and I think I could have expressed myself better, because I don't actually think there's a universal imposition of having to learn philosophy to take drugs, even though I agree with Simone Weil when she says philosophy is the required work so we can become vessels of God (hope this doesn't trigger your acid-like thinking detector). I only think drugs are tools we have the option to use and have the control over how we are going to direct them.
Nursie 8 minutes ago [-]
For my part I probably could benefit from studying philosophy and contemplating inner life a little more. It’s also fair to say I’m disillusioned with psychedelics - not that I don’t think they’re pretty amazing, but that time in my life has passed and I’ve come to view them as maybe overhyped.
I find my contentment and meaning in digging and planting these days, managing trees and general manual labour surrounded by birdsong and small animals. And in my relationships with my partner and my friends.
In many ways this is as irrational as any other path :)
bowsamic 8 hours ago [-]
The truth is fully accessible through reason, you don’t need to take drugs to know things
gchamonlive 2 hours ago [-]
I've seen your post below about your bad trip. I fully respect your position, but that is not my experience. I realised I can't access things I find important through my reason. I'm just too dependent on my body for my mind to function, so I just followed what my body was telling me.
But I agree that you don't need to take drugs. That's why my advice wasn't a definitive one. It's an invitation for people to consider what they want in their lives.
Wish you all the best truthfully.
bevan 6 hours ago [-]
You don’t need to take drugs to know things, but reason only covers a portion of what can be known. Reason doesn’t really help one understand the nature of experience itself. That’s a whole different kind of meta-factual knowing, an infinite subject that some people approach through meditation (and psychedelics too).
bowsamic 5 hours ago [-]
Reason can know the entirety of all necessary truth. There are experiential contingent things such as what I ate for breakfast that it of course cannot know. But it can know all universal truth, such as all metaphysical and philosophical truth
I’m a Hegelian though so I’m biased
jrflowers 4 hours ago [-]
I like this because it immediately accounts for truth not arrived at though reason and then just slaps on the word “universal” as the descriptor for the subset of truth reachable through reason. It is convincing because universal is a big word
bowsamic 3 hours ago [-]
Well the reasonable truth is not universal as in exhaustive but as in it always holds. I mean universal as in necessary, not contingent. Psychedelic and personal experience is merely contingent
2 hours ago [-]
krzat 6 hours ago [-]
Reason is overrated. Knowing that smoking is unhealthy is not sufficient to stop oneself from smoking.
bowsamic 6 hours ago [-]
It’s not overrated if you want to know the universal truths of reality, which is what the person I replied to spoke of. The truth is fully reasonable
jrflowers 4 hours ago [-]
This makes sense because experience doesn’t affect how a person reasons. This is why all truth is agreed upon
bowsamic 3 hours ago [-]
I know you’re being sarcastic but indeed if we reasoned properly we would all agree
sethammons 2 hours ago [-]
A common fallacy is that if you and I are smart then we will agree. Conflicts of interest and personal value systems and world views provide easy inlets for various counter points.
bowsamic 1 hours ago [-]
Well it isn’t a fallacy because if you reason without presuppositions you do uncover the absolute truth
golergka 5 hours ago [-]
Qualia. Black and white room.
LoganDark 8 hours ago [-]
No, but LSD helped me see things that couldn't be learned from outside. For some reason, it helps me recall childhood memories better. Sure maybe there's some guided therapy session that could have done that, but LSD gives it to me for free, along with a whole lot of other stuff.
adastra22 7 hours ago [-]
Did it let you recall childhood memories, or invent new ones? How would you know the difference?
sethammons 2 hours ago [-]
Historic events can be corroborated.
LoganDark 2 hours ago [-]
This. There are certain events that we already know happened. We have approximate dates, and we have talked about the events with others, who have given us their impressions of how we acted at the time. But sometimes we don't remember what our internal thought processes were at the time, or we simply held some certain belief about what had occurred (e.g. "I just decided I didn't want to go to school some day", or "I wanted to go to school but ADHD wouldn't let me!"). Sure LSD can give us some creative visualizations, but sometimes it also gives us ideas that just make more sense than what we had before. Instead of some spooky brain disorder just randomly Stopping me from going to school that day, randomly, maybe it was actually a fight between alters (yay for dissociative identity disorder!). And the more I thought about it (especially being - apparently !! but clearly - able to see what was me and what was the other during those fights), the more true it seemed, especially given all the more instances of this I've discovered over time, and that it's part of a longstanding pattern, but I digress. More and more has come out over the months and years that builds a progressively clearer picture of why we act the way we do and why we've done certain things we've done; why I feel certain things I do, why I remember certain things I do and why I don't remember certain things I don't. I'm not seeing any universal truth; I am discovering our own truth, and we are discovering our own truths, and this has done a lot of good for us, especially where we gain a better understanding of our past behavior in friendships (and elsewhere), and where we can still improve, etc.
Even if everything we've learned through LSD were false, I wouldn't even really care because we've still uncovered and figured out so much through this (much of it we've discussed with various others who were there during past events) that we are incredibly grateful to now know. So overall I think the experience for us has been positive, that we have gained much from it, and that we may stand to gain more over time since we are a regular user.
bowsamic 8 hours ago [-]
All knowledge that can be gained through LSD is contingent and experiential, not universal and certain
I’m well aware through my own testing
EDIT: I’m not saying it is useless information for your life but it is particular to your life, not truths of the universe like the person I replied to claimed
LoganDark 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, of course, nothing about LSD can give me access to things that my brain just doesn't have access to. It can help with the things that already are in my brain though.
bowsamic 1 hours ago [-]
Your brain does have access to all rational truth
LoganDark 1 hours ago [-]
My brain has the ability to claim anything it wants as truth. I prefer for my truth to either be consistent with an objective or empirical truth, or be measurably opposed to truths I disagree with (and to a known degree). I don't always achieve this and I'm not always the best at being open-minded but it is the goal, I would think.
bowsamic 1 hours ago [-]
Empirical truth is a lesser form of truth, look for necessary truth, purely rational
brcmthrowaway 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
010101010101 10 hours ago [-]
Why?
gchamonlive 9 hours ago [-]
For some people there is only the serious life for the serious man. Everyone else are just manchildren.
And they are right. Give these drugs to these people, they will turn into manchildren because it's their reality, and it's true for them.
bongodongobob 9 hours ago [-]
Nah, if you think you want to do it, do it, and I think a lot of people would benefit from a little peer pressure of having a half dose. It's all social stigma, all of the fear is from bullshit stories of turning into a glass of orange juice: that shit doesn't happen. Take a half hit of acid and you'll wish you took more. Every person I've I introduced it to has agreed. It's not that big of a deal. You aren't going to wreck your brain. It's not something that will ALTER YOUR LIFE PERMANENTLY!!! It's a drug and you'll be fuckin fine.
It very much IS set and setting and the powers that be really want to fuck up the set. Try it. You won't regret it.
gchamonlive 9 hours ago [-]
My point is, even though there is no unsafe dose of LSD, bad trips are real and can totally lock yourself out of it psychologically.
My advice has to be very careful in order not to incentivise unprepared people who would otherwise have a great trip. We have to be responsible, even if it'll only gonna negatively affect a very small percentage of them. Applied philosophy of care 100%
Other than that, I totally agree.
bongodongobob 9 hours ago [-]
I think the bad trips are good though, it's almost the point. Why are you feeling bad? It's usually because you're in a physical or mental place you don't want to be, yet, when sober, you think it is where you should be. The incongruity of the situation is the lesson and the point.
When I was in college, I tracked down some mushrooms, bought em, and ran away on my own to trip out. I found myself on a bench, next to a river surrounded by trash in a mixed industrial area. I saw cig butts and empty beer cans on the ground. Looked at my ripped jeans and thought "Am I trash? Why am I here?" It was a shitty feeling and I got really down. I realized that getting fucked up for its own sake was stupid, and it's about sharing time with others that's actually important, no matter what drug you're on. I started crying and felt horrible, but the next day, I had a new sense of worth and a new frame of reference for the world that has persisted for 20+ years. I'll always remember that shitty trip on that shitty bench.
bowsamic 8 hours ago [-]
Good for you. I was suicidal for 4 years after my LSD trips
shinryuu 7 hours ago [-]
I'm sorry that happened. I'm curious what was it that made you suicidal?
How did you come out it after those 4 years?
There seems to be quite the story around this one sentence and a very rough time. Though I think there are perhaps some learnings for other people as well if you're willing to share.
bowsamic 7 hours ago [-]
Childhood trauma that I didn’t know was affecting me. I thought I hard perfect set and setting
Lots of intense therapy, I still go 3 times a week
I had no suicidal feeling before the drug. I suppose one way to put it is that seeing into the void made me take suicide seriously as an option
Nursie 7 hours ago [-]
> there is no unsafe dose of LSD
Other than being a psychedelic, LSD is a stimulant and vasoconstrictor, so while physically unsafe doses are quite high (yes I've read about 'thumb print' doses), it's probably not wise to say that there is no unsafe dose of LSD.
It is unlikely you'll ever come across that much LSD, but LD50 is estimated at about 100mg, which is about 500-1000 ordinary doses.
sethammons 2 hours ago [-]
I know a guy who had something of an LSD overdose. Went psychotic and fully changed his personality. Total space cadet after. Ended up attacking an old man in a parking lot that he thought was a demon some months later.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 8 hours ago [-]
I think this is too dismissive of the transformative power of psychedelic drugs. They absolutely can alter your life permanently. They certainly altered mine. I think, in a positive way. But that power cuts both ways. I also know people who had harrowing, traumatic experiences and developed PTSD.
My advice to people who haven't tried it tends to be that if you're scared, you should abstain. Your presuppositions of what the experience will be, will in themselves shape the experience. If you expect a bad time, you're likely to get one.
There's also a group of people who are curious about using psychedelics to treat mental disorder. My advice to those people is to find a way to do it in a clinical setting. Psychedelics have enormous potential for effectively curing anxiety disorders, but it's not just a matter of taking the drugs. The experience must be guided by a psychologist who knows what the goal is. And then integrated and processed afterwards, also with expert help. Psychedelucs are not a treatment in and of themselves, more like an accelerant of psychotherapy. The therapy is still necessary, it's just that psychedelics allow you to do in a handful of sessions what could take years in a sober patient. As a case in point, I have a severe anxiety disorder myself, and my many self-initiated experiments with psychedelics haven't magically cured it. If combined with therapy, it might have. I'm still waiting for clinical practice to catch up, so I can have psychedelic therapy.
arkey 4 hours ago [-]
Are you referring specifically and exclusively to LSD? Or to hallucinogens in general?
A friend of my brother was doing shrooms with a couple other guys, had a bad trip and actually offed himself as part of the trip.
Please don't try to convince people that all of this is completely safe.
There are some interesting videos on YouTube from people experiencing this.
echelon_musk 2 hours ago [-]
This is demonstrably false and dangerous to repeat.
Just because everyone in your sample size has been fine doesn't mean everyone will be or even that your group will continue to be. Contrary to simplistic thinking, the law does exist for a reason and these substances are also scheduled for reasons other than conspiracies around free thinking.
