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Re:Ketamine therapy is going mainstream by whalesalad on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @12:25PM (#29727067)
The drugs certainly do not magically fix your problems. But it does allow you to see them, where you can inspect them (read: yourself) without judgement. This is what people refer to when they say "ego death". Your ego is not dying, it's just that your consciousness has been relaxed to a point that you are capable of witnessing it for what it truly is.

"Set and setting" is a frequent quip of the psychonaut that doesn't get enough respect. You must have intention. Psychedelics are like removing the bumpers from the side of a bowling lane - without intention you will just fall into the gutter (figuratively).

Therapy is vitally important, either externally or internally. One can certainly perform self-therapy, which is sometimes only enabled with the help of a mind-altering substance like Psilocybin.

I think you would be surprised to try them again. You have a lot more lived experiences under your belt, new perspectives, new/fewer biases, etc...

Re:Ketamine therapy is going mainstream by blackhaz on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @12:45PM (#29727339)
Great comment. This "ego death" can also be achieved through practices like Atma Vichara. Taking a shroom is catapulting yourself into that state of witnessing. It will definitely come off and the mind will take over, as it was induced artificially, the question is - what are you going to do with yourself during this state?

Defining or, rather, roughly sketching out, a mission might be one way to approach psychedelics. You don't want to follow it to the letter, to avoid self-limits, but at least define your attitude: are you looking for a master, an answer, a resolution? Do you want to feel what's inside of something, i.e. how your reactions are built, where this or that comes from? Just mildly keeping your goal in mind may set you to achieve the right result.

As a quick example of the outcome, at some point I felt my body telling me "man, what are you doing with this e-cigarette? Just stop putting this in me." In a few months I quit for good. Understand this might not be a demon as big as the one causing depression, but maybe this will help? Where did that guy came from?

Re:Ketamine therapy is going mainstream by pell on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @03:48PM (#29729826)
> This is what people refer to when they say "ego death". Your ego is not dying, it's just that your consciousness has been relaxed to a point that you are capable of witnessing it for what it truly is.

A challenge in these conversations is that there’s still no real standardized way of speaking of these experiences. What you’re describing sounds like detachment to me which can vary to different degrees of course but what I would call “ego death” is the actual death of your ego, the dissolution of yourself: you stop existing and with it also any consciousness. In my experience there was really nothing left to witness in that situation as I was no more.

Re:Ketamine therapy is going mainstream by hnuser847 on Wednesday December 29, 2021 @01:03PM (#29727597)
What tangible insights did you get from your trips?