Have psychedelics actually helped you? Have they increased the quality of your life? Why do you use psychedelics? Are they just another class of drug people use and abuse? Have any of you actually had a profound experience that's radically shifted the course of your life into a positive more fulfilling direction?

I'm calling total bs on psychedelics having any lasting effect on mental health and wellness. For me it's a never ending seeking of new and novel altered states that are going to do it for me. Years of searching have gone by and the circumstances of my life are more or less the same. There are things in my life that I want to pursue and accomplish that I am not, I believe this is largely caused by my obsessive seeking of psychedelic states.

yes, they've helped me, im healthier physically and spiritually, and i think my existential model is more refined. i think that in general you need to approach your psychedelic use with the intention of self improvement in order for it to turn out that way.

the magic showed me what to do, and where to go, but i was the one who made the changes. Its consistant hard work, but ultimately worth it.

What do you mean by healthier spiritually? Why on earth would you need to take a drug for self improvement? Why not just cut out the middle man and do the self improving?

Provocative, HT777. Should generate some interesting discourse!

IME, psychedelics provide an ergonomic TOOL for accessing the "mystic" state. Once an individual gains a bit of facility with their tool(s) of choice, they do indeed seem to dwarf other teks with respect to reliability, profundity and time investment.

What one "does" with the "revelations" so delivered is rather varied and INDIRECT. Tools are inert, the vitality comes from the user. That said, psychedelics can "directly" invoke sensibilities such as awe, wonderment, supplication, compassion, thanks giving and entheogenesis. These emotions can have inherent value, for many at least. Cool thread!

Peace

by this i mean that before i was a staunch materialist and now i am not, i feel i have a more nuanced view of my reality


would you use this line of thinking with regard to someone seeing a therapist to sort themselves out?

i feel i did do the self improvement work, the magic just showed me things i was doing wrong that i had been blind to previously.

They helped me tremendously.

I was living like a hamster running in a wheel, completely unaware of it. The psychedelics (namely LSD) showed me the wheel so I could step out of it and have a better look.

After one trip I completely changed my life, I moved to another city a travelled across the world alone for 3 months. My past self would never ever be able to do that.

After five heavy ayahuasca sessions, I changed my top priority from work to relationship and guess what - found a loving girlfriend a month after that! The one I looked for for 15 years...

I agree the returns from trips are diminishing. I believe one has to do the real work, no pill would do it for him. But once you do the consciousness work or doing creative work, the psychedelics can be of great benefit.

this is an area which cannot be determined in black and white terms; as experiences vary, so do the the effects and potential benefits. with that being said...

for the past 3 years i have been involved in medicine-based psychotherapy. the model is we do standard therapeutic meetings for 3 months, and then we do one full-day (usually 6-8hrs) of therapy with sacred medicine. during the three years we have used MDMA, Psilocybin, LSD, 2C-B and Ketamine.

there is no question at all whether this has helped me; simply put it has changed me from my core outward profoundly. a good way of putting it is that i have not really changed, but have evolved into the person i was always meant to be. it has helped me confront and resolve many difficult issues, from interpersonal relationships, traumas from childhood and very bad self-esteem. it has helped me see the way my past experiences have shaped the way i think about things and given me a new lens to view life, events and people through. my therapist/guide/shaman has helped me come to a place where i can honestly say my life has been saved; reborn, if you will.

it has also raised my awareness as to the real difference between using these medicines on one's own and using them in a therapeutic setting with a trained facilitator. for example, it is hard for me to imagine taking MDMA on my own; while it might provide a nice, "feel good" experience, the true potential, in my opinion, might be wasted. this is, of course, my own perspective - not suggesting at all that people shouldn't feel free to use these medicines as they wish...safely.

i look forward to these every-three-month sessions with great excitement and anticipation, but treat them as part of our overall exploration. each time i set a very strong and well thought out intention. and each time i am reminded in in no uncertain terms...

the medicine does not always give us what we want, but always gives us what we need.


namaste

Personally I do feel psychedelics have helped me in a number of ways and I feel very lucky to have encountered them. I believe I am physically/psychologically/spiritually better off because of my experiences. These days personally it is rare for me to indulge as my life plate is pretty full as it is, but I feel many insights have stayed with me. I feel they have encouraged me to take better care of my physical body, in terms of diet and exercise. I feel they defused me from depressive episodes I used to experience in my younger pre=psychedelic days (I'm not giving psychedelics full credit here but I do feel they played a part). My psychedelic use I feel has increased my hunger for knowledge and deepened my connection to nature and the universe, while enhancing my empathy to my fellow humans, and my desire to be a positive force in what little ways that I can. On my initiatory experience with iboga, I got the message not to be passive in life, and to try and be active in cultivating new experiences, opportunities and connections...that this will reflect onto me in a positive way, but importantly ripple out and affect others positively too. This insight I believe to be valid and to stand up to the cold sober light of say, and I've tried to live my life with this in mind since then.