Please spend some time reading about drug induced psychosis and educate yourself of the risks.
SlowTao 9 hours ago [-]
Ram Dass said that back in the 1960's when they were doing study of LSD they would try to randomize/double blind these tests but it was very funny to see. There were one where they had clergy involved and it basically went, one person would be like "I think it is doing something" and another would be wandering around going "I SEE GOD! I SEE GOD!". It was obvious who had what.
so hard to track these things down with google nowadays. Treats every word you add as an "or" like yahoo used to when google took their search market. The move from search engine to suggestion engine has been a disaster from my point of view. Hard to see how it would be more profitable.
edit: better link
sznio 5 hours ago [-]
>Hard to see how it would be more profitable
Queries use less compute time to complete, saving money. Why provide quality if there's no competitor for users to escape to?
SlowTao 8 hours ago [-]
The cartoon is a 10 out of 10!
echelon_musk 2 hours ago [-]
> “I took five people and we locked ourselves in a building for three weeks and we took 400 micrograms of LSD every four hours. That is 2400 micrograms of LSD a day.… We finally were just drinking out of the bottle.… We were very high. What happened in those three weeks in that house, no one would ever believe, including us. And at the end of the three weeks, we walked out of the house and within a few days, we came down! It was a very frustrating experience, as if you came into the kingdom of heaven and you saw how it all was…and then you got cast out again.”
Ram Dass and his retelling of this experience contributed to my shift from psychedelics to established spiritual traditions. They had the territory mapped out thousands of years ago. Ram Dass ultimately settled as a Hindu where as I find myself drawn to Buddhism. Anatta maps nicely to experiences of ego death and I find that I can see all drugs as part of the conditioned world. If you rely on a physical substance of the conditioned world for access to the divine then you're not free yet.
kgwxd 51 minutes ago [-]
If the goal is death, what's the point of living? shouldn't we be doing something completely different here than trying to find a way back? if we're going to end up back there no matter what, it seems a waste of life to spend it on that.
echelon_musk 2 minutes ago [-]
> the goal is death
?
hellotheretoday 4 hours ago [-]
This was part of this difficulty in clinical trials for mdma iirc. Both researchers and participants were fairly reliably able to discern placebo, among some other issues
fuzzfactor 9 hours ago [-]
That's about the time Catholics stopped having their Mass in Latin . . .
PunchyHamster 6 minutes ago [-]
Pretty sure giving them to non-clergy eventually created clergy
stared 3 hours ago [-]
I highly recommend the whole book "Sacred Knowledge" by William Richards (one of the author of the studies).
“To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, agape, transcendence, transfiguration, dark night of the soul, born-again, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.” - Thomas Roberts
This phrase is quoted in "Sacred Knowledge" by Richards, yet I find it the most suitable summary of this overview of scientific research on psychedelics and religion.
We hear about mystical visions from LSD ("acid"), psilocybin ("shrooms"), and DMT from many "spiritual but not religious" people and self-proclaimed shamans.
But how does it relate to vision by ordinary people (ones who never tired, and wouldn't try if it weren't for legal, scientific research)?
And how does it relate to prayer, mediation, and mystical visions by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus? How do monks and priests compare their psychedelic experience with their regular practice? Do they all turn to Zen Buddhism, or entrench in their religious background?
Regardless if you are deeply religious, or a non-spiritual atheist, I believe you will reconsider a few things after reading this book.
bravesoul2 14 hours ago [-]
> Almost a decade ago, a Baptist Biblical scholar, a Catholic priest, several rabbis, an Islamic leader, a Zen Buddhist roshi, and more than a dozen other religious leaders walked into a lab—and took high doses of magic mushrooms.
Wild. Maybe what the world needs.
jjulius 14 hours ago [-]
>Maybe what the world needs.
One line that's been recurring between my wife and I for the past half-decade or so is that the whole planet needs a good hotboxing.
robocat 12 hours ago [-]
That's the scattergun controlled approach of seeing like a state - give everyone medication even though it's only some that need it.
There's a small percentage ruining it for most: a few defectors when most are cooperators.
How do we identify the defectors?
What do you do if you identify defectors?
Spivak 12 hours ago [-]
It's maybe inefficient to hotbox everyone but I think I would rather that than give my government the green light to define and identify defectors.
If humanity has proven one thing over and over and over again to itself it's that we're terrible at witch hunts.
pasquinelli 10 hours ago [-]
you're being too fixated on individuals. everyone's doing the same thing: avoiding pain, uncertainty, and the limitation of their future choices; seeking pleasure, security, and to increase their future choices. the very few people who aren't doing that don't matter: history unfolds because people do what makes sense for them, not because some don't.
worthless-trash 9 hours ago [-]
I think you're being too fixated on your own perspective. History is nothing but the individual having a large blast radius.
History ABSOLUTELY unfolds the way it does because they were tired of being 'taking the reasonable/way that makes sense path'.
You can argue that every invention from the wheel forward has had this approach.
shiroiuma 12 hours ago [-]
>There's a small percentage ruining it for most: a few defectors when most are cooperators.
>What do you do if you identify defectors?
Simple: you put them in charge of the government. That's what we do now, after all.
gsf_emergency 11 hours ago [-]
So we just need to hotbox the people running gov :)
echelon_musk 2 hours ago [-]
Nicholas Sand wanted to turn on the entire planet but was unsuccessful.
timewizard 7 hours ago [-]
My friend Andy smoked weed with us once.
He disappeared about an hour after.
We found him a day later at his house.
He let us know he was okay, and everything was "cool and stuff", because the ice dogs didn't manage to catch him. He was able to run away into the woods to hide all night and eventually found his way back home in the morning. He was then curious why the ice dogs didn't chase us at all.
We didn't smoke Andy up anymore.
raducu 5 hours ago [-]
> We didn't smoke Andy up anymore.
I got open eye visuals from smoking some dubious hashish, 2 other people smoking the same stuff had no issues. I really enjoyed the experience, except for a small incident where I woke up in the middle of the night and started slapping my snoring friend -- I hallucinated he was in fact chocking on his own vomit and was going to die and in my mind I was saving his life.
I also got mild HPPD that got better in a few years -- mainly I could not look at certain grid patterns because bright flashes of light would come from the intersection -- this mostly happened from vent iron grids and some shirts of mine.
13 hours ago [-]
BitwiseFool 14 hours ago [-]
Quite frankly, that quote sounds like the premise of some new Netflix original series.
neilv 13 hours ago [-]
Also, an old joke format, presumably done intentionally by the writer.
Example: "A priest, a rabbi, and an atheist walk into a bar..."
867-5309 13 hours ago [-]
"...and say ouch! it was an iron bar"
ElijahLynn 12 hours ago [-]
Exactly.
quantified 15 hours ago [-]
Pretty much nothing of substance in the writeup. All about studying and flaws.
jbm 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah I was honestly taken aback with how devoid of content this was. No personal stories or research.
Finding willing rabbis, however, was easy—the challenge was finding ones who were “psychedelically naïve.”
cluckindan 11 hours ago [-]
There are videos of such religious devotees riding around cities in a van, blasting psychedelic trance, and stopping at lights to dance around the intersection, offering acid to onlookers.
nikcub 11 hours ago [-]
this should probably be OP - much better original story, not a reblog, and it's written by Michael Pollan.
Kilenaitor 13 hours ago [-]
Also has a way better headline heh
swyx 12 hours ago [-]
michael pollan, one of the best in the biz
anigbrowl 11 hours ago [-]
Yeah, total clickbait
elevaet 13 hours ago [-]
I had to scroll up and down for a while, looking for the rest of the article. There wasn't any.
Yea I was wondering if there was some UI issue on mobile bc I kept scrolling down expecting more.
I stopped and read the whole thing to be disappointed.
A blurb about [thing i am interested in].
I now feel like yelling at some clouds.
quantified 9 hours ago [-]
I feel badly that I didn't warn you sufficiently.
nathan_compton 13 hours ago [-]
I don't know if my brain is just wired up differently, but I've taken both LSD and Psilocybin many times and I did not find the experiences spiritual at all. I don't even know what people are talking about when they talk about spiritual experiences.
JesseMReeves 9 hours ago [-]
I recently talked about LSD to a spiritual person (the western esotericism kind).
He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.
jajko 4 hours ago [-]
Set and setting can make or break the experience. Alone and -> introspection or in the crowd who will drag you along them? Looking around at patterns emerging or resting with eyes firmly closed letting your mind wander far and high? What kind of soothing music is in the background? And so on.
For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).
Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.
t-3 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. I really enjoy both acid and shrooms, but beyond appreciating the fractal beauty of trees and the patterns in carpets a bit more I wouldn't describe them as anything life-changing, let alone some kind of spiritual awakening. MDMA is similarly hyped up, but no, I never felt "connected to the mass of humanity" or whatever people talk about, I just got high and danced while gritting my teeth and rubbing on my head.
crtified 11 hours ago [-]
Decades ago I had the same type of what are people talking about?!, it's certainly not happening to me! surprise, regarding MDMA and the supposed wonders of dancing the night away. I felt the effects of the substance, but to me, nightclub dancing on MDMA still felt about as awkwardly-conscious, performative and unnecessary as it did without!
I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.
easymodex 5 hours ago [-]
Might be you're just different than me, or might be that it's the type of nightclub. For me it needs to be something more ravey, like psytrance, DNB or hard techno. If I went to some lame commercial house nightclub, I'd have a bad time as well. But either way, no reason not to retry, life is an adventure.
It beats sitting around and <doing the regular evening passtime stuff>.
globular-toast 6 hours ago [-]
Set and setting. None of these drugs are like alcohol that just dulls the brain and lowers your IQ by 30 points. In a way you get what you're prepared to get.
It sounds like the nightclubs you were going to weren't a good setting either. A club should never feel self-conscious or performative. You should be able to get lost in there with the music. The dancing shouldn't feel unnecessary but more of an obligation because the music is so good. If you feel its unnecessary and awkward sober then no drug will fix that except maybe alcohol. I to to clubs and dance 100% sober these days.
bonoboTP 17 minutes ago [-]
> It sounds like the nightclubs you were going to weren't a good setting either. A club should never feel self-conscious or performative.
