Listener Mail: The Psychedelic Experience

really interesting thing to try. Now, we had never gone to a five part series on the subject before. There are certain subjects that we revisit over time in various ways. I think in the past we'd gone to like two or three parts on some specific subjects. Maybe four. Did we go four on black Holes? I don't remember. I think we went three parts of the Black Holes, but I'm not positive. But anyway, so we've never gone that

long before. It was sort of an experiment, but it felt necessary once we got into the topic because it was something that we wanted to treat with thoroughness, but also with care and even handedness, because it's a sensitive topic, especially dealing with illegality and taboos and possible risks on a you know, a substance that evidence shows may have a lot of benefits but also is not without risks and not without dangers, and that people should understand if

they're gonna experiment with. Of course, we're not advising people to experiment with these substances, and that should be in your minds throughout those episodes and today's episode is that we're not recommending a course of action for you by talking about the science or other people's experiences with psychedelics. Right, these substances are almost certainly illegal wherever you're listening to this show, and even if that were not the case,

they're powerful substances that should not be taken lightly. You know, in certain individuals. As we discuss, psychological side effects can occur, and even in the best cases of set and setting,

users often report challenging portions of the trip. Right, So I mean, I would say the main takeaway is we're not recommending people try psychedelics, but we do want to fairly discuss what the science says about their possible benefits and people's first hand experiences with them, for for good and for ill, right, and of course, as always, we reach out to the listeners and we'll reach out to to other folks to to get their feedback, their experiences,

their first hand experiences on you know, any topic, and this is certainly a topic that we wanted to hear from everyone about. Also on our Facebook group on the discussion module, we also heard some people talking back and forth about just the nature of doing a five part episode. And you know, to what extent people like that or

they don't. They don't like five part episodes. So you know, if you're not a part of the discussion module and you have thoughts on this, certainly right in and uh and let us know, are you down for a five part another five parts study of a particular topic or do you prefer like one in two parts. I enjoyed it. I mean, I really liked the ability to go in depth and explore a topic, even though we couldn't do

everything about psychedelics. We couldn't even really It's frustrating how no matter how deep you go, it seems like you can't but scratch the surface on these big topics having to do with the mind and you know, the human experience and all that. But but I I did appreciate being able to go into more depth than we usually can in a single or two part episode on on a big topic. And it seems to me like the

majority of responses we've gotten about it, we're positive. It seems like most people liked it, though some people said that they liked it better when we spend you know, one or two parts on a subject and then move on to something else, just in case it's not a subject that captures their interest. And if psychedelics don't capture your interest, that's okay, all right, So we're gonna bring in the mail bot at this point. The mail bot is very fractal looking today. I believe he has been

infected with machine elves. But still he's he's here to do his job. He's here to present uh listener mail for us. And we've we've changed addings just a little bit. Normally we provide like the first name of an individual who's written into us. In this case, given the nature of the topic and given the fact that some people asked to remain anonymous, we're just going to have everyone

be anonymous on this episode. Yeah. Oh, and just one more thing also, obviously, since today's episode is going to be frankly discussing people's first hand experiences to some extent with psychedelics and and other drug use. Uh, you know, obviously, just be warned that that subject matter is coming right. All right, Well, I'm going to read the first one here that Carney is handing me. In the psychedelic episodes, there's mention of ridicality and encounters with God or something

that is best described as God. Given the limits of human language to describe some of these things, I wanted to share two experiences that I had along these lines, One from my first and most powerful use of psilocybin mushrooms, and the other from a much later savasana phase of my yoga practice. In the psilocybin case, I experienced a deep, closed eye internal experience. I wouldn't describe it as ego lost because I was aware of myself, but it was

almost out of body in a way. Only instead of pulling out of my physical form and seeing my physical form from above, I saw my place in a much grander chain of beings, like a link and a transdimensional tapestry. It was fractal, genetic, and felt more like deep inner

space than outer space. There was a strong warm, organic feel to it, swirling reds and orange, and in this state, I felt, or was told that this reality was all that mattered, that fears and concerns of the ego were irrelevant, because all that mattered was that I loved and was loved within this interconnected chain of souls. I would say it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever experienced.

I didn't really know much about psychedelics at the time, but I attribute the intensity of the experience to simply having never taken sol cybin before, and I attribute the attribute the vibe in large part to excellent set and setting on that particular trip. It's been a long time, though, and I feel as if I need to remember the lessons of this trip in my day to day life. More than a decade later, the Savastana experience was rather different.

I occasionally experienced strong visions during Savasta, and on a few occasions I feel that they resulted in what could be described as ego loss. I've also seen, but never communicated with, manifestations of the deceased in these cases. And then during one session, I saw something that I knew was God. Despite the lack of communication between myself and the entity. It was a triangle amid the clouds, but not the clouds of this world, more like some brilliant

sunset illuminated atmosphere on some distant gas giant. The triangle itself was luminescent, but of no real color that I remember. I was overcome by feelings of wonder and calm. I'm not saying this wasn't just a mental image assemboled out of various visuals floating around my subconscious It almost certainly was just that, But I think it's a good example of the sort of otherworldly experience that one can have

through meditative practice, even without psychedelic substances. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, it certainly came up in our episode that there are recognized neurological called parallels between uh, the meditative practice that that some people do, and in the psychedelic experience.

