• N&PD Moderators: Skorpio | thegreenhand

Breakthrough psilocybin study uncovers neurochemical origins of human ego

Yeah, I knew it - psychedelics act over glutamate too 😆 Very interesting, yet somehow I don't necessarily agree with that knowing the neurochemical changes is identifical with knowing the origin of something. This'd implicate that our consiousness is nothing but an illusion, sth I know is being speculated about, just there's no answer why we then actually experience our life and aren't just robots.. They'll be able to develop a perfect imitation of a human at some point yet it wll remain an imitation for now, at least to my opinion.. (Know, what's the difference between perfect illusion and reality? What is reality? For me, experiencing is reality, for the lack of a better describation.. Robots act but don't experience.)

Happy to see finally more research about these strange phenomen, and even more so about that maybe it's just a few years until clinical use (can you use psychedelics in a clinical environment?? There's an urgent need to change how such clinics look and feel.) - guess tho it will be similar to K, with the majority being left out as long as the War on Drugs continues and money is a primary factor .. :(

Somewhat off topic, but what are the implications of being unable to experience ego death even on overdose of mushrooms? Can low-ish doses of S/NRIs completely inhibit that or not?
 
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Somewhat off topic, but what are the implications of being unable to experience ego death even on overdose of mushrooms? Can low-ish doses of S/NRIs completely inhibit that or not?

I've taken massive doses (10g of mushrooms), and nearly every other psychedelic and I can't really say I've had Ego Death before. Close to it maybe, but never complete ego death. I think the answer may be that I don't have much of an ego or confronted it long ago. I love Jungian psychology and his idea of the shadow.

I've never taken SSRI's and psychedelics before (together) so I'm really not sure about your other proposition.
 
True ego death is extremely rare on trips and even taking increasing large doses doesn't mean it will happen. Sometimes it can be like 40 trips between them.

Though mushroom ego death is kind of even harder imo to come across since they are still heavy body grounded. But ego death can happen without drugs.

Though ego death isn't really a good term to describe it since its not really your ego dying its just complete transcend of the self and the game of life satori enlightenment will be the most profound and amazing seconds of your life but you will quickly return to the sense of your ego and life. Ego death won't be inhibited by S/NRIS completely but since they do mute the effects of psychedelics a rare occurrence becomes even more rare.

DMT / 5 meo is the ego death drug. LSD is better than shrooms for ego death due to the dopamine stimulation aswell it leads to greater merging of the universe/god. Drop acid 250-400 ug in the dark stay in dark and try just meditate on your body sensations very trippy music can be played highly recommend ott skylon this album was made to ego death.

The only ego death i had on shrooms was the first time i dosed them which would of been over 5 grams of cubensis equiplvent dose.

Tim leary wrote his manual for trying to induce ego death on most trips whenever it works for a person is up to the individual.

Ego death comes in stages full ego death is what is rare. Alot of new people to psychedelics think a little dissolution of the self is ego death. ego death entails seeing through the illusion of self and separation and experiencing complete transcendence and feels like you have become one with god or found the god head that always lay within this is enlightenment but wears off very fast so if you do find yourself in that moment soak it in because its amazing and will change your outlook on everything. Moments leading up to ego death can be very confusing and resistance leads to very scary shit. My last one i got stuck on questioning if i was just a construct in a stimulated reality within my own mind on acid and how many stimulated realities would this lead to so how would i know if all of this was real. Thoughts just overwhemled my mind til i disconnected from body and was just a empty awareness and finally saw through the illusion of ego/self and experienced being god for 10 seconds.
 
Robots act but don't experience.
Hmmm. Experience contributes to learning, i.e. every experience is something we humans learn from, intellectually, spiritually or emotionally. 'Robots' learn from experience too, but cognitively speaking, experience in a different way. While we are not yet at the technical threshold of developing realistic simulacra (androids that so closely resemble a human that you can't tell the difference), we are at a stage of creating artificial intelligence (AI) closely resembling that of a 3 yr old human which can learn from its input and adapt itself accordingly. The scary part is that these AIs mature at a rate massively faster than a human does. Bit OT but...
 
Interesting. Guess I had partial ego dissolution on high doses of dissociatives then, even when they aren't the best example but it comes much closer to the description than an "accidetal" 7gr of strong cubensis which were just.. weird. Speedy and scatter-brained but nothing psychedelic at all - and these shrooms were self grown, so certainly not adulterated.

Granted my English isn't good enough to really express what I wanted to say about humans/lifeforms vs. robots ...

Very curious about to hear that dopamine contributes to ego loss. Do you have sources or more information about that? :)
 
The only time I've had complete and total ego death was on about 600ug of LSD-25 and I haven't been able to replicate it since. In fact, any attempt produces some kind of superego delusion that essentially makes me feel the opposite if the "oneness with the universe" (I am reality and nobody else is real except me) that people (including myself ) describe with ego death. I wonder if that could be explained by this new data in this article or another.
 
The only time I've had complete and total ego death was on about 600ug of LSD-25 and I haven't been able to replicate it since. In fact, any attempt produces some kind of superego delusion that essentially makes me feel the opposite if the "oneness with the universe" (I am reality and nobody else is real except me) that people (including myself ) describe with ego death. I wonder if that could be explained by this new data in this article or another.
Shouldn't it feel more like "everyone else is just another form of myself" ?
Strange, this is exactly what dissociatives give you, usually. Different form of the same concept of being one with the universe ... some times though, usually with less high doses strangely, there is real partial ego dissolution with dissos too(oh, physical dissolution too, pretty nice but this is more..of this world). Somehow have the theory that they either act over activation of 5ht2a partially and/or release of endogenous DMT. But the paper probably gives the answers, that the ego is a glutamate related mechanism and thus glutamate modulating drugs are able to mess with it. Still curious though, will need to read again later..

The 'I am reality and nobody else' is kinda scary, if you were able to feel anxiety at that point, but I am not so it becomes more of a manic de/illusion a la 'I am the creator and could do anything I want' (dangerous!). The other one, 'everyone else if just another form of myself' is mystical.
 
Oh, you can feel one with the universe and others without an actual connection. It was an experience somewhat like the matrix, that everybody is alone in his/her own universe but nevertheless all are the the same, like multiverse theory.. and/or that there's an other-dimensional connection underneath, just that we aren't able to enter or measure that space yet ... Things like real empathy, feeling what others feel without an actual sense of connection or empathy at all, add to that. Subjective empathy can be soo wrong and leads people to do bad shit to others in good meaning.
 
Oh, you can feel one with the universe and others without an actual connection. It was an experience somewhat like the matrix, that everybody is alone in his/her own universe but nevertheless all are the the same, like multiverse theory.. and/or that there's an other-dimensional connection underneath, just that we aren't able to enter or measure that space yet ... Things like real empathy, feeling what others feel without an actual sense of connection or empathy at all, add to that. Subjective empathy can be soo wrong and leads people to do bad shit to others in good meaning.

That's actually a very good way to explain that. Makes a lot more sense to me now.
 
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