10 ms·

Communication between brain networks in people given psilocybin

189 points by eksith 12y ago

jeremysmyth 12y ago
The article's title is somewhat misleading, because it talks about how one of the main chemicals (psilocybin) temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain. The effect is temporary, and reverts when the drug wears off. This is not to be confused with earlier findings that are more permanent but are psychological rather than neurological in effect, such as those found at http://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personality-long-term.html http://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personality... and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/psychedelics-open-the-mind http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/p...
- Raphmedia 12y ago
  Time for an anecdotal experience. I tried psilocybin once and I had a great time. However, I strongly feel like it changed me. The problem is that I've never been someone that felt depressed. I'm a "the glass is half full" kind of guy. Well, you hear all over how psilocybin can help people who are depressed. For me, it was quite the opposite. I woke up in the morning, and I couldn't even get out of the bed. Work felt like a chore. This lasted a few months, and it was horrible. The only thing that got me through it was the thought that this wasn't me. This was chemicals in my brain. I was a positive person, I could be again. I could be myself again. Anyway, fast forward to now, I feel a lot better. My outlook on life really changed, and I'm sure people could say that I act differently. I don't regret trying it, nor do I regret the experience it made me live afterward. I could never understand depression. How could those people simply not get on with their lives and be happy? Well, I know now.
  - pmoriarty 12y ago
    Psychedelics are immensely powerful tools. Like a plane, like an ocean liner, like a battleship, you can have fun with them, but you can also blow your head apart. They should be given the utmost respect, since they can, as you found out, radically change your life and outlook on the world. If you are after their psychotherapeutic effects, you would be wise to only take them under the supervision of a trained and experienced therapist who you respect and trust.
    - abuehrle 12y ago
      "If you are after their psychotherapeutic effects, you would be wise to only take them under the supervision of a trained and experienced therapist who you respect and trust." In what countries is this possible? Are these licensed therapists in the traditional sense, or something more like a shaman (for lack of a better name)?
      - pmoriarty 12y ago
        It is possible in more countries than you might expect. I strongly recommend reading The Secret Chief Revealed,[1] for a taste of how this has been done even in countries where prohibition rages, like the US. You would also profit from following the links. reading up on, and perhaps contacting the various people and organizations listed in the Wikipedia article on Psychedelic Therapy.[2] [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron-Stolaroff/dp/0966001966 http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron-Stolaroff/... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy
      - here_you_go 12y ago
        Switzerland, via a licensed psychiatrist: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/tune-in-turn-on-and-cheer-up-swiss-psychiatrist-fights-fear-with-lsd-a-638080.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/tune-in-turn-o...
    - ObviousScience 12y ago
      In general, the therapeutic benefits kick in at doses far lower than recreational amounts. As an anecdote, which does not data make: times I took very small doses of mushrooms (<5% of a "normal" recreational dose for me) while suffering depression, I felt an improvement of my mood with minimal other effects, and none of the hallmark signs of tripping. Care should always be taken with chemicals that seriously alter perception and mental activity - as you say, they are incredibly powerful - for good, neutral, or ill.
    - fumar 12y ago
      From personal experience: I was seeking to open up my mind. I didn't have a clear goal or a strong desire to trip into oblivion. But, there was an urgency to explore the world through the use of psychedelics. I believe each trip brought immense clarity about the human experience. It has been over 7 years since I last used mushrooms or LSD. I knew after the first trip, my brain had changed. My thoughts and who I was had changed as well. At this time it is hard to pinpoint exactly how much has changed because of the psychedelics or from growing up. But, I still feel a deeper connection to life than I did before I tripped. By life, I mean everything: what we deem living and non living objects.
  - ap22213 12y ago
    Sorry to hear about your depression, and I hope that you pull out of it ok. Here are my thoughts on it, for what they're worth to you. I've suffered from depression for most of my life, so I've spent a great deal of time thinking about it, 'Why me? Why do I feel this way?' I have tried to 'cure' it with therapy (CBT). I've tried to cure it by adjusting the chemicals in my brain with medications. Neither of these have worked well, or at least they have been temporary fixes. After 30 years or so, I've discovered a much simpler approach: remove all of the things in one's life that doesn't 'seem' right or 'feel' right. Like any other disease (take diabetes, for example) some people have a genetic predisposition for it. But, in many cases, the odds of being affected is a combination of both one's genetics and environment. I try to solve my depression by thinking similarly. That is, awareness and sensitivity to one's environment are factors in the disease for those with a natural disposition for these traits. Perhaps the mushroom experience has opened your brain to new insights and awareness, and these are now negatively affecting you? I suggest trying CBT and medications: they're the right things to do, medically. But, concurrently, try to start removing things from your life, even if temporarily. It's can be difficult process to remove from one's life the things that cause disease because they're often enjoyable (bacon to a heart disease sufferer). In the case of depression, it may mean removing things that help define one's identity. Perhaps it means quitting jobs, selling houses, getting divorce, abandoning friends, changing habits, changing patterns of thought, solving addictions, destroying routines. In the end, all I can give you is anecdote, but if the depression remains or gets worse, it's at least worth a shot. Edit: I'm suggesting taking a systematic and rational approach for finding the environmental factors. I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and do these things without thought, wholesale, on impulse. But, unless the ratio of positive to negative is above 1, they're at least things to consider changing. It's up to each person to determine what these things could be.
    - thisjepisje 12y ago
      >Often it means quitting jobs, selling houses, getting divorce, abandoning friends, changing habits, changing patterns of thought, solving addictions, destroying routines. Some of this sounds like mania to me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since mania is seen (by Melanie Klein for example) as a defense mechanism against depression. edit: I understand your point, didn't mean to jump to conclusions.
  - kingkawn 12y ago
    Rather than the mushrooms causing your depression, they may have exposed it, allowing you to continue to develop and be aware of parts of your experience that you'd previously not been able to feel. That you went through that, came out of it, and now feel whole, sounds like a wonderful thing.
    - fragsworth 12y ago
