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I had a similar phase myself. Though I still genuinely believe that every person should have a psychedelic experience at least once in their lifetime, as well a

I had a similar phase myself. Though I still genuinely believe that every person should have a psychedelic experience at least once in their lifetime, as well as a talk-session with close friends while on MDMA. These two things radically shifted my life perspective and resolved a lot of inner issues, both after just a single time. Particularly the psychedelic experience is great for sparking realizations that things like hate, xenophobia, racism, etc. are all so absurd and non-productive.

basil-rash 3y ago
Were you racist, xenophobic, and hateful before? If not, your realizations about their productivity aren’t particularly relevant.
- fasterik 3y ago
  I don't think that's true. Even if someone doesn't explicitly hold those views, one can still be complacent, ignorant, or subtly enabling of them. Seeing things from a different perspective can provide insight into how relevant certain ideas are to the larger picture of humanity.
  - basil-rash 3y ago
    You’re saying the mindset one would have going into it is one of “I’m not personally hateful, xenophobic, or racist, but I can see how those are all logical and productive things to be”? I don’t believe that mindset exists.
    - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
      I think that’s exactly the mindset of most people because they don’t think they’re being racist, xenophobic, etc. If someone were to grow up in an economy built on coal mining with 13 year old miners, and you’re really effective at organizing 13 year old coal miners, then you’re gonna be very productive. Even though everything that you’re doing is existentially bad for everybody, they are all ignorant of it’s harms. So even if temporally coal mining with miners might be the only thing that anyone is aware of to do that is “productive.” You can make no “mistakes” and still lose just from ignorance
      - basil-rash 3y ago
        Your anecdote does nothing to address the root complaint; which is that if one is to make extraordinary claims (LSD is “great for” dismantling hated, etc.), they should have some actual extraordinary experience to support it. Something like a personal experience. Otherwise it’s just more “LSD is so good, it solved problems I didn’t even have” nonsense.
    - fasterik 3y ago
      No, that's not what I said at all. I think someone could believe that they're not personally hateful, xenophobic, or racist while still being unconsciously complacent, ignorant, or subtly enabling of those attitudes in themselves and others. I can see how a psychedelic trip could show someone a different perspective, causing them to change their beliefs and behavior in significant ways.
      - basil-rash 3y ago
        That may be true, but if someone is to make a claim that it is “great for showing hatred…”, I think more proof should be offered than some other person saying “I could see how…”.
        fasterik 3y ago
        I don't think I understand your argument. Your claim was that if someone wasn't already racist and xenophobic, then their epiphanies about that subject on psychedelics is irrelevant. However, a very common experience people have on psychedelics is the feeling that everything, including the entirety of humanity, is part of the same thing, and that anything other than love for all of it comes from an artificially limited perspective. I think that's extremely relevant to having a different perspective on racism and xenophobia and their absurdity, even if the person wasn't racist and xenophobic going in.
        basil-rash 3y ago
        If someone who wasn’t racist says they took LSD and found themselves one with all races, and ended up continuing to not be racist, that doesn’t tell me in any way that LSD is “great” for dismantling racism. All I’m saying is that if someone is to make extraordinary claims “this drug is great against racism”, they should be able to back it up with more than “well I wasn’t racist before, and I’m still not, and besides we’re all one so why would someone else be?”
        fasterik 3y ago
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  I've personally seen someone go from racist, xenophobic and hateful to not in the space of a single trip.
  - nerbert 3y ago
    Wow, I'd love to witness something like that one day. My circle doesn't include a lot of these people, and maybe that in itself is part of the more general problem.
  - basil-rash 3y ago
    And if they wanted to talk about it, I’d listen. Where I protest is when people make grandiose claims like “this solved so many problems for me, it even solved problems that I didn’t have!”, which only serve to perpetuate the modern hippie-dippie stereotype.
  - fullshark 3y ago
    How would you even see that? Can you describe in more detail?
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
      We were both tripping. Fairly recent acquaintances, I had no idea about his views, until it came up during conversation. We ended up talking about it for several hours. I stayed non-judgemental and just kept probing with questions about why he feels this way. Eventually he realised he was really just angry about the failures in his own life and the local community he was from. He'd picked up a bad media diet(neocon youtube...) and found some kind of relief I suppose in directing his anger at others. There was a lot of crying. He even thanked me the next day. I think that's about as detailed as I can get without revealing private information. It was a remarkable experience and fundamentally changed the way I think about the human mind, extreme political views, political dialogue, and most of all how therapy should work.
