What do people see when they're tripping? Analyzing Erowid's trip reports

the visceral realization that something feeling incredibly deep and meaningful doesn't necessarily mean it's actually incredibly deep and meaningful, can, itself, be incredibly deep and meaningful. an opportunity to reset and recalibrate what you feel you want out of life.

There are also other problems: while on acid once I came to a realisation that really changed how I experienced things later on. My realisation was that most of my perceptions of things were really "coloured" by a layer of society. For example, during that trip I found some husks of dead lobsters, that were sundried and quite rotten and gory. But during the trip they were this amazing structure of iridescent craziness on a dimpled hard and shiny shell, combined with dried out half rotted soft meat on the inside. I knew that I should keep the germs away from my mouth or cuts/wounds and I think I played and analysed it for a bit, being amazed by its structure, textures and colours. After that the trip got a bit stronger and the focus was on other things, however. Some hours after the trip I came by the same place that I had happenstanced the lobster husk. The same lobster was lying there. It was ugly and disgusting. I had washed my hands thoroughly after playing with it but really had an urge to wash my hands again. I laughed at how my amazement of the dead lobster had felt so profound just hours earlier.

But. The next day after a nice rest I actually started to see that many things are actually very special and beautiful but our upbringing has destroyed the ability to experience this beauty. Society has teached us that rotten things are ugly. But that is just a layer on your perception. The materiality of things has their intention embedded in them and if their intention is of great beauty, then the materiality tends to be beautiful as well.

What I am trying to say is that first order dismissal of "deep insights" might not be warranted. You might have really had a deep insight, but you cannot correctly assess it because the setting has changed.

This is very true.

Hallucinogens trigger all sorts of pathways in ways they aren’t triggered in sober life.

I think it’s pretty common to have a mind blowing realization during a trip then once sober realize it wasn’t that mind blowing.

I believe it is a misapplication of entheogens to try solving "IQ problems" with them. I've found them to be incredibly valuable for personal development and solving "EQ problems" - the kind that my sober mind didn't ordinarily process much at all by default, being on the autism spectrum. Psychedelics for me allowed me to become intensely aware and attuned to the emotional and psychological state of others and allows me to imagine myself in their shoes and empathize with their struggles in life (even if entirely unrelated to anything I've ever personally experienced). This altered state of mind introduced me to an entirely new way of thinking that had led to me being a kinder, more compassionate, more considerate, more socially capable person in a persistent, lasting way that has long outlived the psychoactive effects of the psychedelics.

Psychedelic culture has this notion of "reintegration", where in the week(s) after a trip it can take some time to fully internalize the epiphanies and lessons from the trip. During my first reintegration, I realized that I kinda used to interact with everyone in the world in a manner roughly analogous to really advanced NPCs in a role playing game I was forced into called life, and had no realization that I was doing this and lacked full appreciation for the depth of other people as human beings for the first quarter century and change of my life.

Accordingly, I see psychedelics as a profound tool of interpersonal growth and development, but never the kind of thing I'd take to try solving a vexing technical problem - that's a different job that takes a different tool.

PS to anyone else reading: this should not be taken as an endorsement or recommendation for anyone to attempt to procure and use psychedelics. There are serious mental health risks involved for vulnerable populations, risks of contaminated or laced products if procured from untrustworthy or disreputable sources, and more. If you are unsure of whether you're a part of certain vulnerable populations, I'd urge you to consult with a qualified, licensed therapist or mental healthcare provider to get a less-biased second opinion on whether or not you're at elevated risk, just to be sure, but remember this is just one of several risks.

>"The banana is big, but the skin is bigger."...

Most profound insights in religion are of a similar league. Example John 8:32: 'Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'

Got to admit that the banana one is more profound that any one in religion that I encountered.

> How did you handle meaning after that?

Meaning is real and very important but so is the craving for it and it's a good thing.

Like the craving for love/object of love?

I've had dreams in my teenage years about an ex loving me back and I can still remember how happy I was and a bit hurt when I woke up.

The deep realisations, euphoria and profound happiness -- these are not something the human brain can experience every day, it's in the very nature of the brain's chemistry to downregulate if you feel them too often.

Another example -- the first time I took isopropylphenidate, I was staring at this ancient PLSQL stored procedure bug and I realized SqlDevelop had the option to debug the code just like I could debug my java code. My colleagues were basically pulling at me to go to lunch but I was enthralled by how beautiful the SqlDebugger looked and felt, even in UX terms.

The same about my 1 years old daughter obsessive playing with water and children's excitement when they discover mundane(to us adults) things. To us adults they seem to be on MDMA, but it's just the nature of the brain to be so excited about new experiences that it deems "profound" because it's the only way they can learn about the world -- you have to be motivated to exercise those neural circuitry to learn about the word, otherwise you become catatonic .

