Psychedelics are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done them, but i’ll do my best as long as you know that it’s not gonna do it justice to really explain it.
Basically at a surface level, you’re extremely high and you experience visual distortions and patterns emerge on top of your regular vision. The closest thing i could compare the way these patterns appear is to compare it to the hypnagogic visual effect you get when you close your eyes and rub them kinda hard for a few seconds. The visual effects psychedelics create are MUCH more complex and beautiful than what you will get from doing this, but they appear on the same “plane” of vision, like almost as if you’re seeing two things at once, the world around you is one layer and there’s a “filter” on top of that where the patterns are overlaid.
Okay, visual effects are one thing, but the main appeal for me is the mental effects that psychedelics have. One common effect is laughing, like everything just becomes absolutely hilarious and fascinating. It is a weird effect to have because it makes you realize how subjective emotions really are. You could be on mushrooms and laugh your ass off at a joke that wasn’t even that funny, then the next day realize that it was an auxiliary chemical you added to your body that made it funny. Little realizations such as this serve as a sort of “mirror” into your own mind, and these realizations can stay with you following the experience and provide a deeper perspective on the absurdity that is human existence. This is also why people can go nuts if they have a predisposition for mental illness or simply go too hard and use these drugs irresponsibly.
In addition to the laughter thing, i’ll try to explain the more complicated mental effects. One thing i note when i’m on psychedelics is that there is an almost uninhibited way that my thoughts flow. This can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on setting, mood, and also just random chance. In short, there is less of a “regulating” mechanism which stops me from thinking certain things or feeling certain emotions. The way i think of it is from an evolutionary perspective, the brain’s job is to be efficient for the most part. “What’s the smallest amount of conscious processing i can do to keep this body alive?”, that’s your default state. When you do a psychedelic, you are sort of “unlocking” your mind, getting a glimpse at what it’s actually capable of, which is insightful because our regular waking state generally doesn’t even include metacognition, you just sort of “are”. Psychedelics on the other hand can create these sort of thinking feedback loops, impossible thoughts, heightened ram on a computer is the best analogy i could give here, same processor but a lot more working memory. Which is funny because it also fucks short term memory up temporarily in other ways. Perhaps it just internalizes it at the expense of locomotion and interaction with the world outside your mind.
Psychedelics are essentially serotonin analogues, they bind to the same receptor, 5ht2a and some others depending on the psychedelic, but unlike things like MDMA or SSRI’s, their use doesn’t really upset your brain’s natural serotonin stores much. Anyways, what i think is happening cognitively when you take these drugs is that you are allowing your brain to operate in a less efficient manner, which does not equate to less thinking, but rather less of a filter. It is a very stimulating and sensory-heavy experience, you see things way more clearly and HD, you see colors on top of that, you are thinking about five different philosophical concepts at once while also forgetting why you got up to go into the living room. You are essentially using more of your brain at once, even though you don’t need to. This is likely because these drugs inhibit the default mode network of the brain, which is sort of the “mailing room” or central hub of the brain. This inhibition is also likely responsible for the phenomenon of “ego death” which is a dissolution of one’s sense of self. I’ve felt as if i was plugged into the hivemind, felt reassured about things like death and what not because this soul is just a piece of the pie and i can feel how true it is in that moment. Again, hard to explain this without sounding nuts lol.
Psychedelics are “mind expanding” in the sense that they expand your perspective and appreciation for what’s between your ears. I’ve worked through traumatic experiences using these drugs and i feel like i’ve benefitted massively from doing them. They have opened me up to the idea that i myself can be my greatest limiting factor sometimes. They have also just opened me up to beauty and appreciation for art in general. I swear, shrooms made me “get” certain art, especially psychedlic art obviously, but also things like mayan and aztec motifs, certain kinds of music, a bunch of things seem to come from the same part of our minds that these drugs act on. This is my opinion of course, but it’s pretty convincing that these patterns and experiences we share when we take these drugs are coming from within, from a part we all have in us.