      The difference between "causing" and "exposing" doesn't seem very meaningful or scientific. I often see people make the same claim of these drugs when they cause psychosis or schizophrenia, but it sounds more like a defense of the drug than anything else.
      - api 12y ago
        What we want, for understandable reasons, is a predictable way to just make ourselves happier, smarter, and more effective. Psychedelics seem to be able to do that for some people, but not for others, and the effect overall seems like it has this "journey" component as well as a hefty dose of non-determinism. I suspect that the thing we really don't like about that is what it says about self-improvement. What if there isn't a neat, linear, deterministic path from "worse" to "better?" What if it always takes some kind of winding journey, whether involving psychedelics or not? What if there is no happy pill, or at least not one whose brand of happiness we would really want?
      - WhitneyLand 12y ago
        Why do you think this can cause schizophrenia? Are you trying to suggest a psychosis can temporarily produce similar symptoms, or that there is fundamental damage to the brain resulting in long term disease? These are massively different claims.
    - grayfox 12y ago
      Fagsworth is correct in a semantic sense, however there needs to be respect of the process of healing. It isn't a magic bullet, where you take them, have a trip, and are suddenly a different human being. This can, and certainly does, happen. However, psychedelic experiences leading to profound introspection can sometimes exacerbate the symptoms. The ego, when exposed, is a very sensitive construct and can sometimes take a while to re-establish itself. An example: You are a nice, caring person... But you can be a supremely arrogant jerk on occasion. You take mushrooms, and have an hour of uncomfortable dissonance on the negative effects of your arrogance. You discover a new way to look at yourself, that completely alters your outlook on yourself as a human partaking in the human experience. But, this hurts a little because you feel ashamed and embarrassed. This isn't something that may help you somersault out of bed the next day, but once you understand what you learned you may find yourself being more compassionate in the long run.
  - tbastos 12y ago
    Psychedelics make you learn stuff that you cannot easily "unlearn", like any major life experience. It expands your awareness in ways that sometimes are not pleasant (very often, "ignorance is bliss"). That's the reason most psychedelics are not recreational, but rather "spiritual" drugs. They are self-development tools, and like any tool you must know how to use them. It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised. It all depends on your outlook on life, how you instinctively react to adversity. You should see everything under the self-development lens, where everything is an opportunity for growth, and never feel victimised. Your goal after a bad trip should not be just "to recover", but rather to become your best yet. Much like a muscle that grows stronger after you strain it at the gym, psychedelics exercise the mind, and can make you mentally stronger. However, like in the gym, the recovery periods are essential, and over-exercising is detrimental. In answer to the people who always bring up the subject of psychosis: any extremely stressful event can trigger psychosis in people who are prone to have it (for example a divorce, or any big loss). As a rule of thumb, if you're close to 30 and you've been through tough times and feel fine, you're safe. I personally believe that if you're a lucid, clear minded person, looking for self-development, psychedelics are for you. If you're an easily scared person not interested in self-development, psychedelics are definitely not for you.
    - jonnathanson 12y ago
      "It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised." One of the most enlightening experiences of my life was a horrendously frightening trip on salvia divinorum. I took it by tincture. I later learned that I'd done a much bigger dose than I'd thought I had. Anyhow, the experience was akin to madness. I felt detached. I lapsed into fugue state. I saw, heard, and "felt" things. Above all else, I maintained just enough lucidity to retain meta-cognition: I was sane enough to know that I'd become crazy. That is an awful feeling. I thought I was losing my mind, and that I'd never return to normalcy. Well, ridiculous as it sounds, the idea of becoming permanently schizophrenic frightened me into a very deep, very fast-paced analysis of my life to date. With whatever scrap of sanity I had left, I scrawled down my hopes, my dreams, and my goals for the future. Goals I'd need my wits about me in order to achieve. Some of these goals I'd had for years, and I'd made virtually no progress towards them. In this brief period of paranoia -- this fear of never again being able to pursue my dreams -- I strengthened my resolve to try. Oh, and I also wrote a bunch of sappy, ridiculous emails to all of my closest friends. They still pull those emails out, from time to time, for shits and giggles. They're pretty loopy. And yet, there's a real heart and honesty to them. I'm glad I had the experience. I'll never do it again, though. (I've tried other psychedelics, fwiw, but this was my only honest-to-goodness "bad trip").
  - electromagnetic 12y ago
    You mention your outlook on life changed, would you mind elaborating on this? What influence has this altered outlook had on your life and goals? Speaking from personal experience, my use of psychedelics has profoundly realigned my goals. One of my earliest goals was to become a clinical psychologist. I like people and I like how they tick, but my first use of LSD caused a reevaluation on that. I hate giving advice that gets ignored, and I was entering a profession where this is the majority of what happens. You have to be nice and calm and keep repeating steps until people finally get the picture and listen to you. Not only was that not for me, but I didn't even want to stay where I lived. It not only made me reevaluate my goals but my perception of risk. I wanted to travel and visit friends I had made online, so I did. I was 18 and did it alone, friends said I was insane for taking such a "risk". I'm now living in a different country (continent too) and married to one of those friends I visited. Recently I took a strong dose of magic mushrooms and it had an unusual response. Normally I experience what I call uber-Ego. It's a solipstic euphoria where I feel like I'm God and my subconscious created everything to entertain me. However, this time it felt like something dealt a death blow to my soul. This last time, I realized I hated my life. I live in an urban area, which I hate. I'm a country boy, I always wanted to live in the country. Now with a 18 month old, I'm dealing with hating the life he has and is going to have. Me and my wife are never home because cost of living is so high. I see my son between 5pm and 7pm on weeknights, so does my wife. He spends almost 5/6ths of his waking time with other people. We're now planning on selling up and moving to the country where her family lives. Within a couple years we can quarter our living expenses, which would put our costs low enough that I could be a career writer - something I gave up because I had to pay exorbitant expenses to hate my life. This last time made me depressed, and I still feel it. I've been working almost every night from when my kid goes to bed until I do on writing. I don't think the mushrooms made me depressed, not one bit. I think the mushrooms made me bypass my superego that was blocking me from seeing my wants whilst catering to my needs. I definitely changed personality wise afterward, but I know I had been annoyed and angry for months for reasons I couldn't explain, and in hindsight I'd been annoyed ever since we put our son into daycare.
