"It’s still not clear why such effects can have more profound long-term effects on the brain than our nightly dreams."
maybe because it's not really like dreaming at all?
calling a psychedelic trip a "waking dream" really undermines the way your consciousness is altered during a trip. as a matter of fact, your consciousness is one of the few things that seems consistent through the real world and dream world.
calling it a "waking dream" also kind of undermines how insane dreaming actually is and how little we know about it.
Agreed. I've yet to have ego death, or the overwhelming feeling of solipsism when sleeping. The only time I've had even a remotely similar experience when sleeping was the time I had a fever that caused me to hallucinate. That's once in my life, you know of entering a dream state every day of my existence.
I've also yet to have a dream that can overwhelmingly shift my perspective and motivation. An LSD trip made me "take the risk" and move continent with no support to be with my girlfriend. I say "take the risk", because I can just walk into any police station and get my ass deported and land right back at my parents house. Everyone thought I was crazy, but LSD made me see the real probability of risk in that it was negligible.
Mushrooms made me motivated to lose weight. I remember standing in my bathroom naked looking at myself and I came to the conclusion I wanted to be in shape for my son.
Another mushroom trip made me reevaluate risk and see that I have to start my own business. In fact, I just registered a business name and got insurance so I can get licensed.
I like the way calling it a "waking dream" hints that, during a trip, the subconscious (whatever it is concretely) expands its connection with the conscious mind.
The fact that lucid dreaming is a way to explore your mind ("psychonaut" is a name that both psychedelic users and lucid dreamers use) is more evidence of that, for me.
good point. i'm just hesitant to throw lucid dreaming, meditation, and LSD into the same bucket. it's like comparing a hammer to a paintbrush to a belt sander.
i mean, they may very well all belong in exactly the same bucket. i am just hesitant to jump to that conclusion.
on what basis do you base the assumption that the subconscious mind is something "concretely" ? Isn't it's non-concreteness kind of the point of calling it the subconscious ?
Sleep itself is insane. At least in dreams you're concious more or less, but losing conciousness every night? We'd increase the human lifespan by 50% if we could only eliminate this helpless dependency we have.
I am looking forward to a time where the existance of these psychoactive drugs becomes more widely accepted for scientific studies and medical treatment without any of the current demonisation. There seems to be too much to learn about the function of the self that it almost seems irresponsible to wash this aside and criminalise it with a last centuries mindset.
Sam Harris, whose PhD is in neuroscience, wrote a piece on drugs that elegantly lays out the potential benefits and pitfalls that come with the use of hallucinogens, and how there may be other routes, e.g. meditation, to similar experiences. http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/drugs-and-the-meaning-of-...
Great article! I'm already a huge fan of Sam Harris, but I hadn't read this one yet.
That being said though - I disagree with the notion that meditation can lead to similar experiences. Meditation can certainly create very powerful and "spiritual" experiences, but only for people who are both extremely skilled meditators (which is not realistic to expect even 1% of the users of psychedelics to accomplish) and only while meditating (with psychedelics you can see/hear/taste/feel/experience the environment around you, not just the environment of your mind like with meditation).
Psychedelics should certainly be handled with extreme care (yet there's the paradox that being overly anxious/nervous about the experience may cause a bad experience), no doubt about it.
One of the cardinal rules of psychedelic use is to never do it alone though, his near-death experience in Nepal was due to breaking that rule. Being together with someone else isn't a guarantee of not having a bad trip/experience, but it's a good way to prevent putting yourself in dangerous situations like he did.
"Be Here Now" is an interesting read because it starts out with the LSD experimentations in Boston and ends up with a guru in India. There are scenes regarding the effect (or rather no effect) the LSD has on the guru...
As far as the "only while you're meditating" thing, zen meditation is interesting because (based on my limited understanding) zen is really about taking the practice of your meditation and extending that "mindfulness" into the rest of your life. "Zen Mind Beginners Mind" is particularly good if you're interested. Zazen is one form where you are eyes-open.
With meditation, the failure mode (if you're not ready for higher levels of conscious experience) is... non-experience. It can be frustrating to sit for half an hour and experience nothing (we've all been there) but it won't put you in a mental hospital.
With psychedelics, the failure modes are a lot worse.