No, clubbing really is just truly not enjoyable to some people, regardless of which club it is. And just like you, these people believe that it's the same way for everyone, but some people just deny it and crunch through it, like eating extremely hot chili peppers to show off, ultimately in hopes of getting laid. Many people really don't "get" rhythm, and dancing and moving their bodies just feels silly and not intrinsically good at all. I did some clubbing in college and I guess onlookers might have thought I was having fun, but all I was thinking is that I have to do this to have normal social life, and was like "I can do it", just like any hard thing you do in life. It's still not enjoyable but it's just a thing you must do to be normal in a certain stage of life.
phrotoma 1 hours ago [-]
> you get what you're prepared to get
For the folks who aren't sure what the rest of us are talking about, this is the important bit.
conorjh 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
vincnetas 3 hours ago [-]
From my experience, nor MDMA nor shrums do the work for you. They only help you get there. So if you just pop the pill sit back and wait for things to happen, then it's not going to work. These things amplify your inner state (emotions, feelings, thoughts) thats why set and setting is of most importance. And here is where a good trip sitter also can come in handy.
comrade1234 12 hours ago [-]
Same. The hallucinations are fun and the laughter and joy but at the same time I can tell, even though I'm tripping, that it's just my brain mixing up its wiring and nothing to do with god.
esseph 12 hours ago [-]
I know people personally that psilocybin, LSD, and other substances do nothing for. All of them also have existing mental health disorders (extreme generalized anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.).
tlavoie 9 hours ago [-]
That could be an interaction with the meds they take for those conditions, couldn't it? I seem to recall that SSRIs in particular could mitigate the effects of the hallucinogen.
esseph 7 hours ago [-]
Yes, also that was accounted for with doctors notice and slow tapers off medications over months.
kbenson 12 hours ago [-]
Nothing as in there is no outside noticeable change in behavior and they report no change in speaking, or nothing as it relates to the topic of this thread, in that they have no profound or spiritual experiences?
esseph 12 hours ago [-]
They might get a slight body high even on what would otherwise be considered heroic doses for their weight.
Things like lemon-tek to make the psilocybin more bioavailable were also not impactful to them, while being apparently extremely impactful for others.
vermilingua 11 hours ago [-]
It may be worth noting that antidepressant medication has a strong suppressing effect on psychedelics.
ghxst 10 hours ago [-]
Depends on the type! Generally might be true for SSRIs but not always for TCAs or lithium which can have the opposite effect. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8788508/ (just one example)
esseph 7 hours ago [-]
Well aware and accounted for.
grigri907 8 hours ago [-]
Fwiw I find that, due to my antidepressants, i need 3x the dose to have the equivalent experience as my friends.
jdenning 11 hours ago [-]
Many psych meds diminish/block psychedelic effects.
sev 12 hours ago [-]
Dosage might play a factor, I presume.
timewizard 7 hours ago [-]
Impurities as well.
konfusinomicon 11 hours ago [-]
it is there. in a former life ive only felt it under the spell of either of those substances mixed with others popular with today's party goers, but it is. very fleeting and hard to describe but I have the sparse memories of the feelings during the experiences and once you get there you will know and definitely remember
ttoinou 4 hours ago [-]
Take twice the dose in a safe environment with only your best friend
DontchaKnowit 10 hours ago [-]
Lsd did it for me. Psilocybin was not spiritual at all.
For me the "spiritual exlerience" was just a profound sense of gratefulness. And then the idea that god and objective truth are one and the same. Whatever that means
denkmoon 12 hours ago [-]
are you otherwise spiritual? I think that might be a prerequisite. Outside of spirituality did you have any experiences that were "profound" or "thought provoking"?
yboris 1 hours ago [-]
Maybe related, a book Varieties of Spiritual Experience by David B. Yaden and Andrew Newberg - the title pays homage to William James, considered the father of American psychology and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience.
Promising title, but the article felt hollow... all surface, no depth. Skimmed anecdotes without probing them, offered no real insight or new perspective, and left me with absolutely nothing I couldn't have guessed from the headline alone :(
8 hours ago [-]
testemailfordg2 10 hours ago [-]
Better to stay sane...Have seen a lot of these kinds of articles, surely funding comes from somewhere...
easymodex 5 hours ago [-]
Are you saying you are sane but you also believe secret orgs are funding to push psychedelics to people to make them insane? I have bad news then.
t0lo 4 hours ago [-]
I've noticed a pattern in which "type" of outlets push this content the most
The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was an experiment conducted on Good Friday, April 20, 1962 at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, designed the experiment under the supervision of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Harvard Psilocybin Project.[1] Pahnke's experiment investigated whether psilocybin would act as a reliable entheogen in religiously predisposed subjects.[2]
A_Duck 3 hours ago [-]
@dang can we change the article link to the much more detailed New Yorker article? Several comments noting the current link is a pretty thin summary
> He pointed to the risk of selection bias: those who volunteer are likely to be “spiritually hungering for a mystical experience,”...
I would go further and suppose that any Christian elder or leader who volunteered to do this had already demonstrated their unsuitability to speak on the matter of psychedelics and God.
rendall 4 hours ago [-]
> I would go further and suppose that any Christian elder or leader who volunteered to do this had already demonstrated their unsuitability to speak on the matter of psychedelics and God.
I have honest questions. Would you mind expanding? Is there a theological basis for your stance? What would a suitable Christian elder or leader say on the matter of psychedelics and God?
nooneinpart 3 minutes ago [-]
For example, it has been written in the letter to the Ephesians 5.15-21:
Therefore watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Because of this don’t become foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is and don’t be drunken with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; singing and making melody in your heart to the lord; giving thanks always concerning all things to God, even the father, in the name of our lord Jesus Christ; subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.
myflash13 3 hours ago [-]
By taking drugs they immediately invalidate their legitimacy and licenses as clergy, so not sure this means anything.
deepsun 6 hours ago [-]
I swear psilocybin affects the sense of importance, sacredness, meaningfulness. One can be staring at the most boring thing and see the Universe in it. Doesn't mean there's really anything important nor useful in it. Just like a shot of dopamine affects feeling of pleasure, psilocybin affects the brain's feeling of "importance".
quchen 4 hours ago [-]
You make it sound very negative. It’s a strong experience, and after a strong experience most people have it on their mind, and talking about it is one way to integrate the experience. Previously insufferable people have a new channel to be insufferable, scientific people will analyze what their brain chemistry did, dull people will brag about how extreme it was, and so on.
Unearned5161 6 hours ago [-]
I wonder if a similar thing to the dwarfing high of heroin applies to these psychedelics. Would the amazing awakening experience I'd have with an LSD trip make all other mentally exciting moments and smaller awakenings I come across in day to day life more boring in comparison?
quchen 4 hours ago [-]
Have you been to a really long opera? It’s quite impressive. After hours of pretty intense performance and singing, can you not appreciate the street musician the day after? Do you have a strong desire to go to the opera again the following days?
flkenosad 2 hours ago [-]
Honestly, kind of.
hyperadvanced 6 hours ago [-]
I don’t think so. I’ve done it probably 20 times and I feel like it bleeds out into the rest of your life. It forever altered my appreciation of clouds and postmodern fiction/philosophy
teaearlgraycold 3 hours ago [-]
That’s like asking if getting a new pair of glasses makes looking at things more boring. Psychedelics are most interesting because of the medium and long term effects they have on the brain.
pjio 5 hours ago [-]
Those studies should also include if the individuals taking substances become better or worse for the lives of the people around them in a sustainable way.
billynomates 3 hours ago [-]
They did, if you read the study linked in the article. The individuals who took psilocybin mostly became more open, compassionate, and grounded in their spiritual roles. They reported feeling more deeply connected to their faith communities, more empathetic in their pastoral care, and more authentic in how they engaged with others. And the changes were still evident over a year later, long after the acute effects of the substance had passed. What shifted wasn’t just mood or perspective but the felt sense of purpose and interconnection. Many described themselves as more present, more patient, and more attuned to the emotional and spiritual needs of those they served. Their beliefs became less rigid, their egos softened, and their sense of service deepened. For the people around them the net result was almost universally positive. Not in a grandiose or abstract way, but in the quiet, daily patterns of being more available, less judgmental, and more aligned with what they had always claimed to teach.
“Participants often described becoming more open and understanding toward others’ beliefs, feeling greater love for those they serve, and experiencing renewed clarity in their spiritual leadership.”
So where's the follow up in which others evaluate the participants? The results all seem self-reported. But did the participants improve in some measurable way as seen from the outside? Without outside evaluation, it's just people who took drugs reporting they mostly liked the results.
What are the odds that peddlers of religion would turn to promoting chemical drugs on the side ...
cluckindan 10 hours ago [-]
There’s that word again: ”drugs” - you just know anyone using that word in earnest is suffering from a narrow and naïve world view imposed upon them by generations of propaganda.
There is a huge experiential chasm between opiates and psychedelics. These two groups of substances have nothing to do with each other.
7 hours ago [-]
kazinator 9 hours ago [-]
Religion is not literally opium; Marx was speaking/writing figuratively. He just referred to a popular recreational of his time.
cluckindan 8 hours ago [-]
No, he was referring to making the people unwilling and unable to revolt.
This is literally a thread about psychedelics, not allegory.
kazinator 7 hours ago [-]
Great; enjoy your broad, erudite world view.
cluckindan 7 hours ago [-]
Mmkay, you don’t think that’s a bit condescending?
rendall 4 hours ago [-]
> you don’t think that’s a bit condescending?
Honest question: are you self-aware? That is, do you feel yourself to be of the world, or uniquely separate from the world?
I'm asking, again, sincerely, because I'm wondering how one could scold about condescension immediately after posting this:
I vaguely remember some televised British experiment in which a clergyman replaced his usual bread with poppy seed bread -- toast for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, etc. -- then at the end of a month or so tested positive for some opioid threshhold
"William James, considered the father of American psychology ...., is said to have to come to many of his own most central ideas at least in part through hallucinatory experiences with nitrous oxide"
That's a pretty good explainer for psychology. We have a Coke addled Freud who is the father of it all and another drug abuser shepherding the USA.
I wonder how many people have tried to replicate their experiments and succeeded?
kevinsync 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah, keep in mind that significant abuse of the drugs mentioned are, uh, let's say, prone to inflating the ego rather than killing it and showing a different path.
Kinda fills in some unspoken gaps about the 'discipline' of psychology...
hsbauauvhabzb 14 hours ago [-]
Can you explain this for those of us with minimal background in psychology? Is there a substantial amount of pseudoscience in modern psychology, or just historically?
thayne 12 hours ago [-]
Psychology has a pretty significant reproducibility crisis.
From what I've seen as an outsider, a lot of studies are taken as fact without any confirmation with attempts to reproduce the results. And many results suffer from questionable methodology.
A big part of the problem is that doing psychology well is really, really hard. You are dealing with human subjects, which means there are a lot of ethical and regulatory constraints. A lot of experiments that might give you important insights are unethical and/or illegal. Getting people to participate in studies is difficult and expensive, which means sample sizes are often much smaller than they should be. And there are often significant biases in the population sampled (I believe most psychology studies are done on college students... often psychology students). And then there is the inherent complexity of the subject. Every person's brain is different, and finding general rules that apply to the incredible diversity of human minds is very, very difficult. And finally, I suspect that a lot of psychologists are not trained in statistics and experimental methodology to the same degree as scientists in "harder" sciences.
kevinsync 12 hours ago [-]
I can't really speak for psychology as a field other than a spectator, but I find it to be quite subjective. What I really meant was related to cocaine and nitrous oxide -- two very different substances that both result in wild egos, wild ideas, hard-to-sustain invincibility and a host of other effects, unlike psychedelics (LSD, psilocybin, DMT, etc) which are arguably closer to (and provide) positive psychological responses / breakthroughs / perspectives.
