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After 1st psychedelic experience “damn, everyone should try this”. After further experience, no longer a huge proponent. A new user has to make a mental commitm

After 1st psychedelic experience “damn, everyone should try this”. After further experience, no longer a huge proponent. A new user has to make a mental commitment that they will be changed and they themselves take responsibility for that and own the positives and negatives and can’t externalize that blame, otherwise they’re going to have a bad reality going forwards. My first experience was late 30s, I don’t know what it would have been like having that experience 17 or 18. I don’t know if I’d want my kids to have that experience at such a young age. Psychedelics are profoundly strange. My before-the-experience expectations about what it would be like (having read an absolute shitload of literature and trip reports) and what it’s actually like were orthogonal. A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything. Once you’ve been through that (like seriously believing your reality is broken) a lot of other things in life seem easier.

aliasxneo 3y ago
> A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything Just out of curiosity, do you mean the person's self-confidence may dramatically improve with use? The only reason is because I had a recent co-worker who was laid off after taking psychedelics for a decent period of time. He effectively stopped contributing to the team and started making concerted efforts to get the CEO to establish a new, special position for him so that "real work" could get done and the "company would function 100x better." Seeing the before and after was fairly dramatic. I tried to encourage them to stop using, but that "self-confidence" was so over the top that they ignored all of us and eventually lost their job.
- uristohkrat 3y ago
  Anecdotally, I found using psychedelics regularly kind of left me estranged from sober reality. Better to do it semi annually at most, imo. If you need them more frequently then that you are probably missing the point.
- rjbwork 3y ago
  That seems like dude was consistently disconnected from reality due to being constantly high on drugs. I think GP was referring to the long-term mental resilience and mindset shifts that can be byproducts of trips, not the effects of being under the influence.
- Jarwain 3y ago
  Different kinds of "confidence" both of which can occur. What you describe is a more manic "the world is centered on me" kind of egotistical confidence. The one the OP describes is more of a "I survived everest so I can surmount this challenge" kind of confidence. I'd argue the latter is more common in healthy use. The former arises from abuse. Either abuse of frequency, or not really taking care of yourself properly before/after a trip (like pulling an all-nighter or similar silliness). It sounds like your coworker was taking it with some regularity, potentially to perpetuate that sorta manic state.

aliasxneo 3y ago

> A bad trip does equip you with a lot of confidence and resilience in yourself and your mental strength to almost get through anything Just out of curiosity, do you mean the person's self-confidence may dramatically improve with use? The only reason is because I had a recent co-worker who was laid off after taking psychedelics for a decent period of time. He effectively stopped contributing to the team and started making concerted efforts to get the CEO to establish a new, special position for him so that "real work" could get done and the "company would function 100x better." Seeing the before and after was fairly dramatic. I tried to encourage them to stop using, but that "self-confidence" was so over the top that they ignored all of us and eventually lost their job.

uristohkrat 3y ago
Anecdotally, I found using psychedelics regularly kind of left me estranged from sober reality. Better to do it semi annually at most, imo. If you need them more frequently then that you are probably missing the point.
rjbwork 3y ago
That seems like dude was consistently disconnected from reality due to being constantly high on drugs. I think GP was referring to the long-term mental resilience and mindset shifts that can be byproducts of trips, not the effects of being under the influence.
Jarwain 3y ago
Different kinds of "confidence" both of which can occur. What you describe is a more manic "the world is centered on me" kind of egotistical confidence. The one the OP describes is more of a "I survived everest so I can surmount this challenge" kind of confidence. I'd argue the latter is more common in healthy use. The former arises from abuse. Either abuse of frequency, or not really taking care of yourself properly before/after a trip (like pulling an all-nighter or similar silliness). It sounds like your coworker was taking it with some regularity, potentially to perpetuate that sorta manic state.