4 ms·

The hallucination affected by psychedelics such as mushrooms isn't what you might expect. It's not a fully synthetic kind of "i now see an object that is not ac

by c54 5y ago

The hallucination affected by psychedelics such as mushrooms isn't what you might expect. It's not a fully synthetic kind of "i now see an object that is not actually there". There won't be a floating pink elephant in the middle of the room. Instead the effect at most normal doses (3.5g) is more that the walls and floors seem to take on a slightly ephemeral breathing characteristic. You may see patterns in things of varying complexity and intensity. The patterns may seem to shift and meld into eachother in a kind of loop... Psychonaut wiki[0] has several approximations of varying quality, a lot of the gifs in particular (the cat lying on the couch and the wolf drinking) resonate with me. Sensory input can also include audio hallucinations, as well as perceptions that are simply normally filtered out of our experience by our brains--a sense of the organs inside your body, or the teeth in your mouth, or whatever. A lot of the effects are mental, prompting often amusing and revelatory departures from your normal thought patterns. Everything old is new again. You may find yourself deeply examining the complexity of your hands, or the bizarre fact that we're not always "like this", or in deep awe of the staggering complexity of civilization or the chemical machines that are our bodies. That kind of thing. The realization that we collectively have no idea what we're doing here, that a whole lot of what we believe to be real and permanent is imaginary and temporary, and that there are no rules to life, no winners, that we should take care of nature and each other, and that you should follow your muse to do what you find interesting and beautiful. Media portrayal of this varies but some shows do hit it quite on the head, actually Mad Men has an interesting trip episode that understates the visual component and emphasizes the mental[1]. Broad city's was particularly colorful and fun (S4e4, full ep. isn't on youtube). Some media can give you a bit of a taste of the experience, others grossly exaggerate it or flat out misrepresent it. You know how it goes. [0] https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Visual_effects_-_Psychedelics#Morphing https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Visual_effects_-_Psychedelic... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWlKCfSPcU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpWlKCfSPcU

Bradlinc 5y ago
I was disappointed the first time I took mushrooms because I didn't see pink elephants. I thought I hadn't taken a high enough dosage. In its place I took a deep trip that allowed me to reflect on where I was in my life, which was more profound then seeing pink elephants. Oddly it too me a couple of weeks to realize that was the point.
5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
Note that you very much can get "floating pink elephants", but not from psychedelics — you need to get into deliriants for that: Datura plant in small doses, red mushrooms, diphenhydramine or amantadine in large doses, and some other stuff (like these tablets from military first-aid kits: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Aprofene https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Aprofene). These things were somewhat popular in my language segment of the internet about ten years ago. A lot of people were experimenting with the stuff. Usually one trip was more than enough to never want to repeat that again. Try reading some trip reports on erowid if you're curious. https://www.erowid.org/general/big_chart.shtml https://www.erowid.org/general/big_chart.shtml
- Jim_Heckler 5y ago
  Deliriants are fascinating, and the experience sounds absolutely nightmarish. The most interesting thing to me is how the most common feature of every trip of some of the drugs (I think Datura and dph) is repeatedly thinking you're smoking a cigarette, accidentally dropping it then realizing there was no cigarette. And it happens to people who've never smoked.
OGWhales 5y ago
This sub reddit has a lot of examples of people trying to recreate what they saw while tripping. There are some pretty good examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/replications https://www.reddit.com/r/replications Also, I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve heard that some of the hallucinations you see on psychedelics are signals/noise your brain normally filters out, but stops getting filtered during the trip. I believe the context was for so called “sacred geometry”. For example, if you look up the “flower of life”, this is a pattern people regularly see while tripping and it’s one I saw myself the first time I took shrooms.
- c54 5y ago
  Yeah! There's evidence for a reduction of the brain's normal input-filtering processes that I alluded to in the parent post. As Huxley says, 'the doors of perception are opened' These two articles discuss in more detail some of the biological/neurological correlates for the types of patterns seen during psychedelic experiences. Some of the pictures of retinal structure etc are pretty eye opening (hah): https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-hallucinate-20180730/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-... https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha...
robbedpeter 5y ago
One trick to understanding what psychedelics are doing is to recognize that what's happening in those visual effects is also happening to all your other senses and cognitive processes. Having your sense of depth go into a reflective fractal spiral is a fascinating experience. People often hear sound go into a robotic type modulation. The circuits that trigger when you feel the meaningfulness of things go into overdrive. Smaller thought loops can take you over the exact same sequence of input/ output over the course of several minutes of nothing jars you or if it.
Overtonwindow 5y ago
It takes 6 mg to make me trip. Even then it’s very mild visual oddities.
01100011 5y ago
> It's not a fully synthetic kind of "i now see an object that is not actually there" This was generally my experience until I combined high dose(5g relatively fresh) mushrooms with pot. I've had a number of experiences on that combination where I experience vivid hallucinations which are indistinguishable from reality. It's rather uncomfortable at times because of that. On mushrooms alone, up to the 5 or so grams which is my current maximum, I would classify the hallucinations as colorful visuals combined with intense daydreams.
acchow 5y ago
> There won't be a floating pink elephant in the middle of the room. It is possible to take enough shrooms to hallucinate objects which are not there. It's hard to reach this state without losing full sight of everything tho.