  - realanswe91 3y ago
    Transorbital lobotomy would achieve that result too.
- gavinray 3y ago
  I wasn't racist or xenophobic, but I had a lot of spite and a fairly negative world-view due to experiences I had growing up. I had a chip on my shoulder, so to speak.
crimbles 3y ago
YMMV. I took LSD. It didn't do a whole lot other than make me think I could play the piano when I definitely can't. The only life changing thing was I was down some cash which I could have spent on something else. A friend at the time took it and killed themselves a month later. Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science. But it's difficult to be anything but subjective about it if you have experienced it. I suspect any critical thinking becomes biased and that relationship requires some analysis as well. Boring take I know but to pose a question: at the level of society if it is normalised, does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome?
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  >A friend at the time took it [LSD] and killed themselves a month later. Do you think the two events could be otherwise related? As you then say "Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science." >...does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome? It's a great question, but banning it, so the quality of the chemical supplied then may be suspect, and the dosages may be wildly different - and seeing what happens over 60+ years was an incorrect move.
  - crimbles 3y ago
    Yes they are 100% related. The side effect was triggering underlying schizophrenia. Which is why we need controlled research.
- temp0826 3y ago
  >> does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome? If everyone took them in a context conducive to healing/therapy it would be positive. Unfortunately that's rarely the case (though it's becoming more common).
  - crimbles 3y ago
    Well that's not how you need to test it really and is not an objective measure. That's a badly posed question. It should be compared to other forms of therapy. And the criteria for entering therapy needs to be understood.
briHass 3y ago
MDMA in particular has such obvious usefulness for relationship/marriage counseling therapy. After many years of experimenting with pretty much every conventional and 'research' drug, MDMA is the only one that stands out to me personally as having a lasting impact on how I view the world.
- verisimi 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Teever 3y ago
    That's a needlessly pessimistic way of looking at this. Some marriages last decades, and over decades of life severe strains in interpersonal relationships let alone ones as intense as marriage can arise. MDMA has been proven helpful in breaking down barriers of communication and allowing people to talk about difficult things, and allows people to develop stronger empathy for the people in their lives. If it can help people who want to stay together actually stay together I think that's a great thing and is something that we should promote in the context of couples counselling.
    - verisimi 3y ago
      Perhaps yours is a needlessly optimistic way to look at things. Lasting for decades might not be a good thing. I know this is an unpopular opinion, and it is absolutely fine by me for others to do exactly as they see fit, but I really do think that if you have to change yourself, via the use of drugs, this can only be a wrong answer. Perhaps it is acceptable in an emergency as a short term solution. The reason I say this, is that if you really have made structural errors with your life, or have simply changed, it is fine to admit the failure and move on. There's no point in accommodating yourself to a relationship that is broken, via the use of drugs. You are simply prolonging the pain you inflict on yourself and on the other person in the relationship. Relationships can end, and that's ok. Better for everyone probably, in the long run.
      - 3y ago
foobiekr 3y ago
I had the same experience, minus MDMA (never had the chance) and the racism stuff. Completely changed my mental shape at age 47 when I tried mushrooms for the first time (also my first psychedelic). Not a do-frequently thing but genuinely mind opening. The people using microdosing to be more effective at work, well... good grief.
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  Microdosing is supposed to be at an imperceptible level. The people that do it correctly don't feel high. If you can feel it, it's not a microdose.
- ngai_aku 3y ago
  > The people using microdosing to be more effective at work, well… good grief. I think this is overly dismissive. I don’t think we should all be taking drugs to squeeze every bit out of ourselves out into the next jira ticket, but elsewhere in the thread there’s a comment discussing fundamental breakthroughs in networking technology that came about after an LSD trip. If someone believes that microdosing improves the creativity and overall satisfaction with their job, is that a bad thing?
  - foobiekr 3y ago
    IMHO yes. Objectively, those people are normalizing performance-enhancing drugs and the usual vicious cycle that goes with it. Less objectively, they also tend to be the typically soul-less nerds who have made the technology industry so malicious.
realanswe91 3y ago
"We should continue to keep our borders unchecked. Source? It was revealed to me in a psychedelic dream." You should run for office with that platform and see how far it carries you.