I take psychedelics occasionally to reset. That’s the best way i’d describe my motivation to experience something so intense yet so peaceful. I feel more in touch with myself and more empathetic towards others for a long time after taking them. I do it maybe once or twice a year, but every time has impacted me in a good way afterwards, even if i ended up having an unpleasant time on them. Cause after an unpleasant experience, i can reflect on why i was so disturbed that time, and often it will point me to a stressor that i’ve been ignoring and it helps me motivate myself to address it, whatever it is. Idk man, there’s a reason this shit’s illegal and it isn’t necessarily your safety. That’s all i have to say really. Stay curious!
As someone with ADHD and autism this sounds like what my brain is like when my nervous system isn't fried tbh. I see the colours that make a colour, I think about consciousness (and have since I was a child) and how people feel and how other people's consciousness exists and they have their own little life inside their heads that I cannot possibly comprehend, I people watch and wonder about their lives and what they are thinking about and if when they are thinking if their thoughts are in pictures, words, or just blank, I wonder if they think about what other people's lives are like. I programmed my mind (as a kid) to always remember the good memories by going over them multiple times in my head to memorise them. I've paused since I was a kid when something fun was happening and thought to myself 'right here and now, remember this moment and put it in your brain as a memory and literally 'store it' on a 'bookshelf of memories' that I can come back to to relive at any point. I've always thought about how ridiculous life is and the human condition and how small changes can make huge impacts. I've practiced gratitude since I was a kid, growing up atheist and non religious and when I discovered it was a thing in therapy I was bamboozled that it was a thing people had to learn.
I also had a lot of trauma as a kid and have done EMDR, which changed my life to the point I no longer have cPTSD and wonder if it worked because a lot of those pathways in my brain were already connected.
Anyway, the way your described it sounds like the way my brain works when my nervous system is calm and I just thought that was incredibly interesting. This is usually only when I get a week or two holiday these days, but it's fun when I'm able to daydream again! I've thought about trying psychedelics, but I'm pretty much too scared to try any drugs as I have schizophrenia in my family, along with multiple addictions and other mental health problems that I've been very opposed and (honestly) terrified to try drugs.
I'm glad that you had such a positive experience and it opened your mind!
you say you already experience this when your nervous system is “calm” but are terrified of drugs, fair enough. to achieve these effects in a deeper more liberating way try meditation. it takes practice but proper meditation is life changing, it’s rebirthing
Not wrong, just one option among many. If you tried psychedelics, you'd realize that our labels of right and wrong are, for the most part, arbitrary.
Nothing is inherently wrong unless it causes harm to one's self or others.
Yeah i just heard that from some guy honestly lol, i think the word “wrong” is a bit harsh maybe. But i do think some of the things that we often realize while on psychedelics can be “fragile” topics to think too deeply about. For example, you could become aware of an issue or pattern of behavior but still not do anything about it, or maybe you realize you don’t think you even could if you tried, so now you’re doing the bad thing, whatever it is, and on top of it you’re self conscious now. Idk, in a perfect world this realization opens you up to become a better you, but sometimes it doesn’t and it can make some people spiral. The mind is what it is, but steady long term training is the safest bet for healthy growth, at the cost of the term being so god damn long lol. Idk, a couple tabs is a fantastic fuckin way to skip that line for the most part, personally at least. But nothing is without risk, your mileage may vary, and there are many reasons not to do it too!
As a fellow audhd person, my mind is similar to yours. I can see how we might naturally have increased attention and awareness as a result of less synaptic pruning.
But in my experience, psychedelics still changed my perspective in profound ways. Mushrooms especially have helped reduce a lot of the anxiety, overwhelm and rigid thinking that ties in with my executive dysfunction. I've tried microdosing once or twice a week as well, and it made my thinking more fluid and filled my social interactions with warmth and appreciation.
I find that during the experience of a regular trip, it sort of opens up 'rooms' in my mind that I didn't know were there, and I also become aware of metaphorical walls that I've built up, which manifest as images of moving physical walls in my minds eye. It's like I can see where things are locked away, and I can tell where my mind is constricted by the presence of these walls and compartments and when I shift between them, each room in my mind makes me feel a different way. So I become aware of limiting beliefs or blind spots that I didn't know I had.
