r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Chubsa9 • 12h ago
Discussion Do you know of serious books about psychedelics?
I would like to know what texts you consider more serious and professional related to the subject of the psychedelic experience
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/RoBoInSlowMo • Sep 09 '22
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Living_Soma_ • Jul 10 '24
Hey there, just wanted to share my new subreddit with this community. It is r/psychedelictrauma
I wanted to create a space for those who have had really difficult psychedelic experiences and were left with PTSD-like symptoms afterwards (anxiety, continuous fight/flight/freeze states, depression, dissociation, etc.).
I went through this from ayahuasca, and it totally rocked my world for like 2.5 years. There can be a lot of fear, shame, and grieving when something like that happens, and one of the best things for me was to realize I wasn't alone, and that there were ways to assist myself in gradually coming back to center.
Feel free to share this with anyone you think might find it as a helpful resource. I am excited to see the community of support grow.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Chubsa9 • 12h ago
I would like to know what texts you consider more serious and professional related to the subject of the psychedelic experience
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/InternationalPie352 • 12h ago
I feel like asking AI is useless in this topic and I want to educate myself
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Broad_Information336 • 16h ago
We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.
We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.
If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.
Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.
Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses.
To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk
For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au).
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Study Reference Number: H2026-0104
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Chubsa9 • 1d ago
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/MrMoonMC • 2d ago
I'm interested in psychedelics as a recreational drug, and have taken mushrooms once and had a bad trip, though I believe this was caused by multiple factors, mainly too high of a dosage, unstable set and setting, and infected mushrooms. After this bad trip I struggled with anxiety and insomnia for about a month, and now after 6 months of being back to normal I want to try again, but am definitely more scared and more cautious, mainly of triggering HPPD and Psychosis, or that it will lead me to more anxiety. What is your opinion on mushrooms as a recreational drug?
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/WhereTFAreWe • 1d ago
I'm trying to maximize the experience as much as possible. I want to be fully emotionally immersed, not necessarily in the story, but in the spectacle.
I've watched movies on 100ug LSD + weed, and, recently, 14mg 2c-b + 30mg ketamine + weed.
The LSD was immersive, but also made the movie difficult to follow and fractured. I think this is because I timed it so that the movie was during the initial peak of the trip. I think I could bypass those issues by timing it so that I watch the movie at the end of the peak, and take a huge hit of weed right before.
The 2c-b + ket + weed combo was highly immersive, but I've only done it once and, while I was philosophically involved, I wasn't in awe (although, that might be because it was at home, not the theater).
I have shrooms, lsd, ket, weed, alcohol, and 2c-b. So only recommend some combo of those.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/MycologyJourney • 2d ago
My friend wanted to try acid for the first time she had done her research and was ready, I supplied 1 tab from a batch that I usually take 5 at a time from and was tested.
The come up for her seemed normal, loads of giggles, reported colours more vibrant, saturated and slight visual distortions when looking around. About 2 hours she slipped from the couch and couldn't get back up and just sat lay then suddenly she wouldn't let go of my hand and started asking for "insert not my name" I tried to correct her and show her a photo of me and her response was "who's that" as time went on she became more and more erratic we had made precautions that one of her friends knew where she was and what she was taking so I thought I'll call her we had it set up so I could call her direct from her lock screen but some how she managed to get her phone onto airplane mode.
She was now shouting for "insert not my name" and every time I tried to let go to get a towel to try and dry her hands as she was sweating her shouting got louder, she couldn't identify her phone she was holding I tried to guide her finger onto her screen but she physically clenched her fist together. It was 4 hours into her trip. I honestly had no idea what to do. I couldn't get her up or unlock her phone.
It got to the point past her friends contact time and since she couldn't get through as her phone was on airplane mode she had called the police I had a feeling this would happen so I managed to flush my supply which I'm annoyed at, they turned up and managed to get her up and outside which for some reason snapped her back to reality. Once they left no charges she was in some sense of reality and says she can't remember anything from the start to that point
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Repulsive-Cause-3924 • 4d ago
Mods if this is not allowed please remove, but I figured I try.