For a current-times look into nitrous, observe Kanye West. The rumor mill (plus believable evidence) suggests he is out of his MIND on large amounts of N2O frequently, and his erratic and grandiose behavior reinforces the idea. That's probably not ideal for American psychology if "the father" of it is similarly whacked lol.
For a historical look into cocaine, observe Sigmund Freud. There was a great book called Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography [0] by Dominic Streatfeild, the second-third of which covers Freud's discovery and promotion of cocaine as a cure-all.
TL;DR Freud was searching for a drug, any drug, that hadn't been claimed yet by a scientific promoter to then market as his own for fame and fortune, stumbled upon cocaine (hydrochloride, not freebase), started doing a lot of it, proselytizing it (it could cure your heroin addiction!) etc, before the whole thing kind of collapsed around him.
While arguably fun, it's a substance that is the polar opposite of "introspection" and drives a lot of behavior that honestly a person might seek a therapist or psychologist to resolve LOL, so for a psychologist to promote it early in his career who eventually progresses into more or less defining psychology as a field, well ... I just find it curious and would wonder what theories Freud would have put forth had he come to be in a time with psychedelics available instead. That's all!
Psychology isn't a science and never has been. It fails to meet the basic criteria. Reproducibility in particular has been a very big deal in recent years (google search term: "replication crisis").
7thaccount 13 hours ago [-]
This is a little blunt, but I knew a lot of people who went into psychology and got degrees. They were not very gifted academically (C students in highschool) and went into psych as it was an easy major that let them coast and party for four years. I'm sure this isn't the case for all psychology majors of course, but it was very different on average than what I was used to in engineering or the hard sciences where you generally had 4 years of excruciating math classes including calculus and differential equations that weeded out most.
Psychology is very dependent on statistics and experiments. That can be complicated and after going through those classes I simply don't trust the majority of students (or their professors) to get any of that right. It's why I roll my eyes every time the radio guy talks about the results of another pop psych study. I knew some psych majors big into new age crystal stuff and legitimately believed it all as well as a bunch of additional pseudoscience garbage. That kind of thing is a lot more rare in say physics where it's really hard to get through the program without a rational brain.
Again, there are probably some brilliant folks drawn to that field who knows how to do solid research, but my experiences suggest that the signal to noise ratio may be suspect.
BeetleB 13 hours ago [-]
Psych majors with just a BS degree - totally agree with you.
PhDs, though - some more rigor is involved. Definitely not C-grade level folks (or if they were, they've rectified that problem). But still, we do have a replication crisis...
hsbauauvhabzb 13 hours ago [-]
I appreciate your honesty, blunt or not that’s an interesting perspective.
clipsy 14 hours ago [-]
> That's a pretty good explainer for psychology. We have a Coke addled Freud who is the father of it all and another drug abuser shepherding the USA.
Now do tech CEOs
quantified 13 hours ago [-]
The Hebrew writings include some instances of God appearing from fire or smoke. Exactly what was burning? I've read what I consider rumors that there are DMT-containing shrubs in that part of the world.
guicen 10 hours ago [-]
What I find interesting is that the line between a religious experience and a brain chemistry event seems a lot thinner than we usually think. The clergy didn’t lose their faith after taking psilocybin. Instead, they seem to hold their beliefs a bit more loosely and focus more on what they feel in the moment.
In some ways, this feels like something humans have always done. Whether it's prayer, meditation, fasting, or psychedelics, people keep looking for ways to quiet the noise in their heads and feel connected to something bigger. The methods change, but the need stays the same.
keiferski 9 hours ago [-]
People often assume that a spiritual experience is by-definition somehow supernatural, but it makes sense to me that it would need to functionally have a wiring system in order to actually work.
In other words, even if you assume that the vision of God/feeling of divine presence/etc. is valid, there are two methods of implementation: either it’s done in a supernatural way that defies physics and logic; or it’s done in a way that accords with the structure of reality (as in, chemically.)
The latter seems a lot more elegant to me, IMO.
Winsaucerer 8 hours ago [-]
My own view is an idealist style one, where I think God impresses experiences upon us, and the experiences we have are determined by physical states. On this view, it's impossible to have a religious experience without there being appropriate physical states in place. In other words, agreeing with your conclusion.
anon291 7 hours ago [-]
The entire premise of supernatural is wrong. Anything that occurs in this world is, by definition, natural.
Other definitions of supernatural really fail to be complete or useful. One definition is 'not predictable' , but by that metric, every moment of a newborns first few moments of life is supernatural.
Of course, there's another definition, which is experiences that do not take place in this world and unobservable to us. In which case, sure but then we cannot experience them here on earth. The moment such a thing is experienced by a human, it becomes natural
I honestly challenge people to explain what they mean when they say 'supernatural'.
leptons 10 hours ago [-]
>the line between a religious experience and a brain chemistry event seems a lot thinner than we usually think.
George Gurdjieff wrote about this many, many years ago (1890 – 1912). He called it "The Fourth Way". This is the relevant passage from the book "In Search of the Miraculous":
“So that when a man attains will on the fourth way he can make use of it because he has acquired control of all his bodily, emotional, and intellectual functions. And besides, he has saved a great deal of time by working on the three sides of his being in parallel and simultaneously.
“The fourth way is sometimes called the way of the sly man. The ‘sly man’ knows some secret winch the fakir, monk, and yogi do not know. How the ‘sly man’ learned this secret — it is not known. Perhaps he found it in some old books, perhaps he inherited it, perhaps he bought it, perhaps he stole it from someone. It makes no difference. ‘The ‘sly man’ knows the secret and with its help outstrips the fakir, the monk, and the yogi.
“Of the four, the fakir acts in the crudest manner; he knows very little and understands very little. Let us suppose that by a whole month of intense torture he develops in himself a certain energy, a certain substance which produces certain changes in him. He does it absolutely blindly, with his eyes shut, knowing neither aim, methods, nor results, simply in imitation of others.
“The monk knows what he wants a little better; he is guided by religious feeling, by religious tradition, by a desire for achievement, for salvation; he trusts his teacher who tells him what to do, and he believes that his efforts and sacrifices are ‘pleasing to God.’ Let us suppose that a week of fasting, continual prayer, privations, and so on, enables him to attain what the fakir develops in himself by a month of self-torture.
“The yogi knows considerably more. He knows what he wants, he knows why he wants it, he knows how it can be acquired. He knows, for instance, that it is necessary for his purpose to produce a certain substance in himself. He knows that this substance can be produced in one day by a certain kind of mental exercises or concentration of consciousness. So he keeps his attention on these exercises for a whole day without allowing himself a single outside thought, and he obtains what he needs. In this way a yogi spends on the same thing only one day compared with a month spent by the fakir and a week spent by the monk.
“But on the fourth way knowledge is still more exact and perfect. A man who follows the fourth way knows quite definitely what substances he needs for his aims and he knows that these substances can be produced within the body by a month of physical suffering, by a week of emotional strain, or by a day of mental exercises—and also, that they can be introduced into the organism from without if it is known how to do it. And so, instead of spending a whole day in exercises like the yogi, a week in prayer like the monk, or a month in self-torture like the fakir, he simply prepares and swallows a little pill which contains all the substances he wants and, in this way, without loss of time, he obtains the required results.
a corollary is - can a clergy still practice if implanted with a neuromodulator device, i.e. deep brain stimulation, for epilepsy, or Parkinson's, or depression?
patrickmay 13 hours ago [-]
When clergy take psilocybin . . . God sees them?
867-5309 13 hours ago [-]
when you eat too many shrooms .. the shrooms eat back at you
aspenmayer 13 hours ago [-]
There’s also this guy who you might have heard of, who created a little thing called Alcoholics Anonymous:
Apparently he was so serious about the potential for LSD to help alcoholics, that he almost got thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous, the recovery group he helped create. He had written to a Catholic friend about this.
> LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding "a power greater than ourselves" that "could restore us to sanity". He warned: "I don't believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer."
> But Wilson added: "The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people."
> His words were found in a late 50s letter to Father Ed Dowling, a Catholic priest and member of an experimental group he had formed in New York to explore the spiritual potential of LSD.
agold97 7 hours ago [-]
it's no surprise to me that people who believe goats talks like to trip lol
I am no fan of Timothy Leary, I think he put the cause of Psychedelics back decades. He was also a very flawed researcher, which effected this study.
Nevertheless, it was ground breaking for 1962 and had a huge impact.
Not so significant in the twenty first century.
motohagiography 10 hours ago [-]
if you are interested in a rabbit hole, look up the appearance of the acacia shrub in the bible, a source of DMT, and how some people associate it with the burning bush. quite a trip.
I've said before that I think the geometric patterns in hallucinations resemble analog signal feedback, inside an analog signalling system (your brain) that has been impaired by a chemical. other dimensions and beings aren't necessary to the explanation. there are theraputic uses for breaking cycles of thought, but I'd argue a non-spiritual view of drugs based on signalling feedback and channel impairment is sufficient to describe their effects.
elevaet 6 hours ago [-]
I 100% agree with you on the "signal feedback inside an analog signalling system".
I've done a lot of tripping, and I've come to this same hypothesis independently. I believe this explains a great deal about the visual geometric and fractal patterns you can see on psychedelics and also that analogous things happen within the auditory processing system, memory, emotions, and so on when you trip.
So much of tripping comes down to turning up the gain on signalling in your brain, which causes feedback pathways to start resonating. This results in colour saturation, tracers, geometry, exaggerated patterns and edge detection, echoing, reverbs, increased impact of thoughts, and following thoughts down deep rabbit holes etc.
None of this is to reduce the experience, I love psychedelics and think they are super important. But that's whole other discussion.
ttoinou 4 hours ago [-]
Maybe that’s a good start. But sometimes I am able to control my hallucinations, it doesnt seem to be simply analog modification
shinryuu 6 hours ago [-]
It seems like you're thinking of acacia confusa but that bush is growing in south east Asia and not close to where the bible played out.
rajies 8 hours ago [-]
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50208 10 hours ago [-]
Why do people insist on complicating all this so much ... just take a hit of whatever and experience it for yourself.
worthless-trash 9 hours ago [-]
I believe people complicate it because brain chemistry modification is mostly a one way change.
flanked-evergl 5 hours ago [-]
I have taken boatloads of psychedelics in my life. If I could do my life over again I would have traded every single trip for having read Orthodoxy and the Everlasting Man by Chesterton before I was 25. Tripping gives you zero insights into the divine, it is not revelation, you don't get closer to God. There are real answers, but we as civilization have been deliberately moving away from under false premises, and the world has gotten worse and worse. Drugs can't fix this. If you want a better world, you should not dull your perception of it.
Something that would be much more beneficial for all humanity is if more of the clergy actually preached the bible, instead of trying to explain it away, which is almost exclusively what the clergy I have engaged with tries to do.
jwrallie 4 hours ago [-]
I take this book was life changing to you, would you mind explaining a bit more on why? If you read it before 25, do you think it would have the same effect, given your different experience at that age?
jajko 3 hours ago [-]
Given current major religions are visibly inventions of men to cover basic existential fears we all face and were done during roughly iron age era with corresponding illogical parts and conflicting statements, no amount of drugs are going to move any normal person to whatever god or God represents in this universe.
