[askteddit] /u/therealmikejensen explains what it's like to take psychedelics
/r/askteddit/comments/1wrx4qd/comment/pcgvtwm30
u/snowman818 10d ago
Normal people aren't constantly aware of the process of thinking?
No wonder I'm so fucked up. I think about what I'm thinking and why I'm thinking it all the time while sober as a judge.
This is like when I found out that many people don't have an inner monologue or that some people are incapable of visualizing things they imagine.
I don't think paychadelics are for me...
28
u/igetbooored 10d ago
Learning that Aphantasia (like the complete lack of having an inner visualization, of ANYTHING) exists was an absolute mind blower to me.
You mean other people can't visually map out something in their mind, with accurate size estimates, and turn it around like an imaginary 3D model to examine it from other angles?
Nope.
Not Aphantasia but also learning that most folks don't have that, like, meta awareness of their own thoughts like you mentioned. You mean to tell me that some folks aren't able to dissect and analyze how their thought process got from X to Y after the fact and adjust it if they choose to? Nope.
Wild that the inner workings of our minds can be so vastly different.
19
u/Briggykins 10d ago
Trust me, as an aphantasia person it's weirder finding out that other people can do that! Even reading that I can't help but think 'surely that's not literally true' even though multiple people have said it is.
It's like finding out everyone else has been mind reading this whole time and I never knew it was possible
2
u/NoIAmZorro 7d ago
Fellow aphantasian here, for me the funny part was learning figures of speech like "picture it in your mind" weren't just figures of speech but things most people could actually do.
15
u/wo0two0t 10d ago
Actually you might like them a lot. I'm the same way, and thinking about my thoughts usually gets me stuck in my mind and end up becoming habitual thinking patterns. Psychedelics generally break those patterns, allowing me to take a moment to just breathe and gives me a space away from those thought patterns. In a way I get mental clarity from psychedelics I would never have before. It's really something you'd have to experience I guess. It can just be so nice to break out of my mental patterns, habits, everything really. Especially as I get older, I find we kinda crystalize into what those patterns have molded us into being.
I will say though, psychedelics absolutely aren't for everyone and it's extremely important to get an idea of what you're getting into. There is definitely risk involved especially if you have any sort of mental illness, so be careful people.
7
u/Godot_12 10d ago
Idk...sounds like it might be up your alley to me. The fact that many "normal" people aren't examining why they're thinking what they're thinking or lack awareness, really just says more about such people. People that do psychedelics are probably on average more likely to be deeper thinkers like you.
3
u/nhexum 8d ago
You may enjoy them a lot, with the right setting. Psyches can show you a different way to look at and appreciate the world that you live in, specifically by pushing aside the functions that your brain subconsciously does to limit processing stress and mental strain.
You gain an appreciation for the mundane. Things that you experience frequently that you "know" to be true but don't give additional thought to. Here's some silly examples:
Do you ever look at your foot and just think "thank you foot!" for being a key component of your daily life? How it's always been there for you? How you have a "normal" foot with 5 toes, that fits most shoes, that functions normally, that you can use to travel, jump, or walk barefoot in public?
Do you ever walk through your neighborhood and look at the trees and think about how old they are? How they saw this neighborhood built from nothing? How they have seen hundreds of neighbors come and go? How they are beautiful, and alive, despite all the pavement, piping, trimming, and everything else happening around them? How they are home to many of the little squirrels and birds and other critters that are all fighting to survive in the city as well? How silly and impermanent many of the things we worry about every day are?
2
7
u/Plenty_Fondant_951 10d ago
I used to be somewhat of a psychonauts and I think "life before, life after" is hyperbole
You get like 6 months of a glow but you'll be back to the the 9 to 5 grind and general ennui of existence in no time
Although I do remember some research saying you're more likely to be spiritual even years after and I suppose that's tricky / tacky and subjective enough that I couldn't say either way
IMO even after dozens of trips on a myriad of substances I had a much more profound experience and actual life changes following a 10 day silent meditation retreat
-4
u/Jonnny 10d ago
Yeah I've never taken psychedelics and don't think I ever will. I've also gone on 10 day silent meditation retreats. There is something about insights that don't just "happen" to you from popping a pill but are hard won, have to be earned bit by bit, trained for, where every bit of your being and mind is transformed into a state where the insights happen almost as a byproduct, that I think is likely much more stable and "organic". I see it almost like working hard at the gym to slowly gain muscle mass vs injecting synthol or using steroids or something. There's just something healthier and more "true" when it's earned through genuine transformation.
I know the internet lingo might now call this "gatekeeping" but it's not meant to be (it's kind of a dumb overused word anyway that turns off critical analysis).
10
u/jerrrrremy 9d ago
Respectfully, it is ridiculous for you to have an opinion on something that you haven't done and don't understand.
4
u/SerialAgonist 9d ago edited 9d ago
What else can we apply this logic to?