One of the things we talked about was brain imaging studies that at least make it seem like something that's common to both the psychedelic experience with drugs like psilocybin and the experience of at least master meditators, is that there is some suppression of the brain regions we associate with the default mode network, which we talked about having to do with of course, you know, the kind of

rumination that enters people's minds when they're otherwise idol. So you're just sitting there by yourself, you don't have anything to do or think about. You start thinking about yourself and your problems and your past and your future. And that's another part of it, is mental time travel. And then of course another part is like evaluations of the

self and of other people. Right, yeah, and and I feel like, you know this this lines up with what we've read from various commentators and and people who have studied traditional practices that you know that there's there's the domain of of a sort of psychedelic experience achievable through tradition, non drug related practices, and then there's also like the realm of dreams as well, that is often lumped into the same you know, network of experiences, particularly in in

some you know, traditional Amazonian practices. Yeah, totally, all right, here's the next one, and uh, how to catch for myself. We're not using names, Okay, so this one begins. I was an active member, says Hi, Robert and Joe. We can use our names. It says I was an active member of various message boards dedicated to psychedelic drugs from Circle nine until about five years ago. I still participate

in some message boards, but not nearly as frequently. I was a user on forums such as the shrew Maery in the long defunct The Third Plateau, which are dedicated to specific drugs such as psilocybin containing mushrooms and dextromethorphan or d x M, respectively. I was also a member of forums such as Drugs Forum dot com, which is dedicated to psychoactive drugs in general. I'm a pretty critical person, but I don't think my criticisms about ego death are invalid.

I think there is a lot of uncritical discussion on these boards, especially when discussions start getting into the realm of the mystical, supernatural, or spiritual. One thing that I have seen is that a lot of people, often younger people who are new to psychedelics, love to ask how much LSD do I have to take to reach level five or how many mushrooms do I need to take

to have ego loss or ego death? And the author of this email explains that level five refers to what was and may still be, a popular scheme for classifying the intensity of psychedelic experiences, as laid out by Graham Carl and included in the Psychedelic Experience fact, which appears to be hosted on aerowid dot org, which is a

drug related information site. The writer continues, I've seen a lot of discussions about this, and many people think the ultimate aim of taking psychedelics is to experience ego loss. But the writer here contends it is impossible to experience ego loss. The ego is one sense of self. That is to say that the ego is the model of oneself which the brain constructs without any conception of self, it is impossible to experience anything. Experiences are not things

that float around to be gathered. Experience has happened to someone or something. I experience something. Experiences aren't the same thing as raw sensory data, and experience is the result of one's brain making the best sense of all that raw sensory data in relation to the model of oneself. Without the model of oneself, it's meaningless to talk about experiencing ego death. I have never read a compelling description

of ego death. I do not believe that this is simply because we don't have the words to describe what it's like to experience things without any sense of self. Basically, any trip report I've read that includes ego death says nothing except for the same cliches. I generally found the descriptions meaningless. Note that in this paragraph any quotations are not actual quotations, their approximations for memory. Some would be as brief as saying, and then I experience full ego death.

Others repeated cliches like I had ego death and experienced raw sensory data, or then I had ego death and it was pure experience with no ego. A few times I shared my hypothesis about the impossibility of actually experiencing ego death. If your ego dies, then you do not experience anything because you do not exist, or at least there is no model of you to experience anything. So if you or the model of you which your brain

presents are absent, then what is experiencing ego loss? Don't misunderstand, I do know that psychedelics can radically change change one's sense of self to the point where ego loss is almost the right word. If one's normal ego the default mode ego is transformed radically, then sure you've lost your old ego and been born into a new ego. I know. Psychedelics can cause one sense of self to become so tiny that it seems like you don't exist except as

some little dot and a human brain which has self awareness. Alternately, the subject object distinctions can be so fuzzy that it seems one has merged with the universe. It can seem that one is just purely aware. It's just pure awareness with no sense of self. However, even if your ego has gotten to this point where it seems you either don't exist because the ego is an illusion, or you're so tiny as to be meaningless, or you see yourself as being one with everything around you, there is no

experiencing pure awareness without a sense of self. I submit to you that simply being aware must imply self awareness, even if that self seems to be purely an observer. Uh, there still must be a sense of self in order to experience anything. Maybe I'm being nitpicky because ego death isn't exactly inaccurate, but I don't believe that experiencing without any ego without any sense of self whatsoever is possible. Psychedelics can certainly annihilate one sense of self, but the

ego is transformed, not taken away entirely. I'm glad you haven't focused too much on ego death in the episodes. I do think it's mumbo jumbo, and there are a lot of seeker is out there who are being misled by uncritical psychedelic enthusiasts who think it's possible to take LST or another classical psychedelic and experience nirvana and emerge from the trip as a totally new person like a butterfly,

ego death and rebirth like the caterpillar. While psychedelics can influence personality, I don't think that experiencing ego loss is meaningful. I think psychedelic idealists are suggesting that there is an ultimate goal that people should strive towards when taking psychedelics, as though it will then turn them into the beautiful butterfly. I've not seen anyone emerge from a cocoon to end. I'd like to say that the four episodes so far I guess this was after the fourth one, have been

very very good. Thank you for doing such good work. I am so grateful best regards. So in a sense, I guess I see what the writer here is saying, but I'm not sure. I I accept this argument about ego loss being an incoherent concept. So we have experiences, and obviously you need to, as as far as we know, have some kind of brain to have those experiences. So I would certainly disagree with somebody who says that their psychedelic experience proves that like their brain doesn't exist or something.

But the self, I think, as far as we know, is an internal, subjective concept. The self is something that's created by the brain. It's a series of impressions that have to do with a sort of autobiographical narrative script that's constantly running this relating sensory data and experiences back to this idea of who I am, what I've been, what I'm going to be, And I don't actually accept.

I think that it is necessary for all experience to be routed through references to this autobiographical sense of self, the the narrator running in the head. Uh. In fact, I think one of the things about the psychedelic experience that's so revealing to people is it reveals to them that their sense of self is an impression and not an objective reality, that that the elf is a series of thoughts and thought patterns, not like an object in

the world. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Um, you know, I would I would say that that my response to this would be, like, on one hand, it seems like we are getting into just a discussion of terminology. And I think I said in the episodes that I don't particularly care for the term eco death just you know, it's a little gram Yeah.