    - Raphmedia 12y ago
      My outlook of life changed in many ways, but I find myself more aware of the world around me and I'm, I think, more cynical. More tired too. Everything feels like a chore. If I don't focus on myself, I let my hygiene go more than I usually would. I am a monkey, living in a capitalist dream... or nightmare. But all of this is the left over from the depression. I feel I am a more loving person. Empathy was a skill that I severely lacked before. I can connect more easily with people now.
  - api 12y ago
    An expert in the psychedelic experience would likely say that through this experience you learned both the nature of depression and how to grow beyond it. These things are not "recreational." Their effects are difficult to predict, highly individual, and while often transformative are not always pleasantly so. Yet I've found both myself and with most people I've known who have used these things, the effects tend to be on balance positive. The only exception is people who chronically abuse these substances. Using them irresponsibly, repeatedly, and carelessly can indeed destroy your mind. I've seen it. I had an interesting experience myself many years ago that was very beneficial. When I was younger I was often an underachiever. When I tried I scored off the charts, and when I found things I liked (like programming) I would self-educate to the amazement of adults (was doing 6502 machine code at 8). But I just didn't have any desire to do anything "out there" that was strong enough to motivate me to deal with the annoying hoops you have to jump through to get there. I always hated school and did poorly at it, and had no idea what I wanted to do. I think I really dreaded growing up. After the experience, all that changed and rather abruptly. I returned to college after having left, and my GPA went from <2.0 before to >3.5. My first quarter back was full of A's and B's, not C's and D's, and this mostly continued through to the end. I did change major, from CS to biology, because I'd had this huge epiphany about how if you want to understand AI you have to understand how life actually does intelligence. So I proceeded to finish all my bio prereqs in accelerated time and still managed to finish with a high GPA in 2 years. Then I went into research, biotech, and eventually got into startups (but that's another story). I ended up working in CS, but the bio-inspired intelligence research is still a strong interest of mine and I follow the literature pretty religiously. I might go back to it if I'm ever able to make a gig out of it. In bio I also learned a lot of math and science stuff that I've used on a regular basis since then for other purposes, as well as a uniquely biologically-informed way of looking at complex systems and economies and such. Ever since that experience, my output increased astronomically in every area. I also became more socially active and generally more positive. Still, any time someone asks me about psychedelics I always give them both a dose of optimism and a dose of caution. As I said I've seen "acid casualties." These things are powerful and should not be used without respect. I haven't personally touched these things in many many years, and haven't had much interest in doing so. I feel like whatever benefit I was able to get has already been achieved. Edit: I wasn't trying to make some point against the original commenter, just relating my own experience. If you delve into the literature you'll find an enormous variety of experiences both positive and negative.
  - goatforce5 12y ago
    Dr Karl (he's roughly analogous to Bill Nye, I guess) does a radio show in Oz (and maybe the UK too?) where he answers listeners questions. Occasionally people will ask about psychoactive drug usage and he'll umm and ahh, acknowledge that lots of art and science has been helped along by various drugs but ultimately say that some people are just predisposed to have bad experiences, perhaps even inducing long term psychosis or similar, and for that reason he can't recommend recreational drugs. While many people may use drugs for years and have positive experiences, some people will be broken by their first usage. As he is fond of saying: All drugs are poisons, what matters is the dose. I'm curious: was your experience positive, perhaps even amazing, until you went to sleep and woke up depressed?
- jpwagner 12y ago
  temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain Does this imply that you could potentially practice connecting those "typically unconnected parts" (through meditation or other) such that this substance would have little or no effect on you neurologically?
  - jeremysmyth 12y ago
    Terence McKenna, someone who knew a lot about both hallucinogens and shamanism, didn't think so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdxWhKxpF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdxWhKxpF8
    - grayfox 12y ago
      Terence's picture of meditation is pretty superficial (in the above clip, in particular); it is not fair to compare what he is presenting as a view of 'meditation' as deep meditation. Meditation on par with psychedelic drug use would be more akin to vipassana-style meditation. A large part of Shamanism that occurs between entheogenic ritual is intentional "melding" of states. Shamans are instructed to try to harmonize their senses, see their smells, taste their vision.
  - pixl97 12y ago
    If you work out all the time, would steroids have no effect on your body? Of course no one would say no to that, the steroids would enhance it even further.
    - jpwagner 12y ago
      your analogy depends on muscles being like neurons
- dang 12y ago
  > The article's title is somewhat misleading Ok, we changed the title to the first part of the photo caption.
murbard2 12y ago
As it's been pointed out, the title is a bit misleading. That said, one should keep in mind that, technically, everything you experience changes your brain -- it's called learning.
- codyb 12y ago
  Yes, but a seven course meal unlike anything you've ever had will give you a bit more of an experience than the dollar menu at a new fast food chain you've never been to. Everything you experience, may (and I'm not saying it's a definite) be learning, but to assign equal weight to all experiences is obviously naive.
xefer 12y ago
Everything in moderation. Ken Kesey wrote two of my favorite books "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) and "Sometimes a Great Notion" (1964), but basically produced nothing of much merit after that. I'm convinced that his subsequent over-indulgence in psychedelics destroyed his ability to produce great literature.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  The number of great works a person produces is unfortunately something like power-law distributed.
  - xefer 12y ago
    Yes, but Kesey himself hints that damage that was done in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Egz_ex3d_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Egz_ex3d_s (~6:00)
- api 12y ago
  One thing I consistently saw in people that tried these substances is that abusing them -- heavy, careless use -- can be very harmful. I would not recommend it. I saw a few people in my youth who kind of just "never came back." They seem able to produce beneficial effects in moderation and if treated with respect. I suppose that's true of lots of other powerful technologies. Treat them with respect and they can work well, but abuse them and they'll harm you.
deleted 12y ago
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michaelvkpdx 12y ago
