During that first trip, in a few hours I went from seeing the universe as a mechanistic, "matter is all there is", reality, to directly experiencing that there is so much more. Since then I've gone much deeper down that path and I'm so very thankful for this beautiful medicine for opening my eyes and heart!

When I grew mushrooms in college, I'd take massive doses of fresh mushrooms simply because I was flush with these amazing fungi.

So I took a massive dose of fresh mushrooms, which I think is a better way to go if you can make it happen, something like over 50g wet. As it sets in, I looked up at the night sky and a drop of water precipitated with all the moments of my life reflected inside it. It was as if I was a single drop from a large ocean. In some ways it was sad, this teardrop would pass someday and return to the ocean. I know it's okay, and I want to say that it's been a lot of fun spending time with everyone.

The experience reminds me of Blade Runner when the replicant confronts his own death.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Edit: my apologies. I thought it was dry, not wet.

First, have you seen clear, lasting changes in anxiety and depression? If the single-dose effect for cancer patients really is this strong, it seems like everyone who messed with mushrooms once in college should be 'treated' also.

Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

I think mushrooms can open the door, but you need to use them as a catalyst to take action in your day-to-day life to actually have lasting change. I've still been an asshole occasionally since taking mushrooms. Ultimately you're responsible for your own change, but mushrooms can help you want to change.

> Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

I've had an egoless state for a couple hours or so afterwards, and then maybe for a couple days afterwards I'm generally more relaxed and happy: maybe I'll smile more and say hello to people I barely talk to. But the feeling fades after that. Lasting change happens if you really take the lesson to heart and create change in your normal life.

On or around my birthdays for the past five years, I've been taking a moderate to very large dose of LSD. The lowest dose was around 100 micros, the largest was 10x that.

Me being me, with extensive planning, preparation, and a lot of help from my wife, my first dose in 2015 was the largest one.

The experience was moderately life changing. Things were already going pretty well, but after the trip, I was able to do even more 'personal brain cleanup'.

Specifically, it allowed me to release a big chunk of the personal arrogance I still carried. This has been a nearly life-long process, but the trip grealy accelerated it.

It also helped me further improve my (already pretty good) work/life balance. It's not that I loved my family more, it's just that the things that I already knew (time at work is a means to an end, time with my family is truly the most important thing) became more easily actionable.

Lastly, (for this reply...there more aspects than I have time to type up right now) it allowed me to read, understand and empathize with other people's actions more effectively.

Set, drug, dose, and setting all play huge roles in the effects one gets.

First, a lot of drugs on the black market aren't what they claim to be. So someone who tried what they thought were mushrooms in college might have gotten something else.

The dose of psilocybin one gets from black market mushrooms is also difficult if not impossible to gauge. So someone who tried mushrooms in college could have gotten too low or too high a dose.

Many people are also completely clueless when it comes to how to optimally prepare for and take drugs, and believe all sorts of myths and misconceptions about drugs. So many of those who took mushrooms in college probably did so in very poor circumstances, with no intention or even self-destructive intentions (such as those that often go hand-in-hand in binge-drinking), and possibly with misconceptions about what the experience will be like.

This is all very, very different from taking psilocybin or other psychedelics in a carefully designed study, with trained therapists who typically give days if not weeks of therapy before the sessions, during, and after the sessions, are given pure, precisely measured doses. The setting is designed for maximum therapeutic effect, as are the resources available during the session (such as having pictures of loved-ones on hand to focus on at the peak of the session). The sessions are usually done with light blocked out by an eye-shade, and with music carefully designed to facilitate the session. The therapists are on hand to give support and help the patient work through any diffcult experiences, and are encouraged to work through such difficulties rather than run away from them. Acceptance is encouraged.

Because of this careful preparation, planning, and professional therapy, the results are likely to be much different than casual mushroom use in college by people who are likely to be ignorant of psychedelics in general, and of how to properly run a therapeutic session in particular.

Maybe the problem is in the rarity and ineffability of the experience. We don't have a huge frame of reference for mystical-type experiences, and we don't have much of a common language to describe them. We rely on metaphors, the way we do when describing being in love.

When it's all over, you might think, "What the hell was that?" A memory of the feeling-of-the-thing, but no real word for what-it-is-like.

However, I now worry whether this has made me too malleable and less assertive. I often have to remind myself that there are people who would take advantage of you given a chance (the dark personality triad); the systems we live in can be very impersonal and hostile; and so we do have to lookout for ourselves and our family. Is there something you can share about this?

I think if you're concerned about it, it's probably not a big problem for you. Being kinder to all living things includes being kinder to yourself and your family anyway :-)

That article was on a different topic, but the lesson is being aware of the extremes and taking a bit of both is to be balanced, not to be contradictory.

I've had horrible experiences with a very large dose. I essentially passed out and when I awoke I genuinely thought I had died and was roaming as an invisible spirit. It wasn't until a friend interacted with me I realized I was still alive and began to come down.

I really think anyone should take care when experimenting with powerful hallucinogens. They aren't for everyone and have been known to trigger psychosis and other adverse reactions if one has a family history of mental illness.

By the way, ever since these trips, I can’t enjoy much marijuana in the same way. Marijuana feels like the start of that trip now. It’s very weird.

I took 5-6g when I was much younger and it was not an enjoyable experience on the whole, forgetting who/where I was, thinking I was other people. The most interesting part was everything arranging itself in sensible geometric patterns. No matter what I looked at, tree bark, the ground, the wall of a house, a pile of leaves, everything would appear structured as sort of repeating hexagons or octagons. That affect combined with occasional moments of profound peace felt revelatory, but I did not take mushrooms for a few years after that. I will almost definitely never do it again either.

I have not experienced the marijuana thing though :).

Also, with psychedelics the effects will vary from person to person, and even on the same person depending on that person's mood, body chemistry, how much and what they've eaten, what's going on with their life and their subconscious mind at the time, what their expectations are, their stage of development, where and with whom they take it, etc.