The introspection part is where true gold is - and to be honest that tells a lot about where we feel above topic is in our cores (and as you yourself confirmed from your experiences, like it or not).
More religion and preaching got us medieval dark ages and tons of endless wars and genocide, I think mankind deserve a bit more these days.
flanked-evergl 11 minutes ago [-]
> More religion and preaching got us medieval dark ages and tons of endless wars and genocide
This is false.
alex-vlasis 40 minutes ago [-]
I come from a Muslim family but aren’t deeply religious myself. My first LSD trip felt deeply spiritual and echoed themes from the paper on psychedelics and religion. Here’s what I took away, which might interest anyone curious about this topic:
- Prophetic Sensation: It was so profound that, 5,000 years ago, I could’ve thought it was a prophetic vision. I didn’t feel like I was speaking to God, but I got how prophets might’ve felt something divine.
- Inner Peace & Clarity: LSD brought pure joy, warmth, and peace. It stripped away mental filters, showing me the world as it is, not just how I see it.
- Accepting Death: I felt at peace with death, seeing it as a natural part of life. I’d never really thought about it before, but there was no fear—just acceptance.
- Divine Music: Music felt heavenly, amplifying the moment’s emotional and spiritual depth. It was like it carried the experience.
- Spiritual Connection: I didn’t think about whether religions are “true,” but it felt spiritual, like touching something bigger—hard to explain, but so meaningful.
- Right & Wrong Philosophy: I realized “right” and “wrong” are labels we create. Right feels like harmony, wrong like harm, but they’re fluid, shaped by context. Things just are, and we use these ideas to navigate life.
It has lasting effects that go way beyond the effects of the drug.
However I think it's complicated to derive generalisms like saying it's a drug for everyone and everybody should take it. It's definitely not for everybody.
I'm also not going to be a hypocrite and say that you shouldn't do it. What I'll go and say is that it's your journey to figure out what you are going to invite into your life. In any case, depending on what you believe, you aren't actually here to figure things out. You already did. You are here to remember.
In more secular terms, you are here to do the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants and study the great minds that came before you. That will give you the necessary foundational philosophy to withstand and understand these experiences, should you choose to go through them. This is the only way to acquire a foundational respect for these substances and these experiences.
Have I done this work? Have I achieved the required level of understanding to make heads and tails of these experiences? Not for a while at least. It was rough the first couple of times. Very violent and crude, like rushing naked through a sea of people while being completely sure that that night is the last night of your life (I wasn't actually naked, it just felt like that and that everyone was eventually going to merge with me and that I should feel ashamed of it).
But with time and with the necessary exposure to understand the basics of existencialism I think I managed to pin down a more gentle form of this experience that can help me remember how to lay myself bare to the goddess and just be there when I dance.
So I think I can extend this invitation to anyone that feels brave enough to lift the reins of existence and reality and expose yourself to the truth. That everything is a story about the end of the world. About the beginning. And about everything at once.
It's scary, it's blissful and it's totally worth it.
PSA: 100-150 micrograms of LSD is a medium to strong trip. For beginners its good to start low, perhaps 75 micrograms or lower.
Edit: Also testing your reaction psychedelics in more controlled and calmer settings is highly recommended before doing in it raves or other public places. But also note that the effects may vary significantly even in the same person at different times and settings.
Though biological products like psilocybin (or weed etc) are harder to measure and control by producers, in strength than purely chemical products like LSD or MDMA. It's hard to trace what mother nature did exactly when producing this particular mushroom cap, but it could be possible to trace what the chemist did when producing this particular blot. If only it were legalized and we could have actual control, tracability, and prosecution of malpractice...
Also, these tests are set up in a way that they are anonymous in a way that e.g. even if prosecutors could subpoena a test-location or lab to hand over administration, this administration won't contain any PII or even pseudonymous information.
The only thing they don't test are things you can somehow get legally, if I recall correctly (so whatever you can get for any psychological condition).
With LSD it's always a solution (either in paper or in liquid), so you can only trust the producer.
Ah, I see someone else already mentioned it. I'll still keep this here for increased visibility. Drugs testing in NL is solid.
Source: trust me bro ;-)
Second source: go see for yourself! It's anonymous.
[1] https://www.drugs-test.nl/ (use google translate)
I had expiremented with moderate/recomended doses of lsd and psilocybin before participating in an auahuasca retreat... and the doses were shocking.
This was a relatively tame centre in western Europe that had trained psych nurses in attendance. Still, the Shaman handed out monster doses... and offered a second one a couple of hours in... and again the following day.
Many traditional practices conceive of "levels" corresponding to doses, and the lower levels are not the ones associated with transformative spiritual experience.
I have no recomendations of my own.
That's what drug prohibitionists would love to happen, so they should encourage such a "wrong" experiment instead of prosecuting it. :-)
You just open the door for many more first times to come
Chemically and physically, LSD for example is gone in a few days and certainly weeks. But taking two days in a row needs "insane" amounts to get you the same (physical, chemical) effect. MDMA is almost entirely gone in months, after which a normal dose will get the same (physical, chemical) effect. Good documentation with even calculators for this can be found online (be aware that it may not be allowed to even visit such sites in some countries!)
I deliberately emphasis the "physical and chemical" because the experience itself may be something you get used to. First time MDMA is wildly different from any time thereafter for many people. For many this is even stronger with LSD or Psilocybin. Many people report that the (first) experience opened up their mind and being profoundly and lasting. The more one gets used to the feeling the more this feeling itself becomes routine.
The intense love and euphoria from e.g. MDMA may be the same on an objective level, after letting the chemicals disappear over months, so technically one can achieve this level a few times a year. But the feeling itself is something one could get "used to" and "become bored by". Similar to how experiencing a rave sober for decades, or even how after decades of traveling it could get boring and a routine.
My point is: indeed first times are important. Even if the textbooks say that tolerance is gone after X time.
MDMA comes to mind. I've also heard (though not tried, nor will I) the harder narcotics such as heroine and meth are almost never as good as the first time.
The first time being the best time is often exactly why people become addicts.
Not to downplay all obvious and less obvious hazards of these 'harder' narcotics, just saying the whole 'first time being the best time' as an explanation of why exactly people become addicts relies very much on hearsay. It's the sort of language that came with the whole war-on-drugs-thing, and does not reflect reality.
Now, an important factor here is that a first time often comes with anxiety, insecurity, and even fear. With many substances these feelings get amplified so that makes the entire experience be mediocre or even bad. Especially for that, I think it's very important to experience this in a safe, loving, caring and depending on the type taken, controllable, silent, busy, energetic, dark, light etc environment.
Just to offer a counterpoint:
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
The more I experience, the more I think maybe that's a pretty good point, too.
If you choose to fart around, whatever that means, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Since there's no salvation, farts are also meaningless, and at the same time totally meaningful given the circumstances.
A nihilist would say fart or don't fart it's all pointless.
For example, consider Cogito, ergo sum. As Latin has no continues verb time, that phrase may mean I exist because I think. Or I am existing because I am thinking . The latter implies that when one stops thinking the existence stops, the opposite of the former. Philosophers still debates what exactly Descartes meant.
Or consider the notion of time flow. In 1908 John MacTaggart published a paper arguing that the feeling of time flow is unreal. Again, there are heavy debates about the validly of his arguments without any conclusion with quite a lot of philosophers accepting the argument and even arguing that the time flow is an illusion.
For what I know, my "existence" could be an infinitely short moment, or even an entirely static endless "moment", or any of an infinite variety of other options.
So even most of existence is only assumption. It's a set of assumptions that makes sense to just accept because we have no way of proving otherwise, but they are assumptions, not "universal truths".
So why do you perceive yourself, and if you aren't you, then who are you? These sort of thoughts eliminated any notion of nihilism from me and gradually pushed me towards a simulation hypothesis. Of course that's just religion for an agnostic, because it doesn't even answer anything - if you die only to 'wake up' and discover it was all just a simulation, you're still back right where you started.
The search for natural explanations feels unsatisfactory because it will always come back to a question of what created that. For instance what if you think the matter for a big bang was quantum mechanically poofed into existence then what led to the creation of quantum mechanics, the void of which emerged, or so on endlessly. You basically have to do a whole bunch of hand waving and assumptions to the point that it starts to rapidly feel like religion for an atheist.
It may be absurd, but we nevertheless can not rule it out, and so it means that our ability to know anything about existence for certain is limited to almost nothing.
Note that I'm not saying I believe this to be the case. What I'm saying is that I see looking for "universal truths" to be entirely futile, because we can't possibly know much of substance with certainty.
Instead we have to accept that unless someone "pierces a veil" and shows us that there's a reality past the one we observe, we are limited to talking about what is observable and measurable within our observable reality, knowing that we are dealing with assumptions and probabilities, not universal truths.
> I find it no less absurd to imagine the same even if it happens to be 10^100 instructions.
This seems fundamentally at odds with saying you were gradually pushed towards a simulation hypothesis...
> if you die only to 'wake up' and discover it was all just a simulation, you're still back right where you started.
A simulation hypothesis does not need to imply that there's anything to wake up from for anyone. Indeed, even if you were to wake up, by confirming that simulation is possible, this would seem to strongly suggest that you should consider the probability that the world you wake up in is simulated to be extremely high.
> The search for natural explanations feels unsatisfactory because it will always come back to a question of what created that.
It may feel unsatisfactory to you. It doesn't to me. I accept that whenever we push the horizon of knowledge, we're likely to discover more things that we don't know, and for the set of things we know we can't know to expand as well.
> You basically have to do a whole bunch of hand waving and assumptions to the point that it starts to rapidly feel like religion for an atheist.
You don't have to do anything. You can accept that we don't know.
As for natural explanations - what I am saying is that the natural explanations for 'why' seem, currently, to be far weaker than other explanations. And in fact the natural explanations rely on various ad-hoc constructions (like inflation theory) that are completely unnatural. A simulation hypothesis is, to me, the only hypothesis that doesn't seem to have glaring holes in it and/or rely on defacto magic.
And obviously I understand that magic of one millennia is the mundane tech of another. But we do not live in that other era, and there's no guarantee that such an understanding will ever come to pass. Assuming otherwise requires having faith that such discoveries will come to pass in the future, and essentially assuming your own conclusion, instead of looking at the evidence as available. And that's why I referred to natural explanations as religion for an atheist.
To me psychedelic experiences break through the inputs, they become fuzzy and integrate in ways they aren't supposed to in normal functioning, it's why we feel a different sense of connection to anything else, filtering in different ways inputs from our senses and experiences, including the sense of one's self dissolving.
That's begging the question. I'd argue that all meaning is in how we fart around.
If you don’t know what it is and don’t know what you want, you either fart around or resign.
> Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind."