Also take for example this experience I had playing Catan board game with my wife and brother in law. It had profound meaning to me :). For once, I discovered how much satisfaction a few pieces of cardboard and plastic can bring to humans. My wife and her brother were highly competitive and I played the broker between them. I would always accept their trade offers. They thought they got the better deal, but just because they gave me 2x of the stuff they didn't want I was far ahead of them in the game. Because they did not want to trade between themselves and only traded with me, it mean I would get 4x the items they could have traded directly between themselves. I would win the game and not tell them, I would just watch them compete and play along with an inner smile. I'm sure life is like this for some people, who have won at the game of life but others just don't realize it. But the very fact that the game had such deep "meaning" (the feeling) to me made me realize the deeper meanings of being together with others, that the human interaction itself has meaning, that money and a lot material possessions are utterly meaningless and we're giving them too much meaning by introducing a lot of negativity in the game of life just to give them meaning, finally that taking life in a light hearted way, helping others (as long as on your terms) and the human ethos are ALWAYS with you (in a Dune "other memory" sort of way) and those are not 0 sum games and can bring a lot of joy into the world.

Anyway, I think that "meaning" is something objectively true and real (controversial, I know), but our feelings and "aha!" is not and it should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

And if it's true for such a beautiful and positive feeling, how much more so for negative feelings?

These experiences made me more flexible, empathetic towards myself and others and more mellow in general to ideas.

A lot of rambling to say that the experience of realizing a deep realization of meaning in a dream/hallucination was utter garbage does not disprove meaning itself, but the contrary, that meaning is something very important and true to humans and we crave it deeply, we just have to find the right places to find true meaning to us, very few people can find true meaning in great mathematical ideas, but ALL of us can find it in the "mundane" and if you find it there you'll find that it won't be garbage the next day you wake up, young or old, 10000 BC or 100.000 AD.

That happened to me as well. Pretty cool effect. I also remember trying to order “human food” off my phone but couldn’t figure out what anything on the app was

Heh, yes I remember something similar with an old Nokia.

It being scary is kind of the point. Or rather, if you’re going to do LSD, you need to be in the mindset that 1) this is temporary, and you’ll feel fine tomorrow, and 2) the experience you’re about to have will be extraordinarily novel and impossible to fully describe, even after having experienced it. It’s an intense hallucinogenic, and is the most potent mind altering substance that we know of. It’s also one of the safer ones, if you’ve done your research and aren’t predisposed to a certain category of mental illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar, anxiety).

Knowing that it’s temporary is the best tether to this world that keeps me from having a bad trip, if it feels like that could happen. As others have said, an LSD trip is going to take you places you might not expect to end up. Meditation can be good preparation leading up to a trip.

LSD is one of those chemicals that gives you a glimpse at what it’s like to process the world with a completely different category of consciousness.

Nope, but as others have said - you must commit and realize that once you dose you're in for whatever it is. You must assure yourself that this is temporary and will pass. As a matter in fact our lives are much the same, nothing ever lasts forever. Just gotta roll with it.

Anyway, it's not that the brain isn't working properly it's just that the brain is working differently. That's how I see it.

It's only scary if you try to hard to hold on. Relax and float down stream... In the moment, it does not feel like your brain is not working properly. I tend to feel more clearheaded (even when confused) than I am on alcohol.

Depends on your attitude.

I consider life and reality incredibly, painfully boring.

That's why I LOVE alternate states of mind, even if they are scary.

Nothing excites me more than the prospect of feeling thing and seeing things I have not experienced before.

I am not pro LSD (I don't think I'll ever try this or similar).

But I would say sleep is similar in this regard especially dreams.

Whose to say my brain works properly to begin with? We live in a collective delusion and any time I can see outside the delusion, sign me up.

HAving had a similar experience, I have found it somewhat useful.

I've often found that my brain hasn't been working or working properly, and it's good to know that a) that happens, b) it can be transitory and c) even when it feels like it's working, I might still be fooled.

As I grow older, it's been a lot more difficult speak in absolutes.

At the same time, the contrast to observing when my brain actually -does- do something useful has also been useful and I have felt a lot better about leaning into that feeling.

This culture is insane and will gaslight the hell out of you, as will many of its constitutive members, so having some data on what it feels like to vividly hallucinate versus to have a different view on something has been very validating.

I am sure that sounds dumb, and that there are plenty of folks (especially on this social media forum) who would say that I am probably worse off for feeling like I have a better handle on "correct" and "incorrect", but hey, "enjoy the water, boys".

