Psychedelics - Psychosis, or is what I'm experiencing real?

[PocketLady]

So I'm really not sure whether I'm having some kind if break from reality when I take MDMA or psychedelics at festivals. It started a few years back when I'd taken quite a lot of MDMA followed by some mushrooms. As I was coming up on the shrooms I got the sense that everyone around me was telepathic in some way - that it was this secret which you kind of had to figure out yourself.

I continued to have experienced like this at festivals for the last few years. I felt like there was some kind of energy or vibe that we were all sensitive to when high on drugs. Weird things started happening, like if I was giving off a negative vibe at any given point, the music would go weird, or people would start bumping in to me or acting weird around me. But on the other hand, when I was completely in the present and totally open and accepting, the music would be amazing all of a sudden.

I remember going back to my tent one time when I was wasn't feeling too good, and there was this guy literally screaming like his was in pain not too far away. I also remember thinking that a guy in a band was playing the trombone badly, and he stormed off stage like he was really pissed. I could easily write this off as coincidence, but when I say that at least 10+ of these "coincidences" would happen per night would not be in any way exaggerating. I feel when a group of people are high on drugs we can all feel exactly what the other people are feeling, almost to the extent of telepathy.

It only really occurred to me the other day that this might be some kind of psychosis. I looked up "thought broadcasting" which is a symptom of schizophrenia and psychosis which basically describes what i think is happening, except I only believe it happens when I am around other people on drugs and I don't believe it's happening to me exclusively, if that makes sense? It's not a special ability I have, but something that happens as a result of taking drugs.

So am I crazy? Would really appreciate responses from everyone, but am very interested to here from people who go to festivals/raves regularly

 

[pupnik]

I think what you were observing was synchronicity.
It is neither real nor not real.
In very stoned states, the sense of time passing is encumbered with the fact that more than one moment is being experienced simultaneously, and you cannot tell if it is the freshest moment or not.
One of the side effects of that is Deja Vu which is an uncanny experience of knowing what happens next, which you would expect if you were somehow immersed 2 seconds back watching the world unfold (again).
Anyway this rarely happens when you are not stoned, or not just arising from an amazing day dream.
Therefore, I would not call you Psychotic, and I don't think your experiences are that weird for full on psychedelic experience. We do affect each other, we do have thoughts, feelings, and reactions, and when you are stoned it is not obvious what is cause - what is effect - and what came before what - the issue is that the sense of time is not simply flowing forward (it can stand still, and can jump back and forth) so a determination of what is original (causal) is not precise.

 

[Hodor]

MDMA is an empathogen/entactogen, a drug that amplifies emotions and feelings of empathy to the point where you might feel like you are able to sense others' emotions on a telepathic level.

Psychedelics potentiate this effect by making you more open to suggestion, and also alter your perception of time, causality and significance.

And when you're at a festival where a significant portion of the crowd is as high as you are, those feelings are going to be compounded up to 11.

That said, even though empathogens and psychedelics do not give you "true" psychic abilities, they can still be extremely valuable tools in helping you identify and overcome dysfunctional behavior patterns - perhaps even more so if you also accept the limitations of these substances.

 

[Haltia]

I can say that this, or very similar conviction descended on me the one time I took LSD with some other people, and furthermore I fully believed
that the other people were undergoing the exact same experience at once; and that everything that proceeded out of their mouths was inspired by
delighting in this shared discovery of telepathy..

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Psychedelics can cause you to think events are connected when they are indeed completely unrelated. Psychs seem to grab certain aspects from events and intertwine them through vague similarities and past experiences.

This can manifest into paranoia if you connect an event to the collapse of the universe, degradation of your mind/soul, or something similar. You might get convinced that people can read your mind or are evil entities because something they said can be vaguely connected with an insecurity you have.

In reality they are just making conversation and most likely not peering into your soul and pulling out your fears.

 

[DimeBagJohnny]

I got chills reading this. The exact same thing happens to me on weed. Happened a few times on psychedelics, too.

 

[psy997]

This happens to me on psychedelics in public relatively regularly. Remember that we're all energy beings sharing a unified energy field, of course what you put out is going to affect what and who's around you. The key is not freaking out once it's been made obvious in that particular trip, especially if made obvious from emitting some kind of "negative" energy. I freaked out at an acid party in San Fran and had to force my friend and I to leave because I let one negative interaction throw me off which turned into me feeling out of place which turned into completely killing the vibes wherever I was and causing an almost mass exodus of anyone around me, no joke.

No you're not crazy, but also it's in your head.

 

[Solipsis]

These drugs expand your consciousness, make you more open to everything - some of those things could have otherwise been filtered out, however you also get more sensitive to patterns and open to suggestion since there is much less compartmentalization.

