Ego Dissolution:Psychedelics vs dissociatives

[Zilpe]

So I've just come out of a hole experience on DCK yesterday which included a great deal of ego dissolution and it got me wondering more about the comparison of this effect between dissociatives and psychedelics

Over the years I've become pretty familiar with the ego dissolution induced by dissociatives. For me this is a pretty common effect during a deep hole experience. My sense of things becomes less tied to any notion of individual identity and seems more universal or `cosmic.' I may know in some abstract way that my body is somehow facilitating my experience but it seems so disconnected that it becomes more of an academic point than something really felt. Sometimes This feeling will manifest itself with thoughts of being dead which is another common theme I see cropping up in reports of ego dissolution/death.

Despite this I've never really had a strong ego dissolving experience on psychedelics. Even when I've gone fairly deep on drugs like DPT I've always kept one foot firmly planted in the standard conceptions of self. I think this is mostly due to the tendency to redose dissociatives which can lead to accidental strong experiences whereas psychedelics you more or less take your entire dose at the beginning for maximum effectiveness.

Can people who have had experiences with ego dissolution on psychedelics and dissociatves comment on the similarities/differences between the two? Are they the same effect mediated via different mechanisms or is there anything different to the experience?

For example with dissocaitves I never experience fear to a great degree even though some part of me registers that it is an extreme experience. Fear almost doesn't make sense in that state. However, dissociatives are very anxiolytic for me whereas psychedelics are anxiogenic so I'm curious if that carries over the the more extreme states one can reach.

I'm also interested in comparisons to ego dissolution induced via other drugs or other non-substance related practices. Is it all the same experience or are there different shades of it?

 

[Vastness]

I haven't ever had a complete ego death experience either, although I haven't ever really been going for this, having mostly dosed psychedelics recreationally rather than with a deliberate intention of achieving spiritual growth (although I am quite open to any spiritual growth that occurs as a side effect!). I feel like I've come close enough times that I have some insight into what they are however.

Actually for me dissociatives are not necessarily ego dissolving at all compared to classical psychedelics... if anything I have on a few times experienced a kind of paradoxical, grandiose sense of ego-reinforcement while deep within a K hole, believing myself to be an avatar of some pan-dimensional being with some kind of divine mission to carry out, for example. I guess this could be said to be ego death of a sort however, in the sense that my sense of self changes.

I think this is an interesting question and I'd like to take the time to answer more in depth but I am kind of rushed at the moment so I will try to keep it brief. I think that in general, classical psychedelics are ego dissolving in a more connecting way, where you ego is dissolved by virtue of being "dissolved" into the meta-ego of all of existence, and connected to the consciousness of all living beings, such that the usual boundaries between your own self and the outside no longer seem relevant.

On the other hand dissociatives are ego dissolving in a more isolating way - just drawing on my own experiences, again, as well as the above mentioned experience, I've experienced a sense of being an individual worker in some kind of vast cosmic factory, a role that is both quite significant and important as well as insignificant in the sense that I am just one of many... I would like to call these 2 types of ego dissolution "positive" or "connected" ego dissolution, which dissolves the ego by virtue of showing you it's connectedness to everything else, versus "negative" or "disconnected" ego dissolution, which dissolves the ego by, essentially, temporarily deleting it, showing you your insignificance in all of creation but without actually deleting your own individuality.

I'm aware that there may be some negative connotations by my use of words there, like "negative" (obviously), "disconnected", etc, etc, but I really don't mean this to be any correlation with good and bad, I think I am just struggling to find the language to explain these concepts. I think there is a lot of overlap between the 2 states and both types of ego dissolution can be equally profound, but that said (in my opinion) I think dissociatives do have a slightly darker shade to them, by which I don't mean "bad", but, I guess, emotions have less involvement, and therefore in my memory the experiences seem a little "colder".

There I go again using words like "darker" and "colder", as much as I do still love dissociatives, but I hope that I have still managed to convey my meaning somewhat.

 

[Vastness]

Having thought about it a bit more, actually I think the last thing I touched on, the comparative emotional involvement, is actually key. Better terminology than positive and negative would be "emotionally heavy" versus "emotionally neutral", with all other respective properties following on from that and dependant on a variety of factors but still (I think) trending towards a "connected" ego dissolution versus a disconnected one.

 

[Zilpe]

I definitely agree that dissociatives can be ego reinforcing. But for me this is mostly apparent at low doses. It feels like this is more a side effect of the mania that can be induced by dissociatives and at high enough doses the dissociative effects override the manic effects and lead to more classic ego dissolving effects similar to what you're describing. For me drugs like ketamine generally aren't strongly dissociative enough to achieve these effects since you have to be in a pretty deep hole before they really start to take shape. I wonder if the dissociative effect on ego is 'u-shaped' reinforcing at low doses but dissolving at high enough doses and whether the mania and ego dissolving effects are mediated via different mechanisms which have different degrees of importance at different dosage levels.

The emotional side of things is also a good point. Dissociatives tend to be emotionally numbing whereas psychedelics tend to amplify emotions. In the depths of a strong ego dissolution on dissociatives the boundaries between self and other are more or less meaningless but this doesn't necessarily strike me as profound or spiritual but rather simply the way things are. Trying to think of myself as an independent consciousness cut of from the universe seems simply wrong rather than more or less beautiful like it might on psychedelics. With this in mind I think the reputation of dissociatives as being 'cold' is well earned although as you say it's not necessarily a bad thing.

The dissociative ego dissolution is almost solipsistic come to think of it. It's not so much all beings share the same consciousness as it is there is only one consciousness which is being experienced at this moment. The idea of individual consciousness beings seems absurd maybe because you simply can't access that experience as opposed to the feeling that we're all having some kind of collective experience.

 

[pupnik]

alertness is different,
this connects with urgency,
this connects with intentional letting go, letting it be,
if it is easy and dreamy it is less likely to be psychedelic and more likely to be dissociative.

 

[vortech]

Vastness made a lot of good comparisons.
The dissolution qualities differ for sure, and I have 'let go' to a *far greater* level with dissociatives. That said, there is a bit of an art to keeping dissociative experiences light, making their waters a little more psychonautically advanced to navigate. I think traditional psychedelics are a great starting point for ego dissolution. With that experience, going deeper with dissociatives is more of an effortless process.
There is an overlap of effects between tryptamines and arylcyclohexylamines, they are bread and butter for the mind and combine like butter melting into the toasted pores of bread. The power and synergy of both together kind of feel like the 'master quest' of ego dissolution.
.