14 ms·

How ayahuasca changed my perspective

90 points by pmoncada 5y ago

JohnWhigham 5y ago
Ah, another classic "SV bro disillusioned with making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year does psychedelics and now feels at one with the world" timeline.
mam3 5y ago
Most balanced (i.e. no preexisting mental illness background) people should try imo.
rendall 5y ago
My anecdata from knowing 3 or 4 people who have tried ayahuasca and from knowing a shamen who guided people through the experience, is that ayahuasca does have a temporary change but the change is not permanent.
- temp0826 5y ago
  My own anecdata from working at a retreat for the last six months in the Peruvian Amazon is that it definitely can. It doesn't always "work" for most people immediately (one could drink a hundred times and not actually make any progress)- it highly depends on the willingness of the person to go in to their past and work with their unprocessed traumas. It is not easy; proper intentions and concentration make a big difference. The visions can be interesting but truthfully are more of a side effect and can be a distraction if you are trying to get real work done. A good shaman will be able to "move the medicine" (really your focus) with their icaros to different areas of the body that they might see trauma stored in; this in turn can bring up memories or thoughts to push you into processing those ignored emotions.
  - rendall 5y ago
    I'm talking 4-5 years later, the patterns they were trying to escape and thought their trip ended, still remained, were still a struggle.
spamalot159 5y ago
Reminds me of another article about the lead singer of Imagine Dragons[1]. He also had a life changing Ayahuasca experience that totally rewired the way he thinks about god. [1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cutthroat-imagine-dragons-meaning-lyrics-follow-you-1140913/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cutthroat-imag...
uh_uh 5y ago
One experiment I'd like to see is the following: if people take Ayahuasca in a non-Amazonian setting do they also get in touch with Pachamama and friends? In other words, how much is priming responsible for the types of experience one has under the influence of Ayahuasca?
- capableweb 5y ago
  Tripping is not only about the substance itself, no. Set and setting is extremely important also, and decides what kind of trip the user will experience. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting This article might be particularly interesting to you: "The Impact of Set and Setting on Religious Experience in Nature" - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272579916_The_Impact_of_Set_and_Setting_on_Religious_Experience_in_Nature https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272579916_The_Impac...
- ta1234567890 5y ago
  I don’t know about Ayahuasca in particular, but with psychedelics in general, one of the most important aspects for the experience, is the setting that you are in. It is well known that whatever the setting and how you feel about it in that moment, will have a great effect on your experience. A good example is the Good Friday Experiment at Harvard, in which they gave psilocybin to some people and took them to church, then quite a few of them had “religious experiences”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment#Experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment#Expe...
  - admiral33 5y ago
    Was there a sermon? That could definitely make/break the experience. An empty chapel is probably an ideal place to facilitate that type of experience regardless of religious affiliation. Good lighting, acoustics, clean, ornate glass windows, no outstanding obligations from your life manifesting themself in the space.
- jbotz 5y ago
  This has been studied quite extensively and at least semi-scientifically for Ayahuasca specifically and also "clinical" DMT experiences (DMT is the main psychoactive ingredient in Ayahuasca) and the upshot is that yes, the imagery is surprisingly consistent even when removed from the typical ayahuasca-ceremony context and cultural factors. For some references see "The Antipodes of the Mind", a book by an Israeli cognitive psychologist who spent years doing phenomenological study of ayahuasca experiences, and "DMT: The spirit molecule", a book about studies using DMT done in the 90s.
okareaman 5y ago
I am of the opinion that resolving trauma that causes a person to "zone out" and sleep walk through life can have equivalent effect to psychedelics. I've done both, so I can compare them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy and Wisemind done with a knowledgeable therapist can produce excellent results. Meditation and mindfulness (pay attention to what you pay attention to) are also metacognition techniques that produce results. These tools are in my bag of what I call my debuggers for removing automatic thoughts that produce negative emotions, or what ancient Hindus call a "vasana." A vasana can also be a memory of a good feeling, which drives behavior for more, which is a problem for gamblers for example. If you yearn for adventure in South America or like the idea of doing mind altering drugs, by all means do it, but just know it is not the only way. Ram Dass called psychedelics training wheels and said you don't need them after awhile. The point is to break out of the box, but once out, you don't need to keep doing it.
- prox 5y ago
  I knew a few people who did it [ayahuasca], first time(s) seemed ok and very insightful, but after that, it seemed to become more like a need for a trip, or an escape. I only seen one good result with someone who used it a few times in a 1:1 therapy setting.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - tartoran 5y ago
    LSD and ayahuasca have a somewhat low potential for abuse, each trip is so emotionally exhausting, at least for me, and though the experience is enriching I would not want to repeat it anytime soon. There is enough to be processed for a while. Granted, I don't think I have any trauma or at least I am not aware of any. Last time I did LSD feels like yesterday but it was around 10 years ago. But like with everything, people who in general abuse things can abuse these two as much as they abuse food, sweets and so on.
    - 5y ago
dna_polymerase 5y ago
Engineer does Ayahuasca, quits Waymo to start a cryptocurrency. I think I'll pass on this one. But classic medium.com stuff. I'm delighted to see that this website is still around.
- notahacker 5y ago
  The segue from "...this is commonly referred to as “faith” where you have to make a leap of faith to experience some level of spirituality. Ayahuasca, maybe, accelerates that leap" to "I’m just trying to take distil some fundamental features of the positives of religion and some ideas of where to start in terms of my own self-actualization" to "we have created a peer-to-peer smart contract that allows people to hold collateral against each other in an easy way" was truly something to behold.
serverholic 5y ago
It sounds like tripping scrambled his brains a bit and he's having trouble reconciling this with the rational part of his brain. There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. As for why these spirits seem to have a history with humans, I can think of a number of possible explanations. Perhaps human brains are wired in such a way that we tend to hallucinate similar things? or perhaps the various religious symbols he was surrounded by somehow triggered specific thoughts? Or maybe the peruvian environment causes certain mental associations. Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. This seems like yet another story like "hey guys, so normally I'm a rational person, but I did some drugs and now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." EDIT: Another interesting thought. It's been shown that AI tends to "compress" data into forms that seem weird and trippy when visualized. I wonder if the spirit Pachamama is really just how our brains tend to "compress" information about animals.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  > now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." I think he said something more like I am now open to the possibility that they might be real. But ... we know there are people who are schizophrenic, who switch from one personality to another. Which of them is "real"? They probably all are. But that does not mean they exist anywhere outside of one's head. If you can experience another you, then it seems not implausible that you would also experience "God" inside your head. It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not. Another part of the article considers (quite materialistically) the possibility that "God" is something society creates in our heads. I think Sigmund Freud called that the "Super Ego". It is what makes us better survive as a species. It causes us to co-operate rather than just selfishly abuse others as much as we can. It is clear how such a function could evolve by evolution. We see it in all species, they don't spend their energy trying to kill other individuals of the same species. It's the Selfish Gene.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