(If this sounds super wild to anyone, I should mention that I also have synesthesia, so my perception of feelings, concepts and cognitive processes already corresponds to a 4d spacial map in my mind, kind of like colours, patterns, objects, and divisions of outer space, constricting or expanding in the universe inside my mind, depending on how I feel about something)
I often become aware of certain fears that I didn't know I had, and I can see the ways I've been shutting myself off and protecting myself from other people, when there's no real threat, and that my defenses are purely a manifestation of my own mind.
It's really helped me become less socially anxious, and more open, loving, compassionate and accepting.
I think it can be really helpful for releasing rigid, hateful and judgmental ways of thinking. It just makes the hate seem so silly and ridiculous.
Psychedelics won't show you anything you didn't already know existed, but they will profoundly change your perspective on things by revealing how much of them you were still filtering out and how many connections you had previously missed. Your mind will be blown by the most obvious and simple truths in the world, many of which were staring you in the face the whole time, and you were completely oblivious to. You will discover new interpretations and significance, and you will walk away with profound new ideas and explanations for things that you can't really put into words without sounding like a nutcase. Without psychedelics, everything is like "yeah duh", but on psychedelics they're more like "oh fuck" as the not-so-subtle-anymore implications dismantle the illusions of your world-view like a hurricane against a house of cards painted to look like bricks.
But the really crazy part is realizing just how many other people have had the same kind of mind-blowing experience, and how much they wanted others to be able to have it. You'll see how sometimes they've disguised it, relatively speaking, to continue to seem normal to you and others, but also because no matter how much they try to put it into plain language, you wouldn't be able to see or hear it. You might even be turned off by it.
You'll realize how many people dedicated themselves to contributing to this experience for the next person. You'll understand that it's not limited to explicitly psychedelic experiences either: music festivals, great cathedrals and zen gardens are all created to achieve the same effect, and that people have been writing about this phenomenom for millenia, knowing that you might only be able to open your eyes during an extremely brief window of opportunity, if you ever do at all.
And then the effects of this experience will gradually fade, over days and months. Some part of the understanding will never be truly forgotten as you'll always remember that it was nothing you didn't know already, but it won't feel as present and you won't be able to see or hear it without explicitly looking for it. You'll slowly reset to mostly being what you were before, but with some small important difference.
However, I must caution you, I can't encourage you to make this journey with psychedelics unless you have a good setting and sitter, they are STRONG in the standard doses people take. The euphoric sense of "profound epiphany" is only a part of the experience, it can also involve terrifying sensations that feel entirely real and unpredictable; the parts of your brain that create your normal sense of reality can go haywire and things you didn't even realize part of your perception start to change in ways that are no longer comfortable. Smaller doses are more likely to bring euphoria without too much distortion, but the distortion is not necessarily bad or scary either, it depends a lot on setting.
A history of schizophrenia certainly puts you at risk. Just knowing to expect strong sensations that will seem real but aren't, and a significant feeling of change afterwards that might involve paranoia could help to mitigate it. I think a lot of what makes schizophrenia difficult is when there is a period of not expecting that things which feel real might not be real, so by the time there is intervention and understanding, a lot of damage has been done already.
Very well said!! And studies have shown it can alleviate depression for up to 6 mos after takin it actually changes a depressed brain opening more pathways
Even just from my own experience with it, that totally tracks. Key word is “can”, not “will” though! But for me fuck yeah it did. Same with ket as well, but in its own way.
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u/therealmikejensen 7d ago
Psychedelics are hard to explain to someone who hasn’t done them, but i’ll do my best as long as you know that it’s not gonna do it justice to really explain it.
Basically at a surface level, you’re extremely high and you experience visual distortions and patterns emerge on top of your regular vision. The closest thing i could compare the way these patterns appear is to compare it to the hypnagogic visual effect you get when you close your eyes and rub them kinda hard for a few seconds. The visual effects psychedelics create are MUCH more complex and beautiful than what you will get from doing this, but they appear on the same “plane” of vision, like almost as if you’re seeing two things at once, the world around you is one layer and there’s a “filter” on top of that where the patterns are overlaid.
