Honestly, as someone who took that kind of substances, this is not terrifying.

This is actually going out of denial, and really just seeing ourselves just the way we are. Agreed, we have a pretty fucked up side of us, but also a true potential for love and sharing.

These 2 sides are mixed, in conflict, and ever-evolving, but really, they are us. It may appear terrifying, but really, when you see it, it has a freeing and peaceful quality to it, because you just "know" that this is true.

Barely being able to contain violence should be concerning. It's one thing just to know you are capable of violence, it's entirely different if you are struggling to control it.

I think you misread op (either that or I did).

I didn't interpret the post as "I was feeling barely containable violence then" but more of a "I became aware of the barely contained violence that me/humans have under the surface". As in, a change of judgement on his current and past condition, rather than a new emotion.

LSD alone does not create any violence, it does not bring any evil into your mind from the outside.

It mostly shows things that usually stay in the unconscious part of our mind. It is more like a lens than a seed.

Of course Barely being able to contain violence is concerning, but let's face it, it is a daily struggle for a LOT of humans. Our good intentions dp not always weigh up when for example we are starving to death. Anger, greed or hatred, are some of our common struggles, but most of the time they stay hidden in our subconscious, bc we do not like to see ourselves as persons able to perpetrate violence.

But only when we see it (it requires honesty, not necessarily lsd xD) and we resolve to work on it, can we really grow.

OP said evil, not violence. The boundary between good and evil is so thin, that people cross it without even realizing that, e.g. when they wish or do something for personal gain. It's just most people have zero power over others. Evil is indeed barely contained in a typical human today.

That realization is not unique to drugs. If this scares you stay away from reading Solzhenitsyn.

There's a difference between coming to that point of view by reason, willingly, and being dragged to it by a substance, unreasoningly.

Try using reason to explain the taste of an apple to someone who has never tasted it.

True, some trips can get more deeply philosophiocal than you are comfortable with, but typically no matter what corner of philosophy you think yourself into, greater minds have been there and done that. For me for example it sparked some interest in reading Nietzsche.

Knowing that one has a capacity to commit violence isn't the concerning part. The "barely contained" part is.

Yeah, Solzhenitsyn has that too. Here's a famous excerpt.

https://mbird.com/literature/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn-on-the-l...

Except the way he came to that reealization was through spending a good while in the gulag instead of tripping balls. Pick your poison.

Honestly seeing what you have blocked out of your consciousness about yourself is the essence of shadow work as described by Jung.

We are all capable of terrible things, in the wrong circumstance. We just don’t like to admit it.

Hmm, but isn't it the beginning of wisdom? Will a person be motivated to cultivate themselves to be good if they really have no inkling about their capacity to do evil and harm?

It's not an issue with the knowing part, but with the barely containing part.

_barely_ here embodies imo the difference between knowing theoretically "yeah I can do some bad sometimes", and really feeling it in your guts, or your heart, rather than your head.

Wisdom comes when feeling who you are, not having some distant idea about who you are