mettamage 5y ago
> What I saw and what I felt were literally beyond my imagination, it was so exotic and specific in a way that I could never have anticipated. I have this many nights when I'm conscious of falling asleep. I get wildly fantastical thought patterns for which I feel that I'd never be able to make them up. Also the randomness is sometimes insanely wide. Like, I'd go from seeing a woman in a field, to a fragment of a golfball (being chipped off from the actual golfball), to something gaining the gestalt of a zom-, oh wait, it looks like a bir-, no it's now a canoe and I'm enjoying the ride on this thing! Whiieeejjj! ^ My conscious mind made that up, so it's a lot less random and a lot less uncategorized yet categorized. There's a Rick and Morty scene that feels a bit like this, but less existential, less orderly and more random (in my case) [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE9pbj1gd-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE9pbj1gd-Y
s5300 5y ago
Unfortunately, now having read this and seen his pictures, you really can't come to any conclusion. If you'd gone into things not having read this/seen the pictures, had an experience like his, came across his post, then things get interesting to think about atleast. Sucks haha. As absolutely outright inhumane as it is, all I'd like to see in my lifetime (which is in effect nearly impossible) is a human raised in practically a clean room (or idk, just any enclosed environment) where they're fed and cared for, but without any actual human interaction (all automated), then given psychedelics such as ahuyasca. After that, attempt to somehow integrate them for the purpose of, well, you get the idea. Then comes the issue of even if that all works out, not knowing how the environment they were raised in contributed to the experience and such. I'm drunk, the above is most definitely probably torture (and also very poorly worded but i think the jist is there haha), but damn, I'm just so curious. edit: Didn't entirely read before commenting either. Typical HN right. Can guarantee if my dead grandmother were to be a vibrating entity in my head that would sparsely speak to me, she would've definitely said something about the porn by now. Gotta dismiss his thoughts on that one
- cassepipe 5y ago
  Unfortunately, now having read your post, we really can't come to any conclusion about what your point was :)
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    Someone training their GPT-3 bot to refute different positions, perhaps?
underseacables 5y ago
I have used marijuana for approximately twenty years to deal with anxiety and PTSD. The VA hasn’t been too bad but day in, and out, cannabis has had a more positive effect on my overall being, personality, and coping abilities, than the pills the VA used to give me.
- FearlessNebula 5y ago
  It’s funny how differently cannabis affects people. For you it has helped treat your anxiety, for me I never had a panic attack until I tried an edible.
  - gedy 5y ago
    Yes cannabis also would consistently give me panic attacks, swore off it years ago due to this.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "I never had a panic attack until I tried an edible." You probably overdosed. Anxiety is an extremely common symptom of cannabis overdose, and it's very easy to overdose with the highly potent cannabis that's on the market today, especially with edibles where the appropriate dosage is very difficult to control compared to smoking. A wiser way to approach cannabis consumption is to smoke the smallest dose of the weakest strain you can find.. ideally something below the threshold of perception, and slowly, very slowly, over a period of days or weeks, work your way up from there until you achieve a dose that's effective but not overwhelming to you. Edibles are tougher to use this way, as you have to wait much longer to see if there's an effect (and often people give in to the temptation to up their dosage if they don't feel anything), but the principle is the same: start with the smallest dose you can find, and slowly (no more than once per day.. ideally with at least a couple of days in between) work your way up. Also, mixing substances is a bad idea. I don't know if you did that, but synergistic effects from multiple substances can also easily lead to overdose.
    - capableweb 5y ago
      > You probably overdosed. Maybe but maybe not. I myself smoke cannabis every day in order to avoid anxiety, but I know plenty of people who can't even sit in the same room as someone who is smoking as they'll get enough cannabis in their system to trigger some reaction. So while anxiety could be because of an overdose, some people really do get a strong reaction to even the smallest amount of cannabis.
magneticnorth 5y ago
I'll admit I'm pretty skeptical that the psychedelic drug experience is actually putting people in touch with any kind of external experience that is otherwise hidden to us, but at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us, and has some fascinating common patterns like a new perception of inter-connectedness. And having spent a long time immersed in fields related to computability and information theory, I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to say that if something "only" exists in the minds of a large network of humans, then it is not real.
- tempsy 5y ago
  It's the ego crush that is the most fascinating. Most of us bury trauma deep inside and do a pretty good job automatically keeping those thoughts from resurfacing. With psychedelics it's as if you're powerless to keep those hidden which is why they work well in a therapy setting.
- mettamage 5y ago
  > at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us Oh yes, I had a fun one on truffles. There were a few minutes (or more) where I couldn't parse the world anymore. All I knew and understood was "don't move and you'll be safe" (I was on a bed). I was so scared of everything beyond the bed! I could barely understand the bed itself, so I knew being on there was safe. Everything else felt so terrifying, because I had no understanding of what I was looking at. Were the objects in the room friend or foe? What happens when you fall of the bed? Do you fall in a dark pit, does your reality change, or do you simply fall 0.5 meters? I don't know. Heck, even describing this assumes much more knowledge than I had back then. But it did teach me something: when I don't know something, it seems that one of my base emotions is fear. And I've seen it at certain moments when I've been sober as well (like not knowing what's going on). Since then I've told myself: "Mettamage, whatever you don't understand, you're gonna be fine." And that helps :)
- Taylor_OD 5y ago
  Tripping wasnt life altering for me for the first time because of some universal or god realization. It was just a headspace that I had never been in before and I did not feel entirely in control of that headspace. It was interesting, and scary, because of that.
hprotagonist 5y ago
The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Standard trip tale and ramblings of someone who doesn't know how to reconcile with the revelation that their brain is a sack of chemicals.
- uh_uh 5y ago
  There is somewhat of a dissonance that I detect from trip reports like this. On one hand, authors acknowledge that the whole trip might be just the result of their brain acting weird. But on the other hand, they start emphasizing how real the experience felt, therefore there might be something real to the entities/sprits encountered during the trip. But if we already acknowledge that any feeling of "realness" can be purely the result of the brain acting weird, doesn't that invalidate any appeal to how "real" the experience felt? It literally means nothing, if our underlying theory is that the brain's "realness" detectors were malfunctioning.
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    It is interesting. I was in hospital pumped up with all kinds of medicine and I saw from the window how the whole hospital building took off flying. And I "knew" it was real, I knew it could not be a dream. So I wondered afterwards why did it feel so real, unlike any ordinary dream? I think it may be because I remembered that dream so vividly and it was a dream where I was fully conscious about my experience, and was able to question it rationally, and that didn't stop the dream from happening. Whereas in ordinary dreams we just experience the dream, we don't much experience ourselves experiencing it. And seems like if we ask in a dream is this a dream the dream is over soon enough. Seems some drugs can cause us to "dream" in a way that does not immediately break when you start questioning it. And why couldn't they.
