He started posting tons of strange, nonsensical pseudo-spiritual ramblings on facebook and after a few years of this, it became clear he wasn't even the same person anymore - the drugs permanently changed him.

To be fair I don't know if he was using other drugs in conjunction with psychedelics but my (possibly ignorant) gut feeling is to be wary of implications of harmlessness when it comes to any drug.

He was on every kind of excellence list at uni, on 3 different merit scholarships (which all unfortunately went directly to the uni, not personally to him).

That weekend was in the middle of the semester; he basically quit that week, but still came in to campus to complete his TA duties which are hard to drop mid semester; then went on an around-the-world trip for a year. I met him once randomly on the street afterwards, and he said he was happier than ever before, with no intention of going back to his studies or any other aspect of his former life.

I had told this around the time he came back from his trip to two of my friends, neither of whom knew that guy.

One’s response was “wow, that weekend saved him from decades of misery”.

The other’s response was “wow, that weekend had ruined him forever”.

20 years later, I still don’t have a firm opinion myself.

The other’s response was “wow, that weekend had ruined him forever”.

The truth is in the eye of the beholder, of course. "Save" and "ruin" is such strong language though. However, I'm willing to bet this guy is better off not worrying about others think, and maybe, by extension, you're better off for not judging.

After some amount of different hallucinogens he became lastingly weird. He would start saying things about "divine geometry" and "seeing yellow auras" when he closed his eyes and became a big believer in all sorts of supernatural (e.g. horoscopes)

He did come back to something not too far from normalcy maybe 8 years later, last time I heard from him.

Normality is a broad but pretty well-researched subject and i think it's safe to say, belief in horoscopes and other unsubstantiated supernatural phenomena ain't it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normality_(behavior)

In that way, "normality" is flexible: if you change your behavior in a consistent way, your new behavior is normal by that definition. You didn't become "abnormal" you simply redefined your normal.

Now the article goes on to mention that you could also define this relative to a larger population, etc, which supports your point - but the very fact the headline definitely doesn't align with your claim shows that this is not as straightforward as you make it out to be.

But I for one feel everybody around me finds "weirdness" unbecoming. I find it to be an inescapable reality that people will care about you less and not want to get you for any manner of tiny deviation (e.g. as an extreme example, just if you said "beep" outloud every 10 minutes this would be reason enough for I think half of the population or more to not want to associate with you)

In my friends case though, I think what scared me the most was he became very unclear/metaphorical in speaking about even basic topics and didn't seem to realize how much trouble people had understanding him.

I want to demystify this a bit. I don't think it's as unusual as you suggest.

I assume you haven't had any substances lately. What do you see when you close your eyes? If you're like I've always been, you see floaters, a few spots of light here and there, maybe a faint "ghost" of the image your eye had seconds before, especially if it was bright. I first noticed that in childhood. In childhood I also noticed that in low light, like in my parents' car in the evening, I would see this light occasionally. I read in some places that this is a possible explanation for when kids complain about seeing monsters in the closet, or similar. As I got older I noticed this sort of thing less.

Later I started getting migraines, though, and when I get those symptoms I also see light that isn't there. Sometimes when I have a headache I can see it come in waves when I close my eyes.

Later still, I got a little into meditation, and I noticed I could make those perceptions come about by manipulating my breathing.

And finally, I did a low dose of psilocybin exactly one time in my life. I saw colors when closing my eyes. It was pretty much the same as all those experiences above, only a little more intense.

But you know, we also see faces in clouds. Sometimes we think we spot recognizable objects, then look closer and longer, and they're not there. Our brains are taking shortcuts based on limited data all the time, without drugs. What the drug does, in my layperson's understanding, is make your brain very eager to make these connections. Just as you might see a face in a random, noisy pattern when you're not looking closely, your brain is eager to interpret whatever visual data it gets and run with it. When your brain is deprived of sensory input, such as in darkness or with eyes closed, seemingly it can do this more.

