Can confirm, addictions to sugar, caffeine, alcohol and cannabis evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks. I had never felt so peaceful and balanced in my life. Whereas previously I was trying to escape chaos with substances, now consuming substances would only serve unbalance me.
I felt like, wow, this is what a human being is supposed to feel like! When you face what is within you, and process it, it no longer burdens you. Psychedelics seem to facilitate this process.
Out of the addictions you claim you had, only alcohol is severe. Cannabis is mostly psychological addiction but users often combine it with tobacco which is also physiological addicting.
Caffeine addiction is very easy to break with some sheer willpower. The withdrawal symptoms only last 1-2 days, and the side effects are a serious headache. That's nothing compared to heroin, nicotine, or alcohol addiction.
Sugar (and salt) is just a matter of habit. There is no conclusive evidence sugar is a proven addiction. You don't see burglars breaking in to steal sugar, do you?
Why would Ayahuasca work better than professional guidance (e.g. CBT) plus drugs with a proven track record such as Nalmefene, Naltrexone, Bupropion (Zyban), or Disulfiram (Antabuse)?
You wrote: "addictions [...] evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks". Do you mean your cravings were gone? I don't think one ever fully heals from an addiction. You're still an addict, just not one who's practicing their addiction (giving in to it). That is precisely where professional guidance can aid one.
To anyone who is addicted to alcohol I'd like to state: search professional help, please. Don't DIY medicate. If you are a severe alcoholic, you should not quit overnight. That is very dangerous. Instead, you need to slowly lower your dose. The best way to do that is, again, under professional guidance. A shaman might know a lot about Ayahuasca, but he's no MD.
Don't get me wrong, it is interesting to explore and discuss, and I'm also a proponent of scientific research in this field. However we should be wary with drug-related advice, or unrealistically high expectations.
I am all for seeking professional help, and I don't put faith in alternative medical practices. With that said, I think currently pharmacology is too constrained by special interest groups. Cannabis is a great example of something that greatly improves the quality of life for many people, but isn't recognized and respected as medicine by the medical community at large.
> Cannabis is a great example of something that greatly improves the quality of life for many people, but isn't recognized and respected as medicine by the medical community at large.
Scientific research can go (too) slow to your liking and/or needs.
With cannabis, that's been changing the past decade AFAICT. My late father had MS, and he had the opportunity to use cannabis to reduce the effects of MS well over 10 years ago (he didn't use that opportunity because of his preconceived notion about cannabis). My late uncle, who AFAIK never used cannabis before (it is decriminalized here), used cannabis to reduce the side effects of chemotherapy. More and more governments are accepting medical marihuana/cannabis. Portugal has decriminalized a lot of drugs, and even in the conservative USA various States are finally adopting medical marihuana.
That being said, there are also cannabis zealots. E.g. some people abuse that scientific research to justify their pot smoking (which is here, unlike in USA, traditionally combined with tobacco, and regardless includes carcinogenics). They simply deny that smoking is bad for their lungs despite decades of evidence suggesting the contrary. I know one friend of my partner who claims cannabis is great for his diabetes but dismisses his change in lifestyle/diet. You cannot simply ignore such factors, and they greatly complicate scientific evidence in research, never mind for those who decide to self medicate based on such research.
> You don't see burglars breaking in to steal sugar, do you?
Sugar is easily available. I'm not saying it's addictive or not, I don't know enough about that, but if people are addicted to it, there's not a real need to steal it when you can buy a soda for less than $2. That's why you don't see burglars breaking in anywhere to steal it.
This is interesting. I only know one person that’s done it and he said the same thing. Kicked all the habits. I didn’t know him before his trip so I assumed he was kind of full of it.
Based on my escalating coffee bill maybe I should give this a swing...
So are the hallucinations ever “fun”? I’ve dabbled in other things and it has generally been very video game like kidjoy. All ayahuasca hallucinations I’ve read about have sounded terrifying.