- litoorachure 5y ago
  >Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the Weather. - Bill Hicks Everything old is new again; maybe we'll get lucky and have another '60s-'70s as covid wanes, if people are starting to put trip reports on Medium blogs under their real names without any "SWIM" disclaimers. If y'all like these kinds of trip write-ups, erowid.org has loads of them.
29athrowaway 5y ago
He made the same error the ancients did: trying to find meaning in hallucinations. Be aware that sometimes drugs damage the blood brain barrier and cause all sort of fucked up health issues.
- LocalH 5y ago
  I'm not aware of DMT causing any physical damage to the brain.
juancn 5y ago
So... selling a book attributing greater meaning to cognitive defects?
BashiBazouk 5y ago
I had the opposite experience with LSD. I was an agnostic mid teen when I started experimenting with it (and mushrooms). I never found the peak particularly spiritual. During one philosophical downside of a trip I thought about god quite a bit and came to the conclusion the entire concept made absolutely no sense. I've been an atheist ever since...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I never found the peak particularly spiritual." That's really interesting. It makes me wonder: - Did you ever take it in a religious setting such as a church, mosque, or temple? - Did you ever try priming yourself with religious-themed literature, music, or artwork? - Did you ever spend the entire trip in nature? I suspect any of these would make it more likely to have a spiritual or mystical experience. On the other hand, if you're at, say, a party with lots of distractions, or if your mind rarely dwells on religious subjects, you'd be less likely to have one.
  - BashiBazouk 5y ago
    My group was pretty intense with experimenting with LSD. Early trips were always fairly controlled environments in that it was away from people. Countless trips in nature (the forest of nisene marks if you are in the bay area). We always fasted eight hours before taking the drug. We found that anytime we tried to prime the trip with stuff, music, movies, specific places, what have you, we would almost always forget/ignore/not care about the priming once the peak kicked in. On the other hand we were never "turned on" to it by anyone. A friend and I were reading High Times and there was an article about it. After reading it we knew we had to try it out. We did read quite a bit more about the drug before taking it. I knew Peter Stafford and as a teenager did graphic work on his book: Psychedelics Encyclopedia. I guess we came to LSD from a scientific rather than spiritual perspective. We already understood how the drug worked and why. That likely lessened the mystical impact that we might have had otherwise. Humorously enough I did take it once in church. My friends dragged me off to a seventh day Adventist camp to hit on the christian girls, as only one of my friends had family in that church. Walked in to a giant packed hall right before the opening sermon and just as I was starting to peak. Got a giant Nope, this is not the place for me and walked right out...
jdmoreira 5y ago
"Man does drugs. Claims to see God." Really, I'm all for drugs and if they give you perspective that’s awesome. If drugs help you deal with trauma, addiction, depression go for it! Just don’t try to convince me that it all didn’t just happen in your head.
- telmo 5y ago
  Everything just happens in your mind. Anything else is metaphysical speculation.
  - jdmoreira 5y ago
    In my mind yes. Not in his :)
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    Woah, we need to back up and define "everything" "just" "happens" "in" "your" and "mind"
    - telmo 5y ago
      We can do that, but it will just happen in your mind.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lifty 5y ago
  Well, he tries to reconcile his experience with his old rational view pf religion by almost semantically re-defining God. I can relate to this experience based on my own passed experiences but I drew different conclusions.
dmingod666 5y ago
This could be sort of like a debug mode of your brain where you can enter a dream like state while being conscious and forming permanent memories as opposed to sleep where you lose your dreams when you wake up. I feel the 'spirits' they encounter are abstract personalities that the person forms this is why they don't need to speak to communicate. If you can switch from work mode to family mode when your kid enters the room, what guides you? They are probably encoutering parts of their own personality with the addition of a dream like state where the brain just fills in gaps and creates a narrative out of seemingly unconnected dream sequences.. they are probably real because they are 'you' + some imagination thrown in..
throwaway_kufu 5y ago
That part about controlling the body of a monkey compels me to add a related comment. Changing my diet (and by that I mean what I consume and put into my body as a lifestyle, not some temporary change in nutrtion) and ultimately altering my microbiome through my diet and lifestyle changes has given me greater insight into how little control over the most basic decision making processes I really ever had or have. There is no doubt that being host to microorganisms blurs the line of “me” and free will, from conscious thoughts to involuntary biological reactions, I don’t think any of us are independent beings free or separate and apart from microorganisms living within us that we play host to, they want to live and create an environment they can thrive in as much as we think we do. From the ancient tradition of fasting (including our better understanding of the biological changes that occur), to the author’s Ayahuasca experience (reference to the specific foods the author was instructed to abstain from leading up to the experience), it is interesting but not surprising there is a common denominator of manipulating our microbiome. If you want a better perspective on life and oneself, you don’t need to travel to Peru and take Ayahuasca, though I don’t discourage that, but try starting with your diet and lifestyle.
- kaybe 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on what you experienced?
  - throwaway_kufu 5y ago
    Everything from improved immune system, improved vision (color perception), but mentally there was a lot. The crazy things are difficult if not impossible for me to reduce to words. Where I always had a “sweet tooth” and cravings for various foods, those would completely disappear, but it was more than that, it went from my favorite foods I consciously abstained from to those very foods being viewed as poison. So I’m not just talking about a lack of cravings, but mentally the same way I may have once had strong cravings or looked forward to cheat days/meals my mindset changed where it would have become unfathomable how I could have even eaten those things much less viewed them as special treats or rewards. My sensory experience of taste/flavors changed, so even though I never disliked a kale salad with oil/vinegar, salt/pepper, something like that became more delicious and apprising than my prior favorite foods. Physically if I were to eat a previous “favorite foods” I wouldn’t even care for it taste wise the way I once did (plus depending on the food itself I might actually get sick and be unable to hold it down). There are noticeable improvements to my energy levels, breathing, skin, hair, and nails. Finally, as a runner the differences are night and day, from the run itself being easy, to recovery being improved, to being able to forgo water/electrolytes/gels on some pretty long runs. But this is where I have also had experiences I call spiritual, might just fall in the spectrum of runners high, but I never had them otherwise and now I seek them out sort of like a drug. It’s everything from out of body experiences, feelings of enlightenment/nirvana, to connection with something beyond me if not a connection with everything or what the great poets write about when writing of love (not at all unlike the author’a discussion of God and love). I’m not suggesting any of it is real or some attainable state of being if you just do what I did, but I experience them just as much as I used to experience cravings for a given food, think I enjoy a given food or battled what I thought was my own desire for a given food. Fasting isn’t a personal favorite of mine, but I’ve dabbled, and when I say dabbled I’d do a 48-72 hour fast per week. My longest was a 5 day fast, I was working 8-10 hour days in law, I ran 7.5 miles everyday and found them pretty easy (granted I’m slow and not setting any records). I think most of the benefits people subjectively describe with fasting I achieve through my own methods, there may even be a term for it but it slips my mind, but essentially a continuous state of long term caloric deficit combined with the specific foods I consume and avoid. The body adjusts so by no means is it like I’m losing weight or wasting away, I think the body compensates with increased HGH and testosterone which is seen in fasting.