I would say about your friend, don't rush to judge them for describing a particular wrinkle of how his brain works. Perhaps they got a little too into talking and thinking about it, or came to the wrong conclusion. But the experience itself is not that remarkable, and happens to sound-minded people all the time.

I would recommend psychedelics, but like anything, it depends on the person. There are dangers, but those dangers can be controlled quite well. At the population level, it is safer than coffee. At the individual level, it varies, just like anything else.

I will note that after taking ~110 μg of LSD-25 on several occasions, my overall cognition improved dramatically.

I have eye floaters and I can live just fine with them jumping around, still doesn't change the fact they are annoying and if I could get rid of them I would; if they were caused by something I did and I could change that, I would.

I'm sure most people with HPPD, if given the choice, would never have done psychedelics in the first place; HPPD is why I stayed away from psychedelics.

My understanding is that many spiritual traditions have historically viewed psychedelics as ego’s way of “grasping” for enlightenment, for many before they are prepared for what they may experience.

A “bad trip” can leave someone in a state of confusion that they aren’t quite prepared to deal with.

Here's an interesting post about it maybe being due to extremely high "openness" caused by psychs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/28/why-were-early-psyched...

I suspect this is much more common than anyone realizes: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/06/06/hppd-and-the-specter-o...

I meant lethal overdose, like heroin. I certainly I know some people who take too many drugs. Personally I don’t feel like I have to do any psychedelics ever again, but maybe I will, I don’t know. They are not chemically addictive anyway.

And your high school friend taking them at such a young age?! Maybe that’s why, I don’t know. Maybe he’s mentally ill anyway? Maybe it was the drugs? Maybe it was other drugs? That’s why I would like to see more controlled studies from reputable places like John Hopkins. The data looks relatively promising so far, but more needs to be done I think.

I don’t think his friend is mentally ill but he reminds me of someone like Eckhart Tolle.

Anyways, I had a good experience, you know some people who, from your perspective, have not. That's why we need studies.

It is possible the drugs permanently changed this person. It is also possible the drugs merely accelerated what would have happened regardless.

For most people, psychedelics are indeed pretty harmless.

This kind of thinking scans to me like pointing at the severity of plane crashes as a reason not to fly, while poo-poohing their infrequency.

I have, for about a decade now, worked with a number of groups who ritually consume some of the most powerful psychedelics on the planet. I have journeyed with hundreds of different people, and seen truly adverse reactions, where it was more than just a bad trip and the person needed medical attention, all of once.

EDIT: Yes, absolutely, there are risks, but in my experience, they can almost all be mitigated with a little honesty and self-awareness. Maybe don't play with these things by yourself if you have a family history of some kinds of mental illness. Maybe don't play with them at all if you're on certain medications, or have certain, other mental health concerns.

Like schizophrenia. Yes, let's blame "drugs" for what happens when people whose brains are already wired to believe their own, demonstrably false narratives, take them.

I replied to you because your mention of Syd Barrett was the best place to hang my "don't extrapolate from your cousin's brother's nephew's uncle's former roomate's anecdata" point, without coming across that dismissively, because it gave me the clearest opening to talk about occult mental health concerns and such.

Of course you can overdose on them. Even a sub-threshold dose of psilocin can kill many rabbits. Some brains just can't handle the alterations in perception these agents induce. I still fail to see how that's the agent's fault, and not the person who put it in themselves, especially if they're being cavalier, or showing off, or mixing things they aren't prepared to handle.

I can't go into the details of my friend requiring medical attention without violating confidences, but I can say their own behavior and attitude towards the experience beforehand were, let's call it "materially contributory" to their experience during and after.

EDIT: Phrasing.

Even after only doing it once years ago, I still see strange waves sometimes when I see ripples in water or the wake from boats. At the end of it, I was on the beach staring at the waves and the rippled the same way. I never used to see this in water before that.

Also overdose is too strong a word, and has a different connotation here than elsewhere. One can take 100 micrograms and have a wonderful experience, or one can take 100 micrograms and see the devil and never be the same. The mind is the difference maker, not the quantity of the drug.