In that case, I would suggest working a bit on that first. Meditation can help, but "terrified" sounds strong enough that trying out therapy if available may be worthwhile.
Regarding substances, I found mushrooms to be easier than LSD, with a kind of warmth that softens the psychedelic experience (without taking anything away from it). The effects also don't last as long. A non-psychedelic which can allow one to face difficult emotions is MDMA. In some countries you can find MDMA based therapy. This could prepare someone to become more open to what psychedelics have to offer. (Edit: Also, all of these substances have effects that are not comparable to alcohol at all. Trying to understand the effects of psychedelics/empathogens based on experiences with alcohol is a category error.)
Based on my limited experience, I would roughly categorize the relation of these substances to the idea of control like this:
LSD: you might feel like there's some control, but you're actually the playball of the substance
Mushrooms: the substance draws you in some direction, and it's best to just lean into it, but it'll support you in doing so
MDMA: there's no need for control, things are okay the way they are
> having zero belief in the mysticism
That depends on what exactly this means.
Have some knowledge of "mysticism" or some eastern worldviews / philosophy, without taking it too seriously, would be a good basis IMO.
Actively rejecting any ideas related to mysticism while clinging tightly to a specific world view / metaphysics (and related beliefs like "I can only allow something if I understand / can explain it") may lead someone to have a really bad time on psychedelics.
---
Note that this isn't advice about whether to consume anything or what to consume, and experiences can vary widely between individuals, settings, dosages etc. (For both assumptions above, is possible to construct higly positive outcomes, where the substance helped overcome problems, opens one up, etc. and negative ones, horror trip, lasting trauma from the trip, ...) Having someone experienced present when doing something like this for the first time is highly recommended.
Do you have good reason for this fear, like fantasies of hurting yourself or others? If so, yeah, you probably shouldn't ingest substances that can lower your inhibitions.
But I do know people which I would categorise as really terrified of loosing control.
Maybe “letting loose” was the wrong expression here, I meant “loosing control” rather.
For example, the average person will feel altered mood states and mild visual hallucinations (patterns on surfaces, think very detailed mandalas or fractals), in the 50-75μg range of LSD. They will not see pink elephants, they will not try to call their dog on the phone, they will not strip naked, they will not make growling sounds at trees.
Now, I do voluntary work in drug education, and there’s one important thing to say, it’s that everyone’s different, and it’s fine not to do psychedelics, or any other substance.
There are things I can’t control even when sober, that’s clear, but I’m used to it. Giving up the control over things I usually control is a different thing (for me).
2. i never have and probably never will be a spiritual person. doesn't lessen the enjoyment or impact. i literally just think of it as a "reset button" - it makes you forget some previous anxieties, reframe others, let go of stuff that's dragging you down. it's not therapy but sometimes just shaking things up a bit gives you enough of a new perspective to really benefit you. or... you know, sometimes you just watch tv with your roommates for 3 hours. whatever.
This reminded of Deep Space Nine’s Great Link. The drop becomes the ocean, and the ocean becomes a drop.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Great_Link
But then he noticed that the results really depend on who is taking it and what their world view is. If you do not have any inclination towards that mystic space, you will not get the ego death. It is as Eckhart Tolle said "just your senses turned up to 11", that is if there is nothing else you can get out of it.
As Douglas Rushkoff said "If you give tech bros a hit of psychedelics, all you get is tech bros on psychedelics." There is no higher sense achieved.
This is an amazing line. I must admit: the first time I tried LSD I had some code open on my laptop. Before the trip I was curious what programming on LSD would be like, so at some point dutifully I sat down in front of my editor. I was immediately utterly transfixed by the colours of the text cursor as it pulsed. Then I lost myself watching hover states as I moved the mouse around. Needless to say, I didn’t get any programming done.
I remember thinking how strange and hilarious it was that, while sober, I care at all about programming. It all seemed so hollow.
A lot more happened on the trip - the whole thing was incredibly profound and insightful. But all these years later, I still have a crystal clear image of that pulsing cursor etched in my memory.
And I also had my laptop close by to maybe take notes, but the screen was really stressfull.
Watching wild nature in the sun was much more enjoyable.
In any case, this is why I think philosophy is the required work to be done so that we can invite spiritualism and mysticism into our lives and potentially experience them with these reality altering drugs.
This is only true at the physical level. At another level, the only thing that “exists” is a mind. If all you have is a bunch of rocks floating through space with nothing to perceive it, the universe is indistinguishable from emptiness. Experience lives at the intersection of instantiated reality and thought / perception. You need both.
You can also imagine travelling along the axis of an idea or an archetype through time and space. For example, the idea of lovers or warriors or something. Each instantiation of that idea in someone exists along that axis. The idea can only come into being inside a physical reality or simulation. But the idea itself is eternal. The idea of the number 1 doesn’t “need” the universe.
Ideas aren’t made out of atoms.
Ideas are mental concepts, thoughts, or notions that exist in the mind.
As far as we know, there’s no evidence of mind-independent ideas. We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
> We can only access ideas through our minds, so we have no way to verify they exist without minds.
Its symmetric. We can also only access the physical world through our minds too. We have no way to verify it exists without a mind. Actually we have no way to verify it exists at all in the form we perceive it - since it might just be a big simulation.
In that sense, I have more direct evidence of my ideas than I do the world, since I can perceive ideas directly. (I say "my ideas" not "our ideas" because I can't tell as easily if you exist.)
This translates well to psychedelic drug use.
But yes, I do feel (in my limited experience) that for most people the thoughts they carry are more important to work on, than the environment they are in.
I am as agnostic-atheist as they come and would go as far as to say I find mysticism offensive to good sense. But I've experienced the ego death parts of LSD, and consider I have come to know myself more through it. I don't think it reveals some fundamental truth outside myself so much as being simply a phenomenon of the action of psychedelics on my brain.
Frankly I think this idea that you have to be studied in philosophy or open to mystic woo-y nonsense to fully appreciate or even fully experience psychedelics is hilarious and self-aggrandising.
How come?
The mystics of all the religions are the most approachable to agnostic me. Mysticism to me means mainly, the universe as its whole is a great mysterium and those who claim "it is exactly like this and this, because this holy book says so!" are rather the aggressive fools to me. So genuinly curious, what do you perceive as aggressive from mysticim?
Mysticism usually seems to me to imply a poor grasp on reality and can be accompanied by all sorts of baseless claims to knowledge and (often naturalistic) fallacies. It often goes hand in hand with silly beliefs about crystals, alt-med and all sorts of other crap.
"We don't know" is fine. "We don't know, therefore these specific lines of bullshit" less so.
But I didn't post the above to say that my views on mysticism are correct or even to provoke a discussion about it. I posted it to provide a counterpoint to the bizarre notion that one must be into mysticism to experience aspects of the psychedelic experience.
We may interpret the experiences very differently, of course, but the claim that part of it is closed to those who don't subscribe to witter about "the goddess" is ironically very egotistic.
This isn't to discount your experience but rather a general warning: all drugs aren't for everyone. It's easy to take away from these threads that psychedelics are universally positive and that negative trips are generally the result of misuse.
Which isn't true. Before going into this doing some deep introspection about yourself and your abilities is really important. Use these drugs with extreme caution.
Would it make a difference if it was a 70 year old who is still open minded and curious about life, the universe, and everything? (given that I'd guess that any 70+ year old willing to do LSD is likely to be as per this description).
Legitimately interested in your answer / reasoning (mainly because my plan was to experience a number of different drugs once the rest of my life, that could have been put at risk by drugs, is kinda setup and done well enough).
Some drugs increase heart rate dramatically - the older you are the more susceptible to atherosclerosis or other circulatory diseases. There’s more medical risk the older you are for sure. However, you may find you only need a little bit. Some drugs are funny. Some work on first try, other takes a couple tries before your brain understands the chemical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiU96IEr0jU
Had one once. It was not a pleasure at all. Best I can say is that it was interesting and that I did 'experience' interesting stuff. But that has no profound effect on me, since I consider it, like a dream, to have no basis in reality.
Generic statements like this are dangerous since different people may respond VERY differently to the same substance. This can depend on long term traits like personality or short term like the current state of mind. People reading such statements might think there's no way it can go wrong. If it isn't a profound experience, they might also think there's something wrong with them, which isn't the case.
I know some folks in the HN audience will not like this example, but Elon Musk is one.
An older cannonical example is Timothy Leary.
No names are coming to mind, but I feel like there have been plenty of psychedelic informed cults, with cult leader narcissists who continue to abuse people despite experiencing psychedelics.
It may open some doors and cause you to consider more angles, and for many people it helps them with empathy and connectedness, but in another sense it's amplifying what you've already got. A "bad" input can get amplified too.
Manson would dose himself and his followers to, IMO, lower inhibitions and make them more receptive to his ideas.
Isn't he also a ketamine junkie? Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic, although some call it psychedelic, it's not exactly the same thing.
Cool. And good for you, but this has honestly ruined 'raves' for me.
I'm a huge fan of different types of electronic music and really, really enjoy it. The music itself is a spiritual experience and allows me to 'disolve into the Great Void'. But these days when I go to a festival or something, I'm surrounded by people I can't share this feeling/experience with, since everyone seems to be on some type of drug and either in their own world (X, LSD, etc) or think the world is in them (coke).
I recently prematurely left an artist I was really looking forward to because of exactly this. It was incredibly disappointing, though not surprising.
It's really hard to maintain a healthy state of mind when there is a dude overdosing with several paramedics trying to stabilise him. I still remember that time and it hurts me every time I think about it.
But there are smaller raves, with 50-500 people, where I think this feeling is maintained.
I'd maybe recommend avoiding what we call here "commercial raves" and go to "pvt's", private raves, which are not private, just with more modest economic goals.
There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self - while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound. People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
It makes your brain go haywire in all sorts of fun and interesting ways. But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pif-1bTmQZc
Cool. I think it's very important. I'll think really hard about philosophy when on drugs, you go do your thing ;)
> There is no special 'truth' in LSD, certainly no truths outside the self
What is the "outside of the self"? Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world? What if everything is world? And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
> while you can learn some things about your internal experience from it, it also repeatedly provokes in its users a false sense of the profound
What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
> People experience 'realisations' which are pure nonsense when recalled or examined later.
I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
> But if you're looking for the meaning of life in there you're doing it wrong, and I dread to think what you might find.
Is there a meaning to life to be found? I always thought the meaning of life is something you never stop pursuing, every day all the time. So please, tell me the right ways so I don't dread you. I'm being sarcastic in the same proportion you are being arrogant.
Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
Yeah sounds great. It's the imputation that it's the only way that got my back up. I don't imagine 5% of people who've taken and enjoyed LSD have taken the time to understand the basics of existentialism or done "the required work to understand yourself, your circumstances, stand on the shoulder of giants..." and all that guff.
And we still had an absolute blast.
> Isn't that smuggling in the assumption that there is an essential separation of the self and the rest of the world?
There is, it's called your body and other humans generally recognise yours as distinct from themselves and from other objects.
> And what if everything is self? Does it make any difference?
Acid-like thinking detected.
