Unfortunately not everyone has this experience. Narcissists and sociopaths, for example, tend to become even more convinced of their greatness and enter messianic complexes. Others who are unable to let go or who require a tight level of perceived control over themselves experience terrifying experiences that often leave them jarred and feeling damaged. Certainly if everyone could experience the sort of peak experience that we and many others have, it would be a good thing for the world. I don't think psychedelics are for everyone, though.
That's a point, a sad one, specially about narcists/sociopaths because I think they are among the most dangerous humans and those which really should spend time in jail instead in mighty positions but somebody without that emotional operating system I and maybe we'd see as 'normal' and the more naive people (including myself, whilst on dissociatives, also sadly because I lost a fuckton of money and trust) believe all/most to have - they won't fight with police, make silly mistakes which lead to arrest, etc.. the justice system is horribly flawed but I never spent intime so maybe I'd change my mind like I did a bit in/after drug rehab..
One trippy thought is that maybe the aliens are already here and have always been - that there exist different kinds of souls in similar bodies like we have different races of dogs etc. some of which have very different character than others but that's physical genetics, now just apply this to the concept of immortal souls and multiverse.
Maybe I extrapolate from the thing that drugs can change fundamental beliefs, like I was atheist before and somehow still are but I began to believe in nature, multiverse, souls 'n stuff. Even the only lower-ish dosed LSD trip I had was simply beautiful. How the usual 3D vision becomes 4 or 5-dimensional is neither explainable nor drawable. Some people do an amazing job in recreating visuals though with the aid of technology, on youtube are some. I dunno, decades ago people thought that with just enough calculation power computers would eventually become conscious but I don't buy that. It's just like comparing meat and apples. Consciousness is something fundamentally unique, and as I believe in science - just for me science and spirituality don't have to be oppositive as less as natural and chemical medicine would need to have. People chronically fail to see pictures which are bigger than themselves and instead put some men watching out from the sky counting our sins above them. Yah, I'm not against religion, indeed I would love to believe in an intelligent power and sense behind everything but I can't. I just think that everything which is possible will eventually become reality, here on in one of the other infinite realities and possibly, if we don't destroy ourselves before and would put science over money, some day find a technological way to cross realities while still locked in our meat units. Or a way to decouple consciousness from the decaying biology. Somehow this is what I believe to be the sense of life. Not suffering and little shit. It's all a big game and nature's waiting for those crossing to the next level - and possibly there are some which already did, maybe the universe is just the n-th iteration and there'll be a chance for everyone of us.
What's weird about this is that if souls are immortal, are they limited or are we/some of us/etc divided from some oneness? Yeah, weird stuff. But I found my peace with it, indeed it gives me energy to continue when I was suicidal at some points because of material and interpersonal shit. Which maybe is nothing more than an illusion. If death is just a transformation then the survival in this world wouldn't count as much because if we lose there's just the next iteration, maybe it's here for us to learn to control ourselves before we get more power..
I do think that many people who experiences traumatic experiences on psychedelics could have experienced profound and positive experiences had they had a proper set and setting and someone helping them through it. So often people have others around them who end up making a frightening experience much worse, even if they didn't mean to.
Dissociatives might have enormous healing potential for (post)traumatic illness - maybe even, or even more when combined with a psychedelic, I guess this should make a fearless ego death possible but it's really just a thought, I didn't find the braveness yet to do DMT but more so because it's illegal and stigmatized and I don't have friends which were into this than I'd fear - before dissociatives I was a control freak, shrooms brought me terror and hell on earth because I couldn't let go but whyever I could let it be just a bad trip, whyever some catch lasting impact and others not. Somehow I believe marijuana to be a relevant factor, it's so common to smoke while on psychecelics and THC has at least in me the ability to panic, even while on dissociatives, while low dose DXM (suboptimal, I'd recommend e.g. deschloroketamine, my favourite because it has such boundless loving energy - or MXE, the oriental queen) probably greatly facilitated the LSD experience - it wasn't optimal either, with a couple I only met the day before, had phoned once or twice with her but that's not enough for me to trust but at no point was I afraid and this when I have a deep trauma from school bullying and always tend to be wary off people. I'd say this trip ceased at l;east 1/3 of social anxiety, lasting. What doesn't last unfortunately is the antidepressant effect and I blame prolonged SSRI use for that, maybe too because I abused the hell out of low-dose DXM + venlafaxine, making me hypomanic again and again and again. This can't be healthy.