by c54 5y ago

Bradlinc 5y ago

I was disappointed the first time I took mushrooms because I didn't see pink elephants. I thought I hadn't taken a high enough dosage. In its place I took a deep trip that allowed me to reflect on where I was in my life, which was more profound then seeing pink elephants. Oddly it too me a couple of weeks to realize that was the point.

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago

Note that you very much can get "floating pink elephants", but not from psychedelics — you need to get into deliriants for that: Datura plant in small doses, red mushrooms, diphenhydramine or amantadine in large doses, and some other stuff (like these tablets from military first-aid kits: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Aprofene https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Aprofene). These things were somewhat popular in my language segment of the internet about ten years ago. A lot of people were experimenting with the stuff. Usually one trip was more than enough to never want to repeat that again. Try reading some trip reports on erowid if you're curious. https://www.erowid.org/general/big_chart.shtml https://www.erowid.org/general/big_chart.shtml

Jim_Heckler 5y ago
Deliriants are fascinating, and the experience sounds absolutely nightmarish. The most interesting thing to me is how the most common feature of every trip of some of the drugs (I think Datura and dph) is repeatedly thinking you're smoking a cigarette, accidentally dropping it then realizing there was no cigarette. And it happens to people who've never smoked.

OGWhales 5y ago

This sub reddit has a lot of examples of people trying to recreate what they saw while tripping. There are some pretty good examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/replications https://www.reddit.com/r/replications Also, I don’t know how true this is, but I’ve heard that some of the hallucinations you see on psychedelics are signals/noise your brain normally filters out, but stops getting filtered during the trip. I believe the context was for so called “sacred geometry”. For example, if you look up the “flower of life”, this is a pattern people regularly see while tripping and it’s one I saw myself the first time I took shrooms.

c54 5y ago
Yeah! There's evidence for a reduction of the brain's normal input-filtering processes that I alluded to in the parent post. As Huxley says, 'the doors of perception are opened' These two articles discuss in more detail some of the biological/neurological correlates for the types of patterns seen during psychedelic experiences. Some of the pictures of retinal structure etc are pretty eye opening (hah): https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-hallucinate-20180730/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-math-theory-for-why-people-... https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-hallucinations https://plus.maths.org/content/uncoiling-spiral-maths-and-ha...

robbedpeter 5y ago

One trick to understanding what psychedelics are doing is to recognize that what's happening in those visual effects is also happening to all your other senses and cognitive processes. Having your sense of depth go into a reflective fractal spiral is a fascinating experience. People often hear sound go into a robotic type modulation. The circuits that trigger when you feel the meaningfulness of things go into overdrive. Smaller thought loops can take you over the exact same sequence of input/ output over the course of several minutes of nothing jars you or if it.

Overtonwindow 5y ago

It takes 6 mg to make me trip. Even then it’s very mild visual oddities.

01100011 5y ago

> It's not a fully synthetic kind of "i now see an object that is not actually there" This was generally my experience until I combined high dose(5g relatively fresh) mushrooms with pot. I've had a number of experiences on that combination where I experience vivid hallucinations which are indistinguishable from reality. It's rather uncomfortable at times because of that. On mushrooms alone, up to the 5 or so grams which is my current maximum, I would classify the hallucinations as colorful visuals combined with intense daydreams.

acchow 5y ago

> There won't be a floating pink elephant in the middle of the room. It is possible to take enough shrooms to hallucinate objects which are not there. It's hard to reach this state without losing full sight of everything tho.