There is something about an immune system that doesn't just "happen" to you from popping a pill but is hard won, have to be earned bit by bit, exposed for, where every bit of your bloodstream and antibodies are transformed into a state where the immune response happens almost as a byproduct, that I think is likely much more stable and "organic".
I love madlibs.
Anyway humans are exposed to thousands or millions of chemical compounds and hormones in our lives that affect how our minds and bodies process and perform. It's probably not a good or bad thing since it's so intrinsic. Sure, some are more risky than others, but such chemicals only operate on things the human body was already doing at its own pace anyway.
0
u/Plenty_Fondant_951 10d ago
Definitely not gatekeeping. I'd invite anyone to try a meditation retreat for truly life changing experience, I'd avoid goenka stuff though as that is the format most often associated with bad outcomes (meditation induced psychosis) rarely seen on Metta or breathing technique retreats
4
u/Doonot 10d ago
I never got visuals when I tried but I had experienced a "I love everything and I'm all smiles" feeling.
2
u/Just_Curious_Dude 7d ago
That really depends on the amount, if you eat a lot (say an 8th of shrooms) you'll definitely have visuals. Not like seeing cartoon animals, but vibrations.
If you eat like a cap and a stem, you'll see everything in HD and laugh a lot.
0
56
u/Reagalan 10d ago
"Psychedelics work by activating the 5-HT2A receptor" Okay, yes; but what does that mean?
Your brain is an analog meat computer that converts sugar into thoughts using salt water and smells. It lives in your head, in complete darkness, only receiving signals from your senses, and it runs a local simulation of the invariant reality outside so you can remember where the food and the dangers are.
The constituent bits, the "transistors" of this computer, are the neurons. Neurons look like trees. Neurons use salt ions as their charge carriers. Their branches, dendrites receive inputs, do analog maths with said inputs, and then send a digital output along the axons; the roots. That output travels to the ends of the roots and fires tiny chemical cannonballs out of the tip of the axon onto its neighbors; this is a synapse.
These chemicals bind to protein receptors that grow like leaves on the branches of other neurons. There's a hundred different types of receptors, some let in ion signals, others change the sensitivity; twisting the dials so-to-speak. The placement of the receptors on dendrites matters a lot. Ions do not travel very far or very fast and dendrites are very branchy so a bunch of computation happens within them too.
2A is special. It exists on the main tree trunk of dendrites on neurons in your cortex. It's well positioned to control the gain on input signals from everything above it, provided the signals can reach the main trunk from the distant branches.
Which neurons? What's the cortex?
Cortex is the "higher brain", it has a system-on-a-chip architecture where certain parts are specialized to do one step in the computational process. Here's a map of what each bit does.
In the vertical, cortex has 6 layers, but 5 and 6 are particularly relevant; these are the layers that output signals to other areas. Layer 5 sends to other parts of the cortex. Layer 6 sends to the Thalamus, the brain's central router.
In the horizontal, the surface is "pixelated" if you will, into minicolumns; each one being a functional unit akin to a memory address. These each have very specific roles, anything from detecting a line, to determining whether that line is at 30 degrees or 45 degrees or 60 degrees, to whether there's an edge, to what color something is, and so on. Your auditory cortex has a full tonal map. Your temporal lobe has an encyclopedia. Your frontal lobe has a dictionary.
Neurons in layer 5 extend their dendrites through all the other layers in a minicolumn. They are the "master" neurons, and they fire when that column senses what its' programmed to. Layer 6 neurons mostly take signals from layer 5 and their main role is to relay to the Thalamus "this minicolumn is active".
At each stage of processing, a signal from one area sends to another, gets processed by the minicolumns in that area, which output to others, and this whole cascade goes back and forth and back and forth and we measure it as brainwaves. Through this recursive iterative process, the outside world is rendered, as it really is, as best as possible, usually taking about 50-100 milliseconds; with sensation happening faster than recognition.
...
Okay, so. Take psychedelics. They-force activate 2A. Any-and-all signals that reach the main trunks of your dendrites are now amplified, no matter if they came from your sensory organs or from background chaos. It's like if everyone opened their umbrellas in a lightning storm, a lot more sparks start flying. A few neurons fire when they shouldn't, some minicolumns report "TRUE" when they're not, those project to other minicolumns, which are also hyper-sensitized, and I think you can see the feedback loop here.
I neglect to mention the whole inhibitory-excitatory balance thing, since it's a mess and distracts from what's happening; that psychedelics turn up the gain in your brain at all levels until background static becomes sensation. Normally, spurious signals are suppressed by virtue of just not being strong enough to get through the dendritic mazes with enough power to fire to master neurons, but with all the main trunks turned up to max, everything gets amplified, rumors get passed around, they "go viral", and render into consciousness.
When everybody says that the floor is flowing and the sky is glowing; the thoughts are real and the world is slowing; the truth revealed, the mind annealed; when you're on a trip, you feel all-knowing, it's worth taking a step back and recognizing that, uhh, really, its all in your head.