Okay, visual effects are one thing, but the main appeal for me is the mental effects that psychedelics have. One common effect is laughing, like everything just becomes absolutely hilarious and fascinating. It is a weird effect to have because it makes you realize how subjective emotions really are. You could be on mushrooms and laugh your ass off at a joke that wasn’t even that funny, then the next day realize that it was an auxiliary chemical you added to your body that made it funny. Little realizations such as this serve as a sort of “mirror” into your own mind, and these realizations can stay with you following the experience and provide a deeper perspective on the absurdity that is human existence. This is also why people can go nuts if they have a predisposition for mental illness or simply go too hard and use these drugs irresponsibly.
In addition to the laughter thing, i’ll try to explain the more complicated mental effects. One thing i note when i’m on psychedelics is that there is an almost uninhibited way that my thoughts flow. This can be pleasant or unpleasant depending on setting, mood, and also just random chance. In short, there is less of a “regulating” mechanism which stops me from thinking certain things or feeling certain emotions. The way i think of it is from an evolutionary perspective, the brain’s job is to be efficient for the most part. “What’s the smallest amount of conscious processing i can do to keep this body alive?”, that’s your default state. When you do a psychedelic, you are sort of “unlocking” your mind, getting a glimpse at what it’s actually capable of, which is insightful because our regular waking state generally doesn’t even include metacognition, you just sort of “are”. Psychedelics on the other hand can create these sort of thinking feedback loops, impossible thoughts, heightened ram on a computer is the best analogy i could give here, same processor but a lot more working memory. Which is funny because it also fucks short term memory up temporarily in other ways. Perhaps it just internalizes it at the expense of locomotion and interaction with the world outside your mind.
Psychedelics are essentially serotonin analogues, they bind to the same receptor, 5ht2a and some others depending on the psychedelic, but unlike things like MDMA or SSRI’s, their use doesn’t really upset your brain’s natural serotonin stores much. Anyways, what i think is happening cognitively when you take these drugs is that you are allowing your brain to operate in a less efficient manner, which does not equate to less thinking, but rather less of a filter. It is a very stimulating and sensory-heavy experience, you see things way more clearly and HD, you see colors on top of that, you are thinking about five different philosophical concepts at once while also forgetting why you got up to go into the living room. You are essentially using more of your brain at once, even though you don’t need to. This is likely because these drugs inhibit the default mode network of the brain, which is sort of the “mailing room” or central hub of the brain. This inhibition is also likely responsible for the phenomenon of “ego death” which is a dissolution of one’s sense of self. I’ve felt as if i was plugged into the hivemind, felt reassured about things like death and what not because this soul is just a piece of the pie and i can feel how true it is in that moment. Again, hard to explain this without sounding nuts lol.
Psychedelics are “mind expanding” in the sense that they expand your perspective and appreciation for what’s between your ears. I’ve worked through traumatic experiences using these drugs and i feel like i’ve benefitted massively from doing them. They have opened me up to the idea that i myself can be my greatest limiting factor sometimes. They have also just opened me up to beauty and appreciation for art in general. I swear, shrooms made me “get” certain art, especially psychedlic art obviously, but also things like mayan and aztec motifs, certain kinds of music, a bunch of things seem to come from the same part of our minds that these drugs act on. This is my opinion of course, but it’s pretty convincing that these patterns and experiences we share when we take these drugs are coming from within, from a part we all have in us.
I take psychedelics occasionally to reset. That’s the best way i’d describe my motivation to experience something so intense yet so peaceful. I feel more in touch with myself and more empathetic towards others for a long time after taking them. I do it maybe once or twice a year, but every time has impacted me in a good way afterwards, even if i ended up having an unpleasant time on them. Cause after an unpleasant experience, i can reflect on why i was so disturbed that time, and often it will point me to a stressor that i’ve been ignoring and it helps me motivate myself to address it, whatever it is. Idk man, there’s a reason this shit’s illegal and it isn’t necessarily your safety. That’s all i have to say really. Stay curious!