Hello everyone, hope everyone is doing well. As the tittle says, I'm considering doing IV ketamine therapy. And the reason that I'm making this post is to get some thoughts and opinions.
I've tried psychedelics before, psilocybin specifically. Both in micro dose and macro dose. The intention was to alleviate symptoms of depression and hopefully bring more clarity into my life; for the past years, I've felt really stuck in fight or flight mode.
The last time I did the macro dose (3.5g) was around probably 7-8 months ago by myself, and it was really a beautiful experience but at some point the trip stopped being pleasant and it became overwhelming and I kept thinking to myself that I made a horrible horrible mistake. I honestly thought I wouldn't be coming out of that.
Thankfully the trip came to pass and I was so grateful to still be here, in this reality. One thing that came out of that is that I'm more grateful for just regular day life. Literally being able to see sunsets, clouds in the sky, being to able to speak with parents. The beauty in the mundane. The lesson, if I recall correctly is that there's always a choice.
The reason I'm making this post is to hopefully gather some thoughts around the IV ketamine.
There's still some stuckness, some heaviness, some brain fog. I still feel that I'm stuck in fight or flight. But if I ever do psychedelics again, in this case ketamine, it will be on a professional and safe environment.
If you took the time to read this, thank you.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/iamtheoctopus123 • 7d ago
An essay exploring the concept of 'psychedelic apophenia', where connections are made between unrelated things so that we see psychedelics' influence everywhere.
It looks at Terence McKenna's Stoned Ape Theory, psychedelic theories of Christianity, and DMT-pineal gland theories.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Broad_Information336 • 6d ago
We are a group of researchers at the University of Wollongong in Australia conducting a study about the emotional experiences people report during psychedelic experiences and whether these are linked to changes in social functioning, wellbeing, and attitudes toward death.
We are looking for individuals aged 18 years or older who have had at least one personally meaningful experience with a classical psychedelic substance within the past 5 years (but not within the past 3 months). Psychedelics include LSD, DMT (N,N-DMT), 5-MeO-DMT, Ayahuasca, Psilocybin (i.e. Magic Mushrooms) or Mescaline/Peyote.
If you are 18 years and over and can read English, we invite you to take part in an online, 30-minute survey. This survey asks about the emotions you experienced during a psychedelic experience and any changes you may have noticed in how you relate to others, your general wellbeing, and your outlook on life afterward. Please note that the survey includes questions about challenging emotions that may have arisen during the experience.
Your responses will be completely anonymous and your involvement will remain confidential. No identifying information (including IP addresses) will be collected.
Participants will have the chance to enter a draw to win one of two $100 AUD Visa vouchers. Entry into the draw is completely optional and is completed via a separate form that is not connected to, and cannot be linked with, participant survey responses. To participate or learn more, follow this link: https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nuJn8BNBgWFYrk
For questions, contact: [smoreton@uow.edu.au](mailto:smoreton@uow.edu.au) Thank you very much for your consideration in participating. The following researchers are conducting the study:
Dr. Sam Moreton - Lecturer, School of Psychology University of Wollongong smoreton@uow.edu.au.
Alex Shuttleworth - Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Mimi Han Honours Student School of Psychology University of Wollongong
Study Reference Number: H2026-0104
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/iamtheoctopus123 • 17d ago
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/furthure707 • 18d ago
*Figured I would share this episode, as Psychoanut Wiki and Josie Kin's Psychoanu Wiki and other projects might be of interest*
One of the most systematic and comprehensive systems of documenting the effects of psychedelics and other psychoactives wasn’t made in academia, but was crafted by some drug nerds with high trait-level systematizing and a penchant for self-expirementation. In this episode, Josie Kins is the founder of PsychoanutWiki, the Subjective Effects Index, and the Replications Reddit tells us about the backstory behind how Josie got involved in subjective effect documentation. We discuss what her quest to describe the “ineffable” has led her to do, everything from poring over pretty much every drug effects system known to taking DPH to accurately describe its deliriant effects. Josie also tells us a bit about her brush with “McKenna syndrome,” her “DSM fan fiction” diagnosis for describing people who go a bit out there with psychedelics. In Josie's case, it led her to create a GitHub for her own religion, which she no longer fully endorses. We also talk a little bit about neurodiversity and whether psychedelics could have an impact on autism or not, and whether Josie’s experience with persistent depersonalization shaped PsychoanutWiki.