IMO sober part of your mind/brain 'fact-checks' information from other parts, on psychedelic drugs especially potentiated by something like MDMA these functions start blending together more. The upside is that there can be amazing harmony and potential, and also connections which normally would not be made. This can lead to insights and all sorts of benefits. The downside is that there isn't proper control and checking anymore and your mind does all it can to form a coherent stream of consciousness but there is a lot of distortion from inappropriate brain activity like synaesthesia (seeing sounds etc).

Your mind reflects things that happen but your state of mind determines in what kind of mode.

About the 'telepathy': we have ways in which we mirror other people's behaviors and thought patterns. When this goes into overdrive through psychedelia and empathogen effects IMO there isn't so much telepathy in the sense of 'concrete information being sent unseen'. The non-verbal communication, that kind of contact is very important in these kinds of experiences, I'm sure. Is being an expert at reading someone telepathy? Calling that 'reading someone's mind' is a nice way of putting it but should not be confused with paranormal activity.

 

[PocketLady]

Thank you all for your intelligent and thought-provoking replies. I guess I just can't get over how real these experiences have seemed, but maybe thats part of what I am being shown here.

 

[mountainrange]

I think there are two sides to this story. Firstly, MDMA is known simply as empathy or it was, before it was renamed ecstasy when the drug was first picked up in clubs. Empathy wasn't cutting it as a brand name so ecstasy was coined as an alternative. It's a drug which simply connects you to a higher vibrational frequency which we all can recognise and tune into, but like with psychedelics, we choose to shut out and filter. In a way, this makes sense because it doesn't serve us well being super friendly and loving to everyone - especially from an evolutionary perspective. We don't get far being cuddly and loved up in a society programmed to produce, dominate and manipulate resources (including ourselves and each other) so maybe these abilities, these deep emotional and perhaps even deeply spiritual parts of us are there, in plain sight yet in complete darkness, just waiting to be unlocked in our consciousness yet cannot be unless programmed into us, or alternatively, by taking a drug like MDMA.

Like with psychedelics, you can tap into frequencies and consciousness unavailable to the normal operating brain - an aspect of our psyche which stretches back no doubt to primordial times when we had to gel with our communities and shared love and protection and warmth in order to prolong our tribes. This would of included dancing around fires, sharing stories, cuddling and bonding etc. This has been largely bred out of us and psychologically trained to the back of out minds so I don't doubt for a second that what you mention is an aspect of not just those who take MDMA but also those that do not, instead of it being just a drug experience, it's really an intrinsic fundamental evolutionary level of consciousness we once experienced but now has been discounted a reduced through the looking glass of everyday reality.

That being said, you also have to know the difference between what seems to be interconnected into the whole essence of life, the cosmos and in our human potential and what is, quite frankly, bullshit or in other viewpoints perhaps even psychotic. You have to be careful as to be able to scrutinise objectively your own experience so to determine that what you see and believe is actually sustainable in terms of an agreed subjective experience. That's what psychiatry is based upon, an agreed paradigm of socially acceptable experience, which ultimately determines your thoughts and beliefs in a medical context as either being sane or not. The same logic and reasoning applies to your own beliefs and experiences, if you are looking for a marker as to your place your current beliefs and thoughts.

In this case, it's definetly NOT psychotic rambling. We are all connected together, we developed communication methods which must of greatly benefited our communities, we theorise today that love was a feeling developed to ensure survival of offspring and our genetic lineage.

Lastly, there are layers to our consciousness and fabric to our being which is well hidden away, perhaps why it is that way comes down to environmental changes or as mentioned above and no doubt the leading culprit, selective reprogramming over the years. All I know is that such phenomena are closer related to the reality of our human condition and the whole fabric of our existence rather than it is related to psychotic delusions. However saying that and remaining subjective, you have to be able to know where to draw the line and in many ways, be your own scientific litmus test in order to ascertain the difference between what may be a perfectly viable belief and something which could spell the onset or prolonged consequences of mental illness. Some things you experience when high simply isn't true. No matter what you tell yourself, it just isn't true. And some are very true. You perhaps received the inside true knowledge of your psyche and of connection between all beings, or at least all humans in terms of feelings we know we are capable of experiencing but also received other thoughts and emotional content which probably does not stand the test of reasoning and simple rational enquiry. It's knowing what to take from it all.
This being the latter, you should have nothing to worry about

 

[Vastness]

It's likely not psychosis but it's also not real. Psychedelics have a tendency to induce some strange ideas, but while you're under the influence your judgement of reality is impaired. For that matter, as a human being your judgement of reality is already impaired - humans are not always the most rational creatures, and your senses and your emotions will deceive you. Remember this and you'll be fine - try not to get too bogged down in supernatural explanations of such phenomena, as tempting as they might be.