I like ego loss better. And I think my my read on ego loss was was always not so much an absolute loss, but more loss in the terms of a depletion, like I and and that's exactly what this particular listener like is saying, you know, is it is occurring that you know, you're at least experiencing a depletion of of the ego even if there is some you know, they're arguing that there's some at least minuscule uh, sense

of the of the self remaining in your observations, right. Uh. And a very good point I think they may actually is they point out that you shouldn't have overly heroic expectations for what's going to happen, even through a high dose psychedelic experience that like you know that you're going to emerge like a butterfly from a cocoon, you know, without your past self and and being an all new person.

I mean, people do report, uh, in some cases, very profound and positive changes in their life and their sense of self. But it's not a it's not a miracle drought, it's not a cure all. You know, It's just a tool,

a powerful tool, but a tool nonetheless. And yeah, I mean I've I've read some accounts of people, you know, they were critical back in the sixties and are critical today of say individuals who travel to South America in order to have the ahuasca experience, but with like a certain goal in mind, and then they you know, it can be disappointing if you're if you're going to into it expecting again, these these heroic results, if you're expecting

to be transformed purely by the experience. Um so, so yeah, I think that's worth taken into account. But but then again, another whole thing about this, you know we're talking about, you know, the degree to which people are primed and the degree to which the degree to which their expectations might be uh, you know, unfairly elevated. As we discuss though, like this, the psychedelic experience is highly susceptible to priming. Yeah,

and like that is that's it's part of the experience. Well, it's one of the things that makes it a little more difficult to study than a kind of kinds of other things, because it's a drug that acts not necessarily by like you know, changing levels of chemistry and your body, that that have a direct mechanism of action outside your your conscious control. It seems very much like to whatever extent, psychedelics do have therapeutic and legitimate medical uses, and it

does seem like they probably do. It's by allowing you to have an emotional cognitive experience that is meaningful to you and perceived subjectively as meaningful and like motivates changes in behavior. You know, It's not like it's not like aspirin or something. And given that it very much appears appears to be the case that you you do very much want to intentionally bias people's expectations and stuff in in a positive direction to have them get the most

out of the experience. Absolutely, but this is a great, great bit of listener mail. I feel like this was some you know, some some good good food for thought here. Uh. You know, the listener was, you know, is kind of disagreeing with some of the information out there about psychedelic use and the effects. Uh, but they providing an interesting argument. So um um, yeah, I really appreciate this, this bit

of listener feedback. Yeah. I appreciate somebody making a case even and I think making some very good points, even if I don't necessarily agree with the overall point being made. All right, Well, we received another one. We received a one bit of listener mail just asking if we had enjoyed psychedelics and watched Avatar before. Um. But yeah, and

then they summarized it. But in the summary of of Avatar, I was reminded like, yeah, this, like Avatar is a very like psyched kind of psychedelic film in its own way. You know, all these themes of you know, connecting with nature and you know, transformed furring your consciousness into a big blue cat creature leaving your body flying around. Yeah. So, um, I will have to think of think about that that read on Avatar the next time I see it, or when I get to you know, CD sequels that are

in the works. Sorry, my mind is still just grinding on this previous thing. There's another statement I want to make. I just want to see if you agree with this or not. I mean, basically, I think one of the interesting things about psychedelic research to me is that it yields the conclusion, at least to me, that saying the self does not exist is not a spiritual or mystical statement.

Saying the self does not exist can be like a purely material and mundane statement of fact in a way, and that the psychedelic experience does tend to reveal to people subjectively that this is the case. Without the use of you know, brain imaging techniques and all that. It just as you a different kind of subjective experience that makes you realize, like, oh, this thing that I always thought had to be there doesn't have to be there.

I know firsthand because I was there and it wasn't there. Right, Yeah, And it's going to be interesting to see, you know what. Further, uh, you know, breakthroughs we we see in this uh you know now that we're seeing more and more research into psychedelics, like one of the one of one of the points

that I see made again and again. Is that you know, for for the most part, you know, Western Western science has has been on one track, and this track has been you know, completely parallel to uh to the psychedelic track. And these two tracks have have converged, you know, for a very short time, and and it's been kind of

touch and go. And now we're seeing more of a true convergence where we're actually like leveraging more of our our current scientific understanding of the world towards the psychedelic experience and attempt to understand like what can be gained from it, be it in the treatment of you know, addiction or various psychological conditions, or simply an understanding like what the mind is and how it works. All Right, I guess we need to take a quick break, but

we'll be right back with more. Alright, we're back. So here's another bit of listener mail related to our psychedelics episodes. Hi, Robert and Joe. I've been listening to stuff to Blow your mind for about two years now. It keeps my mind occupied while I deal with the mundanity of my day job. I apologize in advance if this gets long winded, but I want to paint the whole picture of my recent dealings with depression and magic mushrooms. Well, it does seem.

It seemed to be a theme that this that these episodes resulted in long listener emails. All right, so they continue. I suffered from chronic headaches for about five years and that kept getting worse. Along with this, I developed migrains that were triggered by travel anything more than fifty kilometers in a car, and the next day my brain wants to load. Once the pain goes away, suicidal depression would kick in for about five days as the post drum and so I saw my doc a few times, who

is a psychiatrist as well. After trying a bunch of different meds and techniques and coming up empty, she suggested that I try a mild S s R I and just see what happens. My life changed from that day on, which was in January this year. Turned out I had depression, and only after being on S s R I was able to see how depressed I was. Depression biases you so much towards negativity that it's impossible to see that you have a problem. My rage, road rage and anxiety

has basically disappeared. Completely along with the headaches and migraines, gotten back to my hobbies and rebuilding relationships. And this is where the shrooms come in. I've had shrims multiple times long ago, about six years ago, and only three weeks ago, decided to give it a go again as my mindset is in a good place and I felt like doing a mental reset. This was literally a week before your Psychedelic series started on Stuff to Blow your mind.