deleted 5y ago
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neonological 5y ago
All available evidence points to the materialistic viewpoint. You cannot trust your feelings or experiences. You cannot even fully trust science and logic. However science and logic delivers more consistent results. You may feel like there's other "wavelengths" of reality when you do a psychedelic but everyone's experience is different. The only consistent experience most of humanity shares is the scientific and logical reality we experience when sober. So as far as we know science and logic is the more accurate and consistent barometer. This man has a claim, his article does not give adequate evidence for that claim. In fact this article shows an intense lack of basic understanding of the nature of logic and science and it's relationship with reality. If 1000 atheists did Ayahuasca will that change all their perspectives? Does a change in perspective or a the opinion of a brain compromised by an hallucinogen serve as accurate evidence? No. Don't be stupid. Not even photographic evidence or a video of a god serves as adequate evidence. If you have a clear perspective on the nature of logic, probability and science and it's relationship with reality... drugs will not change your viewpoint. These kind of experiences are only valid for people who have a lack of deep understanding of reality and the tools we use to understand it. Let's just put it logically and plainly. If drugs compromise your brain and it's ability to drive and it's ability to perceive things than how on earth does a claim about god by a person on drugs serve as an accurate account? You don't trust a man high on some drug to drive, you're going to trust his opinion on God? Don't be stupid. The man's description and judgement is compromised and I'm surprised and disappointed so many HN readers voted this up.
- axguscbklp 5y ago
  >All available evidence points to the materialistic viewpoint. The materialistic viewpoint has failed to explain consciousness in the sense of describing a mechanism by which material phenomena could give rise to subjective experience.
  - neonological 5y ago
    Failure doesn't validate other forms of explanations. Materialism is an imperfect explanation but imperfection is not a metric for reliability. Evidence is the metric for reliability and so far as imperfect as materialism is... it has the best evidence. Moving to other explanations means moving to explanations with less or no evidence and therefore are at high risk of being false.
ericmcer 5y ago
This definitely reads as someone with low/no experience with psychedelics trying to derive some meaning from them. I was exactly the same way when I was younger, trying to analyze my trips, reading about others, upping the dosage, attempting to find the meaning of life or god or whatever. Psychedelic experiences are just experiences, they can exist unanalyzed. At best you might have some self-realizations, but there is no god/collective-consciousness whatever waiting at the end of the road.
mcphilip 5y ago
Highly recommend the author of this post, or any other psychonauts, to read Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. He recounts a period of several years in his life where his psychonautic explorations left him believing he was in contact with an alien intelligence. He wrestles with trying to find scientific explanations and whether that’s important or not since the experience deeply impacted him regardless of its cause. I don’t personally dabble in hallucinogenics, but I’m always fascinated by what bubbles up from the brain given various stimuli.
nickelcitymario 5y ago
While I agree with a lot of the comments about how we shouldn't trust hallucinations as being real encounters with God/gods/beings, I think there's tremendous intellectual and emotional value in these experiences. Mainly, once you experience things like this, you're forced to confront your own understanding of consciousness. For example, many people who take MDMA have a sudden realization that their concepts of themselves and others were based on unchallenged assumptions and paranoia. Someone who has lived their life in fear of intimidating people (jocks, bosses, "cool people", whatever), for example, might come to the realization that we're all far more alike than we are different, and that we're all just trying to make our way in the world. This realization can last years or even a lifetime. Someone who takes LSD or shrooms or Ayahuasca and experiences an encounter with what they perceive to be a spiritual being has to then confront what that meant. Even if it's a manifestation of their subconscious, they're tapping into something that was previously hidden from them. For my 2 cents, I think psychedelics are amazing -- once. After than first experience, you get diminishing returns. What's the benefit of encountering that "being" a second time? Unless "it" teaches you something new, you're just tripping and messing with your brain chemistry.
dqpb 5y ago
> It seemed obvious to me at the time that God is just a thing people tell each other to feel at ease with the greater questions in life: where do we come from, is there a meaning to life, what happens when we die, why am I trapped inside of a monkey I can control with my thoughts etc… Then I started to explore altered states of consciousness and I realized that there is much more to life than meets the eye.
pmoncada 5y ago
OP: I have no idea why, but the name of this posting was changed from "How Ayahuasca change my perspective on life and God" to simply "How Ayahuasca changed my perspective" Also, the post abruptly dropped in ranking on the front page after the name change, it seems to have been de-ranked dramatically... Strange Went from top 1-50, to now 200+... in a matter of a minute
- spurgu 5y ago
  438 right now. Strange indeed.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Fun topic, I liked the intro in terms of things we don’t discuss very often. It is quite interesting that free-will is by any meaningful definition supernatural since atoms just follow the laws of physics. If you believe in free-will, that is a leap of faith, like many other leaps of faith in life. Taking time to analyze the axioms of your life down to the deepest level is a great exercise. The best reflections will improve your life :)
yamellasmallela 5y ago
"How drugs messed up my brain and made me see god" Man this drug normalization needs to stop. Drugs can permanently fuck you up. It's just not worth it.
- calebm 5y ago
  Is this view point based on your own personal experience?
  - yamellasmallela 5y ago
    Its based on a lot of stuff. My experiences, my friends experiences, the scientific literature. I get that everyone loves to say that ketamine and mushrooms are so magical but if you read into these studies they urge extreme caution. The patients need to be careful screened (never mind that study participants self select from previous drug use), the dosages are exact, and they are monitored by professionals. Plus, there is 0 evidence that ketamine helps long term and a TON of evidence it causes severe addiction and withdrawal Point is, illicit drugs are not some magical thing that will solve your problems. In fact, they will make your life a hell of a lot worse the majority of the time.
lcall 5y ago
The article says some very positive things. Now, if several or more people similarly had such an experience (or similar enough), without drugs, and all came out of it saying ~ "God seriously spoke to us, and this is His plan that he wants us to follow in an organized way (but only voluntarily, no one can be forced, everyone can learn this for themselves if they are sincere, read, and pray about it, asking God for themselves)", and they remained faithful to that statement and Plan to the end of their lives, at great personal risk (financial losses, legal & physical persecution and abuse, at least one to the point of loss of ability to bear children, also being driven from place to place, and/or death, which some knew would result and it did), and their associates and successors who said they had similar personal knowledge built a new society in multiple places, with beliefs in serving others humbly, lawfulness under the principles of the US Constitution, etc etc., that would be impressive, would it not? "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." Etc. (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.25?#24 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-... or in English specifically https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.25.25?lang=eng#24 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-... :)