People have taken extremely large doses and not perished (one story of people mistakenly snorting crystals thinking it was cocaine comes to mind).

Personally, I liked acid, it was far more pleasant than any other hallucinogen i've done and has the added bonus of not making you feel sick(if it's pure).

Schizophrenia typically starts manifesting in people in their teens and early twenties. It is not uncommon for people who are feeling that things are not quite right to experiment with drugs as a way to self medicate.

It appears that stressful situations can be the triggers for this, such as: Moving away from home for the first time, personal relationship issues, or experimenting with psychedelics.

It's not clear to me that the arrow of causality necessarily points the direction that you think it does.

Dang.

Perhaps it is possible to die from an overdose of psychedelics, I stand corrected. However, it seems like you can technically overdose from anything after a certain amount. You can technically die from overdosing on potassium if you eat something like 1000 bananas in a day. What I meant is that you can't overdose, just like you can't from weed (even though, I'm sure, if you smoke 1000000 blunts you would). What I mean is that you're no way near something like heroin where the difference between death and bliss isn't much at all. You'd have to be pretty insane to die from overdosing on psychedelics.

As for your friend, from what I’ve learned on psychedelics, it can give people a “religious experience”, for a lack of a better term. It seems that’s what happened to him. However, how much weight one should give those experiences is debatable. If one is going to believe in those positive experiences, shouldn’t one also believe in the negative ones?

I mean, is anyone really the same person after a few years? Especially someone you knew in high school?

He's still very intelligent, but all of his mental resources are wasted on fighting his illness so to speak. To some it might seem like he ruined his brain with drugs but I sincerely doubt the drugs did much damage at all.

The only guarantee is that your ability to change increases due to increased neuroplasticity. Whether the change is good or bad is ultimately up to you, which is why I think if these drugs were to be legalized that the intake should happen in conjunction with in-person therapy in a controlled environment and not at all something you'd just pickup at a pharmacy and take on your own like anti-depressants are today.

See, it worked!

Not so fast. I had a bad LSD (and some marijuana) trip once and had flashbacks for 2 months. I would be going around my day and suddenly reality turned into a videogame or an evil simulation.

That was like 3 years ago, it has all passed now, never had flashbacks again and I'm glad I had that bad trip, because it showed me reality in a way that I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise. But maybe if I had had a higher dose, or had been in a worse place in my life, I would have gone completely mad.

Not saying that's what happened to you, or anything like it, but the general wisdom in the psychonaut world is "don't mix things unless you know what you're doing".

EDIT: Phrasing

While it sounds like it must have been a nightmarish experience, what's remarkable is that my friend doesn't regret it at all. As he worked out what was going on in his mind, he discovered that he had to force himself to remain calm in order to maintain a continuity of consciousness. Every time his focus slipped, he'd black out again - so he spent that entire experience focusing on the physical sensations of anxiety, separating those perceptions from his understanding of reality, and directing his consciousness away from worry and toward calm. After it was all over, he says he came away with a much, much improved ability to maintain awareness of his anxiety and to choose how to respond to it appropriately, instead of just freaking out and reacting.

I think that this is one of the big values of psychedelic experience: by inducing intense, unfamiliar states of mind, we can gain perspective on the inner operation of our cognition, and learn to distinguish between the sensations we experience and the physical realities they respond to. Over time, by bashing your consciousness to and fro in a variety of directions, you can gain more and more insight into its operation, which can help you increase your conscious control over your internal experience and therefore improve your life.

Yes, this. I've found, though, that the intensity can often be dialed back significantly, while still achieving comparable, certainly more comfortable, and sometimes even better effects.

I think there's absolutely a time and a place for nuking one's ego psychedelically, but it's broadly better to chip at it — if, to torture the metaphor a bit, with a plasma cutter instead of a chisel...