Psychedelics, mushrooms in particular, are essential tools for any wise programmer. Very very powerful, only to be consulted on rare occasions, but immensely valuable in solving intractable problems. We essentially owe our profession to psychedelic explorations by pioneers of software engineering. Companies who drug test developers are ignorant of this history, and are the enemies of the digital revolution. Brilliant, beautiful languages and programs came from these pioneers, and it's likely because of their rich neural networks, enhanced by psychedelics as seen in the Wired article. The ability to connect humanistic art and feeling with symbolic systems and code requires a sophisticated neural network. Psychedelics help build the mental infrastructure for software development that actually benefits humans. I would love to see any stats or info about the relative consumption of psychedelics- both kind and amount- among engineers at specific companies or types of software firms.
- rhgraysonii 12y ago
  If you'd like to chat on the topic, email is in my profile.
- ghuntley 12y ago
  http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769
  - bemused 12y ago
    second that, this gives very interesting insight about the mixture of 60s counterculture, then still legal psychotherapeutic and/or recreational experiments with psychoactive substances and the beginnings of "personal" computing reading this helped a lot realizing the innovation and impact "The Mother of All Demos" really brought and getting a understanding about the environment in which this was envisioned and implemented http://www.wired.com/2013/12/tech-time-warp-engelbart/ http://www.wired.com/2013/12/tech-time-warp-engelbart/
  - akavel 12y ago
    Interesting. Quoting a review http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computings-long-strange-trip http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computi...: "Markoff's book covers the years 1960 to 1975 and the area south of San Francisco around Stanford University that would later come to be known as Silicon Valley. I arrived in Palo Alto in 1980, after the period described in the book, but got to know most of the people Markoff depicts. I can report that if anything, he underplays the degree to which they behaved in ways that would today be considered outrageous and radical, and what I saw was said to have been mild compared with what had come before. [...] And yes, there were drugs and naked people in the rooms where some of the code that now drives your e-mail around the globe was first set down."
fsiefken 12y ago
The late Bob Wallace (Microsoft) experimented with low dose psychedelics as aid to programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace Undoubtedly there are more, but they keep understandably silent about it. Even more interesting would be (to me) programmers who would use meditative practices. Techniques - or better named attitudes - like mindfulness, self-awareness, the ability to take a step back to look at the bigger picture also aid in all areas of life. I was presently surprised to hear someone talk about mindfulness in relation to programming on a developer conference (Arrrrcamp): http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html About other programmers, I think it's telling "Why the luck stiff" referred to John Lilly's metaprogramming of the mind in his famous kaleidoscopic Ruby guide page 107: "You might be inclined to think that metaprogramming is another hacker word and was first overheard in private phone calls between fax machines. Honest to God, I am here to tell you that it is stranger than that. Metaprogramming began with taking drugs in the company of dolphins." "We learn. But first we learn to learn. We setup programming in our mind which is the pathway to further programming. (Lilly is largely talking about programming the brain and the nervous system, which he collectively called the biocomputer.) Lilly’s metaprogramming was more about feeding yourself imagery, reinventing yourself, all that. This sort of thinking links directly to folks out there who dabble in shamanism, wave their hands over tarot cards and wake up early for karate class. I guess you could say metaprogramming is New Age, but it’s all settled down recently into a sleeping bag with plain old nerdiness. (If you got here from a Google search for “C++ Metaprogramming”, stick around, but I only ask that you burn those neural pathways that originally invoked the search. Many thanks.)" For sure mushrooms and psylocybin are unsuitable for programming, but low doses of cocaine, acid or 2C-* might have their value. The best programmer however learns to meta-program and hack his mind without chemicals.
- wefarrell 12y ago
  I've maintained a regular meditation practice 2 years sitting for ~30 mins a day. The benefits are most noticeable when dealing with other people and if I have an important meeting with a client I'll meditate shortly before, which undoubtably improves the outcome. It helps reduce the influence of my ego over these interactions. This in turn lowers my clients' guard and reduces their egos as well. Less ego makes meetings less about politics and more about solving real problems. More generally, meditation has helped me maintain focus on my work and made me less susceptible to distractions.
blimblab 12y ago
Don't forget about the risks of taking psilocybin. I myself had a psychosis triggered by them, no fun at all (believe me) and in many cases not reversible.
- fapjacks 12y ago
  There are risks in everything, everyday.
codeshaman 12y ago
Interesting that while the brain is interconnected the way it's depicted in the article, people report having mystical experiences (eg see God), traveling vast distances through galaxies and strange worlds, see spirits of plants and objects, see themselves as a small insignificant part of the large organism that is Earth and at the same time, realise that they are immortal and that this life is one of an infinity of others and that they are God. The larger the dose, the deeper the experience and I would speculate that the number of brain parts interconnected is even higher and the connecting lines even thiker. Why is that ? What would happen if 100% of the brain would start exchanging information like this? What if we could connect only the blue or green areas? Psychedelics are the new unexplored frontier in science. Imagine a technology (or drug) which allows selecting which networks in the brain to interconnect (temporarily). This could be used to design new mental abilities, train or enhance existing ones. I'm really pleased that the taboo regarding these substances is slowly being lifted. I'm also happy that more and more people will take these substances and as a consequence will "expand their minds".
auggierose 12y ago
Jesus, when I read the comments it seems that most programmers are on drugs while coding. No wonder most of the code out there is so shitty. If you need drugs in order to be creative, that's pretty sad.
- mvanvoorden 12y ago
  Have you ever taken psychedelics? Did you even read the article? You cannot judge things you are ignorant of. Also, none of the programmers in the comments are high while coding. Some who have used psychedelics only told it gave them more insight in i.e. patterns and structures. To me personally, psychedelics saved my life. One trip showed me exactly what to do to be happy again and ever since my life is going exactly how I want it. Before I was living the life other people expected me to live, without even being aware of that (like the majority of people). Using drugs to escape might be sad, but using psychedelics to expand your mind is something I could recommend to almost anyone. There's a lot of wisdom hidden inside of us that is mostly supressed by the way we are nurtured, psychedelics make us connect to this again and teach us to be our real selves.
  - auggierose 12y ago
    No, I've never taken psychedelics. I don't need them. My mind is already operating at full capacity without them. When I notice that something bothers me, I think about it, sometimes for a month or so. Eventually I will find the answer to the problem.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