I'm going to try very hard to describe this. It will not be enough :)
It's more than "fun", much more profound, it's Everything, perhaps the single most important thing. It's ineffable, yet, you still feel obligated to try and explain it, as I'm doing. You may experience total happiness, love, wholeness, but then seconds later experience the exact opposite, total depression, despair, loneliness, humiliation, fear, violence. You may experience a plane of existence where you ARE time, and you see how time affects everything at once, as a result, it's a feeling of timelessness, you can see everything happening, a feeling of eternal existence. Perhaps you will then see that the same way events are connected together to form the feeling of time, in fact, everything you know is connected together in your brain, you can move through any of the connections, not just temporal. You may experience realities similar to your own, perhaps many at once, but you may also be catapulted into a completely geometric and abstract universe of inexplicable nature, but you'll feel as if you understand it, as long as you don't try and describe it in language. You may "see" the fundamental structure of sound and music as your various neural compartments cross-fire and visual cortex processes sound or sound cortex process visual data. You may "see" sexuality. You may see good and evil and the necessary duality of the two. For that matter you may see the dualistic relationship of everything. Everything exists because defining non-existence commands the definition of existence. You may see the fundamental feedback loop where perception meets the internal mental model your brain builds to interpret reality. Wait? feedback loop? You don't even know which side is real, cause-effect is completely broken down, it's now a Strange Loop. You may then see, truly see, that your whole entire known reality, including everything you see and perceive to be "outside" of your body is all actually inside your brain. You're trapped, this is your reality. You will likely discover/meet your inner self, you will realize that the consciousness really is the tip of the iceberg as you get rocketed inward into your deep sub consciousness, which has a mind of it's own. Also, for me, it knew everything I was thinking in advance. So when I'd make a joke or expression it would react with "why are you responding to me, I'm the one that told you what you think", so you learn to just shut up and enjoy the ride. It will likely be so beautiful and significant that you may even question if what you experienced was a divine experience. It will be so intense that you will have had a glimpse as to what a super consciousness or hyper-intelligence may look like, as you become even more aware of how small your conscious mind really is in comparison to the whole. You may feel as if all, everything, every person is connected. For example, the knowledge of good vs evil, and the gradient between, and hot and cold, and temperatures between, are these really different things? After all, in your brain they are both represented as neural connections, a graph if you will. And is it just the interpretation of the neural pattern that gives them meaning? The brain just being a massive network of brain cells, where the fundamental unit is a connection, you may realize, no wonder the foundation of human reasoning is also limited to the notion of stateful logic.
Perhaps, after 10 hours of this, you start to want to come back to reality, but you learned something very important this day. You can't go back, you don't, part of you has transcended to Buddha-hood. But you're a stubborn human, you fight to come back, that fighting, rooted in fear, fear is linked to many other negative memories, they may take command of your brain. Have you went crazy? Did you just forgo your conscious existence as you knew it? Then you're sitting there, watching yourself in a mental institution as your family is there crying wondering what happened to you, but communication with them is futile as you have transcended, but part of you, is stuck in that body, for 50 years as you've realized that this infinite experience is just a bit more than you asked for. But that's just one of the many negative things you dream up! Of course, acid is illegal where you lived, so that random sound is the cops showing up and escorting you out. Or perhaps you wake up naked and vulnerable outside, but it's just a trip, as you rock back and forth between the meta-mind-space and all these false realities. (a process called "looping") You face all your fears and inner personal problems, you confront your selfish ego, and all the negative things about yourself, you're embarrassed of yourself as your mind is nakedly exposed. Just as you got to see all the beauty of nature, you also realize how messed up you and everything is. It's hard, very hard, but you face it and accept it. This is what some people call a "bad trip", but to me, that is precisely what made it a "good trip". You eventually grab on to pieces of reality, one at a time, until you finally come all the way back. It takes many hours, and days to process everything. You're never really sure if you ever came back. But you don't mind. You've experienced enlightenment. You're at peace with yourself and the universe, if there's even a difference. You have a new appreciation for everything. But similarly, you also realize the empty, void of meaning nature of the universe. For some people this is all too much. For me, this was the ultimate lens into "reality", and gave me a new spark and energy for life that is unparalleled to any previous experience.
A small side note: This feels very great to have finally shared. It has been melting inside me to get out.
Was that acid or ayahuasca? Did you do multiple days?
I’ve done acid a handful of times. I’ve luckily never had a “bad trip” but I did have to untangle a friend from a coil of barbed wire which he thought was jungle vines.
Another time (I’m from Florida) I went out during a tropical storm (we don’t take those seriously) with a shovel and a laminated note from myself reminding me “everything is OK, but go inland if the water gets above your belly button” and buried myself waste deep in the sand at the beach to force myself to watch the storm. That was a crazy night.
Lightening is weird when it sticks to the ground permanently.