I took about four rams, dried, got in bed under a lot of blankets, and listened to prog metal for a few hours. Yeah. Well, you know, no, I'm not mocking. That's just it's funny what people do. I mean, it's gonna it's it's gonna be subjective to your experience and taste. You know. The music that is comforting to me isn't

necessarily going to be comforting to the next person. And then I think is sometimes the case the music that is comforting to you, the psilocybin user or what have you, it might be different from the music that is comforting to you in your like your normal day to day state. Oh yeah, I mean I was just thinking, how you know, I love me some electric Wizard in general doom metal kind of stuff. But I don't I don't know, it seems like that could be a bad recipe. Yeah, well

it's gonna vary right the anyway, the listening continues. The experience was profound, to say the least. Other than the colors and patterns, I was confronted by all my mental baggage and given a choice of how to deal with it. At a stage, I was in a black pit surrounded by amorphous beings representing all the human connections in my life, towering around me my ego, and they all said simultaneously,

you are no more. My sense of self kind of just evaporated into everything, as if the universe was in a high intropy state and all particles were homogeneously spread over the universe and I just became part of that. After this, the particles started to reconstitute into points of connection, representing all the people in my life, with a connection

between all of them, including me. What I observed was that life is a giant web of connections with mental energy, not quacky pyramid b as, flowing between all these connections. If a connection is faulty, it restricts flow in a certain part of this cloud and drains the amount of energy you have to keep the system in balance. So the solution would be to either fix the connection or sever it, allowing space for more positive experiences and connections

with people. I know it all sounds very subjective, and honestly it is, but I find a lot of comfort in the site you. Three weeks later, I still feel like I've returned from a three month vacation. Things are going a lot better than it used to. I realized that if life consists of fifty fifty good and bad, and you can see fifty of the bad things as either neutral or good, then of your life will be good. It's not about the arbitrary energy that you supposedly send

out into the universe that draws in good energy. It's about your perspective on life. If your observation bias is dial towards the positive, then your life will seem more positive. Weird thing is my sense of self hasn't really returned, which feels odd and fantastic at the same time. I'm not religious or spiritual in any sense, and if you stop worrying about the self, you have the capacity to

help others anyway. Love the podcast guys. I recommend it to most of my friends and will keep listening as long as you make it. Oh well, thank you so much. That's a nice message. And I'm so interested in the way that the brains generate these visual metaphors. It's extremely common,

I mean, not unique to this message. You know. It's probably at least half of the trip reports out there have something like this where people talk about their psychedelic experience being not just a sort of abstract revelation about, you know, their relationships and their emotions and all that, but that they get a concrete visual metaphor through which

they picture these revelations. I remember in Michael Pollan's book you Know, which we read for that series, he talks about his experiences um having revelations about his relationships and his family. In one case, he talks about like envisioning this giant building made out of like beams of wood and all that, and like that the structure somehow represented to him these these feelings he was having about his

his parents and his children and all that. Uh. And another one was like feeling this way about the images of oak trees and a meadow. Why is it that the brain doesn't just say like, oh, I should focus more on having positive relationships with my parents or something like that. Why is it that, like it gives you

a picture that shows that to you? Yeah, I mean because because in a way, we're getting into some sort of like a non linguistic communication, right or or what what would be the description, like a translinguistic object in your mind? Um. Terence McKenna, you know, talks about a

lot of things like this in his his writings. Uh uh, though, I mean in a lot of those writings, it's going beyond merely perceiving like a complex metaphor, but interacting with the complex metaphor and sort of the course dissecting that metaphor later on and with drawing conclusions from it. It

totally goes beyond. Yeah, if you're you're thinking like, Okay, I'm not just perceiving in my imagination imagery that reveals something to me, but actually, like I'm thinking that there is some physical other thing out there that I'm just perceiving as I would perceive objects in my environment, which to some extent McKenna actually thought he did experience, right, Like, Yeah, though I've been kind of I've been looking around at people's different takes on that, Like basically the question to

what extent did did McKenna believe in some of these reads that he discussed on, you know, psychedelic visions, And you know, some argue that, well, you know, it's it's not so much that he necessarily believed in all of these things, but was encouraging people to you know, consider alternate reason reality and also just sort of like pulling the thread of a particular idea and just you know, keep pulling it to see how much of it you can get? What happens if you follow the rabbit hole

of this particular notion, where does it lead you? And I think I do see that. And I'm currently reading a collection of his um like interviews and writing titled The Archaic Revival, And and you do see that, Like it's you can't take all the ideas in the book and line them up and like construct necessarily like the Terrence Terence mckinna mythos, you know, because it's because it's like he's exploring one idea here and he's talking about

another one here. Uh well, I guess that comes back to the the interesting quality of a ridicality or or the noetic quality, right, that there's this feeling that so many people get about their psychedelic experiences that it wasn't just an interesting experience, but that it revealed something objectively true,

which is such a strange and interesting quality. And one way you could look at it is that maybe what it does is it kind of it not that it makes people believe that a hallucination they had on a high dose of psilocybin was a literal, physical object that's out there that they encountered, but it more sort of like increases your willingness to suspend disbelief when entertaining metaphors and stuff. Does that make sense, It's like allows you to get into the story of a movie more without