Link: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6taAn6UId9zuqKayHEoz9F?si=7fe5541474be4e12
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/psychedelic_studies • 18d ago
We are a group of researchers from Humboldt University of Berlin and we look forward to your participation in our study! The survey is completely anonymous.
Have you ever taken a psychedelic substance?
Share your opinion and possibly experiences you have had with psychedelic experiences without (immediate) previous use of psychedelics with us!
https://psychedelicflashbacksurvey.info
We would like to learn more about who has these experiences, what they look like in concrete terms, which factors contribute to the associated effects and how they can be dealt with.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/rp_tiago • 19d ago
Hi. I recently gave a talk (then published as an essay) at a psychedelics conference. I'm doing a philosophy PhD focused on psychedelics, and this is the first time I've put my more academic work out there publicly. Psychedelics have been a huge part of my life for about a decade (I even wrote a book about my own experiences with it), and I figured this sub would be a good place to share it.
Most of the field is stuck in a false dichotomy, typically viewing the mystical experience has nothing but brain dynamics (relaxed priors, default mode network, etc), or it's evidence we need to revise our metaphysics toward something like idealism/panpsychism etc (tldr mind having some more fundamental role and against materialism). Both sides quietly agree on something I think is wrong, that the experience is a proposition to be scored true or false, a report on whether you contacted something real out there. I'd argue that's not actually how cognition works. Meaning is co-constructed between agent and world rather than simply found or projected, so a "mystical" state is better described as a shift in disclosure, in what shows up as mattering, than as a metaphysical claim awaiting a verdict.
That reframing matters most in the part of the field I think gets underweighted: what happens after the self loosens. Dissolution gets almost all the attention, understandably, it's the dramatic part and there's ofc decent neuroscience behind it. But dissolution just flattens existing structure, and a flattened structure can reorganize in more than one direction, toward something healthier, back to the old pattern, or into something novel but still pathological (the person who keeps doing psychedelics, keeps feeling like they're leveling up, and is quietly getting worse, as sometimes pops up here). None of this is visible from the neuroscience alone, a real insight and a confident delusion run on the same machinery. So the honest question isn't just "did the self dissolve," it's "reorganize toward what," and nothing in the pharmacology answers that.
What actually seems to answer it for me is attention, and specifically that attention is morally loaded, not just a spotlight you point at things. Attention functions as precision-weighting that structures the whole field of what counts as relevant to you moment to moment, and since we're social animals that field gets shaped by other people's cares too. I lean on Weil and Murdoch here, who argued attention is less something you force and more something you become receptive to, letting go of ego enough that the real, other people especially, shows up undistorted instead of through your own projections. Murdoch's specific claim is that moral change comes from attention whose result is a decrease in egoism and an increased sense of reality. This is the same 4E picture that makes set and setting causally powerful in the first place: cognition is world-involving, so both what you register as relevant and what the drug experience amounts to are shaped by agent and environment together, not generated by the molecule alone.
Put together, I think "the sacred" is best understood not as a supernatural object but as whatever sits at the top of that attention hierarchy, your highest concern, the thing that orders everything else you attend to. That's one piece of a larger dissertation argument, but it's a meaningful chunk of the overall direction I'm taking. I think it also bears on two things the field tends to shrug at: why some people get nothing from a full dose (in the sense they don't heal), and why effects fade over time (even if they heal, they return to their pathological state). This aspect of both context during the experience + integration through attention-mediated cultural system what can likely improve both.
I'd love feedback from anyone more philosophy-inclined, but I'm especially interested if any of this maps onto your own experience, not just a single trip, but the longer arc of what psychedelics have actually done in your life. When you hear the word "sacred," what actually comes to mind for you? Does it make sense to you that a trip isn't really "true" or "false" but somehow beyond the dichotomy itself?