189 points by eksith 12y ago

The article's title is somewhat misleading, because it talks about how one of the main chemicals (psilocybin) temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain. The effect is temporary, and reverts when the drug wears off. This is not to be confused with earlier findings that are more permanent but are psychological rather than neurological in effect, such as those found at http://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personality-long-term.html http://www.livescience.com/16287-mushrooms-alter-personality... and http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/psychedelics-open-the-mind http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/201110/p...

Raphmedia 12y ago
Time for an anecdotal experience. I tried psilocybin once and I had a great time. However, I strongly feel like it changed me. The problem is that I've never been someone that felt depressed. I'm a "the glass is half full" kind of guy. Well, you hear all over how psilocybin can help people who are depressed. For me, it was quite the opposite. I woke up in the morning, and I couldn't even get out of the bed. Work felt like a chore. This lasted a few months, and it was horrible. The only thing that got me through it was the thought that this wasn't me. This was chemicals in my brain. I was a positive person, I could be again. I could be myself again. Anyway, fast forward to now, I feel a lot better. My outlook on life really changed, and I'm sure people could say that I act differently. I don't regret trying it, nor do I regret the experience it made me live afterward. I could never understand depression. How could those people simply not get on with their lives and be happy? Well, I know now.
- pmoriarty 12y ago
  Psychedelics are immensely powerful tools. Like a plane, like an ocean liner, like a battleship, you can have fun with them, but you can also blow your head apart. They should be given the utmost respect, since they can, as you found out, radically change your life and outlook on the world. If you are after their psychotherapeutic effects, you would be wise to only take them under the supervision of a trained and experienced therapist who you respect and trust.
  - abuehrle 12y ago
    "If you are after their psychotherapeutic effects, you would be wise to only take them under the supervision of a trained and experienced therapist who you respect and trust." In what countries is this possible? Are these licensed therapists in the traditional sense, or something more like a shaman (for lack of a better name)?
    - pmoriarty 12y ago
      It is possible in more countries than you might expect. I strongly recommend reading The Secret Chief Revealed,[1] for a taste of how this has been done even in countries where prohibition rages, like the US. You would also profit from following the links. reading up on, and perhaps contacting the various people and organizations listed in the Wikipedia article on Psychedelic Therapy.[2] [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron-Stolaroff/dp/0966001966 http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Revealed-Myron-Stolaroff/... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_therapy
    - here_you_go 12y ago
      Switzerland, via a licensed psychiatrist: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/tune-in-turn-on-and-cheer-up-swiss-psychiatrist-fights-fear-with-lsd-a-638080.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/tune-in-turn-o...
  - ObviousScience 12y ago
    In general, the therapeutic benefits kick in at doses far lower than recreational amounts. As an anecdote, which does not data make: times I took very small doses of mushrooms (<5% of a "normal" recreational dose for me) while suffering depression, I felt an improvement of my mood with minimal other effects, and none of the hallmark signs of tripping. Care should always be taken with chemicals that seriously alter perception and mental activity - as you say, they are incredibly powerful - for good, neutral, or ill.
  - fumar 12y ago
    From personal experience: I was seeking to open up my mind. I didn't have a clear goal or a strong desire to trip into oblivion. But, there was an urgency to explore the world through the use of psychedelics. I believe each trip brought immense clarity about the human experience. It has been over 7 years since I last used mushrooms or LSD. I knew after the first trip, my brain had changed. My thoughts and who I was had changed as well. At this time it is hard to pinpoint exactly how much has changed because of the psychedelics or from growing up. But, I still feel a deeper connection to life than I did before I tripped. By life, I mean everything: what we deem living and non living objects.
- ap22213 12y ago
  Sorry to hear about your depression, and I hope that you pull out of it ok. Here are my thoughts on it, for what they're worth to you. I've suffered from depression for most of my life, so I've spent a great deal of time thinking about it, 'Why me? Why do I feel this way?' I have tried to 'cure' it with therapy (CBT). I've tried to cure it by adjusting the chemicals in my brain with medications. Neither of these have worked well, or at least they have been temporary fixes. After 30 years or so, I've discovered a much simpler approach: remove all of the things in one's life that doesn't 'seem' right or 'feel' right. Like any other disease (take diabetes, for example) some people have a genetic predisposition for it. But, in many cases, the odds of being affected is a combination of both one's genetics and environment. I try to solve my depression by thinking similarly. That is, awareness and sensitivity to one's environment are factors in the disease for those with a natural disposition for these traits. Perhaps the mushroom experience has opened your brain to new insights and awareness, and these are now negatively affecting you? I suggest trying CBT and medications: they're the right things to do, medically. But, concurrently, try to start removing things from your life, even if temporarily. It's can be difficult process to remove from one's life the things that cause disease because they're often enjoyable (bacon to a heart disease sufferer). In the case of depression, it may mean removing things that help define one's identity. Perhaps it means quitting jobs, selling houses, getting divorce, abandoning friends, changing habits, changing patterns of thought, solving addictions, destroying routines. In the end, all I can give you is anecdote, but if the depression remains or gets worse, it's at least worth a shot. Edit: I'm suggesting taking a systematic and rational approach for finding the environmental factors. I'm not suggesting that anyone go out and do these things without thought, wholesale, on impulse. But, unless the ratio of positive to negative is above 1, they're at least things to consider changing. It's up to each person to determine what these things could be.
  - thisjepisje 12y ago
    >Often it means quitting jobs, selling houses, getting divorce, abandoning friends, changing habits, changing patterns of thought, solving addictions, destroying routines. Some of this sounds like mania to me. Perhaps unsurprisingly, since mania is seen (by Melanie Klein for example) as a defense mechanism against depression. edit: I understand your point, didn't mean to jump to conclusions.
- kingkawn 12y ago
  Rather than the mushrooms causing your depression, they may have exposed it, allowing you to continue to develop and be aware of parts of your experience that you'd previously not been able to feel. That you went through that, came out of it, and now feel whole, sounds like a wonderful thing.
  - fragsworth 12y ago
    The difference between "causing" and "exposing" doesn't seem very meaningful or scientific. I often see people make the same claim of these drugs when they cause psychosis or schizophrenia, but it sounds more like a defense of the drug than anything else.
    - api 12y ago
      What we want, for understandable reasons, is a predictable way to just make ourselves happier, smarter, and more effective. Psychedelics seem to be able to do that for some people, but not for others, and the effect overall seems like it has this "journey" component as well as a hefty dose of non-determinism. I suspect that the thing we really don't like about that is what it says about self-improvement. What if there isn't a neat, linear, deterministic path from "worse" to "better?" What if it always takes some kind of winding journey, whether involving psychedelics or not? What if there is no happy pill, or at least not one whose brand of happiness we would really want?
    - WhitneyLand 12y ago
      Why do you think this can cause schizophrenia? Are you trying to suggest a psychosis can temporarily produce similar symptoms, or that there is fundamental damage to the brain resulting in long term disease? These are massively different claims.
  - grayfox 12y ago
    Fagsworth is correct in a semantic sense, however there needs to be respect of the process of healing. It isn't a magic bullet, where you take them, have a trip, and are suddenly a different human being. This can, and certainly does, happen. However, psychedelic experiences leading to profound introspection can sometimes exacerbate the symptoms. The ego, when exposed, is a very sensitive construct and can sometimes take a while to re-establish itself. An example: You are a nice, caring person... But you can be a supremely arrogant jerk on occasion. You take mushrooms, and have an hour of uncomfortable dissonance on the negative effects of your arrogance. You discover a new way to look at yourself, that completely alters your outlook on yourself as a human partaking in the human experience. But, this hurts a little because you feel ashamed and embarrassed. This isn't something that may help you somersault out of bed the next day, but once you understand what you learned you may find yourself being more compassionate in the long run.
- tbastos 12y ago