stepping out and thinking this is just a movie. It just sort of like opens you up to going with an idea for longer than you normally would without without getting embarrassed about it or thinking like, Okay, that's that's silly, yeah, yeah, or be getting drawn back into the the egoic mind and and thinking about this, pulling out the old toys, you know, the toys of of the past and the toys of the future. If to worry about and being

able to focus on this. You know what is often and in so many of these cases, it's it's some sort of metaphor that is that is bound up in empathy and uh and uh, you know it's it's it's not the necessarily the kind of of you know, ultimately like positive imagery that one is going to dwell on,

because what we two, we tend to dwell on. We tend to dwell on things, things from the past that we're we're great and we wish we had again, or things in the past that hurt us, and then likewise gazing into the future and fantasizing about the things that could hurt us or make us happy. Uh. And then you know, it's in so often it's the metaphor in play in our first message that we read in in this one and also in the example from Michael Pollan's book,

it's based kind of in the present. It's like, what do I have now that is important and of value? Yeah, and and so many It also just seems funny that so many of these revelations and metaphors that people have during their experiences are about love. Yeah, it's always about love. It's like statements that people might normally find kind of

embarrassingly trite or but now take on a new profundity. Yeah, you don't see a lot of accounts where people are like, yeah, I had a psychedelic experience and I realized they need to kick people more. Why am I not kicking people? I mean, I'm not ruling out that possibility that could happen with some people. But you don't hear that kind

of thing much. Yeah, more often you hear stuff like I realized that love is everything, and you know, you not having the experience, might hear somebody say that and say, Okay, yeah, you know I could have told you. You know, there's you want to hear some more Beatles lyrics, But it is. It's the stuff of lyrics. It's the stuff of of of bumper stickers. But but but the actually felt is the thing. It's truly felt. Is it for the first time?

Sometimes yes, totally. Okay, looks like we're going to move on to the next one. Uh, this one starts. Hey, guys, I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoyed your series on psychedelics and wanted to share my experiences. Each spring and fall, I and a few other guys go up to my friend's cottage to open or close it for the season. For the last few years we've

taken this opportunity to take magic mushrooms. His cottage is located on a fairly small island, which makes it a great place to go for a wander without a risk of getting lost. But we always make sure to stick together, even if one of us is lost in the shapes of the clouds and someone else is pondering the moss on a rock. We've always had good experiences, and for the following weeks and months, the world seems like a

brighter place. As you said at the beginning of your series, it's like someone opens a window, and even after the window was closed, the air feels a little fresher. I've had some very interesting experiences on my trips. Most of the time the effects are fairly standard visual hallucinations and a general feeling of euphoria. But on our last adventure, we went for it and took Terence McKenna's heroic dose

of five brams. I should just throw in that this is something he he mentioned in some of the writings I'm reading now, and basically his argument was, look if you're going to take psychedelics, don't play around. Take a heroic dose so that you can like really experience the thing. Uh you know, I agree or disagree with that as you like. But that's that's what people were talking about when they're talking about Terence McKenna's five grams. Uh So,

the writer here continues. This resulted in a much more cerebral experience. I could see the surface of my mind again this visual metaphor. I could see the surface of my mind and had the feeling that small ten drils were extending off and connecting to another level beyond regular consciousness. In that time, I felt like I had a perfect understanding of so many things, the origins of art, the meaning of family, the intricacies of society, and even some

religious thoughts from a non religious person. Unfortunately, my descent to reality was much harder than it had been on lighter doses, and the fresh feeling didn't stick with me. I'm looking forward to are closing this fall, and I hope I can strike a balance in the dose and get the best of both worlds. I also wanted to

thank you for your approach to the conversation. My wife and I grew up the same way you did, with the dangers of drugs being pushed on us at every turn, so she has a bit of apprehension when it comes to things like this. We listen to a few of the episodes together, and I think it opened her mind a little to the idea that mushrooms can be beneficial. Maybe one day she will be ready and we can

go explore together. Thanks again, Well, I like that, But then again, I mean I want to emphasize that every everybody's got to make decisions for themselves and inform themselves on these things. So we're not encouraging people to take psychedelics. We're just trying to describe what, you know, what, what's out there, what the literature says. Yeah, choosing to to

never try psychedelics, who is a perfectly valid choice. Um. Yeah, We we don't advocate, you know, pressuring anybody or bore dosing Richard Nixon with them right, all right, here's another one. This listener rides Hi Joe, Hi, Robert. I'm an occasional listener of your podcast, choosing the topics that inter me most and saving the others for when I have more time, because unlike other podcasts that I can listen to while doing other stuff. Yours requires my complete attention in a

good way. Your recent Psychedelic series, though, had me drop everything right at the second each episode was available. Your research and personal insights were eye opening to a subject that I hadn't really considered before. Your reports of several studies where people described communicating with the gods had me thinking about the three big monotheistic religions Christianity, Judaism, Islam uh.

They all forbid the use of mind altering substances to various degrees, the key probably being that one should always be in control of one action one's actions and not be able to to excuse one's shortcomings with being under the influence of drugs. But I'm wondering if this could also be interpreted as the religious leaders having had a real experience of talking to God while on SI gets psychedelics, and subsequently trying to prevent others from experiencing the same thing.