 

[psy997]

Great post mountainrange. I'd love to see you around more!

 

[Solipsis]

Nice post yes

That idea about the paradigm of society as a way to practice psychiatry and determine psychosis is part of structuralism and Foucault has many things to say on that topic that will have you think twice about whether the eccentricity is really enough to judge a person's madness.

A better argument for stepping away from this 'coincidence (synchronicity) / telepathy / pattern recognition line of thinking' is your own well-being: questioning things that are fundamental to your view on reality is dangerous and not to be done casually or to allow to develop freely. That is not to say you should never question big things, a paradigm shift can be a part of personal development or in other cases an existantial crisis and it may not always be easy to ignore when you are a long way from having a proper 'explanation' whatsoever for things that happened.

On the other hand people can have all sorts of beliefs, many wilder than those about thought broadcasting... and people can function fine with them in many cases.

I wouldn't try to just strip you of your beliefs, but encourage you to remain skeptical as a healthy compromise. Finding the world wondrous is good, but there can be a downside to being heavily impressed by certain experiences since how impressive they are doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how real or illusory they are, yet you can see all around that people easily assume that one implies the other.
Healthy though is balancing and challenging ideas by wondering about opposite things at a second glance: how inaccurate is this thought broadcasting really? There are countless people who believe a medium doing a cold reading even when the medium admits fully that this trick is being used. Similarly you should try to keep a fresh perspective and try to test whether thoughts have actually been transmitted in a way that is so accurate as to be impossible, or whether it just seems like it.

On psychedelics, it's super easy to be fooled in ways like that.

Set high standards for proof before believing any of that too easily, stop tripping when your thoughts on these matters goed beyond casual to serious or obsessive... I don't know how often you trip, but one effect from doing it often that I have noticed is that I gradually lost a huge amount of skepticism over a year once. Back then I theorized on a lot of vague ideas and lost track of how much of it could even be concluded or known based on the available information.

What's actually impressive though IMO is how many examples I have come across of the mind getting fooled in some way or another while any proofs of paranormal things have been either incredibly disappointing / non-existent, or instead - and indeed usually the truth lies somewhere in the middle: there are explanations which show that there are partially scientific explanations but also partially show that the paranormal theories were just very misleading in their way of seeming anti-scientific and actually just turns out to be reconcilable.

This last bit is why I don't advocate 'classical' reductionism but a sort of reductionism-plus which includes changing the way of looking at it, so not only adjusting the answer but also pointing out the flaws in the question.

 

[PocketLady]

This thread is full of so many fascinating perspectives. Thank you! Indeed I've made it a point in my life not take to on too many beliefs. As RAW says, "I don't have any beliefs but I have many suspicions." The thing is, the evidence I have to back up these "beliefs" or "suspicions" is overwhelming. Most of it is completely my subjective experience I know. The idea of an agreed subjective experience of reality is interesting. I would be interested to know how many people have been to a rave, or a festival, or a psytrance party and felt the communal energy or "vibe" created there?

 

[JK25]

So I'm really not sure whether I'm having some kind if break from reality when I take MDMA or psychedelics at festivals. It started a few years back when I'd taken quite a lot of MDMA followed by some mushrooms. As I was coming up on the shrooms I got the sense that everyone around me was telepathic in some way - that it was this secret which you kind of had to figure out yourself.

I continued to have experienced like this at festivals for the last few years. I felt like there was some kind of energy or vibe that we were all sensitive to when high on drugs. Weird things started happening, like if I was giving off a negative vibe at any given point, the music would go weird, or people would start bumping in to me or acting weird around me. But on the other hand, when I was completely in the present and totally open and accepting, the music would be amazing all of a sudden.

I remember going back to my tent one time when I was wasn't feeling too good, and there was this guy literally screaming like his was in pain not too far away. I also remember thinking that a guy in a band was playing the trombone badly, and he stormed off stage like he was really pissed. I could easily write this off as coincidence, but when I say that at least 10+ of these "coincidences" would happen per night would not be in any way exaggerating. I feel when a group of people are high on drugs we can all feel exactly what the other people are feeling, almost to the extent of telepathy.

It only really occurred to me the other day that this might be some kind of psychosis. I looked up "thought broadcasting" which is a symptom of schizophrenia and psychosis which basically describes what i think is happening, except I only believe it happens when I am around other people on drugs and I don't believe it's happening to me exclusively, if that makes sense? It's not a special ability I have, but something that happens as a result of taking drugs.

So am I crazy? Would really appreciate responses from everyone, but am very interested to here from people who go to festivals/raves regularly

That is because Mushrooms opens up the 3rd eye for short periods and then you can actually SEE. Happens either through drugs or many other ways.