basil-rash 3y ago

Were you racist, xenophobic, and hateful before? If not, your realizations about their productivity aren’t particularly relevant.

fasterik 3y ago
I don't think that's true. Even if someone doesn't explicitly hold those views, one can still be complacent, ignorant, or subtly enabling of them. Seeing things from a different perspective can provide insight into how relevant certain ideas are to the larger picture of humanity.
- basil-rash 3y ago
  You’re saying the mindset one would have going into it is one of “I’m not personally hateful, xenophobic, or racist, but I can see how those are all logical and productive things to be”? I don’t believe that mindset exists.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    I think that’s exactly the mindset of most people because they don’t think they’re being racist, xenophobic, etc. If someone were to grow up in an economy built on coal mining with 13 year old miners, and you’re really effective at organizing 13 year old coal miners, then you’re gonna be very productive. Even though everything that you’re doing is existentially bad for everybody, they are all ignorant of it’s harms. So even if temporally coal mining with miners might be the only thing that anyone is aware of to do that is “productive.” You can make no “mistakes” and still lose just from ignorance
    - basil-rash 3y ago
      Your anecdote does nothing to address the root complaint; which is that if one is to make extraordinary claims (LSD is “great for” dismantling hated, etc.), they should have some actual extraordinary experience to support it. Something like a personal experience. Otherwise it’s just more “LSD is so good, it solved problems I didn’t even have” nonsense.
  - fasterik 3y ago
    No, that's not what I said at all. I think someone could believe that they're not personally hateful, xenophobic, or racist while still being unconsciously complacent, ignorant, or subtly enabling of those attitudes in themselves and others. I can see how a psychedelic trip could show someone a different perspective, causing them to change their beliefs and behavior in significant ways.
    - basil-rash 3y ago
      That may be true, but if someone is to make a claim that it is “great for showing hatred…”, I think more proof should be offered than some other person saying “I could see how…”.
      - fasterik 3y ago
        I don't think I understand your argument. Your claim was that if someone wasn't already racist and xenophobic, then their epiphanies about that subject on psychedelics is irrelevant. However, a very common experience people have on psychedelics is the feeling that everything, including the entirety of humanity, is part of the same thing, and that anything other than love for all of it comes from an artificially limited perspective. I think that's extremely relevant to having a different perspective on racism and xenophobia and their absurdity, even if the person wasn't racist and xenophobic going in.
        basil-rash 3y ago
        If someone who wasn’t racist says they took LSD and found themselves one with all races, and ended up continuing to not be racist, that doesn’t tell me in any way that LSD is “great” for dismantling racism. All I’m saying is that if someone is to make extraordinary claims “this drug is great against racism”, they should be able to back it up with more than “well I wasn’t racist before, and I’m still not, and besides we’re all one so why would someone else be?”
        fasterik 3y ago
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
I've personally seen someone go from racist, xenophobic and hateful to not in the space of a single trip.
- nerbert 3y ago
  Wow, I'd love to witness something like that one day. My circle doesn't include a lot of these people, and maybe that in itself is part of the more general problem.
- basil-rash 3y ago
  And if they wanted to talk about it, I’d listen. Where I protest is when people make grandiose claims like “this solved so many problems for me, it even solved problems that I didn’t have!”, which only serve to perpetuate the modern hippie-dippie stereotype.
- fullshark 3y ago
  How would you even see that? Can you describe in more detail?
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
    We were both tripping. Fairly recent acquaintances, I had no idea about his views, until it came up during conversation. We ended up talking about it for several hours. I stayed non-judgemental and just kept probing with questions about why he feels this way. Eventually he realised he was really just angry about the failures in his own life and the local community he was from. He'd picked up a bad media diet(neocon youtube...) and found some kind of relief I suppose in directing his anger at others. There was a lot of crying. He even thanked me the next day. I think that's about as detailed as I can get without revealing private information. It was a remarkable experience and fundamentally changed the way I think about the human mind, extreme political views, political dialogue, and most of all how therapy should work.
- realanswe91 3y ago
  Transorbital lobotomy would achieve that result too.
gavinray 3y ago
I wasn't racist or xenophobic, but I had a lot of spite and a fairly negative world-view due to experiences I had growing up. I had a chip on my shoulder, so to speak.