The motive could be oppression and less for power. But then Jesus and later Mohammad were like, nah, I don't care about that. About what Abraham and Moses said, I want to have as much fun as that goat over there that ate some weird looking mushroom and God talking to them too. Another thought I had while listening was Michael Pollen, huh like the cookbook guy. Weird case of two people with the same name. But well he you know,

well maybe he did stuff about food. He's done a lot about food, and is I think previous book was about like you know, um, you know, he talked about a lot about like culinary traditions, and well, our our our producer Maya just chimed in and pointed out that he did a Cooked series on Netflix. Unless I actually watched this series, it's it's excellent anywhere, our listener continues. But then I decided to look up the book you

reference so much, and it's the exact same guy. My second favorite cookbook author ever, second only to Samine nos Frott, who literally refers to to him as one of her biggest mentors, inspirations, and supporters. His next Netflix series and book, Cooked Heir sparked my interest into the more science e side of cooking, why fermentation is so important, how nutrition works, and why some modern foods make a sick spoiler, It's

most likely neither lactose nor gluten. He dives into different cultures and cuisines with genuine curiosity and respect and not elevating himself and his personal knowledge above the more traditional ways of cooking. What I'm basically trying to say is he would be a phenomenal guest on to your show, whether you want to talk about food, psychedelics, or general

cultural developments. If you've actually made it this far, thank you for reading through my whole rant about things you probably already know, and thank you for making such a phenomenal podcast. Have a great week. Uh well, thanks for getting in touch. I would say that, um, there are a lot of theories people have about the roles of psychedelics in the origin of religions, and I think a lot of these theories are obviously going to be difficult

to prove. So it's just kind of like people offering speculations of that may to various extents conform or not conformed to the evidence we already have, but it's hard to prove these things right. But it's like the food of the God's argument jas MCKINNI made, like it's it's a very interesting argument, but ultimately it's nothing you could ever actually prove, yeah, or at least not in any way we can imagine now. I mean, who knows what we could prove given evidence we don't know about, but

it seems unlikely at least. Um. But with these things, I mean, one thing I would say is that I think it's not hard to see why a lot of religions would place limitations on the use of mind altering substances of various kinds, even the kinds of radically different effects. I mean that that they might have the same kind of attitude towards alcohol that they have towards psilocybin mushrooms, and these are extremely different compounds that are different things

to the brain. Um. But but yeah, I think there's there's like a complex interplay of different pressures going on there. I think one is just sort of like a social orderliness pressure, with the idea that you sort of mentioned in the email that like drugs can induce changes in behavior, drugs can lower people's inhibitions and uh, and you just generally don't want people having excuses for bad behavior that

are chemical in nature. Yea. Um. But another thing I think I mentioned in the episodes, and I still pretty firmly believe is that there is definitely a threat from specifically psychedelics. There's a threat to organized religions that have a set number of like doctrines and dogmas, because psychedelics very often tend to cause people to believe they have had new revelations, you know, like God has talked to me now, and now I in fact see that here

are the new things we should believe. And of course that's a challenge to the authority of the existing church, which has like a doctrinal statement. Yeah. And of course these types of revelations can occur without psychedelics and do occur without psychedelics, And the history is full of individuals who likely had obtained the revelation uh, you know, viet non drug related means, and then end up posing a

problem to the established religion. You know, suddenly you have a new heresy, and generally organized religions don't take kindly to heresies, uh, and they have to be squashed, right. Another I think thing to think to keep in mind is that so many of these different substances. When we're looking historically, we're dealing with with something very regional, and we're dealing dealing with something that is tied to traditional

regional practices and then incomes a major religion. It's these major religions tend to uh be you know, evangelical, they tend to be They're expanding their domain, and in doing so they are absorbing and crushing traditional practices. And and part of that is is crushing whatever kind of you know,

medicinal practices they have in place. Yeah, and uh and of course we don't mean that necessarily as an indictment of people who believe in these religions, but all kind of like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, even they all at various points were expansionist religions that were sort of obliterating local, regional religious practices that people had before them. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's just the it's the nature of of these of ideas. And you can look at it in

two ways. You can look at it is like, okay, here's the big you know, dominant religion coming in and just destroying everything in its path, and think of it like a like a mold taking over something. But you can also look at it if you want, you can say, well, here are just some really good ideas that someone had about how to live your life and so of course they're going to expand of course they're going to be

adopted by people who can benefit from them. I think ultimately you have a mix of these two factors in the expansion of any religion. There are things that are doing people good and therefore they expand, And then of course there's just the inevitable conflict of different ideas, different cosmologies, bump bumping heads, like something's there's gonna be a certain amount of of synthesis that takes place, but something's gonna gonna also be left, you know, on the cutting room floor,

and something is going to more or less win. Yeah. Now, more directly to exactly what the writer here says, uh, I don't necessarily assume or think that there's any good evidence to assume that the founders of you know, more

recent revelatory religions were themselves taking psychedelics. I don't necessarily see any evidence of that, especially because we know that some people spontaneously have these types of mystical experiences without the use of psychedelics, and also because a lot of times the prohibitions that you're talking about against mind altering substances are not spoken directly by the people who have these revelations themselves. I mean, Jesus never said anywhere that

is recorded that one should not take psychedelic substances. That's just not to be found in the Bible. All right, Well, on that note, we're going to take one more break when we come back. More listener mail. Thank alright, we're back. Okay.

The next message starts, Hey guys. Uh. The writer says that we produce their favorite media and says some needlessly flattering things and then says, anyways, I just finished your five part mini series on psychedelics, listening to it and being reminded of mushrooms and Mike's perience with them when I was much younger, and it still has the power to give me this feeling of ego dissolution. Just a

little background. When I was nineteen, I had been arrested a ton of times for marijuana and drinking related crimes, all culminating with my house being rated. I did a short stint in County and then was released with one point five years of probation and drug counseling. I was never a violent or bad guy, or ever really felt I had a problem with drugs. I just sort of lacked purpose or had anything positive I cared about any who.