That said, after my 3 year disso binge I believed to have fried my brain - as you say, and because of the illegal status and desinformation etc, people are quick to believe that - in said adolescence shroom terror, and my first salvia overdose too I thought shit I fried myself but that never happened while
on dissociatives. DCK tops any benzo in terms of anxiolysis in me. Oh, fried brain. Now the last days I took pramipexole + prolintan + testosteron (low levels from morphine + high prolactin from SSRIs I guess) and whoosh all the brain fog and concentration issues and hypersomnia, fatigue, negative outlook are gone. Nothing fried. Which of course shouldn't be a free ticket to abuse dissos, they aren't here for escapism but as catalysts and tools.
Mushrooms are actually more difficult than LSD, for me anyway. Much more emotionally volatile and intense.
For sure. How would you compare with DMT? As it's the endogen one, and the only one (?) which really catapults you in other dimensions - at least that book about a doc who did some clinical experiments with DMT here in Mexico, he mentions that and that the majority of subjects experienced it as more real as this everyday reality which in some sense is true, we experience just a projection of something with something we don't understand yet and maybe never will if we continue as we do as the society as a whole but that's another topic. I find it remarkable how in politics and society besides nuclear war usually the worst possible scenario becomes reality in one or another way, that at the same time the probability for our universe to exist is so very very tiny, a complete opposite, which again brings me to the multiverse. It's interesting to see serious scientists think about such stuff but maybe they'd progress faster if psychedelics become more accepted and nanotechnology advances.
Psychedelics make you pay at the beginning, as opposed to most drugs which you pay afterwards (with hangover, depletion, crash, etc).
Interesting that even you as somebody who I'd think is very experienced with psydelics, gets this come-up anxiety. Yet with some dissociative it's completely gone. Somehow I don't believe that there's always the same price to pay as we get out of a drug but it's an art of itself to find the way to achieve that.
DMT makes everything into colorful geometric patterns and produces an immersion into a place where everything feels interconnected and driven by a controlling web of energy. People who die and come back report various experiences but they almost always include a tunnel and white light, and sometimes involve meeting with dead relatives and such. I've never read a report of someone saying what sounded to me like a DMT trip.
That's a point.
The difference is that people tripping on DMT have a hypervigilant brain which is much more connected than usually and thus will interpret the hell out of whatever input comes while real near-death experiences usually involve, well, to be almost or really dead during the experience. Thus the brain not interfering and coming up with fractals. Somehow I think these elves might be our own brain or consciousness, we aren't one but many in some sense - I experience decision making while high sometimes like if I was a board of politicians debating about the matter. This might be one explanation for why acoustic hallucinations (hearing voices) not always just shout at you but on DCK I could talk with them - just it became somewhat boring and annoying because they never come up with new stuff - and then began to disappear, I don't know if it was the psychological work inside myself or the LSD and abstinence which made them mostly disappaear. What I can tell for sure is that drugs, specially psydelics, not neccessarily need to be contraindicated in people with mental problems, set & setting is more important imho but unfortunately it seems to be a reality that some people remain stuck on trip - once I thought this to be the result of excessive fighting against the effects but I really have no clue. I'd be very interested in hearing more about the individual experiences from people who got lasting negative impact, just to get an idea of what can happen, and maybe my brain would come up with new crazy explanations.
Do you think/believe that it's all just in our mind and everything eventually explainable with chemistry and we nothing more than super advanced carbon based robots or that souls or whatever exist?
Sorry, English isn't my native tongue, probably pretty rough to understand..