> What is the correct sense of the profound and who is going to be the gatekeepers of the profound?
Well, given the nature of the 'profound' realisations people on acid tend to have, I think "a modicum of common sense" would suffice.
That fascinating plastic lemonade bottle you're contemplating so hard probably isn't going to have much impact on space travel, no. Or on a larger scale, many of the proclamations that LSD will fundamentally change society when people 'realise' one thing or another that they 'learned' while under the influence turn out to be hopelessly naive - see the various late-60s to early 70s hippie communes in the US that generally fell into disarray and outright collapse when it turns out optimism and LSD weren't going to solve everything and someone still has to do the dishes eventually.
> I have all my notes and they still make a lot of sense to me so I don't think this argument hold by experience.
Your experience is certainly a data point, I would be surprised if this is as widespread as "I wrote it down and now realise it's all nonsense, it felt so meaningful at the time", but I don't imagine anyone's done a study.
> Is there a meaning to life to be found?
That's an interesting question, but looking for it in psychedelic experience seems to me a path that could lead to all sorts of odd places, mostly concerned with weird echoes of your own mind.
> Ah and thanks for proving my point about the necessity of philosophy.
The necessity of philosophy to an internet argument is one thing. Its necessity to a fulfilling life is arguable, given so much of it is navel-gazing bollocks, and the necessity of deeply studying philiosophical principles before dropping acid even less clear.
You do you, but your original post was full of pretty arrogant assertions about how everyone else should do them. I agree, I shot back with some of the same.
I'm coming from a personal point. I don't care about space travel or these enormous projects. I'm a simple guy with simple needs, and I like people and serving people. I am grateful there are people out there like you that spend time on this so I can focus on alienating myself with things I find interesting, like drawing and philosophy of consciousness.
It's just that not everything has to be a data point or a general abstraction on a larger scale. You can meet people in their own grounds so you can find common ground without imposing yourself.
And about drugs, I reflected on what you said and I think I could have expressed myself better, because I don't actually think there's a universal imposition of having to learn philosophy to take drugs, even though I agree with Simone Weil when she says philosophy is the required work so we can become vessels of God (hope this doesn't trigger your acid-like thinking detector). I only think drugs are tools we have the option to use and have the control over how we are going to direct them.
I find my contentment and meaning in digging and planting these days, managing trees and general manual labour surrounded by birdsong and small animals. And in my relationships with my partner and my friends.
In many ways this is as irrational as any other path :)
But I agree that you don't need to take drugs. That's why my advice wasn't a definitive one. It's an invitation for people to consider what they want in their lives.
Wish you all the best truthfully.
I’m a Hegelian though so I’m biased
Even if everything we've learned through LSD were false, I wouldn't even really care because we've still uncovered and figured out so much through this (much of it we've discussed with various others who were there during past events) that we are incredibly grateful to now know. So overall I think the experience for us has been positive, that we have gained much from it, and that we may stand to gain more over time since we are a regular user.
I’m well aware through my own testing
EDIT: I’m not saying it is useless information for your life but it is particular to your life, not truths of the universe like the person I replied to claimed
And they are right. Give these drugs to these people, they will turn into manchildren because it's their reality, and it's true for them.
It very much IS set and setting and the powers that be really want to fuck up the set. Try it. You won't regret it.
My advice has to be very careful in order not to incentivise unprepared people who would otherwise have a great trip. We have to be responsible, even if it'll only gonna negatively affect a very small percentage of them. Applied philosophy of care 100%
Other than that, I totally agree.
When I was in college, I tracked down some mushrooms, bought em, and ran away on my own to trip out. I found myself on a bench, next to a river surrounded by trash in a mixed industrial area. I saw cig butts and empty beer cans on the ground. Looked at my ripped jeans and thought "Am I trash? Why am I here?" It was a shitty feeling and I got really down. I realized that getting fucked up for its own sake was stupid, and it's about sharing time with others that's actually important, no matter what drug you're on. I started crying and felt horrible, but the next day, I had a new sense of worth and a new frame of reference for the world that has persisted for 20+ years. I'll always remember that shitty trip on that shitty bench.
How did you come out it after those 4 years?
There seems to be quite the story around this one sentence and a very rough time. Though I think there are perhaps some learnings for other people as well if you're willing to share.
Lots of intense therapy, I still go 3 times a week
I had no suicidal feeling before the drug. I suppose one way to put it is that seeing into the void made me take suicide seriously as an option
Other than being a psychedelic, LSD is a stimulant and vasoconstrictor, so while physically unsafe doses are quite high (yes I've read about 'thumb print' doses), it's probably not wise to say that there is no unsafe dose of LSD.
It is unlikely you'll ever come across that much LSD, but LD50 is estimated at about 100mg, which is about 500-1000 ordinary doses.
My advice to people who haven't tried it tends to be that if you're scared, you should abstain. Your presuppositions of what the experience will be, will in themselves shape the experience. If you expect a bad time, you're likely to get one.
There's also a group of people who are curious about using psychedelics to treat mental disorder. My advice to those people is to find a way to do it in a clinical setting. Psychedelics have enormous potential for effectively curing anxiety disorders, but it's not just a matter of taking the drugs. The experience must be guided by a psychologist who knows what the goal is. And then integrated and processed afterwards, also with expert help. Psychedelucs are not a treatment in and of themselves, more like an accelerant of psychotherapy. The therapy is still necessary, it's just that psychedelics allow you to do in a handful of sessions what could take years in a sober patient. As a case in point, I have a severe anxiety disorder myself, and my many self-initiated experiments with psychedelics haven't magically cured it. If combined with therapy, it might have. I'm still waiting for clinical practice to catch up, so I can have psychedelic therapy.
A friend of my brother was doing shrooms with a couple other guys, had a bad trip and actually offed himself as part of the trip.
Please don't try to convince people that all of this is completely safe.
There are some interesting videos on YouTube from people experiencing this.
Just because everyone in your sample size has been fine doesn't mean everyone will be or even that your group will continue to be. Contrary to simplistic thinking, the law does exist for a reason and these substances are also scheduled for reasons other than conspiracies around free thinking.
Please spend some time reading about drug induced psychosis and educate yourself of the risks.
https://www.altaonline.com/culture/cartoons/a42179654/weekly...
so hard to track these things down with google nowadays. Treats every word you add as an "or" like yahoo used to when google took their search market. The move from search engine to suggestion engine has been a disaster from my point of view. Hard to see how it would be more profitable.
edit: better link
Queries use less compute time to complete, saving money. Why provide quality if there's no competitor for users to escape to?
Ram Dass and his retelling of this experience contributed to my shift from psychedelics to established spiritual traditions. They had the territory mapped out thousands of years ago. Ram Dass ultimately settled as a Hindu where as I find myself drawn to Buddhism. Anatta maps nicely to experiences of ego death and I find that I can see all drugs as part of the conditioned world. If you rely on a physical substance of the conditioned world for access to the divine then you're not free yet.
?
“To most people who are even moderately experienced with entheogens, concepts such as awe, sacredness, eternity, grace, agape, transcendence, transfiguration, dark night of the soul, born-again, heaven and hell are more than theological ideas; they are experiences.” - Thomas Roberts
This phrase is quoted in "Sacred Knowledge" by Richards, yet I find it the most suitable summary of this overview of scientific research on psychedelics and religion.
We hear about mystical visions from LSD ("acid"), psilocybin ("shrooms"), and DMT from many "spiritual but not religious" people and self-proclaimed shamans. But how does it relate to vision by ordinary people (ones who never tired, and wouldn't try if it weren't for legal, scientific research)?
And how does it relate to prayer, mediation, and mystical visions by Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and Hindus? How do monks and priests compare their psychedelic experience with their regular practice? Do they all turn to Zen Buddhism, or entrench in their religious background?
Regardless if you are deeply religious, or a non-spiritual atheist, I believe you will reconsider a few things after reading this book.
Wild. Maybe what the world needs.
One line that's been recurring between my wife and I for the past half-decade or so is that the whole planet needs a good hotboxing.
There's a small percentage ruining it for most: a few defectors when most are cooperators.
How do we identify the defectors?
What do you do if you identify defectors?
If humanity has proven one thing over and over and over again to itself it's that we're terrible at witch hunts.
History ABSOLUTELY unfolds the way it does because they were tired of being 'taking the reasonable/way that makes sense path'.
You can argue that every invention from the wheel forward has had this approach.
>What do you do if you identify defectors?
Simple: you put them in charge of the government. That's what we do now, after all.
He disappeared about an hour after.
We found him a day later at his house.
He let us know he was okay, and everything was "cool and stuff", because the ice dogs didn't manage to catch him. He was able to run away into the woods to hide all night and eventually found his way back home in the morning. He was then curious why the ice dogs didn't chase us at all.
We didn't smoke Andy up anymore.
I got open eye visuals from smoking some dubious hashish, 2 other people smoking the same stuff had no issues. I really enjoyed the experience, except for a small incident where I woke up in the middle of the night and started slapping my snoring friend -- I hallucinated he was in fact chocking on his own vomit and was going to die and in my mind I was saving his life.
I also got mild HPPD that got better in a few years -- mainly I could not look at certain grid patterns because bright flashes of light would come from the intersection -- this mostly happened from vent iron grids and some shirts of mine.
Example: "A priest, a rabbi, and an atheist walk into a bar..."
The New Yorker version looks more interesting.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/26/this-is-your-p...
Finding willing rabbis, however, was easy—the challenge was finding ones who were “psychedelically naïve.”
I stopped and read the whole thing to be disappointed.
A blurb about [thing i am interested in].
I now feel like yelling at some clouds.
He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.
For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).
Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.
I suspect it's similar with the spiritual stuff, in principle. That is, if you're typically not a personality who tends towards that stuff - spiritual connections and revelations and such - then perhaps no substance will necessary make you so.
It sounds like the nightclubs you were going to weren't a good setting either. A club should never feel self-conscious or performative. You should be able to get lost in there with the music. The dancing shouldn't feel unnecessary but more of an obligation because the music is so good. If you feel its unnecessary and awkward sober then no drug will fix that except maybe alcohol. I to to clubs and dance 100% sober these days.
No, clubbing really is just truly not enjoyable to some people, regardless of which club it is. And just like you, these people believe that it's the same way for everyone, but some people just deny it and crunch through it, like eating extremely hot chili peppers to show off, ultimately in hopes of getting laid. Many people really don't "get" rhythm, and dancing and moving their bodies just feels silly and not intrinsically good at all. I did some clubbing in college and I guess onlookers might have thought I was having fun, but all I was thinking is that I have to do this to have normal social life, and was like "I can do it", just like any hard thing you do in life. It's still not enjoyable but it's just a thing you must do to be normal in a certain stage of life.
For the folks who aren't sure what the rest of us are talking about, this is the important bit.
Things like lemon-tek to make the psilocybin more bioavailable were also not impactful to them, while being apparently extremely impactful for others.