I did 5 tabs my first time without realizing how strong acid was. I had no reference, no preparation, no warning. I was just thrown into the deep end. It was so intense that I didn't even remember entering the trip, I wasn't sure if I just died or how I got there. It took, what I would have perceived as lifetimes for me to ground myself and realize what was going on.
I say the "perceived lifetimes" because there was literally times where I'd experience trips that absolutely took hours in perceived time, but they would always be interrupted by my friend's snore in the next room. His snore was the trigger for a loop to reset.
One in particularly was when I was "arguing" with myself about how of course my mental reality was less accurate than real reality, and my brain was telling me that it actually doesn't know the difference and that the only reality is what it knows. Then after me arguing that it's mental models were inferior, the next thing I know I'm walking down a sidewalk,
feeling the heat of the sun and everything. I'm talking with my friend, explaining the trip to him and how happy I am that it's over. But he just keeps smiling at me strangely and asks "you don't get it yet?", to which I respond, "what are you talking about." To which he says "nothing, never mind," and we keep walking. Then I hear a snore, that shakes the whole entire space. I look at my friend, he smiles. I realize that the whole thing was conjured up. He looks at me and says "That's what it's all about." and then the trip collapses back to a more abstract meta-mind space. That walk was for at least 20 minutes. But it all happened between two snores. Absolutely wild.
I got myself into that mess a few times with the whole “we got ripped off let’s take it all just in case” just to realize I didn’t get ripped off and the first thing I always think when it kicks in is “I got ripped off”
Now as a grown up(ish) it’s turned into “I got ripped off, oh never mind I’m high this is fine”
That's pretty much how I ended up taking 5 tabs. I definitely learned my lesson, but am very grateful I did it. My second trip with 1 tab was not even remotely comparable nor as enlightening. I actually haven't done it since (definitely open to), but have noticed that now I can reach a similar state through mediation. I noticed something else odd as well though, now if I do marijuana edibles (sativa), I can actually revisit the psychedelic state, not as intense, but enough for me to question if I ever left the psychedelic state to begin with.
Weed's psychedelic properties are vastly understated. Especially for people who aren't exposed to it, the first few times is definitely a very psychedelic experience.
Oh wow that sounds amazing. I was sadly in a dark house locked in a room with a bathroom. Environment wise it can't get much worse.
My second time I only did 1 tab and it was much more sane and I was intact with reality. The amazing thing about that experience was that when watching the sky and trees, I saw pinks and purples that don't exist as typical colors and they would move between dark and light shades following very intricate patterns. This would also cause my do shift from happy to sad and back. Eventually, after a long time, I realized what I was seeing was the pattern of the wind flowing through everything. Was amazing because I'm pretty sure it's something we don't typically consciously think about. :)
I also want to be careful that people don't do acid because they think it's going to be "fun." They will likely be in for a large surprise if they do. They should instead be prepared and do it safely. It's a lot different than drinking a beer.
That's a very good way to describe it. I hadn't thought about it, but indeed, every time I "grasp" something, it unfolds/collapses/opens/transforms into something else, (over and (over and (over and (...))).
I wonder if it's because information flows in cycles throughout the brain. Any thought that you would be aware of is because your brain observed its own thought, thus starting the thought cycle over again. It would seem that this just repeats continuously as your brain thinks. :)
Sure, but this comment was supposed to convince me do undergo hallucinogenic treatment because it can be profound experience, or something. I'm not really sure actually, but it does say that in the first sentence.
The actual result could not have been more different. I'll Nope out of that one, thank you.
I wasn't trying to convince you of anything. You asked if psychedelic experiences are fun. I responded with an attempt at a more "complete" explanation.
i.e. It's a full-mind experience. It encompasses all your known feelings/thoughts, and will likely even transcend those. The word fun is too simple to describe the experience.
I don't know if "desirable" is a suitable word for describing psychedelic experience. You don't really get to pick the outcome. The outcome largely depends on your inner self.
I don't know if any words can truly do it justice. I truly think it's an ineffable experience. :)
Personally I find the idea of setting out to muddle the perception of reality terrifying. I've had sleep deprivation hallucinations and I think everyone should do whatever is in their power not to hallucinate.
Can confirm, addictions to sugar, caffeine, alcohol and cannabis evaporated during my trip and did not return for many weeks. I had never felt so peaceful and balanced in my life. Whereas previously I was trying to escape chaos with substances, now consuming substances would only serve unbalance me.
I felt like, wow, this is what a human being is supposed to feel like! When you face what is within you, and process it, it no longer burdens you. Psychedelics seem to facilitate this process.
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