Each patient would have series of LSD sessions in a regulated environment (usually in a room with an interior that feels secure and comfortable, a psychoanalyst guiding the session included). First sessions were used to test an individual high dose threshold. Once the high dose for a patient was established they would stick to it. According to the book, 'bad' or traumatic LSD experiences are mostly related to the 2nd (BPM II: Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit) and 3rd (BPM III: The Death-Rebirth Struggle), reliving of birth- and prenatal traumas that are suppressed. It takes usually several high dose sessions with a psychoanalytic integration work afterwards in order to 'resolve' traumas. Once they are resolved they don't resurface and the person generally can lead happier life.

Regarding 'bad trips' with lasting consequences in the aftermath: the author mentions that _in some cases_ when a trauma was not resolved or properly addressed in the course of one session the patient could suffer from various psychotic episodes after the sessions was over. As far as I could tell, simplistically speaking, this was attributed mainly to the fact that the traumatic content (normally suppressed) resurfaced and was sort of left uncovered and 'half-processed'. It was stressed in several places in the book how important is that the 'set and setting' is right for an LSD session and how it could be dangerous and counterproductive if LSD is consumed in a wrong environment or not followed up with an appropriate 'psychoanalytic' work after the session is finished.

The flashbacks you were experiencing were very real traumatic flashbacks, like what a victim of violence would experience.

The promising results that psychologists are having with psychedelic drugs all centers around having a trained operator guiding the experience to get a desired effect. It's not just a matter of dropping acid and you immediately see GOD and fix your PTSD.

My Mom raised me to feel that this is putting yourself outside the picture as a passive observer. I was taught from a very young age to remove myself to this state whenever I felt I couldn't understand the world. The older I get, the more I observe the world and behaviour of people around me, the harder I find it to escape this state, silently watching, observing, trying to understand the chaos that is humanity.

I'm not aware of any thoughts or feelings while I'm in the moment I'm in that state. It's not about me. It's about everything going on around me. I'm in the mental place of an observer - In that state I'm evaluating everything from an academic standpoint. Self isn't a state I analyze in that moment except from perhaps a diagnostic analysis. If someone were to ask me right in that moment how I feel, I would never be able to truthfully tell them. If you asked me right this second how I feel, I don't have an answer for you - when I'm in diagnostic mode, my emotions are... unavailable, or like trying to divide by zero, undefined.

I equate it to being in the mind of a therapist. You're there in the moment, but you're not really there in the moment. You're watching people, thinking about who they are and why they are the way they are, observing behaviour, understanding the nuance of how they interact together.

It's interesting. Fascinating even from an academic standpoint. But life isn't academic. The beauty of life can only be experienced if you let yourself experience it.

You know that scene where he wants to be put back in the Matrix because ignorance is bliss... yeah, that.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/the-dark-...

It sounds like your state differs in some key ways from what the Buddhists are aiming for. Nirvana isn't meant to be clinical, depressing, or confusing.

I'm no expert in meditation or psychedelics, but I get into what I imagine is this state when I, for example, hike the top of a mountain. I can look out at the trees around me and, it's odd, but concerns kinda fade away. Good/bad or good/evil just don't really exist, things just are. You see both the trees and the forest, and you get a sense that these have been here for a long time and will continue to be long after you're gone. So "do you like it" is kinda irrelevant because it's not about a "you"... it's just one long infinite flow. Then it's time to descend and you snap back into your head. /shrug

I've also heard astronauts get this a lot and call this the "overview effect" or something like that. Type that into youtube and you'll listen to some people who've been into space talk about it way more eloquently than me, all while streaming earth flybys from that 360-view cupola room on the ISS.

Haha very true. Most meditates are trying to achieve a particular state, not happy with the state they are currently in ;-) But thanks for answering my real question regardless.

This is perfect... this is exactly it. There aren't any thoughts about whether you like it, it just is.

Actually, reading your post was moving. Maybe the most impactful HN post I can remember reading (perhaps with some amount of recency bias in it's favor. Still...)

Thank you!

We live in a culture of (economic) winners and losers, and if you get hung up on this mindset, which is encouraged btw, you could imagine a low place for yourself. Get stuck long enough and it’ll grind you to dust.

