I have done a fair bit of LSD (such as it was at the time) and psilocybin a few times, and my behavior patterns have not changed significantly between the time before I took it and today (other than the normal effects of getting older). Before, I was a kind and helpful jerk, now I am a tolerant, generous asshole.
However, as far as LSD is concerned, my opinion, based on personal experience, is that its effects are not entirely transient. The freakiness part wears off, but the brain gets or rewiring that never completely goes away. It may diminish somewhat over time, but one experiences a permanent mental change. YMMV, of course.
I see. So it’s like a roll of the dice, where you may emerge a better person, or worse, but one way or another you’re likely to be permanently changed? High-stakes gambling.
Yes, I’ve tripped with assholes and they remained assholes while tripping and kept on with their asshole ways after tripping. Lesson learned, don’t trip with assholes. They bring down the experience and are annoying.
When I tripped we would pick 6 or 7 other friends to join us on the trip. Their were definitely people who were not invited because they didn’t “get better”.
Again, “better”/“worse” are highly subjective. I am “better” than I used to be in some ways, “worse” in others, but mostly a yam, what a yam, and the acid is one small component of the history that has made me so.
They can put things in perspective. They can help you realize that somethings are very important and other things are less important. It can help an anxious person see themselves and their anxieties from a different point of view. The effects seem temporary unless real change is made. Tripping more then once every 2 weeks is seen as a waste.
I don’t know if better or worse is part of it. If you have something in your life that you have built walls around. Something that plays a role in all of your subconscious decision making. It can help you see those walls. The functioning alcoholic might not realize that 95% of the decisions they make are to help them drink, or justify drinking. What food they have. How much water they drink. How to hide feeling sick at work. When to buy it. How to hide it from family… The anxious person may not realize they are avoiding getting the mail, not talking to a person they love, hiding, hurting the people around them.
Seeing the walls and making concrete changes are different things. Most of the studies I have read couple it with one-on-one therapy.
I tend to think of it more as unjamming your thought process/making you reevaluate your assumptions/allowing your mind to explore thought pathways it otherwise wouldn’t. Once unjammed, your thought process will likely lead you back to the same conclusions you had before, perhaps with more nuance, but sometimes you’ll reach entirely different conclusions because you’ve been jarred out of the mental rut you were in. One internet famous example is:
Whether this is a better or worse way of thinking is subjective, but it seems that this person definitely started re-evaluating his previous way of thinking. That’s the kind of arguably positive experience that can be had.
On the other hand, I used to have a bunch of friends that were frequent users/abusers of MDMA and other psychedelics (pretty much comes with living in San Francisco) that thought throwing house parties all during lockdown was fine because they weren’t obligated to care about other people’s safety during a global pandemic. They aren’t friends anymore and it’s been a lesson that they were pretty much selfish douchebags all along. “Crisis reveals character.”
So there’s probably an amount of psychedelics that can help you break out of your mental ruts and become “better” in some subjective way, but there’s also too much that just…doesn’t.
Since this is IMHO, I think it’s OK for me to state my completely unscientific opinion that I think it’s possible psychedelic compounds could help some people become ‘better’ in the same way that any interesting experience - travel - theatre - colouring books - any kind of hobby or interest - can give people’s brains something to do that isn’t just blank vacant thought or dwelling on misery, and for some people, that’s enough to get them actively doing other stuff and going about the business of living rather than just being alive.
For the record: never done psychedelics myself; never intend to. I like the way my brain works already.
If I get that far with a surgical glove, I’m pulling it over my nose and doing a Howie Mandel with it.
I for one feel liberated and enlightened (to a degree I otherwise probably wouldn’t) by my own personal psychedelic experiences. But then again, I’ve known stoners who simply enjoy taking acid and punching oak trees.
I strongly recommend against that. Howie (seriously) ruptured a sinus that way.
To clarify, I’m not saying all psychedelics are bad all the time. They can be fun and harmless. I am simply saying they are not the miracle way to ‘better’ suggested in the OP.
I agree with that. I’ve also known, quite closely, people with schizoid disorders who were never better off for their psychedelic experimentation.
Again, IME.
The last time I ate ‘shrooms was a few years back when my gf lamented how she had never “tripped”. I told her I could get whatever she wanted to try and join her. She wanted to try mushrooms.
I sent some texts and went to a friend’s place. He gave me a very nice bag, enough for two people easily.
So, she got cold feet and backed out. I ate the entire bag. I enjoyed the first hour or so, but undulating ceilings become old after that.
She also wanted to consume cannabis prior to our St Martin flight one year. In line for TSA, I ate my brownie and handed hers to her. She got cold feet and backed out. I ate hers. It was a very cool flight. I mostly just sat with a huge smile on my face.
Yeah, that’s my perspective on most of the powerful ones at doses where you actually “trip”. They’re not “let’s have a good time!” drugs, they’re actually “Let’s find something out about ourselves.” drugs.
Sometimes folks can deal with what they see when they look at themselves in that way, sometimes they can’t. If you’re looking to use them to make yourself a better person, it’s probably best to partake them under the control of a therapist or other guide. Taking them and going to a rave or AstroWorld is less likely to have the same effect (but hey, they are crazy drugs, might work for you).
If you hit on a good dosage of the right psychedelic it can be really useful by helping you to drag out traumas and mental knots without triggering the limbic system, it’s like accelerated CBT or desensitization exercises. I haven’t felt the need any time recently but have used psychedelics over the decades to good effect.
We’re all about to get some really good, solid data since Oregon is ramping up the use of psilocybin in therapy. The drugs in question being high scheduled and federally criminalized has made it nearly impossible to get high quality studies with a sufficiently large sample base so in a few years we’ll be able to assess fairly the effectiveness of psychedelics in therapeutic settings.
Oh and recently I saw a posted flyer in a health care setting for a group of therapists doing peer work assisted by ketamine, that was kind of surprising.
Same way as weed is a Schedule I narcotic and federally illegal on a felony level but it’s legal to one degree or another in 37 states. Same as alcohol was made legal at the state level in over 30 states before Prohibition was repealed. State’s rights.
In the 60’s my brother took every drug known at the time. He said he even baked banana peels and my favorite, carefully separated the blue pills out of the Contact capsules. He said while on LSD, he saw himself in a coffin and that made him stop.
Call it divine intervention, but he has a Masters of Divinity and planned to be a pastor. He’s now a grade school teacher and has been drug free for decades.
There are starting to be conferences about the medical use of psychedelics:
They’re being supported by the likes of Queens University and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, so hopefully we’ll get good data on what these substances actually do and how to use them, and recruit them into the medical supply kits.