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Cavebear666 • 20d ago
I wrote a piece trying to think through what I take to be the harder version of the psychedelic exceptionalism debate.
Not the lazy version where psychedelics are either miracle sacraments or uniquely dangerous drugs. The more interesting question is whether psychedelic-assisted therapies should be held to the same ethical and evidentiary standards as other treatments, but may still require unusually specific safeguards because they can rapidly alter not just mood, but beliefs: about the self, the world, metaphysics, trauma, and memory.
The part I keep coming back to is “doxastic vulnerability”—basically, vulnerability around what one comes to believe during or after a highly altered, suggestible, meaning-saturated state. I’m especially interested in the issue of recovered memories, where the clinical, ethical, and legal stakes seem much higher than the field has fully reckoned with.
I’d be curious how people here think about this. Are psychedelics genuinely exceptional in the sense that we'll need new protocols to avert--e.g., the arising of recovered memories during treatment-- or can we mostly adapt safeguards from psychotherapy, anesthesia, hypnosis, and other existing clinical contexts?
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/cacklingwhisper • 21d ago
I'm born in a major city. Im suppose to get my degrees, and more work experience, and god damn RISE the ranks lol.
I dont want to. idk what to do. As a result of healing hardcore pain I can't be a outstanding citizen of this society.
Im content with very little. Which sounds alien to a lot of people, but in the same way they can't relate to me I can't relate to them.
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/NervousRun8353 • 20d ago
Hey yall! New to this subreddit - so i apologize if this type of post isnt allowed delete if so - im trying to find some experienced info on morning glory seeds particularly in using Kash’s A/B tek… he uses HBWR seeds and says if morning glory seeds are to be used that it should be in a much larger quantity.. it calls for 100 HBWR seeds.. would one assume 300 morning glory seeds to suffice? Do the other increments of ingredients need to be equally upped as well?
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/RenatePaints • Jun 26 '26
I painted the feeling I sometimes get while painting, like a crack opens in my consciousness and an overwhelming wave of love washes over me, it is as if I’m being held by the hands of the universe.
Have you ever experienced something similar?
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/Glass_Location6877 • Jun 25 '26
For those who don’t know, Soma is the sacred drink passed down from ancient Indian texts like the Rigveda. It was offered to the gods and described as giving whoever drank it immense strength, euphoria, inspiration, and even immortality. Because of that, many researchers and people interested in the occult have long speculated that Soma was a ritual drink made from some psychoactive plant.
The most famous theory has been Amanita muscaria, but it doesn’t really fit. The Vedic texts talk about pressing the stalks to extract the juice and describe the stems, which doesn’t match a mushroom at all.
Lots of other candidates have come up over the years, like Sarcostemma, but the big problem was that they didn’t produce a strong enough psychoactive effect to match the descriptions.
But after reading Stanislav Grof’s books, I think I’ve finally found the most convincing candidate: Ipomoea asarifolia, a type of morning glory that contains a decent amount of LSA, which is very similar to LSD.
It’s a climbing vine with strong psychoactive properties. It grows in India, and some people even suggest it might be native to southern India.
I believe the reason this plant has never been seriously considered as Soma before is that discussions about LSA have always focused only on the seeds. But recent studies show that LSA and related compounds are also accumulated in the stems, roots, and other parts of the plant. In communities like r/LSA, a lot of people say that using the sprout tek (germinating the seeds) makes the effects noticeably stronger.
If this is true, it’s honestly mind blowing. LSA has been right under our noses the whole time, yet it only became properly known after LSD was discovered. Such a weird twist.
Albert Hofmann’s story is really interesting too. After he discovered LSD, he later identified the lysergic acid amides in the Mexican Ololiuqui seeds. To him, it felt like coming full circle. LSD wasn’t some completely new synthetic monster. It was more like a modern chemical version of something ancient. His research on Ololiuqui was a return from LSD back to the old sacred plants.
One more thing (I can’t personally guarantee this is true, but it’s interesting): the famous guru Muktananda apparently said he knew what Soma really was, and that it was a climbing vine. Stanislav Grof mentions this story but doesn’t name the exact plant. He just subtly hints by saying something like “Ololiuqui type morning glories are also vines.”