I feel like psychedelics are karmic time-accelerators, by a factor of about 100-1000. The good news is that, in a way, this means that you can have a month's worth of experience in a few hours. The negative is that, if there's something negative about to ripen in the next six months, a trip can have you encountering it immediately and deprive you of the time to react to it and get the help, or make the changes, that you need.
Also, there's a perception that "meditation" is closed-eye sitting, and that you don't get to experience the external world while doing it. That's not entirely true. There are walking meditations, for just one example, and one of the goals of many meditative practices is to bring that meditative mind into your daily life. That's easier said than done; it's quite difficult, to tell the truth, and probably not desirable, for average working people, to bring the meditative mind into all aspects of daily life.
All that said, these drugs shouldn't be illegal (even for personal use, what a person wants to do with his or her own body isn't the state's business) and they definitely deserve more research. I think they have a lot of potential and deserve further study, and that the stigma/illegality do more harm (in terms of supply problems, set-and-setting issues) than good.
Thanks for the reply. I actually wasn't aware that there are forms of meditation where you experience the world around you and not just close your eyes, I'll definitely look into that.
Meditation is certainly the safer and less potent choice, nobody disagrees with that. Yet, I feel that the dangers of psychedelics are overstated, as long as you're careful and smart. Most of the bad experiences seem to come from a negative set/setting, not following the cardinal rules and too high of a dose. By starting with a small dose and gradually slowly increasing the dose for each trip you'll discover what your optimal dosage is in a gentle way with less risk of having a negative experience.
Research seems to back that up:
"One study found the most desirable results may come from starting with very low doses first, and trying slightly higher doses over months. The researchers explain the peak experiences occur at quantities only slightly lower than a sort of anxiety threshold. Although risks of experiencing fear and anxiety increased somewhat consistently along with dosage and overall quality of experience, at dosages exceeding the individual's threshold, there was suddenly greater increases in anxiety than before. In other words, after finding the optimum dose, returns diminish for using more (since risks of anxiety now increase at a greater rate)."
In addition to sit down meditation, in my world view any activity you are fully involved in is meditative. That means that champion golfer, footballer, cricketer, coder, designer who are in the zone are meditating.
I guess slowing down an activity and observing it as in tai chi is similarly meditative.
That in essence is the point behind "Living in the Now" IMO.
These are easy to state but hard to practice and hence the allure of LSD's IMO
Yes, i think the scientific and medical investigations of these substances could take part in a sociostructural change that may allow these drugs to be accessible for responsible personal usage. That also could imply a paradigmshift towards a better general education and further cultural development which may help to elevate us beyond the puerile behaviour of yesterdays.
There is a ton of psychoactive drugs proscribed every year, so I am not really sure what your suggesting?
People also use alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine vary frequently.
If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem to be that medically useful. There where a few appetite suppressants which where discontinued and Nitrous oxide still sees some use but it's risky.
> If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem to be medically useful.
That's not true at all. "Hallucinogens" is a group of drugs so wide that it already includes many drugs already used in conventional medicine. Just go through the many drugs on this list[1] of hallucinogens, you'll quickly find references to potential medical benefits.
Just "potential benefits" though, since there hasn't been nearly enough research done on most of them yet. A lot of them haven't been scientifically studied at all, the basic work Shulgin did is the only things we know about them.
The most common hallucinogens (mushrooms, LSD, MDMA) were considered as very promising by many in the field until research of the potential benefits of them essentially was banned for decades due to the drug war, but that has begun to change now. [2][3][4]
Recent research indicate that certain hallucinogens may be very useful in treating a variety of medical issues - like depression, anxiety, alcoholism, cluster headaches, PTSD, etc etc. [5][6]
There have been ongoing studies as recently as 2010. The issue is Hallucinations are considered a significant side effect, so you need a vary large benefit to over come it or a low enough dose people don't notice.
PS: You just linked several recent studies which hardly supports the 'completely suppressed' due to drug war argument.
A: Hallucinations are not always that common. You can have intense experiences without actual visual hallucinations.
B: While they made me a side effect, it seems the benefits come from having experiences, not as ongoing medication like SSRIs. That is, people can have a deep experience, possibly have audio and/or visual hallucinations, then recover for a day and have a significantly different outlook on life.
I should have clarified, and have done so now, that I meant that research was stopped for a long time. Since the early '00s research has finally begun again:
> The issue is Hallucinations are considered a significant side effect, so you need a vary large benefit to over come it or a low enough dose people don't notice.