For me the "spiritual exlerience" was just a profound sense of gratefulness. And then the idea that god and objective truth are one and the same. Whatever that means
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/019066567X
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment
The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was an experiment conducted on Good Friday, April 20, 1962 at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, designed the experiment under the supervision of Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Harvard Psilocybin Project.[1] Pahnke's experiment investigated whether psilocybin would act as a reliable entheogen in religiously predisposed subjects.[2]
https://www.newyorker.com/newsletter/the-daily/michael-polla...
Effects of Psilocybin on Religious and Spiritual Attitudes and Behaviors in Clergy from Various Major World Religions (2025) https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/psymed.2023.0044
Also, I think this point is salient:
> He pointed to the risk of selection bias: those who volunteer are likely to be “spiritually hungering for a mystical experience,”...
I would go further and suppose that any Christian elder or leader who volunteered to do this had already demonstrated their unsuitability to speak on the matter of psychedelics and God.
I have honest questions. Would you mind expanding? Is there a theological basis for your stance? What would a suitable Christian elder or leader say on the matter of psychedelics and God?
Therefore watch carefully how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Because of this don’t become foolish but understand what the will of the Lord is and don’t be drunken with wine, in which is dissipation, but be filled with the spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs; singing and making melody in your heart to the lord; giving thanks always concerning all things to God, even the father, in the name of our lord Jesus Christ; subjecting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ.
“Participants often described becoming more open and understanding toward others’ beliefs, feeling greater love for those they serve, and experiencing renewed clarity in their spiritual leadership.”
What are the odds that peddlers of religion would turn to promoting chemical drugs on the side ...
There is a huge experiential chasm between opiates and psychedelics. These two groups of substances have nothing to do with each other.
This is literally a thread about psychedelics, not allegory.
Honest question: are you self-aware? That is, do you feel yourself to be of the world, or uniquely separate from the world?
I'm asking, again, sincerely, because I'm wondering how one could scold about condescension immediately after posting this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44295152
That's a pretty good explainer for psychology. We have a Coke addled Freud who is the father of it all and another drug abuser shepherding the USA.
I wonder how many people have tried to replicate their experiments and succeeded?
Kinda fills in some unspoken gaps about the 'discipline' of psychology...
From what I've seen as an outsider, a lot of studies are taken as fact without any confirmation with attempts to reproduce the results. And many results suffer from questionable methodology.
A big part of the problem is that doing psychology well is really, really hard. You are dealing with human subjects, which means there are a lot of ethical and regulatory constraints. A lot of experiments that might give you important insights are unethical and/or illegal. Getting people to participate in studies is difficult and expensive, which means sample sizes are often much smaller than they should be. And there are often significant biases in the population sampled (I believe most psychology studies are done on college students... often psychology students). And then there is the inherent complexity of the subject. Every person's brain is different, and finding general rules that apply to the incredible diversity of human minds is very, very difficult. And finally, I suspect that a lot of psychologists are not trained in statistics and experimental methodology to the same degree as scientists in "harder" sciences.
For a current-times look into nitrous, observe Kanye West. The rumor mill (plus believable evidence) suggests he is out of his MIND on large amounts of N2O frequently, and his erratic and grandiose behavior reinforces the idea. That's probably not ideal for American psychology if "the father" of it is similarly whacked lol.
For a historical look into cocaine, observe Sigmund Freud. There was a great book called Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography [0] by Dominic Streatfeild, the second-third of which covers Freud's discovery and promotion of cocaine as a cure-all.
TL;DR Freud was searching for a drug, any drug, that hadn't been claimed yet by a scientific promoter to then market as his own for fame and fortune, stumbled upon cocaine (hydrochloride, not freebase), started doing a lot of it, proselytizing it (it could cure your heroin addiction!) etc, before the whole thing kind of collapsed around him.
While arguably fun, it's a substance that is the polar opposite of "introspection" and drives a lot of behavior that honestly a person might seek a therapist or psychologist to resolve LOL, so for a psychologist to promote it early in his career who eventually progresses into more or less defining psychology as a field, well ... I just find it curious and would wonder what theories Freud would have put forth had he come to be in a time with psychedelics available instead. That's all!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine:_An_Unauthorized_Biogr...
Psychology is very dependent on statistics and experiments. That can be complicated and after going through those classes I simply don't trust the majority of students (or their professors) to get any of that right. It's why I roll my eyes every time the radio guy talks about the results of another pop psych study. I knew some psych majors big into new age crystal stuff and legitimately believed it all as well as a bunch of additional pseudoscience garbage. That kind of thing is a lot more rare in say physics where it's really hard to get through the program without a rational brain.
Again, there are probably some brilliant folks drawn to that field who knows how to do solid research, but my experiences suggest that the signal to noise ratio may be suspect.
PhDs, though - some more rigor is involved. Definitely not C-grade level folks (or if they were, they've rectified that problem). But still, we do have a replication crisis...
Now do tech CEOs
In other words, even if you assume that the vision of God/feeling of divine presence/etc. is valid, there are two methods of implementation: either it’s done in a supernatural way that defies physics and logic; or it’s done in a way that accords with the structure of reality (as in, chemically.)
The latter seems a lot more elegant to me, IMO.
Other definitions of supernatural really fail to be complete or useful. One definition is 'not predictable' , but by that metric, every moment of a newborns first few moments of life is supernatural.
Of course, there's another definition, which is experiences that do not take place in this world and unobservable to us. In which case, sure but then we cannot experience them here on earth. The moment such a thing is experienced by a human, it becomes natural
I honestly challenge people to explain what they mean when they say 'supernatural'.
George Gurdjieff wrote about this many, many years ago (1890 – 1912). He called it "The Fourth Way". This is the relevant passage from the book "In Search of the Miraculous":
“So that when a man attains will on the fourth way he can make use of it because he has acquired control of all his bodily, emotional, and intellectual functions. And besides, he has saved a great deal of time by working on the three sides of his being in parallel and simultaneously.
“The fourth way is sometimes called the way of the sly man. The ‘sly man’ knows some secret winch the fakir, monk, and yogi do not know. How the ‘sly man’ learned this secret — it is not known. Perhaps he found it in some old books, perhaps he inherited it, perhaps he bought it, perhaps he stole it from someone. It makes no difference. ‘The ‘sly man’ knows the secret and with its help outstrips the fakir, the monk, and the yogi.
“Of the four, the fakir acts in the crudest manner; he knows very little and understands very little. Let us suppose that by a whole month of intense torture he develops in himself a certain energy, a certain substance which produces certain changes in him. He does it absolutely blindly, with his eyes shut, knowing neither aim, methods, nor results, simply in imitation of others.
“The monk knows what he wants a little better; he is guided by religious feeling, by religious tradition, by a desire for achievement, for salvation; he trusts his teacher who tells him what to do, and he believes that his efforts and sacrifices are ‘pleasing to God.’ Let us suppose that a week of fasting, continual prayer, privations, and so on, enables him to attain what the fakir develops in himself by a month of self-torture.
“The yogi knows considerably more. He knows what he wants, he knows why he wants it, he knows how it can be acquired. He knows, for instance, that it is necessary for his purpose to produce a certain substance in himself. He knows that this substance can be produced in one day by a certain kind of mental exercises or concentration of consciousness. So he keeps his attention on these exercises for a whole day without allowing himself a single outside thought, and he obtains what he needs. In this way a yogi spends on the same thing only one day compared with a month spent by the fakir and a week spent by the monk.
“But on the fourth way knowledge is still more exact and perfect. A man who follows the fourth way knows quite definitely what substances he needs for his aims and he knows that these substances can be produced within the body by a month of physical suffering, by a week of emotional strain, or by a day of mental exercises—and also, that they can be introduced into the organism from without if it is known how to do it. And so, instead of spending a whole day in exercises like the yogi, a week in prayer like the monk, or a month in self-torture like the fakir, he simply prepares and swallows a little pill which contains all the substances he wants and, in this way, without loss of time, he obtains the required results.
https://archive.org/details/dli.ernet.5892/page/49/mode/2up
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Way
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_W.#Psychedelic_therapy
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-5922.13027
Apparently he was so serious about the potential for LSD to help alcoholics, that he almost got thrown out of Alcoholics Anonymous, the recovery group he helped create. He had written to a Catholic friend about this.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/aug/23/lsd-help-alc...
> LSD, by mimicking insanity, could help alcoholics achieve a central tenet of the Twelve Step programme proposed by AA, he believed. It was a matter of finding "a power greater than ourselves" that "could restore us to sanity". He warned: "I don't believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer."
> But Wilson added: "The vision and insights given by LSD could create a large incentive – at least in a considerable number of people."
> His words were found in a late 50s letter to Father Ed Dowling, a Catholic priest and member of an experimental group he had formed in New York to explore the spiritual potential of LSD.
Nevertheless, it was ground breaking for 1962 and had a huge impact.
Not so significant in the twenty first century.
I've said before that I think the geometric patterns in hallucinations resemble analog signal feedback, inside an analog signalling system (your brain) that has been impaired by a chemical. other dimensions and beings aren't necessary to the explanation. there are theraputic uses for breaking cycles of thought, but I'd argue a non-spiritual view of drugs based on signalling feedback and channel impairment is sufficient to describe their effects.
I've done a lot of tripping, and I've come to this same hypothesis independently. I believe this explains a great deal about the visual geometric and fractal patterns you can see on psychedelics and also that analogous things happen within the auditory processing system, memory, emotions, and so on when you trip.
So much of tripping comes down to turning up the gain on signalling in your brain, which causes feedback pathways to start resonating. This results in colour saturation, tracers, geometry, exaggerated patterns and edge detection, echoing, reverbs, increased impact of thoughts, and following thoughts down deep rabbit holes etc.
None of this is to reduce the experience, I love psychedelics and think they are super important. But that's whole other discussion.
Something that would be much more beneficial for all humanity is if more of the clergy actually preached the bible, instead of trying to explain it away, which is almost exclusively what the clergy I have engaged with tries to do.
The introspection part is where true gold is - and to be honest that tells a lot about where we feel above topic is in our cores (and as you yourself confirmed from your experiences, like it or not).
More religion and preaching got us medieval dark ages and tons of endless wars and genocide, I think mankind deserve a bit more these days.
This is false.
- Prophetic Sensation: It was so profound that, 5,000 years ago, I could’ve thought it was a prophetic vision. I didn’t feel like I was speaking to God, but I got how prophets might’ve felt something divine.
- Inner Peace & Clarity: LSD brought pure joy, warmth, and peace. It stripped away mental filters, showing me the world as it is, not just how I see it.
- Accepting Death: I felt at peace with death, seeing it as a natural part of life. I’d never really thought about it before, but there was no fear—just acceptance.
- Divine Music: Music felt heavenly, amplifying the moment’s emotional and spiritual depth. It was like it carried the experience.
- Spiritual Connection: I didn’t think about whether religions are “true,” but it felt spiritual, like touching something bigger—hard to explain, but so meaningful.
- Right & Wrong Philosophy: I realized “right” and “wrong” are labels we create. Right feels like harmony, wrong like harm, but they’re fluid, shaped by context. Things just are, and we use these ideas to navigate life.