On my twentieth birthday, my best friend at the time and I took mushrooms for the first time and walked around town. I had this feeling of enlightenment, like I was thinking on a much higher level and there was just so much more meaning and truth to the world than I had known. At that point. I decided I wanted to study physics and understand this higher dimension. I

had never been successful in school. My high school g p A was a one point seven, but I took some classes at a local school, did well, matriculated, continued to do well, applied to a solid physics program at the u n H, got a degree, and on to graduate. Went on to graduate school to study imaging science. I sort of stopped looking for the higher dimensions and just

got excited about science. Also, there were other things going on in my life that were positive, but what I really wanted to get to the day after I guess this is the day after the psilocybin experience. I hadn't slept and I was in the best mood ever, not tripping anymore, just feeling like I had learned something deep, gained purpose, and perspective. Months later. I didn't feel that way always, but I could remember the perspective and bring

myself there just tapping into the memory. To this day, sometimes I think back to the time I tripped on mushrooms and I can still sort of get the ego dissolution just by making the connection in my memory. It is sort of like meditation on demand. That being said, I meditated before and a long while after with regularity after I had tripped, and I think it brought a

whole other level to my meditation. It was like there was a deeper well of being in the moment, or maybe more apt being in the moment also aim with a stronger feeling of being connected to the world. Shortly after, I made up a meditation inspired by my trip. There was this pulsing thing to it, where like your breath and heartbeat were connected to the world around you. So I would try to force that feeling. I would start by using my mind's eye and imagining myself breathing in

the energy of my surroundings. That I would expand my region, to my town, and then to my state, my country, the world, the solar system, and then the universe, watching with my mind's eye, this abstract universe is gaseous energy coming into my lungs, following it the entire way than breathing my energy into the universe. And then the writer goes on to say a few more things, but I

think we'll cap it there. But I like this idea of the the expanding consciousness exercise through meditation because it's something that I don't know if there's a version exactly like this that I've come across before, but there's certainly the idea of expanding forms of consciousness in the compassion meditation tradition, you know, where you uh, you're like, you meditate on well wishes and compassion for yourself and for people close to you, and you gradually, through the exercise

like expand that circle of people who you include in your the circle of people who you wish well for, And this just gets bigger and bigger until you wish well for all of humanity. And that's like a way of forcing yourself to experience compassion for people you would not normally feel compassion for. Right. Yeah, I think that's sometimes overlooked as as being you know, one of the positive sides about prayer traditions and like Western Christian traditions,

you know, is that sometimes there's criticism level. They're like, oh, if you're praying for somebody, you're not really helping them, uh, you know, and so forth, you know, the whole sort of thoughts and prayers counter argument. But but if you think of it as like this, uh, this empathy building meditative practice, uh, you know, I think it's a little

bit different. And of course the idea to being that, like you know, first comes thought and then comes action, that if it puts you in a more empathetic mind state, then then hopefully you'll be in a better position to

take actions that are also empathetic. I think I've said this on the podcast before, but I know there are at least some This might sound like an oxymoron to some people, but I've read about this that there are like atheist Christians, you know, who are Christians, they don't necessarily believe that there is a God that can physically change things in the world or anything like that, and yet they would still consider themselves in some way Christian

and pray and that the prayer uh is sometimes thought of as a kind of internal psychological drama where you are conditioning yourself to have, you know, well, wishes and compassion for the people who you pray for, kind of

like the compassion meditation tradition in Buddhism. Yeah yeah, I mean exactly, like if you're if you're doing a uh you know, even like a blessing before a dinner, like you're stopping for a second to appreciate, you know, the fact that you do have food on the table and maybe thinking about you know, other people that need help

and certain causes and whatnot. Like similar exercises and this is one that we do in my house is to have like a family meeting and there are certain like questions that we all answered, like what was the best party day? What was the worst part, what are you thankful for? What are you looking forward to? That sort of thing. Uh, animal of the day is also in their animal of the day. Oh yeah, oh that's a good that's a good tradition. It's frequently a squirrel for me.

But um yea yeah, I mean it's like like you say, it's it's ultimately kind of this empathetic meditative practice. All right. Next, I want to read a section one Like, like I said, a lot of these were long because they're often describing, you know, rather you know, complex emotional or perceptive experiences. Uh so, I'm just gonna read a portion of this one where this individual is talking about how how psychedelic usage impacted their life. Quote. It definitely changed my perspective

on things At the time. I was really lonely, anxious to have a girlfriend. You had not social enough to get out there and then meet and mingle with new people. After the trip, I relaxed a great deal. I realized it didn't matter or so much at once. I became more comfortable with my solitude and more open to trying new things and meeting new people. I realized there was so much more to do, and I was not doing everything I could be doing to make my memories richer.

But that was just the beginning of my changes. The last time my trip was about a year and a half ago. I had one more insightful experience. I was over at my brother's apartment, but instead of discussing anything with him, I opted to lay down in silence for the duration of the trip. I tried to focus inward, but had a very difficult time because of the pain I was feeling in my body. At first, I was frustrated because I felt like I was just being distracted

by this pain. But eventually I realized that I was supposed to be feeling this pain. I had been experiencing chronic back and risk pains for about a year at that point, and had not really done anything about them. I realized that day that I was not treating my body the way it needed to be treated. I had a very sedentary life style as a computer jockey and

did a little exercise. The psychedelics made me focus on how much it sucked to be in pain all the time, and that I was still young enough to fix it. Although I my not have enough time if I didn't start soon. I still work from a computer. Uh, there was no changing that aspect of my life, but I decided to start having healthier exercise habits. I got a gym membership and started swimming almost every day of the week after work, and began practicing yoga almost every morning.

