That's extremely common with recovery from MDD. The ability to act improves before the low mood, so bam! suicide. In hospitals new patients, particularly younger adults, are put on suicide watch for this exact reason.

So the suicide watch monitoring somehow didn't happen. Not unique to ket or psilo. Not at all.

ketamine treatments are often offered online so I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s very common.

They need to come with a huge black-bordered warning, then. SSRIs do, in some jurisdictions.

Sorry, what can be harmful exactly? The experience of drugs? I completely agree.

A corollary of my position is that you should be able to fix a fair bit of depression by providing non-pharmacological access to transcendent experience. The drug is then a (very potent and correspondingly sharp) tool among others.

Hear, hear. Transcendent experience has always been closely guarded and guided, for better or worse - there are good reasons not to throw someone into transcendence without preparing them carefully first. Just that our current situation appears to be so desperate, and the very idea of transcendence has disappeared off the cultural radar, that these drugs become necessary.

You wouldn’t ski a double black diamond without getting good, you need practice in the partaking of drugs. Drugs themselves aren’t the point, the experience is.

The prejudice against it is huge to be honest. I am a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist and a majority of other Buddhists online mock me for using religion in the way you describe, that is, to connect with the Absolute and to understand my life. Not even just the secular ones, who call me pathetic for believing in Amida Buddha or Pure Lands, but even the very religious ones, who say that I am arrogant for thinking that I can give myself up to Amida fully. Thankfully, Jodo Shinshu is popular in Japan, and also in the US, so it is not difficult to find English resources that understand.

Everywhere there is huge gatekeeping from these experiences, or from life in general. I definitely agree with people who say that our society is spiritually bankrupt. It isn't that they are missing some essential doctrine or belief or they will be damned, it is that they can't give themselves up to life fully if they have no recognition of the Absolute.

> Reverently contemplating Amida’s directing of virtue for our going forth, I find there is great shinjin [faith]. Great shinjin is the superlative means for attaining longevity and deathlessness. It is the wondrous way to awaken aspiration for the pure and rejection of the defiled. It is the straightforward mind directed to us through the selected Vow. It is shinjin* that actualizes Amida’s profound and vast benefiting of others. It is true mind that is diamondlike and indestructible. It is pure shinjin by which a person easily reaches the Pure Land where no one goes. It is the mind that is single, realized by the person who is grasped and protected by the compassionate light. It is great shinjin, rare and unsurpassed. It is the quick path difficult for people to accept. It is the true cause of attaining great nirvana. It is the white path by which all virtues are fulfilled instantly. It is the ocean of shinjin that is itself suchness or true reality.

Shinran Shonin

> Shin Buddhist practice is not based on belief in an uncertain better future but instead places emphasis on the present moment—a moment made possible by the causes and conditions of the past. Many take for granted the efforts that generations of humans have made, along with the interdependence of all life forms, that contribute to our being here now.

> Reciting Amida’s name is like an alarm clock that says “Wake up!” to the joy of being alive each and every day. Awakening to this rare gift of life, we can accept and endure the wide spectrum of human grief and bliss and become a source of happiness for others.

Buddhist Churches of America

>to connect with the Absolute and to understand my life

That's very unfortunate, seeing as it's the entire point of religion...

Your experience tracks very closely with my involvement with Roman Catholicism in my childhood and adolescence. It's frustrating beyond words, and has largely put me off from participating in religious institutions.

Thankfully, there are some incredible thinkers who have written books!

Thankfully religious institutions in other cultures have not insisted on our separation from the actual experience of religion

That sounds terrible. It really sounds like they were already pretty far gone. I was able to get help with my depression from magic mushrooms, but it was at most a moderate case.

I'll just add myself as a case where a mild amount of psychedelic drug use led to a mild amount of depression. Strictly negative for me, even if not profoundly negative. I'm mostly fine now, years later, but I feel possibly permanently slightly worse in mood. I am not now nor have ever been "far gone".

LSD was negative for me. It basically made me realise that suicide was an option, and I struggled to stop thinking about it, even now

LSD was also bad for me. Just made me feel anxious and self-conscious. Sorry to hear it’s been so difficult for you.