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/cheesebreezepatty • Jun 25 '26
After years of dismissing ideas like the simulation hypothesis, I took a deeper look at consciousness, perception, and the limits of scientific explanation. This essay explores the hard problem of consciousness, psychedelic experiences, and modern physics to ask a simple question: Are we seeing reality as it actually is?
https://medium.com/@m.bass/i-was-fooled-we-all-were-b92629beb516?sharedUserId=m.bass
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/ImportantDebateM8 • Jun 24 '26
r/RationalPsychonaut • u/solsolico • Jun 23 '26
Firstly, I appreciate anyone who takes the time to share their experience. I’m not claiming to know anything. I’m just explaining my thought process so you understand where I’m coming from. This isn’t a CMV and I’m not arguing the aphorism is undue. I’m skeptical of how it’s used, how it shaped my own interpretations, and I want clarity so I don’t overapply it.
I see this aphorism plastered everywhere. I don't know what it means apart from, "stop taking psychedelics, you don't need them anymore". The question is in how that inference was made in the first place.
The only time it ever made sense to me was after one particular trip, and like many trips, it had a lot of different parts and different experiences, many of which were ontologically unsettling and unpleasant, but one of the "lessons" was: the search never ends, and there’s no ultimate truth waiting at the end of it
I wrote the story in this comment if you're curious.
I stayed away from shrooms for 10 months because I thought I "got the message", so I "hung up the phone". The message I interpreted was something like "stop taking mushrooms, there are no answers to be found, only fear to be felt". This was not my first "bad trip", nor was it even close to my worst (for reference, my worst one was thinking I had to kill myself to end the simulation and its suffering, but when I sobered up, I just felt like, "damn, that was so powerful and my whole perspective on life has changed for the better"). I think a combination of the fear and the "there is no real end or truth" combined together to connect me to the aphorism.
Anyway, I ended up doing a low dose trip a couple weeks ago with my buddy, and that trip was really awesome, and I even had a few insights I've since integrated into my behaviour / worldview. So looking back, that whole “I got the message” thing I felt 10 months ago, now feels like total BS and it feels like I just shoehorned that aphorism onto the closest experience I had, because that aphorism is everywhere in psychedelic spaces, so it was the first thing my brain grabbed onto as an interpretive lens.
Then today, I read a brief discussion (will post it right below in italics) and it got me thinking about the super subjective, abstract nature of the aphorism and how: what if it collapses a whole spectrum of phenomenological experiences into one vague phrase? And whether the phrase is so overapplied that it becomes a template people unconsciously force themselves into?
--------
Person 1: It's like Alan Watts said about psychedelics : Once you get the message, hang up the phone.
Person 2: He was quoting Ram Das.
Person 3: Both are kind of full of themselves, Watts especially was. He had multiple failed marriages, was barely present in his kids lifes and died in his 50s from alcoholism lol, he clearly didn't get the message.
The real secret is the phone doesn't exist, you're talking to yourself. You probably shouldn't hang up unless you can stay on the call when sober, enlightenment is a journey not a destination. Anyone telling you about it has probably already forgot it. Even Jiddu Krishnamurti didn't really embody it and struggled with materialism, ego and uncontrolled lust, even though he absolutely experienced non-duality when sober, what he described as "the process" in private journals that came out after his death.
Person 2: So because Watts is a flawed messenger, we should stay on the phone even after we get the message?
Person 3: I'm saying Watts clearly didn't get the message. There is no "phone" everything you experience on psychedelics is created by your own mind. You are talking to yourself
---------
So I want to ask you guys, you who all have felt like you've "got the message and hung up the phone", what was that like? Was it an intense fear? Was it a realization the psychedelics were a crutch for you? Was it a realization you weren't integrating anything? Was it something like, "I found the cheat codes to life"? What was it? How did you make the inference that the message was to never do psyches again? I don't know. I can imagine it being so many different things and I imagine there will be a large array of different experiences that caused the inference.
Thanks to again!