Yeah but they're quite similar. LSD trips just vary a lot naturally, all kinds of things can happen on them.

The 25 in LSD-25 refers to prior efforts by Hoffman to combine lysergic acid with various other organic moieties. https://archive.vn/vaKCX The first 24 are not hallucinogenic.

As I said in my earlier post, there are analogs to LSD with psychedelic effects. However they are much less potent. 2,3-dihydro is roughly 1/7th the potency of LSD. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&d...

And it is not recent. The paper linked above is from 1964.

But it is closer to absolute than you make it sound here. There are information theoretic models which are “universal” with respect to a class; that is, they are essentially as good as any in that class, for every individual case you apply - even if different cases are best described by distinct models from that class.

E.g. the KT estimator is, for each individual Bernoulli sequence, as good as the best Bernoulli model for that sequence with at most 1/2 but difference (independent of sequence length)

It is undecidable/uncomputable, and only well defined up to a constant, but you have a “universally universal” model - Kolmogorov complexity. In that sense, entropy IS an absolute.

We could be Boltzmann Brains on drugs.

Or worse.

Presumably the probability of a brain appearing as a disordered psychiatric monster is far higher than the probability of arriving as an Earth-normal tenured cosmologist.

I didn't realize they rewrite comment timestamps.

Very creative, and spiritual. At first I was making bank, almost $190k a year, but now I am homeless living in a minivan. I am free however, more free than some of the richest people I know, which I think is the best outcome.

It made me realize that most people do not like creative people because we do not reactivity prop up their paradigms.

plentiful whoas ahead x D

it’s a great trick and even some schizophrenic people can use cameras to ground themselves. I trust the computer, and it will never lie to me.

I dunno about that, everything turns into a wildly animated gif when I’m tripping

> Checking out your profile, did you already have dissociative identity disorder before finding your way to LSD?

yes. I believe the reason I first tried LSD was because another friend with DID said that LSD permanently gave them the ability to "think in parallel". unfortunately it did no such thing for me but it does do something else interesting that makes it still worthwhile. also I experienced an accidental ego death once and it was probably one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to me.

(I think ego death can only ever happen by accident because the moment you realize it's happened, that realization means it's over.)

> How do you think the two interact?

In my experience, LSD allows for a clearer identification of parts, especially in memories. That means while normally I can recall memories and feel like I was always the only one there, on LSD others can recall the same memories and realize that they were there too and had some influence on what happened at the time. I think there are also some memories where I wasn't at all and that can only be recalled while on LSD.

LSD I think also helps with switching and like "identity" of parts. It's easier for them to be completely themselves, I think. Less blurry/fusion/unknown/etc. stuff

A sitter isn't going to save you from a lifetime of HPPD or visual snow.

During your "reboot," which parts of you did you decide to let go of / "change"?

I agree that the intensity / experience was enough to only try a few times (3x myself).

Salvia is the closest thing to witchcraft I have experienced.

After a few incredibly strange experiences, the last time I smoked it the trip came on then it told me "don't ever come back here" and that was it. The whole trip was like 30 seconds. That was almost 30 years ago.

A bad LSD or mushroom trip is scary in a much different way. I was pretty fearless when younger with these things but never wanted to see what that salvia demon thing would do if I went back.

Anything amanita related never sounded much fun to me.

I've never tried Muscimol (don't even know what is), but psilocibin is the only entheogen I'd recommend anybody experience more than just once / casually.

Cannabis is a daily part of my life, for two decades. In the same way I'm "trying to drink less coffee," I'm trying to vape less, too... but everybody should try LSD and/or DMT at least once in their lifetime (but not before becoming comfortable with psilocibin).

I don't know much about Ketamine. I thought it was just what they use to knock you out for surgery.

Agree - my experience with 2C-B was that it was almost entirely visual (tracers and such), with a very subtle mood lift, akin to very weak MDMA.

2C-E on the other hand sent me to some extremely trippy places. 2C-P is a fascinating one to read about too (though I've never tried it.)

I only ever vaporised 2C-B. usually I would get a full intense trip that lasts about 30 minutes and then very little after effects. A hit was also about $10 at the time (decades ago). Quality was good considering I was at one the top chemical engineering schools in the world.

That wasn't very helpful...

That's the one.

You can get all kinds of (very questionable) highs from tons of OTC drugs: diphenhydramine (benadryl/zzzquil), dextromethorphan (Robitussin), doxylamine (NyQuil)...

It's one of the few I've not tried. Personally I believe all the psychoactive plants are tools with distinct purposes (to be prescribed if you will) - salvia is the one that I'm not sure what it should be used for, I guess it's a good tool to show very literally that everything is everything, that seems to be what it basically does?