If we can break out using psychedelics, so much the better. And I agree with others here, it’s best as medicine, not a diet.

There is a joke about a guy, who could not remember a brilliant idea, he got under drugs. He left a piece of paper and pencil around, and wrote it down during the next trip. A day later he found the paper, which read "The Water is Wet".

My original post is sort of the best I can do I think. It’s not like “enlightening” like knowledge I learned. It was just enlightening in a kind of spiritual way, to feel that way. To know I’m capable of feeling that at peace and empathetic, I guess? Doesn’t give it justice but that’s an approximation.

Certainly true you can come out and say some stupid, non-profound things when on drugs though :-)

It is some sort of unity with whole universe, living or not, profound and deep peace of mind with whatever life will throw at you, because in grand enough scheme of things it won't matter and its OK that way. These are mere words that can't describe the actual state, but the whole experience is still in some ways part of me and makes me a better person overall.

Sort of a foresee: a philosophy of "won't matter" is definitely not the one driving the personal growth.

Look at the original post: The John Hopkins study.

This seems really trivial to argue. Look at the studies. Yes, there needs to be more, but the evidence looks promising. You arguing back and forth with everyone here is clearly going nowhere.

Does that mean, that before that experience you never felt at peace or empathetic, or were you just enlightened, that you can induce that feeling by drugs?

My explanation is just an approximation though isn't it? It doesn't help the blind person to actually see the rainbow, just to get a sense of it.

> Does that mean, that before that experience you never felt at peace or empathetic, or were you just enlightened, that you can induce that feeling by drugs?

No. But the mushrooms caused a difference experience that I can only explain to you like I can only explain a rainbow as sounds to a blind person. Of course I feel empathy to people without drugs.

What you are talking is physical experience. And I doubt drugs somehow give you that. How is it different from "a sense of it", except you being very excited about it by a drug?

It doesn't make me better than anyone else because I took some shrooms. I'm not sure what you're arguing with me about.

It's a bit like trying to explain what being in love is like or what you feel when your child is born and he grabs your finger for the first time. You could just as easily dismiss those two, despite the fact that they are some of the most beautiful life experiences for any human.

It doesn't really matter if one writes a sentence or a novel about a psychedelic experience, you won't be that much closer to understanding it either way.

I suggest you either try some mushrooms to understand for yourself, or chill out.

Why not? If nobody here, who had "enlightening" drug experiences, actually can mention something enlightening which they learned during a trip, it would reassure others, that there's no enlightening.

> I don't know why that's such a big deal?

Because we are talking about addictive and potentially dangerous chemicals, which people continue to suggest for some reason.

First of all, the archetypal psychedelic (e.g. mushrooms, LSD) are some of the safest substances one can consume from a physical health standpoint. The dangers come only psychologically and, to be fair, you cannot know beforehand what your reaction will be. However, these risks can be mitigated by doing research beforehand, taking an appropriate dose, testing your substance. As for addiction, psychedelics in particular are on the lower end of the scale. Caffeine and sugar are more addictive by orders of magnitude (though this is personal anecdote).

> actually can mention something enlightening which they learned during a trip

Now, it seems like, for you to be content, you want some pearl of wisdom or utterance that would sound unlike anything that's ever been said before. That will not happen and it is an unfair yardstick. Enlightening is the state you experience during and after the experience; you simply would not believe that your brain is capable of taking you to that place.

That's how understanding works. In science this process is called peer review.

> Now, it seems like, for you to be content, you want some pearl of wisdom or utterance that would sound unlike anything that's ever been said before.

Nah, anything, that person did not know/think before would be good.

> That will not happen and it is an unfair yardstick. Enlightening is the state you experience during and after the experience; you simply would not believe that your brain is capable of taking you to that place.

That's about as enlightening, as having your brain before bungee jump to believe you actually gonna do it.

Who are you trying to fool here, really? Your comments have been tendentious and definitely not on the neutral or inquisitive side. Your agenda is quite clear, despite the perfunctory attempts of proving the opposite.

