Surely everyone here remember's the culturally-accepted idea of what a psychedelic flashback is: You've only used LSD once and it was decades ago. You're driving your car and suddenly you start hallucinating and seeing snakes on your dashboard, or you're operating heavy machinery and suddenly you see pink elephants running around. I always imagined that this is what flashbacks were like because I always imagined that scary snakes and pink elephants were what LSD was like. I'll never forget a conversation I had with a friend my senior year of high school: He was telling me about how wonderful the LSD experience is. I asked "What about flashbacks?" He told me that flashbacks don't happen and that they are just something made up to keep people from using psychedelic drugs, and I believed him. After that, my friend walked away and I remember, for the first time, feeling that it was entirely possible that everything I had ever been told about the dangers of psychedelic drugs was a lie.

Fastforward a couple of years and I'm smoking salvia for the first time, having my life and everything I've ever known torn away from me. That experience only lasts a few minutes, but you don't get to be the same person again when it's over. Something about you is never the same. When I remember those first experiences, I can again feel that same sense of having the curtain that is my world pulled away, but it's not an unexpected reaction. In fact, it's the only rational reaction to the parts of the experience that I can remember. Is that a flashback?

Such experiences are so hard to remember. The first time I did LSD, my life was changed forever. I remember wondering in the hours and days during and after the comedown if my consciousness was back to "normal" again. Hour and days turned to weeks and months. I still wonder if I'm back to "normal". The truth is that I'm not, and I know I'm not because "normal" minds don't ask whether or not they are "back to normal". Normal minds do not ask this question because they know nothing other than what is "normal". There is no knowledge of abnormal to the "normal" mind. Sure there are variations of "normal" but, in that first LSD experience, I realized that the part of me that was changed forever was a part of me that I was never even aware of before, and now I think about this part of me every day, probing into it in attempts to determine it's true nature. Every day, I remember this change in me that started with an LSD experience. Is that a flashback?

Finally, my main claim... A psychedelic flashback is nothing more than a successful remembrance of an experience that, otherwise, defies memory. Imagine biting into an apple. Can you remember what an apple tastes like? Can you remember what an apple feels like between the teeth? Where is that experience happening anyway? Whatever a memory is, there's a clear distinction between it and the sharp physical event of which it is a depiction. After all, the memory of eating an apple is a mere mental reconstruction of a physical experience. On the other hand, there is not a clear distinction between the memory of a mental experience and the original mental event itself. I would say that the psychedelic experience is cognitively indistinguishable from the memory of psychedelic experience because both occur within the mind and thus neither have reality that extends beyond the mental realm. So, when we try to hold a memory of the psychedelic experience in our mind, how is that different from holding the actual psychedelic experience in our mind? Is that really a flashback, because it feels a lot like a memory to me?

In my experience, flashbacks do exist but it isn't like people think and I think a better word for it is "nostalgia", something everyone experiences even if you've never done drugs. When I hear a song that I heard when I was a kid, very interesting feelings, memories and mindsets start "flashing back" to me from that time. In the same way, when I hear a song I heard during a very intense LSD experience, it gives me the same kind of flashback, although it can be more intense depending on how intense the experience was. I think the reason this happens is simply due to trauma. An LSD experience can be incredibly traumatic and impact you in a big way and it's almost as if your brain sections off those memories as if to preserve them, and when we tap back into that area of the brain by listening to a song or many other ways, very interesting things come back to you.

I think you are right though about these experiences being so out of this world that it can be hard if not impossible to grasp in a sober mind-set, but I think this is why it can be so traumatizing, and thus nostalgic.

Actually, The term flashbacks refers to having actual hallucinations after having taken said psychadelic but not being under the influence at the time of the flashback. A coworker of mine has had flashbacks since he took a large dose of mushrooms many many years ago. He will see walls breathing or opening up ect. On top of other hallucinations.

It's also referred to as HPPD and can be read about here --> http://en.m.wikipedia.or...ting_perception_disorder

Many people have speculated on the changes you "receive" after having taken a hallucinogen. I myself feel as though doors have been opened or windows provided for me to view a broader range of understanding and comprehension. When you speak of normal I'm guessing your talking about how you used to feel? That can change with many different types of experiences. After having gotten out of a long relationship with someone I feel much different than my previous "normal" self. Much in the same way that I change from taking DMT or mushrooms.

We all are constantly changing, but possibly the fact that psychs "change" things within a few hours compared to many years of experience can change a person is why it seems to be a different type of change. I myself think it's the same.

HPPD and flashbacks are not the same.

People who've never taking psychedelics have flashbacks, and people usually have flashbacks of extremely meaningful, intense, or life changing experiences. So, it's possible to have a flashback of a psychedelic experience, and the user confuse it with HPPD or "lingering" side effects.