  Psychedelics make you learn stuff that you cannot easily "unlearn", like any major life experience. It expands your awareness in ways that sometimes are not pleasant (very often, "ignorance is bliss"). That's the reason most psychedelics are not recreational, but rather "spiritual" drugs. They are self-development tools, and like any tool you must know how to use them. It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised. It all depends on your outlook on life, how you instinctively react to adversity. You should see everything under the self-development lens, where everything is an opportunity for growth, and never feel victimised. Your goal after a bad trip should not be just "to recover", but rather to become your best yet. Much like a muscle that grows stronger after you strain it at the gym, psychedelics exercise the mind, and can make you mentally stronger. However, like in the gym, the recovery periods are essential, and over-exercising is detrimental. In answer to the people who always bring up the subject of psychosis: any extremely stressful event can trigger psychosis in people who are prone to have it (for example a divorce, or any big loss). As a rule of thumb, if you're close to 30 and you've been through tough times and feel fine, you're safe. I personally believe that if you're a lucid, clear minded person, looking for self-development, psychedelics are for you. If you're an easily scared person not interested in self-development, psychedelics are definitely not for you.
  - jonnathanson 12y ago
    "It's totally possible to be enlightened by a bad trip, rather than traumatised." One of the most enlightening experiences of my life was a horrendously frightening trip on salvia divinorum. I took it by tincture. I later learned that I'd done a much bigger dose than I'd thought I had. Anyhow, the experience was akin to madness. I felt detached. I lapsed into fugue state. I saw, heard, and "felt" things. Above all else, I maintained just enough lucidity to retain meta-cognition: I was sane enough to know that I'd become crazy. That is an awful feeling. I thought I was losing my mind, and that I'd never return to normalcy. Well, ridiculous as it sounds, the idea of becoming permanently schizophrenic frightened me into a very deep, very fast-paced analysis of my life to date. With whatever scrap of sanity I had left, I scrawled down my hopes, my dreams, and my goals for the future. Goals I'd need my wits about me in order to achieve. Some of these goals I'd had for years, and I'd made virtually no progress towards them. In this brief period of paranoia -- this fear of never again being able to pursue my dreams -- I strengthened my resolve to try. Oh, and I also wrote a bunch of sappy, ridiculous emails to all of my closest friends. They still pull those emails out, from time to time, for shits and giggles. They're pretty loopy. And yet, there's a real heart and honesty to them. I'm glad I had the experience. I'll never do it again, though. (I've tried other psychedelics, fwiw, but this was my only honest-to-goodness "bad trip").
- electromagnetic 12y ago
  You mention your outlook on life changed, would you mind elaborating on this? What influence has this altered outlook had on your life and goals? Speaking from personal experience, my use of psychedelics has profoundly realigned my goals. One of my earliest goals was to become a clinical psychologist. I like people and I like how they tick, but my first use of LSD caused a reevaluation on that. I hate giving advice that gets ignored, and I was entering a profession where this is the majority of what happens. You have to be nice and calm and keep repeating steps until people finally get the picture and listen to you. Not only was that not for me, but I didn't even want to stay where I lived. It not only made me reevaluate my goals but my perception of risk. I wanted to travel and visit friends I had made online, so I did. I was 18 and did it alone, friends said I was insane for taking such a "risk". I'm now living in a different country (continent too) and married to one of those friends I visited. Recently I took a strong dose of magic mushrooms and it had an unusual response. Normally I experience what I call uber-Ego. It's a solipstic euphoria where I feel like I'm God and my subconscious created everything to entertain me. However, this time it felt like something dealt a death blow to my soul. This last time, I realized I hated my life. I live in an urban area, which I hate. I'm a country boy, I always wanted to live in the country. Now with a 18 month old, I'm dealing with hating the life he has and is going to have. Me and my wife are never home because cost of living is so high. I see my son between 5pm and 7pm on weeknights, so does my wife. He spends almost 5/6ths of his waking time with other people. We're now planning on selling up and moving to the country where her family lives. Within a couple years we can quarter our living expenses, which would put our costs low enough that I could be a career writer - something I gave up because I had to pay exorbitant expenses to hate my life. This last time made me depressed, and I still feel it. I've been working almost every night from when my kid goes to bed until I do on writing. I don't think the mushrooms made me depressed, not one bit. I think the mushrooms made me bypass my superego that was blocking me from seeing my wants whilst catering to my needs. I definitely changed personality wise afterward, but I know I had been annoyed and angry for months for reasons I couldn't explain, and in hindsight I'd been annoyed ever since we put our son into daycare.
  - Raphmedia 12y ago
    My outlook of life changed in many ways, but I find myself more aware of the world around me and I'm, I think, more cynical. More tired too. Everything feels like a chore. If I don't focus on myself, I let my hygiene go more than I usually would. I am a monkey, living in a capitalist dream... or nightmare. But all of this is the left over from the depression. I feel I am a more loving person. Empathy was a skill that I severely lacked before. I can connect more easily with people now.
- api 12y ago
  An expert in the psychedelic experience would likely say that through this experience you learned both the nature of depression and how to grow beyond it. These things are not "recreational." Their effects are difficult to predict, highly individual, and while often transformative are not always pleasantly so. Yet I've found both myself and with most people I've known who have used these things, the effects tend to be on balance positive. The only exception is people who chronically abuse these substances. Using them irresponsibly, repeatedly, and carelessly can indeed destroy your mind. I've seen it. I had an interesting experience myself many years ago that was very beneficial. When I was younger I was often an underachiever. When I tried I scored off the charts, and when I found things I liked (like programming) I would self-educate to the amazement of adults (was doing 6502 machine code at 8). But I just didn't have any desire to do anything "out there" that was strong enough to motivate me to deal with the annoying hoops you have to jump through to get there. I always hated school and did poorly at it, and had no idea what I wanted to do. I think I really dreaded growing up. After the experience, all that changed and rather abruptly. I returned to college after having left, and my GPA went from <2.0 before to >3.5. My first quarter back was full of A's and B's, not C's and D's, and this mostly continued through to the end. I did change major, from CS to biology, because I'd had this huge epiphany about how if you want to understand AI you have to understand how life actually does intelligence. So I proceeded to finish all my bio prereqs in accelerated time and still managed to finish with a high GPA in 2 years. Then I went into research, biotech, and eventually got into startups (but that's another story). I ended up working in CS, but the bio-inspired intelligence research is still a strong interest of mine and I follow the literature pretty religiously. I might go back to it if I'm ever able to make a gig out of it. In bio I also learned a lot of math and science stuff that I've used on a regular basis since then for other purposes, as well as a uniquely biologically-informed way of looking at complex systems and economies and such. Ever since that experience, my output increased astronomically in every area. I also became more socially active and generally more positive. Still, any time someone asks me about psychedelics I always give them both a dose of optimism and a dose of caution. As I said I've seen "acid casualties." These things are powerful and should not be used without respect. I haven't personally touched these things in many many years, and haven't had much interest in doing so. I feel like whatever benefit I was able to get has already been achieved. Edit: I wasn't trying to make some point against the original commenter, just relating my own experience. If you delve into the literature you'll find an enormous variety of experiences both positive and negative.
- goatforce5 12y ago
  Dr Karl (he's roughly analogous to Bill Nye, I guess) does a radio show in Oz (and maybe the UK too?) where he answers listeners questions. Occasionally people will ask about psychoactive drug usage and he'll umm and ahh, acknowledge that lots of art and science has been helped along by various drugs but ultimately say that some people are just predisposed to have bad experiences, perhaps even inducing long term psychosis or similar, and for that reason he can't recommend recreational drugs. While many people may use drugs for years and have positive experiences, some people will be broken by their first usage. As he is fond of saying: All drugs are poisons, what matters is the dose. I'm curious: was your experience positive, perhaps even amazing, until you went to sleep and woke up depressed?
jpwagner 12y ago
temporarily creates or encourages connections between typically unconnected parts of the brain Does this imply that you could potentially practice connecting those "typically unconnected parts" (through meditation or other) such that this substance would have little or no effect on you neurologically?
- jeremysmyth 12y ago
  Terence McKenna, someone who knew a lot about both hallucinogens and shamanism, didn't think so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdxWhKxpF8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spdxWhKxpF8
  - grayfox 12y ago
    Terence's picture of meditation is pretty superficial (in the above clip, in particular); it is not fair to compare what he is presenting as a view of 'meditation' as deep meditation. Meditation on par with psychedelic drug use would be more akin to vipassana-style meditation. A large part of Shamanism that occurs between entheogenic ritual is intentional "melding" of states. Shamans are instructed to try to harmonize their senses, see their smells, taste their vision.
- pixl97 12y ago
  If you work out all the time, would steroids have no effect on your body? Of course no one would say no to that, the steroids would enhance it even further.
  - jpwagner 12y ago
    your analogy depends on muscles being like neurons
dang 12y ago
> The article's title is somewhat misleading Ok, we changed the title to the first part of the photo caption.