90 points by pmoncada 5y ago

Ah, another classic "SV bro disillusioned with making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year does psychedelics and now feels at one with the world" timeline.

mam3 5y ago

Most balanced (i.e. no preexisting mental illness background) people should try imo.

rendall 5y ago

My anecdata from knowing 3 or 4 people who have tried ayahuasca and from knowing a shamen who guided people through the experience, is that ayahuasca does have a temporary change but the change is not permanent.

temp0826 5y ago
My own anecdata from working at a retreat for the last six months in the Peruvian Amazon is that it definitely can. It doesn't always "work" for most people immediately (one could drink a hundred times and not actually make any progress)- it highly depends on the willingness of the person to go in to their past and work with their unprocessed traumas. It is not easy; proper intentions and concentration make a big difference. The visions can be interesting but truthfully are more of a side effect and can be a distraction if you are trying to get real work done. A good shaman will be able to "move the medicine" (really your focus) with their icaros to different areas of the body that they might see trauma stored in; this in turn can bring up memories or thoughts to push you into processing those ignored emotions.
- rendall 5y ago
  I'm talking 4-5 years later, the patterns they were trying to escape and thought their trip ended, still remained, were still a struggle.

spamalot159 5y ago

Reminds me of another article about the lead singer of Imagine Dragons[1]. He also had a life changing Ayahuasca experience that totally rewired the way he thinks about god. [1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cutthroat-imagine-dragons-meaning-lyrics-follow-you-1140913/ https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/cutthroat-imag...

uh_uh 5y ago

One experiment I'd like to see is the following: if people take Ayahuasca in a non-Amazonian setting do they also get in touch with Pachamama and friends? In other words, how much is priming responsible for the types of experience one has under the influence of Ayahuasca?

capableweb 5y ago
Tripping is not only about the substance itself, no. Set and setting is extremely important also, and decides what kind of trip the user will experience. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_and_setting This article might be particularly interesting to you: "The Impact of Set and Setting on Religious Experience in Nature" - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272579916_The_Impact_of_Set_and_Setting_on_Religious_Experience_in_Nature https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272579916_The_Impac...
ta1234567890 5y ago
I don’t know about Ayahuasca in particular, but with psychedelics in general, one of the most important aspects for the experience, is the setting that you are in. It is well known that whatever the setting and how you feel about it in that moment, will have a great effect on your experience. A good example is the Good Friday Experiment at Harvard, in which they gave psilocybin to some people and took them to church, then quite a few of them had “religious experiences”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment#Experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_Chapel_Experiment#Expe...
- admiral33 5y ago
  Was there a sermon? That could definitely make/break the experience. An empty chapel is probably an ideal place to facilitate that type of experience regardless of religious affiliation. Good lighting, acoustics, clean, ornate glass windows, no outstanding obligations from your life manifesting themself in the space.
jbotz 5y ago
This has been studied quite extensively and at least semi-scientifically for Ayahuasca specifically and also "clinical" DMT experiences (DMT is the main psychoactive ingredient in Ayahuasca) and the upshot is that yes, the imagery is surprisingly consistent even when removed from the typical ayahuasca-ceremony context and cultural factors. For some references see "The Antipodes of the Mind", a book by an Israeli cognitive psychologist who spent years doing phenomenological study of ayahuasca experiences, and "DMT: The spirit molecule", a book about studies using DMT done in the 90s.

okareaman 5y ago

I am of the opinion that resolving trauma that causes a person to "zone out" and sleep walk through life can have equivalent effect to psychedelics. I've done both, so I can compare them. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectic Behavioral Therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy and Wisemind done with a knowledgeable therapist can produce excellent results. Meditation and mindfulness (pay attention to what you pay attention to) are also metacognition techniques that produce results. These tools are in my bag of what I call my debuggers for removing automatic thoughts that produce negative emotions, or what ancient Hindus call a "vasana." A vasana can also be a memory of a good feeling, which drives behavior for more, which is a problem for gamblers for example. If you yearn for adventure in South America or like the idea of doing mind altering drugs, by all means do it, but just know it is not the only way. Ram Dass called psychedelics training wheels and said you don't need them after awhile. The point is to break out of the box, but once out, you don't need to keep doing it.

prox 5y ago
I knew a few people who did it [ayahuasca], first time(s) seemed ok and very insightful, but after that, it seemed to become more like a need for a trip, or an escape. I only seen one good result with someone who used it a few times in a 1:1 therapy setting.
- deleted 5y ago
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- tartoran 5y ago
  LSD and ayahuasca have a somewhat low potential for abuse, each trip is so emotionally exhausting, at least for me, and though the experience is enriching I would not want to repeat it anytime soon. There is enough to be processed for a while. Granted, I don't think I have any trauma or at least I am not aware of any. Last time I did LSD feels like yesterday but it was around 10 years ago. But like with everything, people who in general abuse things can abuse these two as much as they abuse food, sweets and so on.
  - 5y ago

dna_polymerase 5y ago

Engineer does Ayahuasca, quits Waymo to start a cryptocurrency. I think I'll pass on this one. But classic medium.com stuff. I'm delighted to see that this website is still around.

notahacker 5y ago
The segue from "...this is commonly referred to as “faith” where you have to make a leap of faith to experience some level of spirituality. Ayahuasca, maybe, accelerates that leap" to "I’m just trying to take distil some fundamental features of the positives of religion and some ideas of where to start in terms of my own self-actualization" to "we have created a peer-to-peer smart contract that allows people to hold collateral against each other in an easy way" was truly something to behold.

serverholic 5y ago

It sounds like tripping scrambled his brains a bit and he's having trouble reconciling this with the rational part of his brain. There is no evidence that any of these spirits exist so I don't know why people seem to think that taking a hallucinogenic drug somehow connects them to another plane of existence or w/e. As for why these spirits seem to have a history with humans, I can think of a number of possible explanations. Perhaps human brains are wired in such a way that we tend to hallucinate similar things? or perhaps the various religious symbols he was surrounded by somehow triggered specific thoughts? Or maybe the peruvian environment causes certain mental associations. Either way, I feel like I've read and heard similar stories before. This seems like yet another story like "hey guys, so normally I'm a rational person, but I did some drugs and now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." EDIT: Another interesting thought. It's been shown that AI tends to "compress" data into forms that seem weird and trippy when visualized. I wonder if the spirit Pachamama is really just how our brains tend to "compress" information about animals.

