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> a bit of my late adolescence consuming I liken doing psychedelics in late adolescence to reading philosophy in late adolescence. Unfortunately late adolescen

> a bit of my late adolescence consuming I liken doing psychedelics in late adolescence to reading philosophy in late adolescence. Unfortunately late adolescence is the period where the majority of both psychedelic and philosophical experimentation happen, when both of these are much more useful after gaining some life experience. If you haven't even spent time working on or struggling with your own depression and isolation, and are in fact still quite tangled up in the formation of these issues, psychedelics don't have much to offer you other than "fun". Likewise reading Nietzsche as an adolescent, you miss many of the subtleties that make his work truly revolutionary, for example misreading "god is dead" a proclamation of some sort of victory against religion, when Nietzsche is much more concerned about our loss of meaning. You can't really get at what Nietzsche is worried about until you've had your own, serious struggle with meaning as you get older and the reality of death hits you much harder than any adolescent can imagine. As an adolescence you're still rapidly formulating your world view, there's not a whole lot to shake up that isn't all ready rapidly changing. An adolescent will learn far more by interacting closely with a group of people they normally wouldn't, or wandering around parts of a city they normally never go to, than doing any psychedelics. It's not to say they shouldn't experiment with psychedelics and read lots of philosophy, but these won't be really impactful until later. I highly recommend everyone in their thirties and later revisit both psychedelics and philosophy. There's a lot more there than when you where younger.

hnuser847 5y ago
I definitely relate with this comment since my psychedelic usage was between the ages of 19 to 23. However, I don't really have any interest in trying them again. My "set" as a 33 year old is significantly more complex than when I was 19 and I'm convinced that my day-to-day worries would cause me to have a terrible trip. What have you gained by trying them again as an adult?
- it_does_follow 5y ago
  I find that it's precisely when I'm mired in these "day-to-day worries" that I find shrooms most effective at breaking me out and getting a renewed sense of relative priority. I can understand your concerns about a "terrible trip", especially since these type of worries typically make me paranoid and anxious when I'm on cannabis. However, I've found that when I do shrooms the psychedelic experience always side steps these anxieties completely and reminds me that these concerns are not the core concerns I have. What's different about doing shrooms as an adult is that I'm not like "whoa, all this stuff isn't real!", I already know that. It's for those times when I feel daily stresses slowly crushing down, am fully intellectually aware that these things are ultimately not important, but can't quite find the emotional release. Shrooms aren't a miracle cure, but typically I'll feel a bit refreshed for quite awhile. As a teenager shrooms are about changing your perspective of big, metaphysical things "whoa man!", as an adult they're about changing perspective on those small things "oh right, performance reviews really don't matter." The insights are the things you, for the most part, already knew, but have been too distracted by daily life to really realize. I had bad trips when I was younger, but being older and knowing both myself and psychedelics better I find I am much better at keeping myself from spiraling out of control too easily, and much more deeply feel the wisdom of "there are no bad trips". The other nice thing about tripping as an adult is you have much better control over the scene portion of it.

hnuser847 5y ago

I definitely relate with this comment since my psychedelic usage was between the ages of 19 to 23. However, I don't really have any interest in trying them again. My "set" as a 33 year old is significantly more complex than when I was 19 and I'm convinced that my day-to-day worries would cause me to have a terrible trip. What have you gained by trying them again as an adult?

it_does_follow 5y ago
I find that it's precisely when I'm mired in these "day-to-day worries" that I find shrooms most effective at breaking me out and getting a renewed sense of relative priority. I can understand your concerns about a "terrible trip", especially since these type of worries typically make me paranoid and anxious when I'm on cannabis. However, I've found that when I do shrooms the psychedelic experience always side steps these anxieties completely and reminds me that these concerns are not the core concerns I have. What's different about doing shrooms as an adult is that I'm not like "whoa, all this stuff isn't real!", I already know that. It's for those times when I feel daily stresses slowly crushing down, am fully intellectually aware that these things are ultimately not important, but can't quite find the emotional release. Shrooms aren't a miracle cure, but typically I'll feel a bit refreshed for quite awhile. As a teenager shrooms are about changing your perspective of big, metaphysical things "whoa man!", as an adult they're about changing perspective on those small things "oh right, performance reviews really don't matter." The insights are the things you, for the most part, already knew, but have been too distracted by daily life to really realize. I had bad trips when I was younger, but being older and knowing both myself and psychedelics better I find I am much better at keeping myself from spiraling out of control too easily, and much more deeply feel the wisdom of "there are no bad trips". The other nice thing about tripping as an adult is you have much better control over the scene portion of it.