murbard2 12y ago

As it's been pointed out, the title is a bit misleading. That said, one should keep in mind that, technically, everything you experience changes your brain -- it's called learning.

codyb 12y ago
Yes, but a seven course meal unlike anything you've ever had will give you a bit more of an experience than the dollar menu at a new fast food chain you've never been to. Everything you experience, may (and I'm not saying it's a definite) be learning, but to assign equal weight to all experiences is obviously naive.

xefer 12y ago

Everything in moderation. Ken Kesey wrote two of my favorite books "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1962) and "Sometimes a Great Notion" (1964), but basically produced nothing of much merit after that. I'm convinced that his subsequent over-indulgence in psychedelics destroyed his ability to produce great literature.

fiatmoney 12y ago
The number of great works a person produces is unfortunately something like power-law distributed.
- xefer 12y ago
  Yes, but Kesey himself hints that damage that was done in this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Egz_ex3d_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Egz_ex3d_s (~6:00)
api 12y ago
One thing I consistently saw in people that tried these substances is that abusing them -- heavy, careless use -- can be very harmful. I would not recommend it. I saw a few people in my youth who kind of just "never came back." They seem able to produce beneficial effects in moderation and if treated with respect. I suppose that's true of lots of other powerful technologies. Treat them with respect and they can work well, but abuse them and they'll harm you.

