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 · 2h 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.
dbbljack · 1h ago
counterpoint: you only get your first time, one time.
const_cast · 52m ago
Counter counter point: if you mess up your first time, it's likely you'll never be able to enjoy the experience.
netcan · 33m 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.
hoseja · 32m ago
Counter counter counter point: That's a good outcome.
lukan · 1h ago
Yes. And I wish I would have started with 75 microgram.
dr_dshiv · 55m ago
Agree! Go into it with great preparation — be sure to read the manual closely.
golergka · 35m 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.
jampekka · 1h ago
First time is rarely especially good. This applies to more or less all substances.
heavyset_go · 1h ago
Less is more
o1bf2k25n8g5 · 4h 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 · 4h 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.
jona-f · 47m 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 · 40m ago
There are certainly universal truths. For example, you exist. Therefore there is something to believe in
jona-f · 25m ago
My existence is negligible, especially in the grand scheme of things.
ramblerman · 2h ago
Vonnegut sounds closer to an epicurist.
A nihilist would say fart or don't fart it's all pointless.
rags2riches · 2h 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 · 1h 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 · 35m ago
I think you might be confusing nihilism with absurdism in this case.
flir · 9m 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."
AnthonBerg · 2h ago
One is not counter to the other.
illiac786 · 3h 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 · 2h 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 · 1h 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 · 48m 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 · 6m 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.
GuinansEyebrows · 2h 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.
SlowTao · 4h ago
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 · 3h 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 · 59m 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.
gchamonlive · 4h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h 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 · 50m 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.
ostwilkens · 54m 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 · 2h ago
I have nothing more to add but... Yep, spot on!
Nursie · 2h 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 · 54m 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 · 44m 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.
PoignardAzur · 8m 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 · 5h 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 · 1h 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.
gchamonlive · 5h 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 · 4h 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.
james-bcn · 27m ago
This reminds me of the grandpa advice scene in Little Miss Sunshine:
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 · 2h 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 · 4h 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.
swayvil · 3h ago
It is a fine cure for arrogance too.
heavyset_go · 1h 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 · 2h ago
It amplifies things. If your core it truely rotten, only rotten stuff can come out.
lukan · 1h 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 · 2h 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 · 1h 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.
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.
lynx97 · 2h 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 · 24m 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.
bowsamic · 3h ago
The truth is fully accessible through reason, you don’t need to take drugs to know things
bevan · 52m 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 · 14m 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
krzat · 1h ago
Reason is overrated. Knowing that smoking is unhealthy is not sufficient to stop oneself from smoking.
bowsamic · 56m 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
golergka · 32m ago
Qualia. Black and white room.
LoganDark · 2h 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 · 1h ago
Did it let you recall childhood memories, or invent new ones? How would you know the difference?
bowsamic · 2h 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
bongodongobob · 4h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h ago
Good for you. I was suicidal for 4 years after my LSD trips
shinryuu · 1h 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 · 1h 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 · 2h 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.
There are some interesting videos on YouTube from people experiencing this.
mtlmtlmtlmtl · 2h 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.
pjio · 4m 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.
SlowTao · 4h 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 · 15m 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 · 2h ago
The cartoon is a 10 out of 10!
fuzzfactor · 3h ago
That's about the time Catholics stopped having their Mass in Latin . . .
bravesoul2 · 9h 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 · 8h 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 · 7h 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?
pasquinelli · 5h 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 · 4h 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.
Spivak · 7h 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.
shiroiuma · 7h 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 · 6h ago
So we just need to hotbox the people running gov :)
timewizard · 2h 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 · 24m 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.
ElijahLynn · 7h ago
Exactly.
BitwiseFool · 8h ago
Quite frankly, that quote sounds like the premise of some new Netflix original series.
neilv · 8h 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 · 7h ago
"...and say ouch! it was an iron bar"
quantified · 9h ago
Pretty much nothing of substance in the writeup. All about studying and flaws.
jbm · 8h 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 · 5h 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 · 6h ago
this should probably be OP - much better original story, not a reblog, and it's written by Michael Pollan.
Kilenaitor · 8h ago
Also has a way better headline heh
swyx · 7h ago
michael pollan, one of the best in the biz
elevaet · 8h 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 · 4h ago
I feel badly that I didn't warn you sufficiently.
nathan_compton · 7h 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 · 4h 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.
t-3 · 7h 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 · 6h 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 · 23m 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 · 1h 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.
comrade1234 · 7h 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 · 7h 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 · 3h 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 · 1h ago
Yes, also that was accounted for with doctors notice and slow tapers off medications over months.
kbenson · 7h 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 · 6h 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 · 6h ago
It may be worth noting that antidepressant medication has a strong suppressing effect on psychedelics.
ghxst · 5h 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 · 1h ago
Well aware and accounted for.
grigri907 · 2h ago
Fwiw I find that, due to my antidepressants, i need 3x the dose to have the equivalent experience as my friends.
jdenning · 6h ago
Many psych meds diminish/block psychedelic effects.
konfusinomicon · 6h 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
sev · 7h ago
Dosage might play a factor, I presume.
timewizard · 2h ago
Impurities as well.
DontchaKnowit · 5h 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 · 7h 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"?
socceroos · 35m ago
The article opening sounds like a bar joke.
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.
testemailfordg2 · 5h ago
Better to stay sane...Have seen a lot of these kinds of articles, surely funding comes from somewhere...
easymodex · 17m 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.
xwowsersx · 8h ago
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 :(
No comments yet
deepsun · 1h 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".
Unearned5161 · 1h 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?
hyperadvanced · 1h 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
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]
Animats · 3h ago
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 · 5h 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.
kazinator · 4h ago
Religion is not literally opium; Marx was speaking/writing figuratively. He just referred to a popular recreational of his time.
cluckindan · 2h ago
No, he was referring to making the people unwilling and unable to revolt.
This is literally a thread about psychedelics, not allegory.
kazinator · 2h ago
Great; enjoy your broad, erudite world view.
cluckindan · 1h ago
Mmkay, you don’t think that’s a bit condescending?
summer_glue · 4h ago
There's not much information in this article.
guicen · 5h 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 · 3h 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 · 3h 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 · 2h 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 · 4h 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.
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
it's no surprise to me that people who believe goats talks like to trip lol
caycep · 8h ago
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 · 7h ago
When clergy take psilocybin . . . God sees them?
867-5309 · 7h ago
when you eat too many shrooms .. the shrooms eat back at you
aspenmayer · 8h 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.
readthenotes1 · 9h ago
"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 · 9h 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 · 8h 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 · 7h 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.
adastra22 · 1h ago
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").
kevinsync · 7h 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!
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 · 7h 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 · 8h ago
I appreciate your honesty, blunt or not that’s an interesting perspective.
clipsy · 9h 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 · 7h 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.
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 · 5h 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 · 1h 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.
shinryuu · 1h 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.
50208 · 5h ago
Why do people insist on complicating all this so much ... just take a hit of whatever and experience it for yourself.
worthless-trash · 4h ago
I believe people complicate it because brain chemistry modification is mostly a one way change.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiU96IEr0jU
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.
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.
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
I’m a Hegelian though so I’m biased
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
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.
There are some interesting videos on YouTube from people experiencing this.
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.
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?
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?
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.
If humanity has proven one thing over and over and over again to itself it's that we're terrible at witch hunts.
>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.
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.
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
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.
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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]
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.
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.
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
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.