I firmly believe the same. Every person (without known psychological conditions) should have a psychedelic experience at least once within their lifetime, ideally during the formative years of early adulthood.

These are tools to investigate what it means to be a consciousness here on Earth. They allow people that otherwise may not (I am a staunch Atheist, for example) to experience the ineffable. That changes you, and in my experience, usually for the better. It shows you that you are just a tiny part of the system, and that you have this rare and special gift of existing as a conscious being, able to investigate your own mind and perceptions of reality. It shows you that there is no "outside" yourself.

I do think that most people would do better to try psilocybin, as it has a more "earthy" connected-ness feel to it than LSD ever did for me. To me, LSD puts you into the place of an alien experience this planet for the first time, and psilocybin makes you feel at home in your place in the world. LSD is much more cerebral, while psilocybin is more about the connected-ness.

Either are recommended for use at Disneyland, if you want to get the full experience of just how weird and wonderful this reality is. ;)

edit:

Try psilocybin _first_, then LSD if you enjoyed that.

Psilocybin doesn't last nearly as long as an LSD experience, which can be easier in my experience than just jumping straight into the deep end of the pool.

It's a moving metaphor but of course cells within us have the same genome whereas different humans have different genomes. So it's hard to consider them part of one living system, unless one accepts the Gaia Hypothesis.

The sense of oneness or of a divine essence permeating the whole of physical reality is caused by the fact that we don't perceive external entities directly. Rather we each of us perceive our own unified model of reality comprised of tokens for all entities including tokens representing external physical objects. And we may eventually become aware of this, giving rise to that sense. For some people this happens with the assistance of a hallucinogen which I think distorts the model enough for it to become noticeable as a model. Others have spontaneous spiritual experiences.

None of which is to say that life isn't precious, or that consciousness is not a wonderful thing.

Except recent studies have found that even our own cells often have different DNA from each other (not just due to mutation), and that what makes us function is a careful dance of countless microbes.

You couldn't live without many other organisms both in you and around you.

So the divine unity that the mystics, poets and psychonauts speak of cannot derive from nature per se, as many people believe. In my comment I tried to give an alternate explanation.

That said, despite my fondness for these experiences, I do personally know 2 people who experienced prolonged (1-2 weeks) psychotic episodes after taking LSD. So there is more risk associated than many believe or want to accept. I haven't heard of this happening with mushrooms.

That said, don't accept third hand reports of psychedelic experiences. If you want to read first hand accounts, I recommend browsing the trip reports at https://www.erowid.org/.

Or better yet, just give it a try and see for yourself. :)

I guess I stated it in the way I did because, most enthusiasts start thinking that LSD is "the answer" or "the cure" etc etc.. and get super 'bout it and consequently tend to reject the idea of any real negative consequences, because the experience really is truly amazing and even the day after can be even more amazing, in stark contrast of the 'hangover'.

So I just wanted to mention in spite of this, weird things do happen in very rare cases, and this could even be due to the fact that it's illegal and thus not manufactured with consistent/optimum purity.

Both of my friends were quite experienced with dozens of enjoyable trips under their belt.

Appeals to reason don't force us to bow to economic imperatives. Wanting to preserve nature for the joy it brings us is perfectly rational and reasonable.