Considered by whom? The "cost"/benefit balance is entirely a matter of opinion, and in my opinion the choice should be left to the sufficiently educated patient. If there are compelling reasons why the patient shouldn't be making that choice, I'd be interested to learn them.
You are so ill-informed. Read the book "DMT", from one if the top psychedelic researchers, who states that not only are psychedelics understudied, that much of the research that's been done in the past is not easily accessible. He calls it one of the biggest losses of psychotherapy research
> If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem to be that medically useful.
LSD and Mushrooms can be an effective treatment for cluster headaches (a debilitating disease which is said to be "The most painful medical condition known to science").
make me deeply regret the current political/conceptual barriers to research on psychotropic compounds. I think we're missing opportunities to help quite a lot of people.
Sorry to hear that. AFAIK it's legal in most places to buy spores and grow your own, and dosage is relatively easy to control. Maybe time for a mycoculture project?
It's legal in the US (in all but three states I believe), because the spores do not contain psylocin/psylocybin. Once you start to grow them though, you could be charged with possession of a controlled substance.
Don't let that stop you though GP! It's a fun project and very satisfying to see your mushrooms finally sprouting up after a month or two of work. The risk of getting caught is low, and even if you somehow did, it would probably still be worth the penalty if they have a positive effect on your wife's headaches!
> If you mean Hallucinogens, they have been studied extensively and don't seem to be medically useful.
Eh? Studied extensively? Last time I checked they're all schedule I and haven't really been studied since the 70s. On top of that, in the few recent studies that have focused on them, hallucinogens do seem to be medically useful. MDMA for PTSD, psilocybin for terminally ill patients, etc.
MDMA's most infamous use that I am aware of, and which you didn't mention, is for the temporary but complete relief of the symptoms of Parkinsons. In addition I'm sure it would also be ideal for fostering empathy and discussion to come to terms with the imminent loss of terminally ill loved ones. I believe the Swiss have looked in to it for marriage counseling.
Psilocybin is the most effective treatment for cluster headaches, and is known to be effective at treating depression as well. LSD has been shown to have significant potential for curing alcoholism.
Yeah the caption is "a man displays dried mushrooms", as if that had anything to do with anything. Their file-photo folks really mailed it in on this one.
For what it's worth, this article was written by a mycologist, not a drug expert. That's why some of the explanations sound a little off. I also don't know anyone who would describe psilocybin as being like a waking dream.
I've taken them a few times, and all have been positive experiences that let you explore existence. I remember at the time I was reading Flow the psychology of experience. And while I was under the influence at work, I started thinking about how that book applied to what I was doing, and was seeing it happen all around me ( auto assembly), no loss in motor skills because my skill level of that job was higher than the amount of thought actually needed, so my unused thought energy seperated from my actions, I started looking at things differently, mainly myself and that point of response to stimuli for action or whatever. The point where if you notice it can lead you towards or away certain goals with some sort of common thread.
words cant explain, because it will help each individual upgrade their mental operating system differently.
there was a two week span where I took a small dosage each day, and i felt better than any anti anxiety or anti depressant I've taken previously. Have never taken another "mental" rx medication since, that as about 4 years ago. marijuana excluded ca-legal
I often hear that these types of drugs can change the way you see the world. As someone who has never taken a psychedelic I wonder if my highly scientific/atheist view of the world will shift after taking a shroom? Can anyone relate?
The first time I took mushrooms (over 20 years ago) I was walking home when they kicked in at 2 am on a winter night. Looking around me, I saw the snow, trees, grass, buildings very differently than normal; they were all exactly alike. When looking at grass, it looked, literally, like the same texture pasted all over the field. Same for snow, trees, houses. So I sat down with my friend and started talking how the world must be built up of a much lower resolution substance than we think and our minds add randomness to make it seem as if it's more diverse. Shrooms are great in that you remember everything of the trip and it is like you are awake and dreaming; I apparently am more susceptible to it than others; I actually see things which are not there which is more common with LSD. My friends usually saw only some vibrations on the wall and felt funny (and after that paranoid) while I was seeing the armada falling from the sky while hearing orchestra's play. I would recommend anyone at least trying a few times; it changes things long term, but like others said, I don't think you'll move to religious or something like that; if you're scientific, it is more likely to explain things to totally eradicate that last sliver of paranormal stuff in the world. As in; then you actually know what they ate before they saw the holy spirit descend.