galaxyLogic 5y ago
> now I think higher-dimensional beings exist." I think he said something more like I am now open to the possibility that they might be real. But ... we know there are people who are schizophrenic, who switch from one personality to another. Which of them is "real"? They probably all are. But that does not mean they exist anywhere outside of one's head. If you can experience another you, then it seems not implausible that you would also experience "God" inside your head. It is fun to think that there might be higher-dimensional conscious beings around us or even within us. But that's all it is, fun. There doesn't seem to be any practical implications of whether there are or not. Another part of the article considers (quite materialistically) the possibility that "God" is something society creates in our heads. I think Sigmund Freud called that the "Super Ego". It is what makes us better survive as a species. It causes us to co-operate rather than just selfishly abuse others as much as we can. It is clear how such a function could evolve by evolution. We see it in all species, they don't spend their energy trying to kill other individuals of the same species. It's the Selfish Gene.
- hutzlibu 5y ago

mettamage 5y ago

> What I saw and what I felt were literally beyond my imagination, it was so exotic and specific in a way that I could never have anticipated. I have this many nights when I'm conscious of falling asleep. I get wildly fantastical thought patterns for which I feel that I'd never be able to make them up. Also the randomness is sometimes insanely wide. Like, I'd go from seeing a woman in a field, to a fragment of a golfball (being chipped off from the actual golfball), to something gaining the gestalt of a zom-, oh wait, it looks like a bir-, no it's now a canoe and I'm enjoying the ride on this thing! Whiieeejjj! ^ My conscious mind made that up, so it's a lot less random and a lot less uncategorized yet categorized. There's a Rick and Morty scene that feels a bit like this, but less existential, less orderly and more random (in my case) [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE9pbj1gd-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE9pbj1gd-Y

s5300 5y ago

Unfortunately, now having read this and seen his pictures, you really can't come to any conclusion. If you'd gone into things not having read this/seen the pictures, had an experience like his, came across his post, then things get interesting to think about atleast. Sucks haha. As absolutely outright inhumane as it is, all I'd like to see in my lifetime (which is in effect nearly impossible) is a human raised in practically a clean room (or idk, just any enclosed environment) where they're fed and cared for, but without any actual human interaction (all automated), then given psychedelics such as ahuyasca. After that, attempt to somehow integrate them for the purpose of, well, you get the idea. Then comes the issue of even if that all works out, not knowing how the environment they were raised in contributed to the experience and such. I'm drunk, the above is most definitely probably torture (and also very poorly worded but i think the jist is there haha), but damn, I'm just so curious. edit: Didn't entirely read before commenting either. Typical HN right. Can guarantee if my dead grandmother were to be a vibrating entity in my head that would sparsely speak to me, she would've definitely said something about the porn by now. Gotta dismiss his thoughts on that one

cassepipe 5y ago
Unfortunately, now having read your post, we really can't come to any conclusion about what your point was :)
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  Someone training their GPT-3 bot to refute different positions, perhaps?

underseacables 5y ago

I have used marijuana for approximately twenty years to deal with anxiety and PTSD. The VA hasn’t been too bad but day in, and out, cannabis has had a more positive effect on my overall being, personality, and coping abilities, than the pills the VA used to give me.

FearlessNebula 5y ago
It’s funny how differently cannabis affects people. For you it has helped treat your anxiety, for me I never had a panic attack until I tried an edible.
- gedy 5y ago
  Yes cannabis also would consistently give me panic attacks, swore off it years ago due to this.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "I never had a panic attack until I tried an edible." You probably overdosed. Anxiety is an extremely common symptom of cannabis overdose, and it's very easy to overdose with the highly potent cannabis that's on the market today, especially with edibles where the appropriate dosage is very difficult to control compared to smoking. A wiser way to approach cannabis consumption is to smoke the smallest dose of the weakest strain you can find.. ideally something below the threshold of perception, and slowly, very slowly, over a period of days or weeks, work your way up from there until you achieve a dose that's effective but not overwhelming to you. Edibles are tougher to use this way, as you have to wait much longer to see if there's an effect (and often people give in to the temptation to up their dosage if they don't feel anything), but the principle is the same: start with the smallest dose you can find, and slowly (no more than once per day.. ideally with at least a couple of days in between) work your way up. Also, mixing substances is a bad idea. I don't know if you did that, but synergistic effects from multiple substances can also easily lead to overdose.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    > You probably overdosed. Maybe but maybe not. I myself smoke cannabis every day in order to avoid anxiety, but I know plenty of people who can't even sit in the same room as someone who is smoking as they'll get enough cannabis in their system to trigger some reaction. So while anxiety could be because of an overdose, some people really do get a strong reaction to even the smallest amount of cannabis.

magneticnorth 5y ago

I'll admit I'm pretty skeptical that the psychedelic drug experience is actually putting people in touch with any kind of external experience that is otherwise hidden to us, but at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us, and has some fascinating common patterns like a new perception of inter-connectedness. And having spent a long time immersed in fields related to computability and information theory, I'm not so sure that it's reasonable to say that if something "only" exists in the minds of a large network of humans, then it is not real.

tempsy 5y ago
It's the ego crush that is the most fascinating. Most of us bury trauma deep inside and do a pretty good job automatically keeping those thoughts from resurfacing. With psychedelics it's as if you're powerless to keep those hidden which is why they work well in a therapy setting.
mettamage 5y ago
> at the very least tripping like this puts people into an internal experience that is otherwise hidden from us Oh yes, I had a fun one on truffles. There were a few minutes (or more) where I couldn't parse the world anymore. All I knew and understood was "don't move and you'll be safe" (I was on a bed). I was so scared of everything beyond the bed! I could barely understand the bed itself, so I knew being on there was safe. Everything else felt so terrifying, because I had no understanding of what I was looking at. Were the objects in the room friend or foe? What happens when you fall of the bed? Do you fall in a dark pit, does your reality change, or do you simply fall 0.5 meters? I don't know. Heck, even describing this assumes much more knowledge than I had back then. But it did teach me something: when I don't know something, it seems that one of my base emotions is fear. And I've seen it at certain moments when I've been sober as well (like not knowing what's going on). Since then I've told myself: "Mettamage, whatever you don't understand, you're gonna be fine." And that helps :)
Taylor_OD 5y ago
Tripping wasnt life altering for me for the first time because of some universal or god realization. It was just a headspace that I had never been in before and I did not feel entirely in control of that headspace. It was interesting, and scary, because of that.

hprotagonist 5y ago

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

Standard trip tale and ramblings of someone who doesn't know how to reconcile with the revelation that their brain is a sack of chemicals.

uh_uh 5y ago
There is somewhat of a dissonance that I detect from trip reports like this. On one hand, authors acknowledge that the whole trip might be just the result of their brain acting weird. But on the other hand, they start emphasizing how real the experience felt, therefore there might be something real to the entities/sprits encountered during the trip. But if we already acknowledge that any feeling of "realness" can be purely the result of the brain acting weird, doesn't that invalidate any appeal to how "real" the experience felt? It literally means nothing, if our underlying theory is that the brain's "realness" detectors were malfunctioning.
- galaxyLogic 5y ago
  It is interesting. I was in hospital pumped up with all kinds of medicine and I saw from the window how the whole hospital building took off flying. And I "knew" it was real, I knew it could not be a dream. So I wondered afterwards why did it feel so real, unlike any ordinary dream? I think it may be because I remembered that dream so vividly and it was a dream where I was fully conscious about my experience, and was able to question it rationally, and that didn't stop the dream from happening. Whereas in ordinary dreams we just experience the dream, we don't much experience ourselves experiencing it. And seems like if we ask in a dream is this a dream the dream is over soon enough. Seems some drugs can cause us to "dream" in a way that does not immediately break when you start questioning it. And why couldn't they.
litoorachure 5y ago
>Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here's Tom with the Weather. - Bill Hicks Everything old is new again; maybe we'll get lucky and have another '60s-'70s as covid wanes, if people are starting to put trip reports on Medium blogs under their real names without any "SWIM" disclaimers. If y'all like these kinds of trip write-ups, erowid.org has loads of them.