crimbles 3y ago

YMMV. I took LSD. It didn't do a whole lot other than make me think I could play the piano when I definitely can't. The only life changing thing was I was down some cash which I could have spent on something else. A friend at the time took it and killed themselves a month later. Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science. But it's difficult to be anything but subjective about it if you have experienced it. I suspect any critical thinking becomes biased and that relationship requires some analysis as well. Boring take I know but to pose a question: at the level of society if it is normalised, does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome?

InCityDreams 3y ago
>A friend at the time took it [LSD] and killed themselves a month later. Do you think the two events could be otherwise related? As you then say "Point is there are no absolutes and a lot of romanticism and anecdotes around it when we need science." >...does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome? It's a great question, but banning it, so the quality of the chemical supplied then may be suspect, and the dosages may be wildly different - and seeing what happens over 60+ years was an incorrect move.
- crimbles 3y ago
  Yes they are 100% related. The side effect was triggering underlying schizophrenia. Which is why we need controlled research.
temp0826 3y ago
>> does taking psychedelics have a general positive or a general negative outcome? If everyone took them in a context conducive to healing/therapy it would be positive. Unfortunately that's rarely the case (though it's becoming more common).
- crimbles 3y ago
  Well that's not how you need to test it really and is not an objective measure. That's a badly posed question. It should be compared to other forms of therapy. And the criteria for entering therapy needs to be understood.

briHass 3y ago

MDMA in particular has such obvious usefulness for relationship/marriage counseling therapy. After many years of experimenting with pretty much every conventional and 'research' drug, MDMA is the only one that stands out to me personally as having a lasting impact on how I view the world.

verisimi 3y ago
[flagged]
- Teever 3y ago
  That's a needlessly pessimistic way of looking at this. Some marriages last decades, and over decades of life severe strains in interpersonal relationships let alone ones as intense as marriage can arise. MDMA has been proven helpful in breaking down barriers of communication and allowing people to talk about difficult things, and allows people to develop stronger empathy for the people in their lives. If it can help people who want to stay together actually stay together I think that's a great thing and is something that we should promote in the context of couples counselling.
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Perhaps yours is a needlessly optimistic way to look at things. Lasting for decades might not be a good thing. I know this is an unpopular opinion, and it is absolutely fine by me for others to do exactly as they see fit, but I really do think that if you have to change yourself, via the use of drugs, this can only be a wrong answer. Perhaps it is acceptable in an emergency as a short term solution. The reason I say this, is that if you really have made structural errors with your life, or have simply changed, it is fine to admit the failure and move on. There's no point in accommodating yourself to a relationship that is broken, via the use of drugs. You are simply prolonging the pain you inflict on yourself and on the other person in the relationship. Relationships can end, and that's ok. Better for everyone probably, in the long run.
    - 3y ago

foobiekr 3y ago

I had the same experience, minus MDMA (never had the chance) and the racism stuff. Completely changed my mental shape at age 47 when I tried mushrooms for the first time (also my first psychedelic). Not a do-frequently thing but genuinely mind opening. The people using microdosing to be more effective at work, well... good grief.

bongodongobob 3y ago
Microdosing is supposed to be at an imperceptible level. The people that do it correctly don't feel high. If you can feel it, it's not a microdose.
ngai_aku 3y ago
> The people using microdosing to be more effective at work, well… good grief. I think this is overly dismissive. I don’t think we should all be taking drugs to squeeze every bit out of ourselves out into the next jira ticket, but elsewhere in the thread there’s a comment discussing fundamental breakthroughs in networking technology that came about after an LSD trip. If someone believes that microdosing improves the creativity and overall satisfaction with their job, is that a bad thing?
- foobiekr 3y ago
  IMHO yes. Objectively, those people are normalizing performance-enhancing drugs and the usual vicious cycle that goes with it. Less objectively, they also tend to be the typically soul-less nerds who have made the technology industry so malicious.

realanswe91 3y ago

"We should continue to keep our borders unchecked. Source? It was revealed to me in a psychedelic dream." You should run for office with that platform and see how far it carries you.