I have a scientific + atheistic view of the world, and when I took psilocybes, those views grew stronger and more complex. I do not believe you will have a revelation that makes you believe in God. To the contrary, you'll explore things you think about deeper.
I can't speak for mushrooms, but from my experiences with LSD I'd say, "it's complicated." Psychedelics don't turn you into a different person, however they do remove the filters and barriers we've built up in our heads (to what extent depends on the dosage). If, on some level, you aren't sure about your world view it will probably be reassessed.
I, for example, was raised Mormon, but it was never all that convincing to me. By the time I decided that I wanted to start experimenting with psychedelics I had already stopped participating in the religion, though I had my doubts that this was the correct course of action. Taking LSD, and other psychedelics, helped me resolve those conflicts.
The idea that psychedelics tend to put into your head is that everything is connected, everything is one. That concept broke down my loosely held notion that God was some kind of supreme alien who liked telling us what to do, and led me to take on a rather Eastern world view that the universe is at once one thing, nothing, and infinite.
I agree with Carl Sagan on this one. It is more likely that you will attribute any awe or grandeur to something else than a religious construct. This is also why when surveyed a 'religious or spiritual event' is used rather loosely.
> I wonder if my highly scientific/atheist view of the world
As someone with a highly scientific/religious view of the world, I too wonder how I would be affected. Curiosity isn't enough to make me try them though.
If you are interested in the subject I'd reccommend reading some Carlos Castaneda. It takes an anthropological view of the issues and conveys his psychedelic experiences in reasonable detail. If you find it to be a bunch of bullshit, then you'll be ahead in the game. If it confirms your warm feelings then at least you will engage the risks better informed.
I've definitely shifted a little towards pantheism since the first time I took LSD. The thing is though, my views didn't really change much, it's more that I gained a greater sense of respect for the universe.
new here and somehow I separated this comment from my comment he responded to, thought the upvote was like a thanks button. But I think it was a rhetorical question, because it was true.
That was my interpretation, and the article talks about ego death. When one removes ego, it mimics "zen mind, beginner's mind" where you are more open to more ideas. In theory.
Absolutely not for a first time, you're right. For me though, as I became more comfortable with the altered psychedelic state of mind, being around people became much easier. I wouldn't want to be trapped at a party, but I've stopped in at them for 30-40 minutes, had fun, and then left to move onto the next thing.
The important part for me is to have options, whether that's a ride back home, a nearby park, someone to take a walk, an Ipod and some headphones, etc.
Almost positive that movie is based on John C. Lilly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Lilly) If you're remotely interested, I highly recommend reading his books. 'Programming the Human Biocomputer' and 'The Scientist' were great.
I don't even think that there is such a thing. A dream is what you think just happened when you wake up with your brain in an inconsistent state, and it rationalizes how it arrived there. People's subjective experience of their own dreams changes based on cultural expectations:
edit: "In the 1950s, dream researchers commonly thought that dreams were predominantly a black and white phenomenon, although both earlier and later treatments of dreaming assume or assert that dreams have color. The first half of the twentieth century saw the rise of black and white film media, and it is likely that the emergence of the view that dreams are black and white was connected to this change in film technology. If our opinions about basic features of our dreams can change with changes in technology, it seems to follow that our knowledge of the experience of dreaming is much less secure than we might at first have thought it to be."
There's an odd mix of people in possession of downvote powers, and not all of them are particularly discerning in their use of the downvote button. I think a lot of people past the 500 point mark got their because of one lucky submission (or a small handful of decent picks), and not necessarily because of the quality of their character.
Anyway, I think, at a cursory glance, people (or maybe just one narrow-minded person) are assuming that you intend to dismiss the significance of the interpretation of dreams.
I think your concept is pretty insightful though. Considering the distortion of time we experience during sleep, where dreams can seem to span decades, or seconds, yet transpire within hours or fractions of an hour, that aspect holds up well with the premise that we reconstruct the context of the dream based on the state we're confronted with when awakening.
maybe because it's not really like dreaming at all?
calling a psychedelic trip a "waking dream" really undermines the way your consciousness is altered during a trip. as a matter of fact, your consciousness is one of the few things that seems consistent through the real world and dream world.
calling it a "waking dream" also kind of undermines how insane dreaming actually is and how little we know about it.