29athrowaway 5y ago

He made the same error the ancients did: trying to find meaning in hallucinations. Be aware that sometimes drugs damage the blood brain barrier and cause all sort of fucked up health issues.

LocalH 5y ago
I'm not aware of DMT causing any physical damage to the brain.

juancn 5y ago

So... selling a book attributing greater meaning to cognitive defects?

BashiBazouk 5y ago

I had the opposite experience with LSD. I was an agnostic mid teen when I started experimenting with it (and mushrooms). I never found the peak particularly spiritual. During one philosophical downside of a trip I thought about god quite a bit and came to the conclusion the entire concept made absolutely no sense. I've been an atheist ever since...

pmoriarty 5y ago
"I never found the peak particularly spiritual." That's really interesting. It makes me wonder: - Did you ever take it in a religious setting such as a church, mosque, or temple? - Did you ever try priming yourself with religious-themed literature, music, or artwork? - Did you ever spend the entire trip in nature? I suspect any of these would make it more likely to have a spiritual or mystical experience. On the other hand, if you're at, say, a party with lots of distractions, or if your mind rarely dwells on religious subjects, you'd be less likely to have one.
- BashiBazouk 5y ago
  My group was pretty intense with experimenting with LSD. Early trips were always fairly controlled environments in that it was away from people. Countless trips in nature (the forest of nisene marks if you are in the bay area). We always fasted eight hours before taking the drug. We found that anytime we tried to prime the trip with stuff, music, movies, specific places, what have you, we would almost always forget/ignore/not care about the priming once the peak kicked in. On the other hand we were never "turned on" to it by anyone. A friend and I were reading High Times and there was an article about it. After reading it we knew we had to try it out. We did read quite a bit more about the drug before taking it. I knew Peter Stafford and as a teenager did graphic work on his book: Psychedelics Encyclopedia. I guess we came to LSD from a scientific rather than spiritual perspective. We already understood how the drug worked and why. That likely lessened the mystical impact that we might have had otherwise. Humorously enough I did take it once in church. My friends dragged me off to a seventh day Adventist camp to hit on the christian girls, as only one of my friends had family in that church. Walked in to a giant packed hall right before the opening sermon and just as I was starting to peak. Got a giant Nope, this is not the place for me and walked right out...

jdmoreira 5y ago

"Man does drugs. Claims to see God." Really, I'm all for drugs and if they give you perspective that’s awesome. If drugs help you deal with trauma, addiction, depression go for it! Just don’t try to convince me that it all didn’t just happen in your head.

telmo 5y ago
Everything just happens in your mind. Anything else is metaphysical speculation.
- jdmoreira 5y ago
  In my mind yes. Not in his :)
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  Woah, we need to back up and define "everything" "just" "happens" "in" "your" and "mind"
  - telmo 5y ago
    We can do that, but it will just happen in your mind.
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lifty 5y ago
Well, he tries to reconcile his experience with his old rational view pf religion by almost semantically re-defining God. I can relate to this experience based on my own passed experiences but I drew different conclusions.

dmingod666 5y ago

This could be sort of like a debug mode of your brain where you can enter a dream like state while being conscious and forming permanent memories as opposed to sleep where you lose your dreams when you wake up. I feel the 'spirits' they encounter are abstract personalities that the person forms this is why they don't need to speak to communicate. If you can switch from work mode to family mode when your kid enters the room, what guides you? They are probably encoutering parts of their own personality with the addition of a dream like state where the brain just fills in gaps and creates a narrative out of seemingly unconnected dream sequences.. they are probably real because they are 'you' + some imagination thrown in..

throwaway_kufu 5y ago

That part about controlling the body of a monkey compels me to add a related comment. Changing my diet (and by that I mean what I consume and put into my body as a lifestyle, not some temporary change in nutrtion) and ultimately altering my microbiome through my diet and lifestyle changes has given me greater insight into how little control over the most basic decision making processes I really ever had or have. There is no doubt that being host to microorganisms blurs the line of “me” and free will, from conscious thoughts to involuntary biological reactions, I don’t think any of us are independent beings free or separate and apart from microorganisms living within us that we play host to, they want to live and create an environment they can thrive in as much as we think we do. From the ancient tradition of fasting (including our better understanding of the biological changes that occur), to the author’s Ayahuasca experience (reference to the specific foods the author was instructed to abstain from leading up to the experience), it is interesting but not surprising there is a common denominator of manipulating our microbiome. If you want a better perspective on life and oneself, you don’t need to travel to Peru and take Ayahuasca, though I don’t discourage that, but try starting with your diet and lifestyle.

kaybe 5y ago
Can you elaborate on what you experienced?
- throwaway_kufu 5y ago
  Everything from improved immune system, improved vision (color perception), but mentally there was a lot. The crazy things are difficult if not impossible for me to reduce to words. Where I always had a “sweet tooth” and cravings for various foods, those would completely disappear, but it was more than that, it went from my favorite foods I consciously abstained from to those very foods being viewed as poison. So I’m not just talking about a lack of cravings, but mentally the same way I may have once had strong cravings or looked forward to cheat days/meals my mindset changed where it would have become unfathomable how I could have even eaten those things much less viewed them as special treats or rewards. My sensory experience of taste/flavors changed, so even though I never disliked a kale salad with oil/vinegar, salt/pepper, something like that became more delicious and apprising than my prior favorite foods. Physically if I were to eat a previous “favorite foods” I wouldn’t even care for it taste wise the way I once did (plus depending on the food itself I might actually get sick and be unable to hold it down). There are noticeable improvements to my energy levels, breathing, skin, hair, and nails. Finally, as a runner the differences are night and day, from the run itself being easy, to recovery being improved, to being able to forgo water/electrolytes/gels on some pretty long runs. But this is where I have also had experiences I call spiritual, might just fall in the spectrum of runners high, but I never had them otherwise and now I seek them out sort of like a drug. It’s everything from out of body experiences, feelings of enlightenment/nirvana, to connection with something beyond me if not a connection with everything or what the great poets write about when writing of love (not at all unlike the author’a discussion of God and love). I’m not suggesting any of it is real or some attainable state of being if you just do what I did, but I experience them just as much as I used to experience cravings for a given food, think I enjoy a given food or battled what I thought was my own desire for a given food. Fasting isn’t a personal favorite of mine, but I’ve dabbled, and when I say dabbled I’d do a 48-72 hour fast per week. My longest was a 5 day fast, I was working 8-10 hour days in law, I ran 7.5 miles everyday and found them pretty easy (granted I’m slow and not setting any records). I think most of the benefits people subjectively describe with fasting I achieve through my own methods, there may even be a term for it but it slips my mind, but essentially a continuous state of long term caloric deficit combined with the specific foods I consume and avoid. The body adjusts so by no means is it like I’m losing weight or wasting away, I think the body compensates with increased HGH and testosterone which is seen in fasting.