Earlier this year I had some breakthrough experiences with 5-MeO-DMT in the form of Bufo alvarius secretion which collectively, for me, was the most profound event of my life, and the only event of my life thus far I would view as a true spiritual breakthrough or revelation. Despite the time that has elapsed since these experiences they still remain fresh in my mind and I still frequently dream about them and occasionally enter the state I experienced through dreaming. These experiences built and expanded on those insights I had previously.

Psychedelics certainly aren't a quick fix or a panacea. One's likelihood of gaining benefits from experiences with them is going to be intimately tied to the ability of one to put energy into acting on the insights and putting the necessary work on. Ultimately, to give a highly condensed summary, psychedelics are very effective at generating new perspective on one's life, and this can be very valuable indeed. However, what one chooses to do with their insights is entirely up to the individual in question, and this in turn is linked to the benefits one can bring back with them to their sober reality.

Traditional cultures don't consider them "teachers" for nothing. Cutting out the middle man is great if you know how to do it yourself. In western psychedelic culture we say "once you get the message hang up the phone".

Anyways the answer to your question is "without a doubt". I'll use my first Ayahuasca trip as probably my best example of a psychedelic experience that has impacted my life. I had entered ceremony as a born and bred reductionist. I identified with my logic and only saw healing as a manner of pointing at problem sources and "fixing" them. This led to a lot of external blame and powerlessness to do more than shout at the world about how shitty of a job everyones doing. How could I a lone human, "fix" this broken world? Anyways, Ayahuasca kicked my ass. I was given a full breakthrough-strength dose. The first thing that happened was I came face to face with the Creator. That vision is permanently burned into my psyche. It is my guiding light. The pinnacle of my being. My divine right to eternal union with the infinite Creator and it's endless gifts. After that I was chucked out of the clouds into the pits of hell. I was literally begging people i didn't know to kill me and disrupted the entire ceremony. I put it up there as one of if not the most terrifying experiences of my life. Anyways the point is that nothing changed. Between heaven and hell. The ceremony stayed the same, the setting did not change... Yet I must have changed something. And i was certainly too intoxicated to have done so from coherent logical thoughts. To be able to manifest heaven and hell only from a change in being... that's true power. Living life with that sort of power... Well I'm infinitely grateful to it. A year later i contracted Lyme disease unknowingly and was let to progress to late stage where I remain today. It's like being on Ayahuasca continuously. A continuous test of attitude and perseverance to rectify it. Learning to lead from the heart and let understanding follow. Waking up everyday and seeking the Creator in everything to ease the pain. Continuously letting go of preconceptions that inhibit your healing. And most of all learning to effect change through action and presence as opposed to logic and condemnation.

I live in a magical and functional world thanks to Ayahuasca. Other psychedelics only serve to support this change. I will say too that more than just inner personal change I also brought back some great music from my ceremony Music that, four years later, can still induce instant flashback and make tears flow. Music that, despite me giving up my own musical career, keeps me playing the guitar and offering up my gratitude from a mode of self expression that i would otherwise not have.

I can empathize though, that psychedelics can be seductive. I just tripped this morning for the first time in almost a year. Just DMT. But I remember now the infinite mind game it plays with you. I keep coming back to it thinking I'm going to be swimming in sacred geometry and yet all I get is a bunch of tests of will In a few hours that will all be gone and I will be fantasizing about geometric shapes again. I spent years obsessed with altered states. Lyme disease really pulled me out of that by forcing me to focus on health and shift my scientific interests from psychotropics to microbiology. And I'm glad, but I think psychedelics still have their relevance in my life in a more ritualized context. Only when i have a deep commitment to the work. The ceremony also helps give context that I can bring back day to day without feeling as if i must continue to drink on a regular basis. Because essentially I meet other people on the same healing path, I hear songs written by people on that path, and so I get a lot of materials to work with in my freetime besides my own vague memory of the experience. So there's a lot of significance in the communion as well as the individual work. In fact I did not even participate last time, but merely stepped into the space to pick up my wife at the end of the night and that alone gave me afterglow for a month as if i had actually taken the brew

Well that's my kratom ramble for the day.