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michaelvkpdx 12y ago

Psychedelics, mushrooms in particular, are essential tools for any wise programmer. Very very powerful, only to be consulted on rare occasions, but immensely valuable in solving intractable problems. We essentially owe our profession to psychedelic explorations by pioneers of software engineering. Companies who drug test developers are ignorant of this history, and are the enemies of the digital revolution. Brilliant, beautiful languages and programs came from these pioneers, and it's likely because of their rich neural networks, enhanced by psychedelics as seen in the Wired article. The ability to connect humanistic art and feeling with symbolic systems and code requires a sophisticated neural network. Psychedelics help build the mental infrastructure for software development that actually benefits humans. I would love to see any stats or info about the relative consumption of psychedelics- both kind and amount- among engineers at specific companies or types of software firms.

rhgraysonii 12y ago
If you'd like to chat on the topic, email is in my profile.
ghuntley 12y ago
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143036769
- bemused 12y ago
  second that, this gives very interesting insight about the mixture of 60s counterculture, then still legal psychotherapeutic and/or recreational experiments with psychoactive substances and the beginnings of "personal" computing reading this helped a lot realizing the innovation and impact "The Mother of All Demos" really brought and getting a understanding about the environment in which this was envisioned and implemented http://www.wired.com/2013/12/tech-time-warp-engelbart/ http://www.wired.com/2013/12/tech-time-warp-engelbart/
- akavel 12y ago
  Interesting. Quoting a review http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computings-long-strange-trip http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computi...: "Markoff's book covers the years 1960 to 1975 and the area south of San Francisco around Stanford University that would later come to be known as Silicon Valley. I arrived in Palo Alto in 1980, after the period described in the book, but got to know most of the people Markoff depicts. I can report that if anything, he underplays the degree to which they behaved in ways that would today be considered outrageous and radical, and what I saw was said to have been mild compared with what had come before. [...] And yes, there were drugs and naked people in the rooms where some of the code that now drives your e-mail around the globe was first set down."

fsiefken 12y ago

The late Bob Wallace (Microsoft) experimented with low dose psychedelics as aid to programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Wallace Undoubtedly there are more, but they keep understandably silent about it. Even more interesting would be (to me) programmers who would use meditative practices. Techniques - or better named attitudes - like mindfulness, self-awareness, the ability to take a step back to look at the bigger picture also aid in all areas of life. I was presently surprised to hear someone talk about mindfulness in relation to programming on a developer conference (Arrrrcamp): http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html http://beatimpostorsyndrome.net/actions.html About other programmers, I think it's telling "Why the luck stiff" referred to John Lilly's metaprogramming of the mind in his famous kaleidoscopic Ruby guide page 107: "You might be inclined to think that metaprogramming is another hacker word and was first overheard in private phone calls between fax machines. Honest to God, I am here to tell you that it is stranger than that. Metaprogramming began with taking drugs in the company of dolphins." "We learn. But first we learn to learn. We setup programming in our mind which is the pathway to further programming. (Lilly is largely talking about programming the brain and the nervous system, which he collectively called the biocomputer.) Lilly’s metaprogramming was more about feeding yourself imagery, reinventing yourself, all that. This sort of thinking links directly to folks out there who dabble in shamanism, wave their hands over tarot cards and wake up early for karate class. I guess you could say metaprogramming is New Age, but it’s all settled down recently into a sleeping bag with plain old nerdiness. (If you got here from a Google search for “C++ Metaprogramming”, stick around, but I only ask that you burn those neural pathways that originally invoked the search. Many thanks.)" For sure mushrooms and psylocybin are unsuitable for programming, but low doses of cocaine, acid or 2C-* might have their value. The best programmer however learns to meta-program and hack his mind without chemicals.

wefarrell 12y ago
I've maintained a regular meditation practice 2 years sitting for ~30 mins a day. The benefits are most noticeable when dealing with other people and if I have an important meeting with a client I'll meditate shortly before, which undoubtably improves the outcome. It helps reduce the influence of my ego over these interactions. This in turn lowers my clients' guard and reduces their egos as well. Less ego makes meetings less about politics and more about solving real problems. More generally, meditation has helped me maintain focus on my work and made me less susceptible to distractions.

blimblab 12y ago

Don't forget about the risks of taking psilocybin. I myself had a psychosis triggered by them, no fun at all (believe me) and in many cases not reversible.

fapjacks 12y ago
There are risks in everything, everyday.

codeshaman 12y ago

Interesting that while the brain is interconnected the way it's depicted in the article, people report having mystical experiences (eg see God), traveling vast distances through galaxies and strange worlds, see spirits of plants and objects, see themselves as a small insignificant part of the large organism that is Earth and at the same time, realise that they are immortal and that this life is one of an infinity of others and that they are God. The larger the dose, the deeper the experience and I would speculate that the number of brain parts interconnected is even higher and the connecting lines even thiker. Why is that ? What would happen if 100% of the brain would start exchanging information like this? What if we could connect only the blue or green areas? Psychedelics are the new unexplored frontier in science. Imagine a technology (or drug) which allows selecting which networks in the brain to interconnect (temporarily). This could be used to design new mental abilities, train or enhance existing ones. I'm really pleased that the taboo regarding these substances is slowly being lifted. I'm also happy that more and more people will take these substances and as a consequence will "expand their minds".

auggierose 12y ago

Jesus, when I read the comments it seems that most programmers are on drugs while coding. No wonder most of the code out there is so shitty. If you need drugs in order to be creative, that's pretty sad.

mvanvoorden 12y ago
Have you ever taken psychedelics? Did you even read the article? You cannot judge things you are ignorant of. Also, none of the programmers in the comments are high while coding. Some who have used psychedelics only told it gave them more insight in i.e. patterns and structures. To me personally, psychedelics saved my life. One trip showed me exactly what to do to be happy again and ever since my life is going exactly how I want it. Before I was living the life other people expected me to live, without even being aware of that (like the majority of people). Using drugs to escape might be sad, but using psychedelics to expand your mind is something I could recommend to almost anyone. There's a lot of wisdom hidden inside of us that is mostly supressed by the way we are nurtured, psychedelics make us connect to this again and teach us to be our real selves.
- auggierose 12y ago
  No, I've never taken psychedelics. I don't need them. My mind is already operating at full capacity without them. When I notice that something bothers me, I think about it, sometimes for a month or so. Eventually I will find the answer to the problem.
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