Thanks! That sounds fascinating, if scary. Did any of these experiences affect your beliefs and actions while sober? I’ve heard of people having life-changing revelations on LSD, for example, although I’d be skeptical of the accuracy of any beliefs suddenly revealed to people while tripping.
I can easily imagine more subtle and potentially helpful behavioral changes, though.
I have had mild but long-lasting effects from revelations under the influence of MDMA and 2C-E. The revelations were personal, not about the nature of reality. I would say that they could generally be described as resulting from a reduced avoidance of thinking about things that I already had plenty of information on, and had basically positive results. Both took some time to integrate afterwards, and the 2C-E trip was at times a somewhat unpleasant look at myself. The MDMA trip was unambiguously pleasant at the time, even considering that I spent time thinking about some fairly unpleasant stuff.
That was something I failed to get across in my reply, I guess. I feel like I owe a part of my mental composition of today to those experiences, I mean, imagining infinity is not the same as experiencing infinity, and even though it was internally generated, the memories and impressions and rewired synapses are very real. I was fully aware when the effects wore off that it was not “revealed knowledge”, but it exposed me to viewpoints and thoughts that I might not have otherwise had access to. My description of the events was my flow of thoughts during the events, not my “usual” philosophy. On a side note, as a child I had the unfortunate combination of truth-seeking and logic, and a strong neurological tendency toward magical thinking. Perhaps my familiarity with walking the line between Spock and Q allowed me the ability to interpret the otherworldly impressions with quiet detachment, while simultaneously benefiting from the sense of wonder they conveyed.
LSD is a source of metaphysical spectacle and entertainment, not of edification. It will give you a lot to think about, but it’s not a source of answers, and I mildly recommend against it if you value intellectual achievement.
I’ve understood the claims of LSD therapy to be mostly about fixing psychological hang-ups, like the recent research claim that it helps with alcoholism. This is mostly a separate direction from both entertainment and intellectual achievement. Of course psychological well-being can indirectly lead to more intellectual achievement, and an altered psychological outlook can change the set of hypotheses you will entertain as the starting point for intellectual work. No idea whether the post-LSD hypothesis pool will necessarily be better than the pre-LSD one. If it’s larger, then it might help discover some unlikely ideas that actually do pan out when you take the time to think through them off-LSD.
Incidentally, there are some interesting anecdotes that deep meditative states achieved by long-term meditators resemble the states you end up on LSD. At least MCTB alludes to this.
Thanks! That sounds fascinating, if scary. Did any of these experiences affect your beliefs and actions while sober? I’ve heard of people having life-changing revelations on LSD, for example, although I’d be skeptical of the accuracy of any beliefs suddenly revealed to people while tripping.
I can easily imagine more subtle and potentially helpful behavioral changes, though.
I have had mild but long-lasting effects from revelations under the influence of MDMA and 2C-E. The revelations were personal, not about the nature of reality. I would say that they could generally be described as resulting from a reduced avoidance of thinking about things that I already had plenty of information on, and had basically positive results. Both took some time to integrate afterwards, and the 2C-E trip was at times a somewhat unpleasant look at myself. The MDMA trip was unambiguously pleasant at the time, even considering that I spent time thinking about some fairly unpleasant stuff.
That was something I failed to get across in my reply, I guess. I feel like I owe a part of my mental composition of today to those experiences, I mean, imagining infinity is not the same as experiencing infinity, and even though it was internally generated, the memories and impressions and rewired synapses are very real. I was fully aware when the effects wore off that it was not “revealed knowledge”, but it exposed me to viewpoints and thoughts that I might not have otherwise had access to. My description of the events was my flow of thoughts during the events, not my “usual” philosophy. On a side note, as a child I had the unfortunate combination of truth-seeking and logic, and a strong neurological tendency toward magical thinking. Perhaps my familiarity with walking the line between Spock and Q allowed me the ability to interpret the otherworldly impressions with quiet detachment, while simultaneously benefiting from the sense of wonder they conveyed.
LSD is a source of metaphysical spectacle and entertainment, not of edification. It will give you a lot to think about, but it’s not a source of answers, and I mildly recommend against it if you value intellectual achievement.
I’ve understood the claims of LSD therapy to be mostly about fixing psychological hang-ups, like the recent research claim that it helps with alcoholism. This is mostly a separate direction from both entertainment and intellectual achievement. Of course psychological well-being can indirectly lead to more intellectual achievement, and an altered psychological outlook can change the set of hypotheses you will entertain as the starting point for intellectual work. No idea whether the post-LSD hypothesis pool will necessarily be better than the pre-LSD one. If it’s larger, then it might help discover some unlikely ideas that actually do pan out when you take the time to think through them off-LSD.
Incidentally, there are some interesting anecdotes that deep meditative states achieved by long-term meditators resemble the states you end up on LSD. At least MCTB alludes to this.