Legato Ray- in a nutshell high on drug, feel nice, back to reality, still have work to do.

3rdI- so spirituality just means ones view on reality? No vague connections with some transcendent other? Yes I would suggest they sort themselves out who else is going to do it. I would suggest that every action they take serves to further their health and happiness. I imagine most people in therapy would discover that they are willingly making themselves miserable and the only person who is going to change it is them.

Bancopuma- what was this true spiritual breakthrough that your convinced the most novel psychedelic you've consumed has given you? Please share! I think most of the insights gained from psychedelics are common knowledge. Is there really a particular revelation you've had that hasn't been uttered in your run of the mill self help book before?

I've felt this way too. But common knowledge spoken in words and common knowledge felt with unwavering conviction are two different things. I think many of us here would believe the answers were always inside of us. Psychedelics just turn up the gain

I can't say I read m(any) self help books to be honest. Also, the point has already been well made by Psiloraptor, but reading something in a book or hearing something, or having an intellectual understanding of something...even if it's a good something...is something highly distinct from experiencing this something directly and knowing it

The TL;DR insight of my 5-MeO-DMT breakthroughs is that old cliché, "we are all one". I've experienced states of oneness before on psychedelics, but nothing anywhere near as deep or cosmic as this. For me it was the personal realisation we're all individual facets of something much, much bigger. This is an experience I can never hope to come close to describing in words, but my insights are shared below if they are of interest. By the way, I do agree that psychedelics are very often accessing common knowledge...why wouldn't they? As Rick Doblin states, "When we take a psychedelic drug and material emerges from our unconscious . . . it's not a psychedelic experience, it's a human experience." As mentioned, I think it's the change in perspective and the levity psychedelics can yield that is one of the most valuable facets.

My insights on the experience are half way down this thread if you want to have a read.

https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=74013

I don't use psychs currently to heal any pain, but I think I have probably avoided a lot by favoring them over other things from the start. They've helped me to come up with some seriously 'out there' ideas and thoughts about the universe that seems to have made life more mystical. It's as if experiencing something so outside the box makes you think in unusual novel paths... or something.

Of course it's the user who improves their own life. Psychs are tools/keys. Taking the mind for a walk keeps it healthy. I've always seen it as having access to an extra layer of reality/mind. Hyperspace is hyperspace and there seems to be no reason not to go there from time to time... when I've got the balls.

Bancopuma- I've felt things with unwavering conviction at times on psychedelics, with the entirety of my being and then after also felt the opposite to be true as well. We may all be one but surely we are separate as well.

That seems to depend on how we want to define the system. Are we a multicellular organism or a symbiotic eukaryotic ecosystem? One organism or many? Or is the distinction purely a mind game? Something that draws lines around perceived bodies forgetting the continuous dissipation and integration of energy across all existence. Maybe we just revel in the perspective that's novel to us. Would the Chinese be so profoundly altered by the same insight with their different orientation towards individualism/collectivism? I'd be curious to know. All I can say is that there is nothing we do that isn't impacted by the cosmos at large. Whether we exhibit any intrinsic free will and thus individualism I do not know

I don't over think it I'm a human being having a human experience. Nothing draws lines around bodies the body ends I've read about the continuous disapation of energy but my experience is that im a human in a body.

Well that's certainly your perspective as it is most peoples and you're entitled to live by it. But it is a mental construct and nothing more. Parts of yourself (microorganisms, organic molecules, photons, etc) are continuously exchanged with everything else and play a role in shaping everything and visa versa. You're like a city connected by highways. If that is not unity I don't know what is. Even things such as ideas and behaviors are difficult to isolate from broader cultural contexts.

I'd argue that micro organisms, organic molecules and photons are mental constructs and nothing more! It's not the raw experience of being. Do you have the experience of being a micro organism or a human being?

Independent of feelings of exhilaration and a sense of a nuerochemical reset that both have a significant half-life for me, psychedelics have always grabbed me by the lapels and given me a good shake, saying, "Hey jackass!, take a look at yourself!". There always seems to be something that I'm refusing to acknowledge in my life - the proverbial gorilla in the elevator, and a good dose will put it in my focus. They are astoundingly effective if I allow them to be, and do the work they point out needs doing. Of course, i can always say "I was just tripping", and ignore it all.