I was upset at first that I didn't have as much time in the day to do what I wanted, but as the week went by, I began to love the exercise. I feel that my trip gave me a healthier ability to communicate with my body and understand what it wanted. I had been depriving it for so long, and it was so happy that I was giving it the movement it needed so badly. Uh yeah, and the writer here has has some other great things to say. This was also a long email, but thank you for

getting in touch. It's it's great to hear. I mean, yet again, this is something we've we've seen at least anecdotally over and over again in these reports, is the ability of these substances to give people an experience that leads to change in habits, which is such a precious thing to come by, actually, like being able to change your routines were In fact, I think so often we are really just oblivious to how governed by routine we are,

how how subject it to habits and repetitive actions. I mean, it's one of the things that it can be almost kind of debilitating to think about life this way, but it is sometimes worth realizing that every time you do something, you're not just doing that thing, but you're making it more likely that you'll do that thing again in the future. Every time you say it, every time you think it, every time you do it, you're sort of writing a

program in your brain to reinforce that thing. And so like our actions, you know, your actions are never just that one action in the moment. It's also changing your future predisposition. But it seems like the one great thing about psychedelics is they have at least some sort of power, often reported anecdotally, to to to get in there and mess with that code, to give you more ability to

overcome your habitual behaviors and try to do something different. Yeah, to shake up the snow globe, and and again again. The research this is it goes beyond just sort of the subjective experience. But I mean we see the research in uh, the ability to combat combat addiction addiction, and like that is a that is certainly a more concrete area of like here's the here's the coding, here's the program that's been put in place, and then here we

are just we're seeing its disruption. Alright, So we have just a few more. These are some short ones to close it out. I'm gonna read this one listening rites and it says I've been enjoying the five part series on psychedelics. Great examination given to this topic. I particularly enjoy the discussion of the other. At the end of the first installment, the foray and gnostic belief was quite apt.

I experienced a similar feeling during a few psychedelic experiences, and this detail lended more to a feeling I used to think was unique. However, my whole gnostic experience happened after reading way too much HP Lovecraft in my freshman year of college, and that produced a monolithic Cyclopean fear that I cannot describe of which is fitting. That's very okay, uh.

Over the less, I think that the other produced by psychedelics, the disassociation from reality and the fallibility of perception, is a real benefit from these substances. I look forward to future research on psychedelics, especially the use of micro dosis. Some of the best transcendent moments of my teens in early adulthood were aided by consumption of small amounts of psychedelics in the company of close friends. Taking some mushrooms and hiking up a small mountain can really offer you

some perspective. I would like to see a time when responsible and private use of psychedelics is more accepted. I couldn't help but think of Roger from mad Men. When I was listening to the series. Oh yeah, yeah, this happened. Later on, he ends up taking I never finished mad Man. I think I just watched the first season or something. Oh it's I. I enjoyed the whole the whole journey.

But yeah, Roger ends up taking out. I want to say, he ends up going over to an individual's house and I can't remember what historic figure that may or may not supposed to be like, but anyway, he goes, and he's introduced to last Anyway, listen, the writer continues his love of LSD and his habitual use in later in the later seasons paints and image of how even successful people in business could enjoy that kind of cleansing feeling that psychedelics evoke. Great show. I love listening to this

podcast on my way to work. Oh well, thanks for sharing with us. Wait a minute, what is this about the Cyclopean fear that? Uh well, I I take that to to mean that, yeah, that there was. The psychedelic experience was initially influenced by reading too much HP Lovecraft, which sounds like not a great bad story hearing, uh, you know, but it's funny. HP Lovecraft also gets to the ineffable much like the mystical experience as this quality of ineffability one of the most common things, at least

in my you know, I'm not as deeply read on HP. Lovecraft, I think as you were, as a lot of other people are. But I recognize in that and in some other horror writers of the period this very common thing about just like not being able to describe the feeling of horror experienced. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just a common trope of of Lovecrafts writing. But then yeah, other writers working at the time, and and writers have come and

you know, in the tradition to follow. Um. But but yeah, at the same time, it's very like there's no empathy there, Like it's kind of an anti psychedelic like well a darkly psychedelic description of things, I guess. But anyway, I guess part of the thing to think about is I guess that the brain is going to build your experience out of whatever you've been feeding in to a certain extent. So, um, he was this individuals feeding at Lovecraft and this is

what they got. Well, I hope this has been informative. After we uh, you know, explored the sort of historical and scientific reports for a number of episodes now to just hear these like first hand anecdotes and experiences from all these listeners and and other people. Yeah, yeah, this was This was great. So I appreciate everyone who wrote in. If you wrote in or or you know somehow try to communicate with us on this and we didn't respond or read your your thoughts here, just you know, bear

in mind that we we we did read them. We read everything that comes in, and we do appreciate you sharing your thoughts with us. And likewise, if you didn't you know, hit the deadline on this and you have you have you have additional thoughts, well we'll send those in. Anyway we may return to We won't do a dedicated listener mail on this topic again, but you know, we may carve out the in portion of a future listener mail episode to consider future emails related to the psychedelic

experience totally. And for that matter, I mean, we may do future episodes about psychedelics because again, the research is ongoing. We may see some some really cool studies in the next year or two and we'll have no choice but to return to them. So I mean, hopefully that's the case. I hope. So I don't think we'll do another five part series, but but you know it's something. Yeah, we're we're we're fascinating. New avenues of of inquiry will continuously

pop up. Yeah, and the ultimately, I think it would be fun to like what we do come back to it, have like a single study to focus in on, Like here's a new study, here's what they did, here's what their their findings are, and and and here's what we can we can clean from that. Oh yeah, I think I already mentioned. One that came up in the episode we didn't get into in depth was like the research on adult personality change. I imagine if more stuff comes

out about that, maybe we'll explore that in a future episode. Yeah, all right. In the meantime, if you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over to Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.

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thanks to our excellent audio producer say Maya Cole. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, uh, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello and all that kind of stuff, you can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.