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neonological 5y ago

All available evidence points to the materialistic viewpoint. You cannot trust your feelings or experiences. You cannot even fully trust science and logic. However science and logic delivers more consistent results. You may feel like there's other "wavelengths" of reality when you do a psychedelic but everyone's experience is different. The only consistent experience most of humanity shares is the scientific and logical reality we experience when sober. So as far as we know science and logic is the more accurate and consistent barometer. This man has a claim, his article does not give adequate evidence for that claim. In fact this article shows an intense lack of basic understanding of the nature of logic and science and it's relationship with reality. If 1000 atheists did Ayahuasca will that change all their perspectives? Does a change in perspective or a the opinion of a brain compromised by an hallucinogen serve as accurate evidence? No. Don't be stupid. Not even photographic evidence or a video of a god serves as adequate evidence. If you have a clear perspective on the nature of logic, probability and science and it's relationship with reality... drugs will not change your viewpoint. These kind of experiences are only valid for people who have a lack of deep understanding of reality and the tools we use to understand it. Let's just put it logically and plainly. If drugs compromise your brain and it's ability to drive and it's ability to perceive things than how on earth does a claim about god by a person on drugs serve as an accurate account? You don't trust a man high on some drug to drive, you're going to trust his opinion on God? Don't be stupid. The man's description and judgement is compromised and I'm surprised and disappointed so many HN readers voted this up.

axguscbklp 5y ago
>All available evidence points to the materialistic viewpoint. The materialistic viewpoint has failed to explain consciousness in the sense of describing a mechanism by which material phenomena could give rise to subjective experience.
- neonological 5y ago
  Failure doesn't validate other forms of explanations. Materialism is an imperfect explanation but imperfection is not a metric for reliability. Evidence is the metric for reliability and so far as imperfect as materialism is... it has the best evidence. Moving to other explanations means moving to explanations with less or no evidence and therefore are at high risk of being false.

ericmcer 5y ago

This definitely reads as someone with low/no experience with psychedelics trying to derive some meaning from them. I was exactly the same way when I was younger, trying to analyze my trips, reading about others, upping the dosage, attempting to find the meaning of life or god or whatever. Psychedelic experiences are just experiences, they can exist unanalyzed. At best you might have some self-realizations, but there is no god/collective-consciousness whatever waiting at the end of the road.

mcphilip 5y ago

Highly recommend the author of this post, or any other psychonauts, to read Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. He recounts a period of several years in his life where his psychonautic explorations left him believing he was in contact with an alien intelligence. He wrestles with trying to find scientific explanations and whether that’s important or not since the experience deeply impacted him regardless of its cause. I don’t personally dabble in hallucinogenics, but I’m always fascinated by what bubbles up from the brain given various stimuli.

nickelcitymario 5y ago

While I agree with a lot of the comments about how we shouldn't trust hallucinations as being real encounters with God/gods/beings, I think there's tremendous intellectual and emotional value in these experiences. Mainly, once you experience things like this, you're forced to confront your own understanding of consciousness. For example, many people who take MDMA have a sudden realization that their concepts of themselves and others were based on unchallenged assumptions and paranoia. Someone who has lived their life in fear of intimidating people (jocks, bosses, "cool people", whatever), for example, might come to the realization that we're all far more alike than we are different, and that we're all just trying to make our way in the world. This realization can last years or even a lifetime. Someone who takes LSD or shrooms or Ayahuasca and experiences an encounter with what they perceive to be a spiritual being has to then confront what that meant. Even if it's a manifestation of their subconscious, they're tapping into something that was previously hidden from them. For my 2 cents, I think psychedelics are amazing -- once. After than first experience, you get diminishing returns. What's the benefit of encountering that "being" a second time? Unless "it" teaches you something new, you're just tripping and messing with your brain chemistry.

dqpb 5y ago

> It seemed obvious to me at the time that God is just a thing people tell each other to feel at ease with the greater questions in life: where do we come from, is there a meaning to life, what happens when we die, why am I trapped inside of a monkey I can control with my thoughts etc… Then I started to explore altered states of consciousness and I realized that there is much more to life than meets the eye.

pmoncada 5y ago

OP: I have no idea why, but the name of this posting was changed from "How Ayahuasca change my perspective on life and God" to simply "How Ayahuasca changed my perspective" Also, the post abruptly dropped in ranking on the front page after the name change, it seems to have been de-ranked dramatically... Strange Went from top 1-50, to now 200+... in a matter of a minute

spurgu 5y ago
438 right now. Strange indeed.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Fun topic, I liked the intro in terms of things we don’t discuss very often. It is quite interesting that free-will is by any meaningful definition supernatural since atoms just follow the laws of physics. If you believe in free-will, that is a leap of faith, like many other leaps of faith in life. Taking time to analyze the axioms of your life down to the deepest level is a great exercise. The best reflections will improve your life :)

yamellasmallela 5y ago

"How drugs messed up my brain and made me see god" Man this drug normalization needs to stop. Drugs can permanently fuck you up. It's just not worth it.

calebm 5y ago
Is this view point based on your own personal experience?
- yamellasmallela 5y ago
  Its based on a lot of stuff. My experiences, my friends experiences, the scientific literature. I get that everyone loves to say that ketamine and mushrooms are so magical but if you read into these studies they urge extreme caution. The patients need to be careful screened (never mind that study participants self select from previous drug use), the dosages are exact, and they are monitored by professionals. Plus, there is 0 evidence that ketamine helps long term and a TON of evidence it causes severe addiction and withdrawal Point is, illicit drugs are not some magical thing that will solve your problems. In fact, they will make your life a hell of a lot worse the majority of the time.

lcall 5y ago

The article says some very positive things. Now, if several or more people similarly had such an experience (or similar enough), without drugs, and all came out of it saying ~ "God seriously spoke to us, and this is His plan that he wants us to follow in an organized way (but only voluntarily, no one can be forced, everyone can learn this for themselves if they are sincere, read, and pray about it, asking God for themselves)", and they remained faithful to that statement and Plan to the end of their lives, at great personal risk (financial losses, legal & physical persecution and abuse, at least one to the point of loss of ability to bear children, also being driven from place to place, and/or death, which some knew would result and it did), and their associates and successors who said they had similar personal knowledge built a new society in multiple places, with beliefs in serving others humbly, lawfulness under the principles of the US Constitution, etc etc., that would be impressive, would it not? "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." Etc. (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.25?#24 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-... or in English specifically https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-ne/2.25.25?lang=eng#24 https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/bofm/2-... :)