I was wondering; I myself I am 26 years old. I find that I am more able to experience intense and ecstatic experiences than ever before; probably due to having a more mature brain than when I was say 19; and because of my habit of meditation.

For those here who are significantly older than me: do you find that as you age the capacity to have intense experiences diminishes? I'm not just talking about drugs but life in general. Does the world turn necessarily 'grayer' as you age?

Fast approaching 50 and no noticeable change in intensity
Of experiences. Physical endurance is more of an issue than
When younger. Sometimes going in multiples times can be
Physically exhausting after a while .

With maturity comes patience to wait for right circumstances to
Journey. Also knowing when to take time off to integrate .

My dad is 60 and his experiences in life are still more intense than most be can handle. He also I believe would be able to handle large doses of psychs no problem still today.

Age would not be the culprit. Personal perspective would be.

It depends what the intense experience is as to whether i have the capacity for it. After all what is the worst that could happen? Death i guess. You live and learn. So i have put a cap on my physically dangerous intense activities and indulge myself rarely nowadays. This is partly due to a fear of pain, linked to the recently acquired knowledge that i am no longer indestructible. And partly due to a responsibility for those that are close to me. I would imagine this would be amplified if i had kids.

I really don"t think i need very many intense experiences nowadays. All that wildness just seems un-necessary and i am quite lazy aswell. Although i now think that i am better mentally equipped for "safe" intense experiences, i just feel that i am becoming old and boring, but quite happy about it. I have always liked this story from a film i saw (i cannot rightly remember the name of the film but it was a character played by Robert Duvall that told the story). It makes me feel so much better about being a doddering lightweight::::

A father bull and his son were sitting on a hill watching a herd of cows grazing in the valley below.
"Hey dad" said the son " lets run down there and fuck one of those cows!"
"No son" his dad replied " let"s walk down there and fuck all of them"

As for the world turning gray, the opposite is true for me. Which maybe related to my lesser needs for the intensities in life. I am prepared to admit that the world seeming less grey could very well be linked to my drug use.

I will be 30 in 4 months, and life is brighter than when I was 20.

There is too many factors IMO to make a clear cut answer. So much of it depends on the person, their life style, context of use, etc.

Generally speaking though i think that neuroplasticity decreases with age while left brain dominance increases. So that in general ones reality-tunnel tends to become more fixed or solidified, whereas childhood/adolescence was more characterized by a perpetual state of discovery, novelty, change, and sensitivity to the profoundness of reality. Obviously though there is exceptions to this generalized trend and if you start getting very into things like meditation, mysticism, psychedelics, healthy food/lifestyle, and so on, then even in old age it seems this isn't as much of a factor and can be more or less bypassed, at least in some ways.


"Intense" is also pretty relative. What can seem intense at one stage in life might seem rather tame at another stage in your journey.

Then again i'm young and dumb... so i'm not sure how much stock you should put into all that ^____^