4 ms·

The analogy I heard recently was a brain with chronic depression/trauma is something like a car with a bad engine. It is repairable and fixable, but it's a lot

The analogy I heard recently was a brain with chronic depression/trauma is something like a car with a bad engine. It is repairable and fixable, but it's a lot of work to tear everything down, and lots of times trying to fix or replace one thing snowballs into many things (e.g. you shear a rusty bolt, or as long as you have the timing belt out, you really ought to do the water pump). Other times you really need to address the broken rod before you can do anything else, but to get there you need to tear the whole engine down. The problem is, you can't just tear your brain apart into individual pieces and leave it scattered across your garage as you work on each piece one at a time. Every new counseling session, every new day you're starting over and tearing down things and then when you're done, when you have to get back to the day to day of life, you have to put it all back together and hope it gets you through to the next one. Psychedelics seem to give you a very brief window where you whole brain is just sort of "exploded" like a giant parts diagram. And you can poke at and work on one part at a time without all the tear down and without having to do all the other pieces because they just all got out of the way. It's not as good as if we could just tear everything down and do a complete rebuild over the course of a week. But given what we have, when things are really entangled and overlapping, it's a better / faster approach.

saiya-jin 3y ago
This remarkably well describes my experiences with mushrooms. I recall all of it, its not some brain fog like from alcohol or weed, but those experiences perceived by massively 'expanded' brain simply are not the same as when remembering it sober, its like seeing a tiny crop of an original picture, it may still make some sense but you are probably missing most of what actually happened. But let me tell you, once I got into another trip, those memories from previous trip again made complete sense and they were very detailed, if only for that brief amount of time. Anyway back to the topic, when tripping (alone, laying in bed with eyes closed, shamanic music in background, late evening), I felt I gradually lost all my senses (ie weird to keep 'seeing' as experiencing what was happening, yet organ of the eyeball was unreachable at that moment to my brain, and so were the others), all connection to my body. Heart rate went to very low mode (I held breath for what I referenced as few mins just to try this new situation, not more than 3, and I could 100% control all feedback from desperate body spasming for any air while I was casually observing it, not a worry in the world for that experiment - just to clarify I don't do any freediving or similar activity where you train to hold your breath). At the height I was a mist of atoms, dancing or more like swirling in the air in the music, nothing in nothingness. Those atoms were tiny parts of me, alone useless and incoherent, meaningless. And once trip was ending, very very gradually (I'd say it alone took 90 min easily), coming down from that peak one step at a time, re-discovering senses and body. All those atoms joining one by one. I felt very strongly that if I had any major character flaw or unresolved issues, this would be the moment where putting back those atoms wouldn't work very well. I had this without getting any info from more experienced users or research (those mushrooms I grew myself from growkit from Amsterdam, we talk about cca 2007), and the part about splitting into atoms and then combining them back together sounds similar to neuroplasticity you describe. Just for the love of god don't do such strong stuff if you have some unresolved inner issues. There is a chance you can solve it for good via this, but the risk of something going wrong and ending up in catatonic nightmare, or even some (additional) permanent damage ain't worth it. If it would be long term legal and accepted and you would be able to have professional managing the set then this part should be without major worries.

saiya-jin 3y ago

This remarkably well describes my experiences with mushrooms. I recall all of it, its not some brain fog like from alcohol or weed, but those experiences perceived by massively 'expanded' brain simply are not the same as when remembering it sober, its like seeing a tiny crop of an original picture, it may still make some sense but you are probably missing most of what actually happened. But let me tell you, once I got into another trip, those memories from previous trip again made complete sense and they were very detailed, if only for that brief amount of time. Anyway back to the topic, when tripping (alone, laying in bed with eyes closed, shamanic music in background, late evening), I felt I gradually lost all my senses (ie weird to keep 'seeing' as experiencing what was happening, yet organ of the eyeball was unreachable at that moment to my brain, and so were the others), all connection to my body. Heart rate went to very low mode (I held breath for what I referenced as few mins just to try this new situation, not more than 3, and I could 100% control all feedback from desperate body spasming for any air while I was casually observing it, not a worry in the world for that experiment - just to clarify I don't do any freediving or similar activity where you train to hold your breath). At the height I was a mist of atoms, dancing or more like swirling in the air in the music, nothing in nothingness. Those atoms were tiny parts of me, alone useless and incoherent, meaningless. And once trip was ending, very very gradually (I'd say it alone took 90 min easily), coming down from that peak one step at a time, re-discovering senses and body. All those atoms joining one by one. I felt very strongly that if I had any major character flaw or unresolved issues, this would be the moment where putting back those atoms wouldn't work very well. I had this without getting any info from more experienced users or research (those mushrooms I grew myself from growkit from Amsterdam, we talk about cca 2007), and the part about splitting into atoms and then combining them back together sounds similar to neuroplasticity you describe. Just for the love of god don't do such strong stuff if you have some unresolved inner issues. There is a chance you can solve it for good via this, but the risk of something going wrong and ending up in catatonic nightmare, or even some (additional) permanent damage ain't worth it. If it would be long term legal and accepted and you would be able to have professional managing the set then this part should be without major worries.