> Nah, anything, that person did not know/think before would be good.

Fine. Quoting from a friend below, of course...

What effects you get deeply depends on what substance you ingest, and your mileage may vary, but generally speaking, your thoughts get a whole new dimension to them, a dimension that you never knew existed. You are not necessarily smarter, but you can quite literally _see_ avenues of reasoning stemming from your biases, opinions, thoughts. While sober thoughts are somewhat garbled up, without a clear beginning or end, on psychedelics they become like flipping through stack of books - visual, clear, compartmentalized, distinct. You can take an idea and dissect it by means that are just not available while sober.

There are many nuances to this and a text will never capture them all.

On mushrooms, as an example, I become objective to a fault. I know the notion of good and bad, but nothing is intrinsically so because my biases and preconceived ideas have gone out the window. I can think of a topic as if I became aware of it for the first time. I also get this state of constant awe at the beauty and the complexity of everyday life - be it a ladybug, a plane, a tree, a painting. This is not a state I want permanently, it doesn't necessarily _feel good_ by definition and it can be overwhelming.

Now, as for examples of what I "did not know/think before", there are plenty. Some of them too personal to post here, but I guess I can give one example.

My childhood was a happy one, but I never realized how much school has shaped me and affected me in negative ways. Since I was not brought up in a Western country, the school system was absurd in many ways, most obviously in terms of the authority issues I got from it. I always saw my school years as a given, an immutable part of my existence, and never once pondered the question of "how much different would I have been as a person in different circumstances?".

Think of this what you will, I have tried my best to convey a very complex experience that I myself have forgotten a lot about. The realness of the experience tends to fade away with abstinence.

Are you seriously claiming that thought never crossed your mind before?

Have you never thought of the possibility of your parents passing away? Of course you did, but you don't internalize that until it happens.

Also, I am not actively seeking joy, that is induced by a drug.

And if you've read this thread and come to the conclusion that "seeking joy" is all that's going on here, it suggests yet another benefit you might realize from some small experimentation: a substantial improvement in your epistemological abilities.

> This is far from sufficient to support the statement "some unscientific bullshit, that probably has no real effect, except the bragging rights."

Your question was formulated "why not just try". Why are you referring to the other part. If I have two choices, which you provided, and I kick one out with this answer, the other one is the only one left.

> a substantial improvement in your epistemological abilities

Are you claiming my "epistemological abilities" are somehow lacking, because I claim there's nothing enlightening but "wow, I can feel it on drugs" in drug-related experience, because multiple opponents on this thread fail to provide any concrete examples?

How about you guys are just delusional, or unable to adhere to Occam razor? The later states, that the explanation of drug experiences via a failure of participants to recognize bullshit in their dreams due to their brains being partially off, is superior to the explanation, that throwing a random chemical into a complex system designed to live a normal life can somehow produce a very deep though via a mechanism unknown?

My theory also have a very good easily falsifiable prediction, that the opposite does not: that none claiming to have an "enlightening" would be able to produce anything enlightening in this thread. And it holds so far.

There is a very large difference between objective reality, and reality as we perceive it. If you'd like to see that difference, there is a way. If you'd like to remain ignorant (in the technical sense of that word, not the pejorative sense), and in your case overconfident in your beliefs, that is your choice.

> How about you guys are just delusional, or unable to adhere to Occam razor? The later states, that the explanation of drug experiences via a failure of participants to recognize bullshit in their dreams due to their brains being partially off, is superior to the explanation, that throwing a random chemical into a complex system designed to live a normal life can somehow produce a very deep though via a mechanism unknown?

Maybe, maybe not. But it's rather foolhardy to speak down to people who you know have more knowledge and experience than you, is it not?

Occam's razor is a popular rule of thumb, a heuristic, for cases where you lack information. In this case, more information is available to you.

Experience maybe, but knowledge?

Either way, these alone mean nothing, if proper disciplines are not followed during accumulation process. You don't think all older people somehow understand life better, than you do, just because they have more experience, and, often, knowledge.

