Both are great, both can be great tools for self discovery, and both can yield annoyingly ardent fans. I personally think everyone who is interested in experiencing life should aim to do a 10+ mile run and take a reasonably strong dose of a psychedelic. But by no means is your life impoverished by having neither experience.

> I felt like I was at peace and all my problems almost went away.

Right away this is a key difference, the peace you feel running is closer to a mild opioid than any psychedelic. Long distance running is fantastic for this sort of deep meditation, and for many people will be much easier than performing long sitting mediation. However I would say the end result of this running is that you travel deep within yourself.

Psychedelics on the other hands will temporarily take your mind apart. It is very common to experience looking in the mirror and seeing 'you' as just another body that is no different than the other bodies on the street. Psychedelics are both more exhilarating and more terrifying. Baggage you are carrying around can easily spiral in to a "bad" trip (which may be terrifying, but many would agree is not really a "bad" thing). At the same time and during the same experience you can see and feel the details in a blade of grass that let you feel a sense of beauty in the mundane that is a very different intensity than the peaceful bliss that can come from running.

I highly recommend you try something like shrooms in the safe environment. Not dissimilar to running a marathon, once can be enough of an experience for a lifetime (where for some people they want it to be a major part of their life, which is fine too in both cases).

Just listened to Seth Rogen's audible book (hilarious, and decent anecdata on shrooms particularly) and he would say shrooms are a lot more intense than LSD. Shrooms take control while on LSD you're "the pilot."

He has good genes, or a high tolerance.

I tried smoking around December, and realized I hated it. I liked it in high school. I couldn't wait until the effect went away. It's weird I kept trying it, and finally gave up. Was about to toss it, but hide it instead--too cheap to toss?

Then again real life has been scaring me for years. I wish there was a calming drug that was easy on the body.

Especially with the extremely high THC content of modern strains people often fail to recognize that weed is still a psychedelic in its own right.

Alcohol, for most people, will simply make you feel good (up to a point), but strong weed can often magnify strong emotions you have. During a particularly challenging time in my life I completely gave up weed because smoking only served to make me feel worse.

Like all psychedelics the negative experience can be useful, for example if you get very anxious when you smoke it's likely you have some other unaddressed problems, but for those that are just looking for an escape (and most people, myself included, are looking for this from weed) it can certainly make smoking during stressful times a bad idea.

A counterargument that a friend told me once: a psilocybin trip is like a wagon ride that takes you to what you need to see. LSD is like a jet plane that takes you instantly to where your brain wants to go.

I think it probably depends on the person. My first psilocybin trip was the most intense experience I've had, but then I had a lot that I needed to confront at the time.

In all there were three trips I would call "bad", I went to what I perceived as hell. The mushroom bad trip was nearly indistinguishable from the acid bad trips.

In all three cases I felt immense gratitude for the trips being over yet thankful for the experiences.

There is no reason to take more than this as introductory doses, and then you can make up your own mind.

Like I get motivated to do things I’m procrastinating on, except now I’m in the middle of a trail and cant

This can have redeeming benefits like sorting out thoughts for things I hadnt considered and I can enjoy it when I get into it, but this is a different experience than psychadelics

Also not all trails I can get into. Some start boring and stay boring.

An exercise high where you zone off into your thoughts and get a (theorized) release of dopamine and serotonin from your muscles aching is very different than psychedelics

Some/Many people on the trails around you are also on psychadelics. You shouldnt be able to tell, but especially if they are microdosing.

I would say while using psychadelics that stimuli guides your thoughts differently. Your mind is sorting different things. And primarily different neuron groups are communicating that typically aren’t, or are now communicating at higher bandwidth. This is all theorized based on shared experiences and some MRIs that show enhanced activity but arent capable of corroborating how neurons are connected. The serotonin released is also considered to be amplified. For many, this has redeeming benefits. More study is needed so at least less redeeming side effects can be listed on the bottle like every fda evaluated drug.

Being in the woods and being on psychadelics isnt mutually exclusive

This is a really common phenomenon. We also experience it in the shower or laying in bed at night.

I think the common understanding is that it's a dumb little trick our anxiety is playing on us. One of the main reasons we procrastinate is fear: that we will fail at the task, that it will be too hard, that it will impinge on our picture of ourselves in some way. So we know we're supposed to do it, but we also don't want to.

