5 ms·

My Adventures With the Trip Doctors

vinceguidry 8y ago
Sorry in advance for the length. The big takeaway I got from the article was that the ego actually resides in the Default Mode Network and that psychedelic experience almost completely deactivates it. This allows me to construct the idea that meditation, which removes focus from sensory experience and concentrates it in the DMN, is akin to working on your self rather than obliterating and reconstructing it, if only for a short time. This idea survived only as long as it took for me to search 'dmn meditation', which reveals that concentration meditation also reduces DMN activity. So why did I feel that meditation increased activity in the DMN? Well, when I was learning meditation all those years ago, the usual stepping off point is through concentration practices, which obviously will quiet the DMN down through task-focus. Eventually you reach the point where you can go exploring in the spaces of your mind. But the sheer magnitude time investment needed to self-induce into trance and the cognitive effects I'd seen in people who really identified with doing lots of it warned me off of it pretty early. I instead settled into a pattern whereby every few years I'll sense the need for a reboot, then self-induce for awhile, until it didn't seem to be all that helpful anymore. The last such session had me doing inductions every few nights and slowly pulling back on how deep I go before ending the session. Now I understand that a person's mind builds up 'structures' over time and they need to get swept away every now and again for good health. I was leery of psychedelics for so many years for the same reason I didn't want to do hardcore meditation. Essentially, it's the 'ego-shattering' nature of turning off the DMN for so long that makes me wary of it. Good to do every now and again, but I don't like what happens when you do it often. I've conversed with many people who have done this to themselves, and they present as drug addicts to me, not as fully-functioning, let alone super-functioning, humans. Rather than grow as human beings, they're growing as some weird alien species. So my own personal journey has me organize my life around greater DMN activation with occasional breaks, like to do programming work or play ping pong, then every once in awhile trance out and break through to a new understanding. It's very important to me to integrate trance experiences, I spend a lot of time on it, and it's one reason trance induction is just too heavy to do regularly.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- influnza 8y ago
  Thank you for such good description of your experience. My pole dance studio incorporates mild relaxation techniques into warm up flow and this works great to help me reset after a stressful work day in the office. I rarely feel the need to reset, but when I do I usually just switch to things I haven't done for a while. Music -> reading -> painting -> sports -> socializing -> learning and so on. This helps stimulate various areas and keep my consciousness well-balanced.
- azhu 8y ago
  > I've conversed with many people who have done this to themselves, and they present as drug addicts to me, not as fully-functioning, let alone super-functioning, humans. Rather than grow as human beings, they're growing as some weird alien species. An alternate hypothesis to explain the weirdness of these people is that perhaps those who have taken their place of mental residence too far closely overlap with those who lack the social awareness to know that presenting psychedelics as an integral part of routine life in today's society will get you regarded as insane. This can happen to people, and those who have this happen to them are particularly noticeable while I suspect those who have deeply moving experiences and are able to successfully incorporate them into their daily lives to positive effect keep those pieces of their backstory under especially stringent wraps. Anecdotally, I was able to implement an enormous increase in my function as a human being resulting from my reflections on my psychedelic experiences. In all areas from mental health to human relationships to technical skill development. The current state of my own experience of my life and the experience of all those who are part of it confirms. The primary psychedelic experience that spurred on these changes occurred about 3 years ago, and was the result of a recreational trip gone very wrong. Today, I continue to microdose 1P-LSD to subjectively beneficial effect.
  - mason55 8y ago
    Similar to how people say that transgender folks don’t ever pass. It’s not that, it’s that you only notice the ones who don’t.

Sorry in advance for the length. The big takeaway I got from the article was that the ego actually resides in the Default Mode Network and that psychedelic experience almost completely deactivates it. This allows me to construct the idea that meditation, which removes focus from sensory experience and concentrates it in the DMN, is akin to working on your self rather than obliterating and reconstructing it, if only for a short time. This idea survived only as long as it took for me to search 'dmn meditation', which reveals that concentration meditation also reduces DMN activity. So why did I feel that meditation increased activity in the DMN? Well, when I was learning meditation all those years ago, the usual stepping off point is through concentration practices, which obviously will quiet the DMN down through task-focus. Eventually you reach the point where you can go exploring in the spaces of your mind. But the sheer magnitude time investment needed to self-induce into trance and the cognitive effects I'd seen in people who really identified with doing lots of it warned me off of it pretty early. I instead settled into a pattern whereby every few years I'll sense the need for a reboot, then self-induce for awhile, until it didn't seem to be all that helpful anymore. The last such session had me doing inductions every few nights and slowly pulling back on how deep I go before ending the session. Now I understand that a person's mind builds up 'structures' over time and they need to get swept away every now and again for good health. I was leery of psychedelics for so many years for the same reason I didn't want to do hardcore meditation. Essentially, it's the 'ego-shattering' nature of turning off the DMN for so long that makes me wary of it. Good to do every now and again, but I don't like what happens when you do it often. I've conversed with many people who have done this to themselves, and they present as drug addicts to me, not as fully-functioning, let alone super-functioning, humans. Rather than grow as human beings, they're growing as some weird alien species. So my own personal journey has me organize my life around greater DMN activation with occasional breaks, like to do programming work or play ping pong, then every once in awhile trance out and break through to a new understanding. It's very important to me to integrate trance experiences, I spend a lot of time on it, and it's one reason trance induction is just too heavy to do regularly.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
influnza 8y ago
Thank you for such good description of your experience. My pole dance studio incorporates mild relaxation techniques into warm up flow and this works great to help me reset after a stressful work day in the office. I rarely feel the need to reset, but when I do I usually just switch to things I haven't done for a while. Music -> reading -> painting -> sports -> socializing -> learning and so on. This helps stimulate various areas and keep my consciousness well-balanced.
azhu 8y ago
> I've conversed with many people who have done this to themselves, and they present as drug addicts to me, not as fully-functioning, let alone super-functioning, humans. Rather than grow as human beings, they're growing as some weird alien species. An alternate hypothesis to explain the weirdness of these people is that perhaps those who have taken their place of mental residence too far closely overlap with those who lack the social awareness to know that presenting psychedelics as an integral part of routine life in today's society will get you regarded as insane. This can happen to people, and those who have this happen to them are particularly noticeable while I suspect those who have deeply moving experiences and are able to successfully incorporate them into their daily lives to positive effect keep those pieces of their backstory under especially stringent wraps. Anecdotally, I was able to implement an enormous increase in my function as a human being resulting from my reflections on my psychedelic experiences. In all areas from mental health to human relationships to technical skill development. The current state of my own experience of my life and the experience of all those who are part of it confirms. The primary psychedelic experience that spurred on these changes occurred about 3 years ago, and was the result of a recreational trip gone very wrong. Today, I continue to microdose 1P-LSD to subjectively beneficial effect.
- mason55 8y ago
  Similar to how people say that transgender folks don’t ever pass. It’s not that, it’s that you only notice the ones who don’t.