Yes.

> You don't think all older people somehow understand life better, than you do, just because they have more experience, and, often, knowledge.

It depends on the topic.

On this topic, you have precisely zero first hand knowledge, yet extremely high confidence in your speculative opinion. And seemingly not the slightest curiosity in obtaining facts. It's kind of interesting if you think about it that way don't you think?

1. facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

2. awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

Speaking of knowledge, you seem to be strangely unable to recognize the limitations of yours, even when a thread is full of people discussing things of which you are utterly ignorant. And I choose the word ignorant deliberately - you don't just lack knowledge, you choose to ignore that which is inconsistent with your existing knowledge, at least on this topic.

Of course, there is a very simple solution to this, but for reasons I doubt you are interested in, you will likely choose to remain in your current state, which is well within your rights.

Possibly.

"Water is wet" isn't the realization in what I'm hypothesizing, but could be a spark of an idea that sets of a chain reaction of tangentially related concepts that seem to make a whole lot of sense as a whole and impart feelings of great beauty to one who is high and might inspire that person to write down the "big bang" of their experience, if you will. So, someone writing "water is wet" is writing the map, not the treasure.

Maybe?

[]I've done mushrooms once and it was mostly a horrifying, traumatic experience. The drive home during sunrise with my car's radio set to the local classical station playing choral music felt particularly affecting, though.

Sounds like its similar to experience of being drunk then. E.g. you get a bunch of unrelated uninteresting ideas, that seem impressive to you, because the part of the brain, that is responsible for filtering bullshit is off/operating poorly.

That said, psychedelic drugs do not inherently bring the user to any kind of spiritual discovery or intellectual awakening. The path to enlightenment requires one to make the conscious choice to continue down it on a daily basis and the self-discipline to not get stuck in the murk and mire.

Drugs are just one of many tools available to facilitate meditations on the nature of being.

Unsurprisingly, however, hallucinogenic drugs are likely more often used as a distraction from reality. This is certainly a valid use-case for many people, but it does not have anything to do with enlightenment.

I don't think LSD puts ideas in your head, it just gives you a different perspective over the stuff that's already there. So it's a silly idea to believe it'll enlighten you by itself, but if you've been reading poetry, philosophy, if you're in contact with nature it may help you see things you didn't see or realize before, which is enlightening.

I think that's one of the properties that help with depression/anxiety since it may help you deal with trauma or with inconsistencies in your own personality that you have repressed, ignored or just don't know how to deal with.

Alcohol does not make you come to peace with such things, it just makes you forget for a time. Then you eventually have to deal with it again.

William James, the legendary pioneer of psychology and pragmatic philosophy, experimented with nitrous oxide (aka "lauging gas" -- the stuff they still give you at the dentist), and experienced revelations, which he wrote down[1][2]:

    What's mistake but a kind of take?
    What's nausea but a kind of -ausea?
    Sober, drunk, -unk , astonishment. . . .
    Agreement--disagreement!!
    Emotion--motion!!! . . .
    Reconciliation of opposites; sober, drunk, all the same!
    Good and evil reconciled in a laugh!
    It escapes, it escapes!
    But--
    What escapes, WHAT escapes?

"Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation.

"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question--for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality.

"Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but one of the species, the nobler and better one, is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself.

"This is a dark saying, I know, when thus expressed in terms of common logic, but I cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as if it must mean something, something like what the hegelian philosophy means, if one could only lay hold of it more clearly. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear; to me the living sense of its reality only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind."

[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1996/05/the-nit...

[2] - https://erowid.org/chemicals/nitrous/nitrous_article1.shtml

[3] - https://www.fulltextarchive.com/page/The-Varieties-of-Religi...

I chose a star for me, I chose a star for him I chose two stars for my kids and one star for my wife Something made me smile. Something seemed to ease the pain Something about the universe and how it's all connected"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RwlGRtanvs

Plenty of people on reddit think they are very worthwhile and say tehy learn the most from bad trips.