It's definitely not "eat mushrooms; become millionaire". It's unlikely that there's a highly predictable way a mental change will effect your life, but the "typ

It's definitely not "eat mushrooms; become millionaire". It's unlikely that there's a highly predictable way a mental change will effect your life, but the "typical story" is also a misrepresentation. It's possible that it has positive mental consequences with some regularity. My impression is that this might be true. Some reasons for this may be it's culture of use, perception of the drug, and most importantly its biological effects. Most psychedelics alter the serotonin receptor system(Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia), and are culturally, and more recently medically, associated with "higher consciousness" (Guardian). At the risk of highly simplifying complex mental/neurological interactions, I think one of the things mushrooms provide is perspective as a result of examining everything from an altered mental state. Having experimented with small to moderately high doses, my hypotheses as to what my personal version of the altered mental's state's characteristics are are: *some effect on attention and mental effort that unify attention to an abstract focus and allow extended mental effort. *maybe it makes every thought feel very profound. *maybe it allows us to emotionally react to simulated outcomes which can make long term thinking more statistically accurate. *introduces some new mental illusions. *various effects on the whole perception black box. The same one that stitches, both eyeball inputs together, ignores your nose, and removes blurry eye images,etc. *makes mental associations more observable The biggest impact that it had for me personally was greater self awareness. Not in the sense that I immediately knew more about myself afterwards, but I could perceive more of my inner interactions if I wished. Hopefully people do studies. I'd volunteer for low-to-none toxicity drugs like mushrooms. Citations: (Kahneman): "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-and-slow https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11468377-thinking-fast-a... (Psychedelic Drug, Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_drug (Guardian): https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-reveal-mind-opening-response-to-psychedelic-drug-trip-lsd-ketamine-psilocybin https://www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/19/brain-scans-...