When we're in a situation where we could work on it, those procrastinating rationalizations rise up to let us escape the risk of those negative experiences. But if we're in a situation where we can't do the task we're afraid of, there's no reason to put the unconscious mental effort into summoning those mental blocks. So we experience that as "I feel really motivated right now but I can't."

What's really going on is that you're equally motivated all the time, you just have other negative stuff layered on top at points when you could be doing the thing. Work through that negative stuff, and you'll feel just as motivated even when you are able to do the task.

> since within twenty-four hours, in the empty frame of that long morrow in which everything was so well arranged because I myself had not yet entered it, my good intentions would be realised without difficulty ... Unfortunately the morrow was not that vast, external day to which I in my fever had looked forward. When it drew to a close, my laziness and my painful struggle to overcome certain internal obstacles had simply lasted twenty-four hours longer.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/63532/63532-h/63532-h.htm

Its all replaced with a deconstructive process. Deconstructive of the mental model and fabric of reality.

Might result in insight into something you’re procrastinating on

Might just make your stomach hurt and question if this is a good or bad drug

Very different than just removing anxiety distractions

Edit: Actually, if the comparison is microdosing I've never done that. But I'd take a run over microdosing any day, even if I could get guaranteed pharmeceutical-grade LSD on tap.

Unfortunately I can't go on a 3 week expedition every weekend.

With one, you have to actively work to achieve an altered state. With the other, once you ingest the thing, it's happening whether you want it to or not.

One is an act of willful exertion, the other is an act of surrender.

One day I felt the urge to run and popped a pill in preparation, which kicks in after about half an hour. Where kicks in means pain is gone like a switch is thrown, and not much else, maybe a feeling of relaxation, but that may have been just because the pain was gone?

So I've been ready, and then a thunderstorm started. That was unexpected, because the weather was fine, and then suddenly it wasn't anymore. Whatever, didn't want to have taken the pill for nothing, and went out to run in spite of the rain.

Along one side of the mountains forming a valley, on a path through a pine forest above the train tracks curving along the mountain above the little valley.

Soaked, but so what? It was warm summer rain. I could see down to the train tracks, between 50 to 150meters away(that varied)

And then the lightnings really started. It came to mind that it wouldn't be a good idea to be out there, so exposed, during that much lightning, maybe even suicidal. I coldly calculated that all the trees there made much better lightning rods than me, and ran on.

While doing that I saw dozens of lightnings hitting the tracks and their electrification/overhead wire and masts, again and again.

Like in some crazy movie-fx/CGI. Because I perceived it in slow motion, white-blue-violet-purple colored, branching apart, similar to the roots of a tree, but not. And the thundering, even the echoes giving you light full body slaps.

While on the usual runners high, feeling light, flying.

This went on for maybe 10km over half an hour, then I had to turn back because end of way. Well, not exactly, but no more forest, and I don't like to run in urban areas between housing and traffic.

So, for me the kind of drugs I took just intensified that and I'd agree with you regarding the similarity of experience.

But there are other drugs working differently, there are other people reacting different to some(or all?) drugs than others, and there are (supposedly?) different 'neuro-architectures' ('wiring of the brain') resulting in different sensibilities on a spectrum/scale from something vague to something vague :-)

I truly believe it. The happiness you feel after a race, or a good workout, is indescribable. I've never been happier than when I routinely worked out for 90 minutes a day, 6 days a week. I was floating, and had random endorphins highs during the day.

I've never microdosed, but from what I've read I think running (and more generally sport) can be similar to it. Maybe similar to meditating, too.

Back then I was pushing my body beyond the limits my brain thought was possible, and each time I broke through those limits it was exhilarating.

Nowadays when I run it is more a calm and meditative experience, however I'm also running within those limits, some quite extensive, that I had set myself in past runs.

Except that one time recently when, on a whim, I set myself a new goal to run all of the large hills in my area in one session. During the attempt my brain was screaming at me to stop, but I kept going and made it. From the moment I knew I could make it I felt the high again, a rush that radiated from my brain through the body and crashed against my extremities. My legs felt like they were flying over the pavement, the world around me became crystal clear, I had a beaming smile plastered on my face and I found myself wondering if I had attained godhood.

I've since come back to earth, but the experience made me realize that I'll need to set some tough challenges to feel that high again.